Sketches New and Old, Part 1. Read online

  POLITICAL ECONOMY

  Political Economy is the basis of all good government. The wisest men of all ages have brought to bear upon this subject the--

  [Here I was interrupted and informed that a stranger wished to see medown at the door. I went and confronted him, and asked to know hisbusiness, struggling all the time to keep a tight rein on my seethingpolitical-economy ideas, and not let them break away from me or gettangled in their harness. And privately I wished the stranger was in thebottom of the canal with a cargo of wheat on top of him. I was all in afever, but he was cool. He said he was sorry to disturb me, but as hewas passing he noticed that I needed some lightning-rods. I said, "Yes,yes--go on--what about it?" He said there was nothing about it, inparticular--nothing except that he would like to put them up for me.I am new to housekeeping; have been used to hotels and boarding-housesall my life. Like anybody else of similar experience, I try to appear(to strangers) to be an old housekeeper; consequently I said in anoffhand way that I had been intending for some time to have six or eightlightning-rods put up, but--The stranger started, and looked inquiringlyat me, but I was serene. I thought that if I chanced to make anymistakes, he would not catch me by my countenance. He said he wouldrather have my custom than any man's in town. I said, "All right," andstarted off to wrestle with my great subject again, when he called meback and said it would be necessary to know exactly how many "points" Iwanted put up, what parts of the house I wanted them on, and what qualityof rod I preferred. It was close quarters for a man not used to theexigencies of housekeeping; but I went through creditably, and heprobably never suspected that I was a novice. I told him to put up eight"points," and put them all on the roof, and use the best quality of rod.He said he could furnish the "plain" article at 20 cents a foot;"coppered," 25 cents; "zinc-plated spiral-twist," at 30 cents, that wouldstop a streak of lightning any time, no matter where it was bound, and"render its errand harmless and its further progress apocryphal." I saidapocryphal was no slouch of a word, emanating from the source it did,but, philology aside, I liked the spiral-twist and would take that brand.Then he said he could make two hundred and fifty feet answer; but to doit right, and make the best job in town of it, and attract the admirationof the just and the unjust alike, and compel all parties to say theynever saw a more symmetrical and hypothetical display of lightning-rodssince they were born, he supposed he really couldn't get along withoutfour hundred, though he was not vindictive, and trusted he was willing totry. I said, go ahead and use four hundred, and make any kind of a jobhe pleased out of it, but let me get back to my work. So I got rid ofhim at last; and now, after half an hour spent in getting my train ofpolitical-economy thoughts coupled together again, I am ready to go ononce more.]

  richest treasures of their genius, their experience of life, and their learning. The great lights of commercial jurisprudence, international confraternity, and biological deviation, of all ages, all civilizations, and all nationalities, from Zoroaster down to Horace Greeley, have--

  [Here I was interrupted again, and required to go down and confer furtherwith that lightning-rod man. I hurried off, boiling and surging withprodigious thoughts wombed in words of such majesty that each one of themwas in itself a straggling procession of syllables that might be fifteenminutes passing a given point, and once more I confronted him--he so calmand sweet, I so hot and frenzied. He was standing in the contemplativeattitude of the Colossus of Rhodes, with one foot on my infant tuberose,and the other among my pansies, his hands on his hips, his hat-brimtilted forward, one eye shut and the other gazing critically andadmiringly in the direction of my principal chimney. He said now therewas a state of things to make a man glad to be alive; and added, "I leaveit to you if you ever saw anything more deliriously picturesque thaneight lightning-rods on one chimney?" I said I had no presentrecollection of anything that transcended it. He said that in hisopinion nothing on earth but Niagara Falls was superior to it in the wayof natural scenery. All that was needed now, he verily believed, to makemy house a perfect balm to the eye, was to kind of touch up the otherchimneys a little, and thus "add to the generous 'coup d'oeil' a soothinguniformity of achievement which would allay the excitement naturallyconsequent upon the 'coup d'etat.'" I asked him if he learned to talkout of a book, and if I could borrow it anywhere? He smiled pleasantly,and said that his manner of speaking was not taught in books, and thatnothing but familiarity with lightning could enable a man to handle hisconversational style with impunity. He then figured up an estimate, andsaid that about eight more rods scattered about my roof would about fixme right, and he guessed five hundred feet of stuff would do it; andadded that the first eight had got a little the start of him, so tospeak, and used up a mere trifle of material more than he had calculatedon--a hundred feet or along there. I said I was in a dreadful hurry,and I wished we could get this business permanently mapped out, so that Icould go on with my work. He said, "I could have put up those eightrods, and marched off about my business--some men would have done it.But no; I said to myself, this man is a stranger to me, and I will diebefore I'll wrong him; there ain't lightning-rods enough on that house,and for one I'll never stir out of my tracks till I've done as I would bedone by, and told him so. Stranger, my duty is accomplished; if therecalcitrant and dephlogistic messenger of heaven strikes your--""There, now, there," I said, "put on the other eight--add five hundredfeet of spiral-twist--do anything and everything you want to do; but calmyour sufferings, and try to keep your feelings where you can reach themwith the dictionary. Meanwhile, if we understand each other now, I willgo to work again."

  I think I have been sitting here a full hour this time, trying to getback to where I was when my train of thought was broken up by the lastinterruption; but I believe I have accomplished it at last, and mayventure to proceed again.]

  wrestled with this great subject, and the greatest among them have found it a worthy adversary, and one that always comes up fresh and smiling after every throw. The great Confucius said that he would rather be a profound political economist than chief of police. Cicero frequently said that political economy was the grandest consummation that the human mind was capable of consuming; and even our own Greeley had said vaguely but forcibly that "Political--

  [Here the lightning-rod man sent up another call for me. I went down ina state of mind bordering on impatience. He said he would rather havedied than interrupt me, but when he was employed to do a job, and thatjob was expected to be done in a clean, workmanlike manner, and when itwas finished and fatigue urged him to seek the rest and recreation hestood so much in need of, and he was about to do it, but looked up andsaw at a glance that all the calculations had been a little out, and if athunder-storm were to come up, and that house, which he felt a personalinterest in, stood there with nothing on earth to protect it but sixteenlightning-rods--"Let us have peace!" I shrieked. "Put up a hundred andfifty! Put some on the kitchen! Put a dozen on the barn! Put a coupleon the cow! Put one on the cook!--scatter them all over the persecutedplace till it looks like a zinc-plated, spiral-twisted, silver-mountedcanebrake! Move! Use up all the material you can get your hands on, andwhen you run out of lightning-rods put up ramrods, cam-rods, stair-rods,piston-rods--anything that will pander to your dismal appetite forartificial scenery, and bring respite to my raging brain and healing tomy lacerated soul!" Wholly unmoved--further than to smile sweetly--thisiron being simply turned back his wrist-bands daintily, and said he wouldnow proceed to hump himself. Well, all that was nearly three hours ago.It is questionable whether I am calm enough yet to write on the nobletheme of political economy, but I cannot resist the desire to try, for itis the one subject that is nearest to my heart and dearest to my brain ofall this world's philosophy.]

  economy is heaven's best boon to man." When the loose but gifted Byron lay in his Venetian exile he observed that, if it could be granted him to go back and live his misspent life over again, he
would give his lucid and unintoxicated intervals to the composition, not of frivolous rhymes, but of essays upon political economy. Washington loved this exquisite science; such names as Baker, Beckwith, Judson, Smith, are imperishably linked with it; and even imperial Homer, in the ninth book of the Iliad, has said:

  Fiat justitia, ruat coelum, Post mortem unum, ante bellum, Hic facet hoc, ex-parte res, Politicum e-conomico est.

  The grandeur of these conceptions of the old poet, together with the felicity of the wording which clothes them, and the sublimity of the imagery whereby they are illustrated, have singled out that stanza, and made it more celebrated than any that ever--

  ["Now, not a word out of you--not a single word. Just state your billand relapse into impenetrable silence for ever and ever on thesepremises. Nine hundred, dollars? Is that all? This check for theamount will be honored at any respectable bank in America. What is thatmultitude of people gathered in the street for? How?--'looking at thelightning-rods!' Bless my life, did they never see any lightning-rodsbefore? Never saw 'such a stack of them on one establishment,' did Iunderstand you to say? I will step down and critically observe thispopular ebullition of ignorance."]

  THREE DAYS LATER.--We are all about worn out. For four-and-twenty hoursour bristling premises were the talk and wonder of the town. Thetheaters languished, for their happiest scenic inventions were tame andcommonplace compared with my lightning-rods. Our street was blockednight and day with spectators, and among them were many who came fromthe country to see. It was a blessed relief on the second day when athunderstorm came up and the lightning began to "go for" my house, as thehistorian Josephus quaintly phrases it. It cleared the galleries, so tospeak. In five minutes there was not a spectator within half a mile ofmy place; but all the high houses about that distance away were full,windows, roof, and all. And well they might be, for all the fallingstars and Fourth-of-July fireworks of a generation, put together andrained down simultaneously out of heaven in one brilliant shower upon onehelpless roof, would not have any advantage of the pyrotechnic displaythat was making my house so magnificently conspicuous in the generalgloom of the storm.

  By actual count, the lightning struck at my establishment sevenhundred and sixty-four times in forty minutes, but tripped on one ofthose faithful rods every time, and slid down the spiral-twist and shotinto the earth before it probably had time to be surprised at the way thething was done. And through all that bombardment only one patch of slateswas ripped up, and that was because, for a single instant, the rods inthe vicinity were transporting all the lightning they could possiblyaccommodate. Well, nothing was ever seen like it since the world began.For one whole day and night not a member of my family stuck his head outof the window but he got the hair snatched off it as smooth as abilliard-ball; and; if the reader will believe me, not one of us everdreamt of stirring abroad. But at last the awful siege came to anend-because there was absolutely no more electricity left in the cloudsabove us within grappling distance of my insatiable rods. Then I salliedforth, and gathered daring workmen together, and not a bite or a nap didwe take till the premises were utterly stripped of all their terrificarmament except just three rods on the house, one on the kitchen, and oneon the barn--and, behold, these remain there even unto this day. Andthen, and not till then, the people ventured to use our street again.I will remark here, in passing, that during that fearful time I did notcontinue my essay upon political economy. I am not even yet settledenough in nerve and brain to resume it.

  TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN.--Parties having need of three thousand twohundred and eleven feet of best quality zinc-plated spiral-twistlightning-rod stuff, and sixteen hundred and thirty-one silver-tippedpoints, all in tolerable repair (and, although much worn by use, stillequal to any ordinary emergency), can hear of a bargains by addressingthe publisher.