I think I have been sitting here a full hour this time, trying to get

back 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 may

venture 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 in

a state of mind bordering on impatience. He said he would rather have

died than interrupt me, but when he was employed to do a job, and that

job was expected to be done in a clean, workmanlike manner, and when it

was finished and fatigue urged him to seek the rest and recreation he

stood so much in need of, and he was about to do it, but looked up and

saw at a glance that all the calculations had been a little out, and if a

thunder-storm were to come up, and that house, which he felt a personal

interest in, stood there with nothing on earth to protect it but sixteen

lightning-rods--"Let us have peace!" I shrieked. "Put up a hundred and

fifty! Put some on the kitchen! Put a dozen on the barn! Put a couple

on the cow! Put one on the cook!--scatter them all over the persecuted

place till it looks like a zinc-plated, spiral-twisted, silver-mounted

Sketches New and Old