Sketches by Mark Twain/Political Economy
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 me down at the door. I went and confronted
him, and asked to know his business, struggling
all the time to keep a tight rein on my seething political
economy ideas, and not let them break away from me or get
tangled in their harness. And privately I wished the
stranger was in the bottom of the canal with a cargo of
wheat on top of him. I was all in a fever, but he was
cool. He said he was sorry to disturb me, but as he was
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, in particular nothing except that
he would like to put them up for me. I am new to
housekeeping; have been used to hotels and boarding-houses
all my life. Like anybody else of similar experience,
I try to appear (to strangers) to be an old housekeeper;
consequently I said in an off-hand way that I
had been intending for some time to have six or eight
lightning-rods put up, but The stranger started,
and looked inquiringly at me, but I was serene. I thought that if I chanced to make any mistakes, he
would not catch me by my countenance. He said he
would rather have my custom than any man's in town. I
said, "All right," and started off to wrestle with my great
subject again, when he called me back and said it would
be necessary to know exactly how many "points" I wanted
put up, what parts of the house I wanted them on,
and what quality of rod I preferred. It was close quarters
for a man not used to the exigencies of housekeeping;
but I went through creditably, and he probably 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 would stop a streak
of lightning any time, no matter where it was bound, and
"render its errand harmless and its further progress
apocryphal." I said apocryphal 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 do it right, and make the best job in town of it,
and attract the admiration of the just and the unjust
alike, and compel all parties to say they never saw a
more symmetrical and hypothetical display of lightning-rods
since they were born, he supposed he really couldn't
get along without four hundred, though he was not
vindictive, and trusted he was willing to try. I said, go
ahead and use four hundred, and make any kind of a job he pleased out of it, but let me get back to my work. So
I got rid of him at last; and now, after half-an-hour spent
in getting my train of political economy thoughts coupled
together again, I am ready to go on once 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 further with that lightning-rod man. I hurried off, boiling and surging with prodigious thoughts wombed in words of such majesty that each one of them was in itself a straggling procession of syllables that might be fifteen minutes passing a given point, and once more I confronted him—he so calm and sweet, I so hot and frenzied. He was standing in the contemplative attitude 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-brim tilted forward, one eye shut and the other gazing critically and admiringly in the direction of my principal chimney. He said now there was a state of things to make a man glad to be alive; and added, "I leave it to you if you ever saw anything more deliriously picturesque than eight lightning-rods on one chimney?" I said I had no present recollection of anything that transcended it. He said that in his opinion nothing on earth but Niagara Falls was superior to it in the way of natural scenery. All that was needed now, he verily believed, to make my house a perfect balm to the eye, was to kind of touch up the other chimneys a little, and thus "add to the generous coup d'œil a soothing uniformity of achievement which would allay the excitement naturally consequent upon the first coup d'etat." I asked him if he learned to talk out 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 that nothing but familiarity with lightning could enable a man to handle his conversational style with impunity. He then figured up an estimate, and said that about eight more rods scattered about my roof would about fix me right, and he guessed five hundred feet of stuff would do it; and added that the first eight had got a little the start of him, so to speak, and used up a mere trifle of material more than he had calculated on—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 I could go on with my work. He said, "I could have put up those eight rods, 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 die before 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 be done by, and told him so. Stranger, my duty is accomplished; if the recalcitrant and dephlogistic messenger of heaven strikes your""There, now, there," I said, "put on the other eight—add five hundred feet of spiral-twist—do anything and everything you want to do but calm your sufferings, and try to keep your feelings where you can reach them with the dictionary. Meanwhile, if we understand each other now, I will go to work again."
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 last interruption; 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 is 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 Greely has 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 cane-break! Move! Use up all the material you can get your hands on, and when you run out of lightning-rods put up ram-rods, cam-rods, stair-rods, piston-rods—anything that will pander to your dismal appetite for artificial scenery, and bring respite to my raging brain, and healing to my lacerated soul!" Wholly unmoved—further than to smile sweetly—this iron being simply turned back his wristbands daintily, and said, "He would now 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 noble theme of political economy, but I cannot resist the desire to try, for it is the one subject that is nearest to my heart and dearest to my brain of all 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 cœlum,
Post mortem unum, ante bellum,
Hic jacet 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 make it more celebrated than any that ever—
["Now, not a word out of you—not a single word. Just state your bill and relapse into impenetrable silence for ever and ever on these premises. Nine hundred dollars? Is that all? This cheque for the amount will be honoured at any respectable bank in America. What is that multitude of people gathered in the street for? How?—'looking at the lightning-rods! Bless my life, did they never see any lightning-rods before? Never saw 'such a stack of them on one establishment,' did I understand you to say? I will step down and critically observe this popular ebullition of ignorance."]
Three Days Later.—We are all about worn out. For
four-and-twenty hours our bristling premises were the
talk and wonder of the town. The theatres languished,
for their happiest scenic inventions were tame and
commonplace compared with my lightning-rods. Our street
was blocked night and day with spectators, and among
them were many who came from the country to see. It
was a blessed relief on the second day, when a thunderstorm
came up and the lightning began to "go for" my
house, as the historian Josephus quaintly phrases it. It
cleared the galleries, so to speak. In five minutes there
was not a spectator within half a mile of my place; but
all the high houses about that distance away were full,
windows, roof, and all. And well they might be, for all
the falling stars and Fourth-of-July fireworks of a
generation, put together and rained down simultaneously out
of heaven in one brilliant shower upon one helpless roof,
would not have any advantage of the pyrotechnic display that was making my house so magnificently conspicuous
in the general gloom of the storm. By actual count, the
lightning struck at my establishment seven hundred and
sixty-four times in forty minutes, but tripped on one of
those faithful rods every time, and slid down the spiral
twist and shot into the earth before it probably had time
to be surprised at the way the thing was done. And
through all that bombardment only one patch of slates
was ripped up, and that was because, for a single instant,
the rods in the vicinity were transporting all the lightning
they could possibly accommodate. 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
out of the window but he got the hair snatched off it as
smooth as a billiard-ball; and if the reader will believe
me, not one of us ever dreamt of stirring abroad. But at
last the awful siege came to an end—because there was
absolutely no more electricity left in the clouds above us
within grappling distance of my insatiable rods. Then I
sallied forth, and gathered daring workmen together, and
not a bite or a nap did we take till the premises were
utterly stripped of all their terrific armament except just
three rods on the house, one on the kitchen, and one on
the barn—and behold these remain there even unto this
day. And then, 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 not continue my essay upon
political economy. I am not even yet settled enough in
nerve and brain to resume it.
To Whim it May Concern.—Parties having need of three thousand two hundred and eleven feet of best quality zinc-plated spiral-twist lightning-rod stuff, and sixteen hundred and thirty-one silver-tipped points, all in tolerable repair (and, although much worn by use, still equal to any ordinary emergency), can hear of a bargain by addressing the publisher.