So he took his pen, and, some demon guiding his hand, he wrote, greatly to his astonishment:
“Who sells his influence should stop it,
An honest man will only swap it.”
The Rainmaker
An Officer of the Government, with a great outfit of mule-waggons loaded with balloons, kites, dynamite bombs, and electrical apparatus, halted in the midst of a desert, where there had been no rain for ten years, and set up a camp. After several months of preparation and an expenditure of a million dollars all was in readiness, and a series of tremendous explosions occurred on the earth and in the sky. This was followed by a great down-pour of rain, which washed the unfortunate Officer of the Government and the outfit off the face of creation and affected the agricultural heart with joy too deep for utterance. A Newspaper Reporter who had just arrived escaped by climbing a hill near by, and there he found the Sole Survivor of the expedition—a mule-driver—down on his knees behind a mesquite bush, praying with extreme fervour.
“Oh, you can’t stop it that way,” said the Reporter.
“My fellow-traveller to the bar of God,” replied the Sole Survivor, looking up over his shoulder, “your understanding is in darkness. I am not stopping this great blessing; under Providence, I am bringing it.”
“That is a pretty good joke,” said the Reporter, laughing as well as he could in the strangling rain—“a mule driver’s prayer answered!”
“Child of levity and scoffing,” replied the other; “you err again, misled by these humble habiliments. I am the Rev. Ezekiel Thrifft, a minister of the gospel, now in the service of the great manufacturing firm of Skinn & Sheer. They make balloons, kites, dynamite bombs, and electrical apparatus.”
The Citizen and the Snakes
A Public-Spirited Citizen who had failed miserably in trying to secure a National political convention for his city suffered acutely from dejection. While in that frame of mind he leaned thoughtlessly against a druggist’s show-window, wherein were one hundred and fifty kinds of assorted snakes. The glass breaking, the reptiles all escaped into the street.