"Ah! this is a wicked world, Mr. Keyser. You can't be too cautious. Some of these yer agents lie like a gas-meter. It's awful, sir. They are wholly untrustworthy. Them rods was the most ridicklus sham I ever see—a regular gouge. They wa'n't worth the labor it took to put 'em up. They wa'n't, now. That's the honest truth."
"What kind do you offer?"
"Well, sir, I've got the only genuine lightnin'-rod that's made. It's constructed on scientific principles. Professor Henry says it's sure to run off the electric fluid every time—twisted charcoal iron, glass insulators, eight points on each rod, warranted solid platinum. We give a written guarantee with each rod. Never had a house struck since we began to offer this rod to the public. Positive fact. The lightnin'll play all around a house with one of 'em and never touch it. A thunder-storm that'd tear the bowels out of the American continent would leave your house as safe as a polar bear in the middle of an iceberg. Shall I run you one up?"
"I don't know," said Keyser, musingly.
"I'll put you up one cheap, and then you'll have somethin' reliable—somethin' there's no discount on."
"You say the old rod was a fraud?"
"The deadliest fraud you ever heard of. It hadn't an ounce of platinum within a mile of it. The man that sold it ought to be prosecuted, and the fellow that put it up without insulators should be shot. It's too bad the farmers should be gouged in this sort of way."
"And Bolt & Burnam's rod is not a fraud?"
"A fraud? Why, really, my dear sir, just cast your eye over Professor Henry's letter and these certificates, and remember that we give a written guarantee—a positive protection, of course."
"Just cast your eye over that," said Keyser, handing him a piece of paper.