“Thank you again, I think I will try my old stand—the hearth. And now, Mr. Lightning-rod-man, in the pauses of the thunder, be so good as to tell me your reasons for esteeming this one room of the house the safest, and your own one stand-point there the safest spot in it.”
There was now a little cessation of the storm for a while. The Lightning-rod man seemed relieved, and replied:—
“Your house is a one-storied house, with an attic and a cellar; this room is between. Hence its comparative safety. Because lightning sometimes passes from the clouds to the earth, and sometimes from the earth to the clouds. Do you comprehend?—and I choose the middle of the room, because if the lightning should strike the house at all, it would come down the chimney or walls; so, obviously, the further you are from them, the better. Come hither to me, now.”
“Presently. Something you just said, instead of alarming me, has strangely inspired confidence.”
“What have I said?”
“You said that sometimes lightning flashes from the earth to the clouds.”
“Aye, the returning-stroke, as it is called; when the earth, being overcharged with the fluid, flashes its surplus upward.”
“The returning-stroke; that is, from earth to sky. Better and better. But come here on the hearth and dry yourself.”
“I am better here, and better wet.”
“How?”