Chapter XXV (6)

Mrs. Tascher did so too, and struck a match to light her lamp. "If I were you, Ruth," she said as she settled the shade over it, "I would go down to the croquet-ground, from where you can see those people, and call to them."

"Oh no," said Ruth with a shiver.

"Why, you see," continued Mrs. Tascher, "it doesn't look well. Miss Custer ought to know better, but she is so vain of her influence over gentlemen that she exercises it upon every occasion that offers. It doesn't appear to make any difference who the gentleman is: it would be all the same to her now if it were Hugh instead of the doctor. I believe she does care something for Bruce, and he is her lawful prey; but she knows the doctor is not in the market."

Ruth threw back her head proudly. "He _can_ be in the market," she said hoarsely.

"No, no, my dear," said Mrs. Tascher, shaking her head. "I don't want you to get reckless: I want to see you play this game with Miss Custer with a cool hand and come out ahead. You can do it, and you will be stronger and safer in the end."

Ruth pretty soon went out. She entered her room with her hand upon her heart, and sat down by the window without striking a light. In the course of half an hour the doctor and Miss Custer appeared in sight, walking slowly toward the house. They passed directly under her window, but their voices were so low that she could distinguish no word. By and by she heard the piano going. A moment after Mrs. Tascher tapped on her door, and, turning the knob, put her head in and called, "Ruth!"

Ruth got up and came forward.

"Come," said her visitor, "let us go down to the parlor."

"I cannot," said Ruth: "please don't ask me."

"Foolish child!" said Mrs. Tascher. "I am a thousand times sorry that I brought this thing to your notice."

"It was brought to my notice long ago," said Ruth brokenly; and Mrs. Tascher turned and went down stairs.

The doctor was leaning back in an easy-chair, completely absorbed in watching the exquisite figure at the piano and listening to the strains she evoked.

"One _would_ think she had feeling," commented Mrs. Tascher mentally as she entered the room and swept across to the vacant seat beside the doctor, dispelling somehow, with her strong presence, the spirit of sentimentalism that pervaded the atmosphere. "Why, Doctor Ebling, are you here?" she asked: "I supposed you had gone to town. Where is Miss Stanley?"

"I--I don't know," said the doctor--honestly enough, to be sure.

"I thought you all went down to the croquet-ground?"

"Yes, we did. But she came back, and left Miss Custer and myself to finish our game."

"Oh, then I presume she is in her room.--Have you finished playing, Miss Custer?" with a smile of placid indifference as Miss Custer turned round on the piano-stool.

"Yes," said Miss Custer, getting up and taking a chair. "Doctor Ebling wished to hear the 'Last Hope.'"

"You haven't come to that in your experience yet, have you, doctor?" laughed Mrs. Tascher, though she was not in the habit of playing upon words.

"No," said the doctor. "It seems to me the 'last hope' is that we feel when we draw our last breath."

The three spent the evening together, and Mrs. Tascher brought into exercise the old charms and graces of manner and conversation that years ago had made her one of the most brilliant and fascinating women society could boast of. She was not old--not more than thirty-five--and when animated she was still beautiful: her face became illuminated and stars shone in her eyes. She so far outdid Miss Custer in the matter of pleasing and entertaining that when the doctor went away he hardly thought of the latter. He said to himself as he went down town, "What a remarkably brilliant woman Mrs. Tascher must have been in her day! And is yet, for that matter. Husband been dead six years: wonder why she never married again?"

Then he wondered with a slight feeling of uneasiness where Ruth had kept herself all the evening. "How affectionately and admiringly Mrs. Tascher always speaks of Ruth!" he said, and added, "Well, she is a noble girl."

There was an indefinable hardness in Ruth's manner the next morning. Her voice was hollow and her smile seemed ironical, though she was unusually gay. Mrs. Tascher, who observed her closely and with some uneasiness, thought her mockingly attentive to Miss Custer. Something was said at the dinner-table again about the doctor's promise to read to Miss Custer, and Ruth exclaimed, "By all means!--Miss Custer, make him stay at home and read you that poem."

The doctor of course fell readily in with the idea, and said he would not go down town this time to see if there were any orders: if anybody wanted him it was generally known that if he was not in his office he was at his boarding-place.

"Why _did_ you do it?" said Mrs. Tascher, putting her handkerchief on her head and going down to the gate with Ruth.

"Because," said Ruth with drawn lips and heaving bosom, "I do not want to get him unfairly. If there is some one else who interests him more than I, he is still at liberty to choose."

"Ruth," said Mrs. Tascher, and her eyes flashed, "do you think she is getting him fairly? You have no conception of the scheming of that woman."

"Oh yes, indeed I believe I know it all," said Ruth, and hurried away.

In a few days school closed, and Ruth packed her trunk and went up to Merton, a little village about twenty miles distant, to visit her aunt. Almost as soon as she was gone Miss Custer was taken sick. Aunt Ruby insisted upon her occupying the spare bedroom, a cool, spacious apartment opening off the back sitting-room. The professional services of Doctor Ebling were of course engaged at once, and he proved himself very attentive at least.

To save appearances and for Ruth's sake, although she had little hope, Mrs. Tascher took up her position in the sick-room and compelled the doctor to give all his directions to her. He pronounced the malady a low fever brought on by the extreme heat of the season. Mrs. Tascher thought it was the result of exposure to night-dews, carelessness in regard to diet and lack of proper exercise.

Her presence, it must be allowed, put but little constraint upon the extraordinary intimacy of the pair. The doctor was all devotion, and Miss Custer all languor and dependence. She made a beautiful invalid, with her rare complexion and her white, lissome hands lying so restfully and helplessly on the counterpane. One day, after being freshly dressed in an embroidered gown of the finest texture, and instructing Mrs. Tascher how to wind her hair, which was long and abundant, around the top of her head in a coronet that was very becoming to her, she requested to have Mr. Bruce sent in when he came to his dinner. She had some affairs that must be looked into immediately by a legal eye.

"Had you not better just send him a message?" asked Mrs. Tascher.

"No: I prefer to attend to it myself," she returned coldly.

Bruce was therefore sent in, and Mrs. Tascher stepped out into the sitting-room. Miss Custer, who was certainly very white, raised her dusky eyelids, smiled faintly and held out her jewelled hand. Bruce, standing awkwardly enough by the bed-side, took it, but without apparent appreciation of its loveliness.

The invalid had chosen an inopportune moment: despite the subdued light of the chamber, it was high noon and the sun shone burningly outside, and Bruce, who had just eaten a hearty dinner, was utterly devoid of sentiment and indifferent to nice effects. There was a tumbler of dewy roses on a little table beside the bed, and he picked out one, and, sitting down, began eating the leaves one by one. "I hope," said he, thinking it a good plan to rally the sick a little, "you haven't got so discouraged by this indisposition--which the doctor tells me is not at all serious--that you wish to make your will?"

"No," she returned, hardly able to conceal her disgust at the unfeeling wretch: "I merely wish to send to my attorney for some money."

"Oh, is that it?" said Bruce, laughing. "Then the doctor was right. So long as a person takes a controlling interest in his affairs he is safe."

"A _person_!" thought Miss Custer, and really curled her lip. She gave him her lawyer's address, stated the sum she wanted and told him he might say that she was ill.

"And unable to write," added Bruce. "All right! I shall be as prompt in the execution of your commission as the exigences of the case appear to demand."

He took up his hat and went out cheerily, and Miss Custer turned her face to the wall and cried. For a day or two she was worse: then she grew better, and was finally able to sit up. At the expiration of two weeks Ruth came back. She was very pale and her face had a rigid look. Miss Custer met her sweetly, being still under the subduing influence of invalidism, and Ruth tried to feel kindly to her; which was a great vexation to Mrs. Tascher.

"Let me alone," said Ruth passionately one day. "Don't you see how I hate her? I could almost kill her! I am trying to fight down the demon in me."

The doctor, who had himself grown thin and haggard-looking, welcomed Ruth back with an air of constraint.

One day the young folks of the village got up a picnic and invited Aunt Ruby's boarders. The doctor at first hesitated about giving his permission for Miss Custer to go, but she coaxed, and he finally consented. The evening before the picnic Ruth requested an interview with the doctor, and they walked out into the grove. She told him she wished to release him from his engagement, and it was a painful satisfaction to her to see the agony that was in his face. He accused himself bitterly--said he had broken up her happiness and ruined her life, that he could never forgive himself, and ended by refusing to accept his release, and declaring that he should never avail himself of any of the advantages it offered.

The next morning he went to Bruce with white face and strained eyes, and begged him, for the love he bore him, to take Miss Custer to the picnic and to stay by her.

"So, my boy," said Bruce, not a little affected, "you have got into the ditch and want me to help you out? Well, I will do what I can.--Thank the Lord, his eyes are opened at last!" he muttered as Ebling went away.

The picnic-ground was a wooded hillside that sloped down into a grassy meadow a mile from town. The company all got together at the appointed hour--two in the afternoon--in the street below Aunt Ruby's, and waited for her boarders to come out. Ruth had persuaded Mrs. Tascher to go, and the doctor, with a painful attempt to appear natural, kept beside her and was scrupulously attentive to her comfort. Ruth playfully claimed Hugh as her escort. Bruce, true to agreement, monopolized Miss Custer in a masterly way, much to her surprise. She tried to snub him at first, but he ignored all her efforts in that direction with consummate stupidity, and in the end she submitted with a charming grace that was torture to the doctor.

Everybody seemed in fine spirits, but on the part of two or three members of the company we have reason to suppose that it was _only_ seeming. And perhaps a little general knowledge of the affairs of mankind might justify us in the suspicion that there were others not so happy as their bright looks seemed to warrant. But, however that might be, every one threw in his or her contribution to the pleasure and amusement of the day. The doctor helped to lay out a croquet-ground and fixed the target for archery-practice; Hugh was active in putting up swings; some of the older and more dignified gentlemen, including Bruce, took upon themselves the lighter duty of entertaining the ladies; when lunch-time came some of the young fellows kindled a fire, and Ruth boiled the coffee. After that there was a good deal of pairing off and walking about, or sitting cozily upon old mossy, fallen trunks of trees.

Miss Custer, who had not yet risen from the grass-plot where she had sat to eat her dinner, looked away down across the green meadows with sleepy, half-shut eyes, and asked, "What is that pile of stones in the corner yonder?"

A youthful jeweller whom she remembered among her distant admirers answered, "It's an old well. This place here used to be a stock-farm, but it hasn't been used for that for a good many years; so the framework and buckets have been taken away."

Miss Custer, seized with a sudden impulse, sprang up and exclaimed, "I have a great mind to go down and take a look into it. Old wells have a peculiar fascination for me, and that one looks so lovely and romantic!"

She had a thought that Bruce might volunteer to accompany her, but that indolent barrister, sprawling upon the grass at her feet, hardly felt called upon by the nature of his agreement with Ebling to undergo quite so much as that. He reflected that it was his business to keep the charmer out of mischief for the day. "And if she meanders away to that fascinating well," he thought, "in her own solitary company, nobody will be damaged, so far as I can see."

But Miss Custer, seeing no other way and feeling the position a little awkward, appealed to Ruth, who got up and started with her. When they had clambered down the rather steep hill to the meadow's edge Miss Custer affectionately took her arm. "Don't you think picnics are stupid things?" she asked confidingly.

"Why," said Ruth, "we didn't think so this morning."

"Oh no, not when we were anticipating, but

One of the pleasures of having a rout
Is the pleasure of having it over.

I shall be glad when we get back home, though I suppose we shall not start till near sundown."

When they reached the well Miss Custer stepped upon the flat white stones with which it was walled up to the surface of the ground and gazed down into its dark depths. "What a queer feeling that is which one is almost sure to have standing upon the edge of danger!--a sort of reckless impulse to throw one's self forward. Did you ever feel it?" Ruth, standing just behind her as she leaned over, saw her hands involuntarily clutch her dress, as though the strange temptation were so great that she must hold herself forcibly back from it. "I have--a thousand times," she added; "and I feel it now."

"Take care!" cried Ruth, catching at her.

Miss Custer, in turning away her charmed gaze, lost her balance from sheer dizziness and plunged forward. Ruth, with a look and cry of horror, bent over and saw the fearful descent, so quick and so noiseless until the dull splash was heard and the black water opened and closed again. Then she threw up her hands and started to run toward the hill, calling loudly. But already they had seen and were coming. One--Doctor Ebling--was far ahead of the rest. Ruth met him and turned back with him.

"Ruth, you did it: I saw you push her," he found breath to say. But Ruth's sensibilities were too shocked to feel the accusation.

The doctor was halfway down the well before any one else reached the spot. Bruce had had the forethought to cut down a swing and bring the rope. In a very few minutes Miss Custer--or what was believed to be her lifeless body--was lying wet upon the grass and the doctor, also dripping, was making a hasty examination of her condition. "I think she will live," was his verdict, "but we must get her home with all speed."

A light wagon coming up the road was signalled to, and they got her into it and drove furiously to town. By the time the rest of the party reached home she was partially recovered, though very weak and terribly shaken.

As soon as it was said that she was out of danger and would probably suffer no serious consequences Ruth recalled the doctor's frightful words: "You did it: I saw you push her."

She rushed in search of him. He was in the parlor, walking back and forth with a troubled air. She went up to him: "Frank, you accused me of doing that dreadful thing. I have just remembered what you said--that you saw me push her. I did not: I put out my hand to save her."

"I hope to God you did!" said he, but his look was doubting and reproachful.

"Why, Frank," she said, with scarcely enough breath to speak the words, "if you do not believe me it will kill me!"

Just then some one came to the door and beckoned to him, and he went out. Ruth turned, with a breaking heart, to go up stairs. The youthful jeweller was talking to Mrs. Tascher in the hall. "Yes," he was saying, "I saw it all. She was standing leaning over the well, and was just turning to step back when she gave a sort of lurch as if she had got dizzy, and Miss Stanley reached out her hand and caught her by the shoulder. But she had got the start of her, and over she went in a twinkling. The whole thing was done in an instant."

"Oh, Mr. Omes, I wish you would explain all that to Doctor Ebling," said Ruth, coming up.

"Oh, he knows all about it: he saw it the same as I did," said the young man.

A suspicion crossed Ruth's mind that the doctor _knew_, but she could not believe him so base.

Miss Custer was doomed to have a serious time of it, after all. The great excitement brought on fever again, and for some days her recovery was thought doubtful. Everybody in the house did all that was in her or his power to do, and the doctor was more devoted than ever. It became a fixed idea that he would marry Miss Custer as soon as she was able to sit up. He and Ruth scarcely spoke to each other.

One day Mrs. Tascher told Ruth she must go away.

"Yes, I know," answered Ruth: "I am going."

She packed her trunk again--this time taking all her things--and went back to her aunt's. In less than a week Mrs. Tascher had a letter from her stating that she had started, under the escort of a friend of her guardian's, for Beirut.

It was so great a shock to Mrs. Tascher that she scarcely left her room for ten days after it, and indeed did not wholly recover until another letter came, dated from far-off Syria, with a curious commingling of the strange and the familiar in the well-known handwriting and the foreign post-mark, assuring her that her young friend was safely sheltered under the protection of her guardian and his estimable wife. Ruth dwelt entirely upon her new experience, and never mentioned the old. She had not so much to say about her journey, though it was interesting and delightful, as about her arrival and the meeting with her dear friends, whose loved faces were so sweetly familiar in that strange, strange land that she fell upon their necks and wept. She drew vivid pictures of the magnificent scenery that lay around her in her new home--the gardens, the orange-groves, the figs and olives, the terraced slope of Mount Lebanon, the glorious Mediterranean.

Mrs. Tascher was comforted, though the void made by Ruth's absence was almost like death, the wide space seemed so unspannable. She wrote back at once in all the fulness of her heart, and Ruth was not so absorbed in grief for the loss of her lover but that she appreciated and was deeply grateful for the tender, unfailing affection of her friend. Mrs. Tascher, who felt that the sharpest knife was the best to be used in a case of urgent surgical necessity, wrote briefly that the doctor and Miss Custer were married--that Miss Custer had begged for at least three months' preparation, but the doctor was impatient; and so, as soon as she was able to stand the journey to Boston, where her friends and property were, they had joined hands and started.

"The marriage took place in the parlor," Mrs. Tascher wrote, "and the household were invited to be present. I, however, had a bad headache and could not get down stairs; Bruce pleaded 'business;' and poor Hugh, whose boyish affections have been cruelly tampered with, had a fishing engagement. So there was nobody but Aunt Ruby and her 'help' to witness the touching ceremony except the minister and his wife. It _was_ touching, I suppose: Miss Custer wept bitterly at being so 'neglected,' and Ebling is mortally offended with Bruce."

Three years went by; which space of time Mrs. Tascher spent chiefly in Florida and New York, going back and forth as the seasons changed in obedience to medical authority. At last she concluded to try a few weeks in Westbrook again. Aunt Ruby, who still kept boarders--all strangers, however--gave her the old rooms up stairs with their pleasant windows. Here she sat and wrote to Ruth a few days after her arrival.

Ruth had become quite contented, and even happy, under the warm Syrian sun, watching with earnest, loving eyes the development of barbarism and heathenism into civilization and Christianity, though it seemed very much to her sometimes as if she had lost her place and personality in the world. She was swallowed up in the great pagan East, and was nothing to the land that owned her--to the people that were her people. She was dead to the life and world to which she had been born.

The family of her guardian, together with some of their pupils, had removed to a little village up the side of the mount to spend a few of the hottest weeks, as was their custom. The mail was regularly brought up by a young Arab riding a mule. One evening, when Ruth had gone to sit alone on one of the grassy terraces overlooking the sea and the luxuriant foliage and vegetation below--a thing she liked, though it usually made her pensive and a little sad--a young Syrian girl ran down and gave her a letter. It was Mrs. Tascher's, and I will take the liberty to transcribe a part of it here:

"Aunt Ruby has furnished me with a good many surprising items in regard to the fortunes and actions of our old associates. Bruce (he was a splendid fellow--wasn't he?--solid, practical and all that), who, you remember, had a good deal of means, has built himself a house, something quite elegant. It stands on that little knoll on the other side of the town, overlooking the river. I mean to go over and take a look at it some day: it is said to be beautifully furnished, and is kept by an old maiden aunt of our friend. Bruce, by the way, is in Europe, though what took him there I cannot conjecture, unless he means to bring home a European exportation in the shape of a wife. I wish, my dear, _you_ had taken a fancy to him: I always thought he admired you. You don't mind my probing an old wound--do you?--because I want to speak of some of the others. Miss Custer's fortune, as it turned out, was extremely limited. She had, I believe, enough to furnish a small rented house here, and she and the doctor immediately went to housekeeping. But time, which settles all things and places them in their true light and relations, has brought to the notice of this precious pair that they are very ill adapted to each other: it is even said that they quarrel. The coarser gossips affirm that Mrs. Ebling is lazy and shiftless, and that the doctor is disheartened and neglects his business. I have seen him once, and can judge something of his state by his bearing and looks. He is certainly not the sort of man I once thought he would make. Whether there is better stuff in him than what we see developed, or whether he owes what he is entirely to circumstances, is an unsolvable question. I am inclined to think that every person has the making of two individuals in him--one bad, the other good. What a pity that a man usually has only one chance! If he makes a mistake he is lost. My dear Ruth, in the whole course of my life I have kept my eyes upon the infallible law of cause and effect; and I know this, that wrong-doing inevitably brings its own retribution."

When Ruth took her eyes from this letter and fixed them upon the distant blue water-depths they were brimful of tears. "Yes, wrong-doing is followed by retribution," she thought, "but where is the reward for right-doing?"

Oh, she felt so lonely in that far-off heathen land, with the shadow of others' wrong-doing lying always across her path! Why must she suffer and be alone?

A step from behind startled her, and she sprang up and turned round. A pair of black eyes were smiling at her from a handsome, familiar face. "Oh, Mr. Bruce!" she cried, and flew up the steps, holding out both her hands.

"I have come such a long way to see you," said Bruce, "that my motive must be pretty conspicuous: I don't mean to try to conceal it. Perhaps you have never thought of me as a man you would be at all likely to marry. Still, I have made it my business to come and ask you, and I thought I might better let you know my errand at once, instead of leaving you to guess it from any clownish efforts of mine to do the agreeable to you."

He certainly broke it to her very well, smiling and holding her hands--so well that she laughed heartily and was at home with him in a moment.

One day it was rumored in Westbrook that Bruce had come home with a wife. The news had but just reached Aunt Ruby's premises when Bruce himself came rapidly up the path and asked for Mrs. Tascher. She came down at once. "I have come for you to go and call upon my wife," said he.

"Why, Mr. Bruce--" she began.

But he stopped her, and in spite of her demurring carried her off.

"You certainly _have_ a lovely place, Mr. Bruce," she said, looking admiringly round as they mounted the front steps of his residence. The door flew open, and there, waiting to welcome her, stood the bride--Ruth.

ALICE ILGENFRITZ.

WHERE LIGHTNING STRIKES.

The air has been growing hotter for many days, with "occasional counteracting influences" (as "Probabilities" says), until the sunshine-loving doves hide under shadowing gables and the robins and sparrows sit on the lower branches of the trees with little wings lifted from their palpitating sides. The multitudinous shrilling of the grasshoppers adds emphasis to the white heats of the air. Even the housefly seeks the shade and hums drowsily in complicated orbits about the upper part of the room, or, with too keen proboscis, destroys my last crumb of comfort, the post-prandial nap.

My eyes open upon a world that dreams. The trees stand motionless. Among their tops the bull-bat darts erratically. The pale star of thistledown mounts on some mysterious current, like an infant soul departing heavenward. The hum of the near city is hushed. The sound of the church-bells is muffled. The trumpeting of the steamer comes from the bay, as though some lone sea-monster called aloud for companionship. There is a sudden rattle and roar as a train rushes by, and then the smoke drifts away over the glowing landscape.

But there is an increasing opaque dimness in the western horizon that steadily deepens in color. Fleece-like clouds rapidly increase in height and density, and a sheet of pale flame flashes from the midst and is gone. A glowing, crinkly line marks the edge of the cloud, and disappears.

Now swallows soar far up in the sky, the doves make wild, uncertain flights above the steeples, and the hoarse trumpet of the steamer again calls for recognition. At the west another bright line falls, zigzag, to a distant hill, revealed an instant, then lost in the shadow of the cloud. Soon there is a low, momentary rumble, and you are assured that the swift, delightful, dangerous shower, that cools the earth without interrupting our pleasures for dreary days, is approaching. No one whose dwelling is not better protected than most of those which bear the vain and flimsy decorations called "lightning-rods" can know whether his own house may not in a few moments receive a ruinous stroke, or that it may not be his lot to enter eternity with the first flash from that dark, towering mass of sulphurous hue that already casts its ominous shadow upon his face.

Timid persons should experience gladness rather than alarm at the sound of the thunder and the flash of the lightning, both being signals that personal danger is past for the time. Persons who have been struck and rendered insensible, but who have afterward recovered, had not seen or heard what hurt them. Unless we are acquainted with the locality, and know the points likely to receive the fiery bolt; if a disruptive discharge occurs near us there is no telling the spot of danger or of safety in open ground. A discharge from the front of the cloud may take a downward angle of forty-five degrees, and, passing over hill and forest, strike an insignificant knoll or a moist meadow half a mile in advance of the cloud. For myself, if overtaken in the country by a thunderstorm, I would seek the nearest and most convenient shelter from the rain and take my chance with the lightning.

Teams and the persons accompanying them appear to be peculiarly in danger during a thunderstorm. Caves, and even deep mines, afford no absolute safety, for the thunderbolt has been known to enter even these. Tall trees are more dangerous than low ones, but none of them appear capable of affording protection against this mysterious element. The people of different countries have regarded various kinds of trees as exempt from the electric stroke, but inquiry has always shown that every species has suffered in one locality or another. The beech, from some cause, has probably escaped more generally than any other tree of considerable size in northern latitudes. But it is the neighborhood of a good conductor, not a sheltering non-conductor, that affords safety. Some scientific men have advised a station of fifteen to forty feet from a tree, or such a position between several trees, but it has sometimes happened that such open spaces have received the bolt. In cities and villages, likewise, open spaces are not found to be places of safety.[5]

The question whether the small metallic articles usually carried about the person increase the danger is a matter of some concern. Many persons on the approach of a thunderstorm customarily relieve themselves of these things. Hair-pins, clasps and the metallic springs often used in the dresses of ladies are not, however, so easily got rid of. From the record of the effects of lightning upon the human body we reach the conclusion that metal is dangerous about the person only according to its position. Constantine mentions that during a thunderstorm a lady raised her arm to close a window, when a flash of lightning entered: her golden bracelet was entirely dissipated, but without the slightest injury to the wearer. A similar case is reported in the _Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal_ for 1844. During a violent thunderstorm a fishing-boat belonging to Midyell, in the Shetland Islands, was struck by lightning. The discharge came down the mast (which it tore into shivers) and melted a watch in the pocket of a man who was sitting close by, without at all injuring him. He was not even aware of what had happened until, on taking out his watch, he found it fused into one mass. Instances might be cited where a portion of the shoe was carried away without serious injury to the wearer, and where knitting-needles, scissors and other household implements have been struck, sometimes conducting the current to the person with fatal effect.

During a thunderstorm in France in July, 1858, a peasant-woman, on her way home from the fields, was struck down by lightning. No wound was detected upon her person, but her hair was singed and a part of a silver comb melted. Here metal seems to have conducted the electricity to the body. On the other hand, the traveller Brydone relates a circumstance which happened to a lady who was regarding a thunderstorm from her window. At a flash of lightning her bonnet was reduced to ashes, nothing else about her being affected. Brydone supposes the electric current to have been attracted by the metallic wire which maintained the shape of her bonnet. Hence he proposes that either these wires be abandoned or in times of danger a metallic chain be attached to the bonnet, by which the charge might pass to the earth. Accordingly, we find that it became fashionable in France at that period to wear on the top of the bonnet an ornament of bright metal connecting with a small silver chain dropping down to the ground. At about the same time umbrellas were carried fitted with wires and chain for a similar purpose.

In July, 1819, lightning fell upon the prison of Biberach in Suabia, and there struck, in a common apartment, among twenty prisoners, one only--a condemned captain of brigands, who was chained about the waist. A similar arrangement of metal proved fatal in another case. On the 9th of October, 1836, on the coast of Italy, a young man was struck by lightning and killed. It was found that he wore a girdle containing gold coins. Undoubtedly, danger or safety depends on properly placing the conducting object. It may convey the current to the vital organs or it may ward off the stroke. Probably any line of metal parallel with the length of the body when upright would be in some degree a protection. The noted Dr. King once saw a military company receive a discharge of electricity from the clouds upon their bayonets, whence their muskets conducted it to the ground without harm or any painful shock. On the other hand, a battalion of French infantry, while marching between Mouzon and Stenay, June 2, 1849, was struck by lightning, and two men killed, while about two hundred were struck to the ground. Blood flowed from their mouths, ears and noses. This effect appears to have been the result of the concussion. Similar results sometimes follow from heavy discharges of artillery.

Uniform testimony goes to show that men in metallic armor have never been fatally injured by lightning. A complete suit of metallic armor embodies the principle of the well-known electrical cage of Faraday. This is simply a basket of wire network with its open side to the ground. If the wire is of proper size and the capacity sufficient, this cage is the most effectual protection possible, unless the walls be of solid iron.

If one places beside him a better direct conductor to the earth than his own body, he will not be fatally injured by the electric current, though, if it pass very near, he may be blinded by the glare or deafened by the noise--effects which are usually temporary. Equal safety for buildings may be similarly secured.

Glass being so well known as an excellent non-conductor, some have been led to suppose it effectual in warding off the disruptive stroke. Hence chambers or cases of glass have actually been made for the use of individuals who were apt to be overcome with terror during the prevalence of a thunderstorm. In this belief, also, the vane of Christ Church in Doncaster, England, was furnished with a glass ball; but the spire was afterward struck, causing great damage. Many also think they may sit beside a closed window in safety, but records of holes being melted in the glass and whole windows crumbled to powder by lightning are too numerous to admit of any reliance upon such a precaution.

In the case of silken garments the evidence met with does not warrant a statement either for or against them; yet there appears to be no reason why this non-conductor should be more of a safeguard than any other. No doubt an abundance of gold and silver lace, or cloth having threads of these metals, might prove a protection. Feather beds, too, have been regarded as places of safety, but persons have been killed by lightning while in bed. Dr. Franklin advised especially that the vicinity of chimneys be avoided, because lightning often enters a room by them. All metallic bodies, mirrors and gilded ornaments, he held, should likewise be shunned. Contact with the walls or the floor or proximity to a chandelier, a projecting gas-pipe, a position between two considerable pieces or surfaces of metals, unless distant, are all hazardous. Draughts of air are also to be avoided. Bell-wires may generally be considered as protective, though too small to be effectual. Perhaps a hammock, in addition to the preceding precautions, will afford as much security as can be derived from insulation. But in a building having continuous iron walls, posts or pillars from top to bottom, or in one which is properly supplied with conductors in other forms, all the foregoing precautions may be neglected without apprehension. Yet, as was suggested early in this article, the great number of buildings damaged by lightning while furnished with rods has caused much distrust of this system of protection.

From the large number of trees receiving the electric current it has come to be thought by many that these may be the best protectors of buildings if properly placed. In a case coming under my observation a tree received (or at least deflected) the current and communicated it to the house. In many instances, however, the building is struck while tall trees near by are untouched.

There is no doubt that lightning generally strikes elevated rather than low objects, and therefore it has been thought that a building surrounded by steeples had nothing to fear. As previously stated, however, the bolt sometimes selects a low object when high ones are at hand. For example, lightning fell upon a house occupied by Lord Tilney in Naples, although it was surrounded on all sides, at the distance of four or five hundred paces, by the towers and domes of a great number of churches, all wet with a heavy rain.

In considering the matter of protection from lightning we must bear in mind that trees, buildings, masts and other elevated points exert no attractive power on the thundercloud except in connection with the great plane where they are situated. The primary cause of the discharge is not in the metals of the building, the exact point or line in which the insulation by the air breaks down being determined by a variety of causes. The elevated points of a building or ship may form a channel for the passage of the current, but it is not the only one nor the cause of the discharge, which would take place sooner or later though the ship or building were absent altogether.

There has been a difference of opinion in regard to the area protected by lightning-conductors, early notions on this point having been much exaggerated. Leroy's, in 1788, is the earliest positive statement which I have met. It is, that a conductor protects a horizontal space around it equal to somewhat more than three times the height of the metal rod above the building to which it is attached. The physical section of the Academy of Sciences of Paris, on being consulted by the Minister of War in 1823, expressed the opinion that a lightning-conductor protects a circular space of which the radius is equal to the height of the rod. Here, apparently, is a wide difference, but possibly the estimates refer to different elevations. Leroy clearly intended an area at a level with the top of the building: thus, supposing the rod to be attached to a chimney six feet in height and to rise a foot and a half above the chimney, then it would protect a radius of about ten feet on the roof. The estimate of the Academy of Sciences speaks of the total height of the rod, and refers to a horizontal area at the base of the measurement, whether this began at the ground or at the top of the structure to which the rod is attached. In this view the estimates do not differ so much as might appear, the latter being about one-third less than that of Leroy. Other French writers estimate the area protected as having a radius of double the height of the rod above the highest point of the connected structure, being twice the radius allowed by the Academy. Later physicists have been cautious in giving figures, for experience has shown that estimates of protection are not accurately observed by the descending bolt. For instance, when Her Majesty's corvette Dido, furnished with the best system of conductors, was struck by lightning, the discharge fell in a double or forked current upon the main royal mast, one of the branches striking the extreme point of the royal yard arm and passing along to the conductor on the mast, while the other fork fell on the vane, spindle and truck; which last was split open. As soon as the discharge reached the conductor all damage ceased.

The practice of the best electricians has now long been to protect all angles and projections, the latter by a branch of the rod, and the former by running a line of rod over them, having at every few feet sharp points of an inch or two in length attached to and standing out at right angles with the rod. Indeed, some go even beyond this, forming points along the whole length of the conductors by notching the corners of a square rod with a chisel. Sometimes a rod is twisted for ornament, but with a loss for practical uses, for in a twisted rod the electrical current is retarded, and a portion of the charge is more liable to leave the conductor.

In England, during our Revolutionary war, an active scientific discussion was carried on as to whether the upper end of a lightning-conductor should be sharp or blunt. "The scientific aspect of the question soon became lost in political acrimony, those who, with Dr. Franklin, advocated sharp conductors, being classed with him and the Revolutionary party, while those who advocated blunt conductors were held to be loyal subjects and good citizens." There is a difference in the action of a sharp conductor and one with a blunt end or terminating in a ball. In the first the point silently receives the current, while in the other the opposite electricities of the rod and cloud may meet with explosion; but the building will not necessarily be injured from this cause. M. Michel proposed to combine the advantages of the two systems by having the rod terminate in a spherical enlargement from which should project points in various directions. This, he thought, would lessen the danger of fusion and control the current at distances where it might escape other forms of terminal. Some American electricians now use a modification of this form, surmounting the rod with a branching tip, while others prefer the single point. The latter is the form used in the American and British navies. The vane, with its appurtenances, is sometimes made the terminal of the conductor, and should at least always be connected.

The practice is also a good one of combining balustrades, finials and other metal-work at the tops of buildings with the system, by which protection is rendered more complete. Especially is it important to connect with a metallic roof at its lower edge, and with the gutters, unless the rain-conductors connect with the earth to its moist mass.

In regard to the material for conductors, copper is undoubtedly the best, but more expensive than iron. The latter is more liable to rust, and on account of its lower conductive power is more easily melted. An electrical explosion which only melts a copper wire would utterly destroy an iron wire of twice the diameter of the former. In being heated a rod contracts in length, and is then liable to fracture by the shrinkage, but if of sufficient size these results are not likely to occur. An iron rod, by successively receiving an electrical discharge, is sometimes reduced in size.

The conducting power of metals likely to be found in buildings is as follows: taking the power of lead as _one_, that of tin will be _two_--that is, tin conducts electricity twice as well as lead; iron, nearly two and a half times as well; zinc, four times; and copper, twelve times. From this comparison of conducting power the important fact will appear that when any two of these metals are used in the same line of conduction, the one of low power should be proportionately larger. Sir W.S. Harris--perhaps the best authority on lightning-rods in general--advises that the size of the rod, if of iron, should be three-fourths of an inch in diameter, although he admits that probably never in the experience of man has a rod half an inch in diameter been melted by an electrical discharge. He regarded the extent of surface rather than quantity of metal in the conductor as the measure of its power, while many other electricians hold the contrary opinion.

It is important that the conductor should form an unbroken line throughout its extent, otherwise there is danger that a portion of the charge may be diverted from it. For instance: a large barn struck not long since had a conductor at each of three corners. In order to maintain the uniformity of the four angles of the square hip roof, a rod was run from the main conductor down the fourth angle to the hip, where it terminated in an erect point. A heavy discharge struck the main rod at the cupola, and, descending, divided among the four branches. That on the short branch jumped from its end to the metal sheathing along the angle of the roof, which it followed to the gutter, passing along this to one of the conductors, doing some damage on the way. Had not the charge found a line of metal on which to continue its course from the end of the rod, it would have done greater damage, and most likely have set the building on fire.

Another point of importance is, that the connection of the joints of the rod be perfect, as explosions and fusion occur wherever the surface in contact is less than the size of the rod, unless the latter is much larger than necessary. The hook and the lap joints, if not very carefully made, are liable to this objection. The best connection, no doubt, is that of the screw coupling.

The insulation of the rod from the building is an expense not only without the least advantage, but the contrary. Harris (_Thunderstorms_, pp. 129, 131) says: "This practice is not only useless, but disadvantageous, and is manifestly inconsistent with the principles on which conductors are applied." Dr. Franklin says: "The rod may be fastened to the wall, chimney, etc., with staples of iron. The lightning will not leave the rod to pass into the wall through these staples. It would rather, if any were in the wall, pass out of it into the rod, to get more readily by that conductor to the earth." The practice may have gained vogue from an observance of the use of glass knobs as insulators of telegraph-wires. Many intelligent people have failed to apprehend the vast difference between the low tension of voltaic electricity and frictional electricity, lightning being in the nature of the latter. The fact that when lightning strikes the telegraph-wire it jumps from the wire to the posts, often tearing in pieces half a dozen in a row, ought to be conclusive in regard to insulating lightning-rods.

The same considerations will also effectually dissipate the fallacy by which the horizontal lightning-rod has duped so many people in certain portions of the West; for if the wire be cut off from the ground-connections (in which condition it accords with the conductor in question) the posts (which answer to the building thus "protected") must suffer still greater damage. So far from being insulated, the rod should be connected with all considerable masses of metal in the building, these having also a good connection with the earth. Frequently during a thunder-shower--sometimes even on the approach of one--all metallic objects will be electrified, and those of considerable size will often yield a spark; and this without the building containing these objects being struck. When struck, the larger masses of metal might occasion a dangerous explosion from induction, though at some distance from the rod: for this reason, as before stated, they should be connected with the ground. Being then liable to receive a part of the current from the conductor in case this be too small, they should be connected with it, as otherwise the current would cause damage in its passage. In a word, therefore, all metal bodies in a building should, as far as possible, be made a part of the system of conduction. This matter is not well understood generally. A dwelling in Boston having been struck by lightning a few years since, a neighbor remarked that "it was fortunate the lightning did not reach the gas-pipe, for it would then have gone all over the house." The fact was, that the bolt did not go more than five feet inside the house before it struck the pipe, and there all damage ended. The idea may be novel to most people, but if the gas-or water-pipes were carried above the roof to the usual height of lightning-rods, they would form a very efficient system of conductors so long as they were connected with the main pipes in the street. Knowing the destructive character of lightning when it passes through air, wood, brick, stone or other non-conductor, people are naturally fearful of allowing the current to run through their houses. But the lion and the lamb are not more different than are the disruptive discharge while passing through a non-conductor and the same current passing through a good conductor.

The system of lightning-conductors in use in the British navy goes through the woodwork of the vessel, the conductors sunk in the side of the masts connecting with the sea through the metal bolts in the hull. After the terrible charge of electricity had fallen on the Chichester, Captain Stewart wrote: "I examined the planks about the bolts, and found all quite fair and water-tight." (These "bolts" formed the lower part of the system of conduction, passing through the bottom of the vessel and connecting with the water.) After twenty-five years' use there had not, as we learn from the _British Nautical Magazine_ for March, 1853, been a solitary instance of serious damage by lightning on ships fitted with these conductors, though many had been struck by heavy discharges. In our own navy the conductors pass from the upper part of the mast over the side of the vessel.

It is not, however, to advocate making the gas-and water-pipes the main lines of conduction that I have made these citations, but to remove in some degree the dread of "having the lightning come into the house." A better conductor would be the metal covering of the roof when such material is used. When a good metallic connection is made between a metal roof and metal rain-conductors, which, in their turn, are well connected with the earth, nothing further is needed for complete protection than a rod soldered to the roof for each chimney or other projection. But as the lightning is liable to melt the plate at the point where it enters, especially if the metal be tin or zinc, it is well to solder points at the angles. Some, "to make assurance doubly sure," carry the rods over the whole distance quite to the ground in addition. All authorities consider such a system as this to be as complete a defence against lightning as possible.