"How do you know they were worthless?"

"Why, I was drivin' by yer in the spring, and I seen them rods, and I says to myself, 'That barn'll be struck some time, but there's no use in tryin' to convince Mr. Keyser;' so I didn't call. I knowed it, because they had iron tips. A rod with iron tips is no better'n a clothes-prop to ward off lightnin'."

"The man who sold them to me said they had platinum tips," remarked Keyser.

"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.

"Well, upon my word! This is indeed somewhat—that is to say it is, as it were—it looks—it looks a little like one of our own certificates."

"Just so," said Keyser. "That old rod was one of Bolt & Burnam's. You sold it to my son-in-law; you gave this certificate; you swore the points were platinum, and your man put it up."

"Then I suppose we can't trade?"

"Well, I should think not," said Keyser. Whereupon the man mounted the red wagon and moved on.

* * * * *

When Benjamin P. Gunn, the life insurance agent, called upon Mr. Butterwick, the following conversation ensued:

Gunn. "Mr. Butterwick, you have no insurance on your life, I believe? I dropped in to see if I can't get you to go into our company. We offer unparalleled inducements, and—"

Butterwick. "I don't want to insure."

Gunn. "The cost is just nothing worth speaking of; a mere trifle. And then we pay enormous dividends, so that you have so much security at such a little outlay that you can be perfectly comfortable and happy."

Butterwick. "But I don't want to be comfortable and happy. I'm trying to be miserable."

Gunn. "Now, look at this thing in a practical light. You've got to die some time or other. That is a dreadful certainty to which we must all look forward. It is fearful enough in any event, but how much more so when a man knows that he leaves nothing behind him! We all shrink from death, we all hate to think of it; the contemplation of it fills us with awful dread; but reflect, what must be the feelings of the man who enters the dark valley with the assurance that in a pecuniary sense his life has been an utter failure? Think how—"

Butterwick. "Don't scare me a bit. I want to die; been wanting to die for years. Rather die than live any time."

Gunn. "I say, think how wretched will be the condition of those dear ones whom you leave behind you! Will not the tears of your heartbroken widow be made more bitter by the poverty in which she is suddenly plunged, and by the reflection that she is left to the charity of a cold and heartless world. Will not—"

Butterwick. "I wouldn't leave her a cent if I had millions. It'll do the old woman good to skirmish around for her living. Then she'll appreciate me."

Gunn. "Your poor little children, too. Fatherless, orphaned, they will have no one to fill their famished mouths with bread, no one to protect them from harm. You die uninsured, and they enter a life of suffering from the keen pangs of poverty. You insure in our company, and they begin life with enough to feed and clothe them, and to raise them above the reach of want."

Butterwick. "I don't want to raise them above the reach of want. I want them to want. Best thing they can do is to tucker down to work as I did"

Gunn. "Oh, Mr. Butterwick, try to take a higher view of the matter. When you are an angel and you come back to revisit the scenes of earth, will it not fill you with sadness to see your dear ones exposed to the storm and the blast, to hunger and cold?"

Butterwick. "I'm not going to be an angel; and if I was, I wouldn't come back."

Gunn. "You are a poor man now. How do you know that your family will have enough when you are gone to pay your funeral expenses, to bury you decently?"

Butterwick. "I don't want to be buried."

Gunn. "Perhaps Mrs. Butterwick will be so indignant at your neglect that she will not mourn for you, that she will not shed a tear over your bier."

Butterwick. "I don't want a bier, and I'd rather she wouldn't cry any."

Gunn. "Well, then, s'posin' you go in on the endowment plan and take a policy for five thousand dollars, to be paid you when you reach the age of fifty?"

Butterwick. "I don't want five thousand dollars when I'm fifty. I wouldn't take it if you were to fling it at me and pay me to take it."

Gunn. "I'm afraid, then, I'll have to say good-morning."

Butterwick. "I don't want you to say good-morning; you can go without saying it."

Gunn. "I'll quit."

Butterwick. "Aha! now you've hit it! I do want you to quit, and as suddenly as you can."

Then Mr. Gunn left. He thinks he will hardly insure Butterwick.

THE END