Yankee lightning rods.
--In olden times, when the
Franklin or lightning rods first came into use, people had them of a comfortable size.
In the latter days, when Yankee cupidity went for saving everything, the amount of iron put in them was so contracted that spectacles were required to trace the minute thread of metal that was set up to ward off the lightning's effects.
While very few ‘"strikings"’ are recorded of the old sort of rod, the lightning seems to want no better fun than to play all sorts of mad pranks with the fragile substance that has supplanted the substantial rod of the olden time.
The private dwelling of
Mr. E. Y. Stokes, located on
Church Hill, which has been for some time past embellished with one of the new-fangled lightning rods, was struck by lightning during the storm on Saturday last.
The members of the household were in the third story when the shock came.
The fluid traveled down uninterrupted to the second story, when, coming in contact with a globular mass of glass, it entered the house by a small orifice on the outside, which increased to good dimensions before it broke through.
When in the room it tore off all the plastering of a partition, and beat a hasty retreat for the basement, from which it escaped by an open door to the kitchen, fifteen feet off, knocking a flat-iron from the hands of a servant, and impregnating her with sufficient fluid to paralyze her energies.
Luckily no damage beyond that recorded was done, though no thanks are due to the
Yankee lightning rod. The latter have proved their worthlessness and inefficiency in many a contest with the etherial vapor, which has such wondrous power for evil.
Most of he old houses in the country are furnished with large lightning conductors.
We seldom near of their being struck.
If struck, the electric fluid generally glances off, as if convinced that his customer was too tough to handle.
