Herman Melville · 1854
Questions on the text, each answered in the book’s own words, with the minute you hear it.
Challenge a friend: 123BookWarThe text
Answer On his hearth-stone
“What grand irregular thunder, thought I, standing on my hearth-stone among the Acroceraunian hills”
Answer His fist against the panel
“why don’t he, man-fashion, use the knocker, instead of making that doleful undertaker’s clatter with his fist against the hollow panel?”
Answer Be seated
“Pray be seated.” What is that strange-looking walking-stick he carries: “A fine thunder-storm, sir.”
Answer In the exact middle of the cottage
“The stranger still stood in the exact middle of the cottage, where he had first planted himself.”
Answer Four feet
“It was a polished copper rod, four feet long, lengthwise attached to a neat wooden staff”
Answer Three
“The metal rod terminated at the top tripodwise, in three keen tines, brightly gilt.”
Answer Mr. Jupiter Tonans
“Mr. Jupiter Tonans,” said I, quietly rolling my body on the stone, “I stand very well here.”
Answer The fire-place
“by far the most dangerous part of a house, during such a terrific tempest as this, is the fire-place?”
Answer A dealer in lightning-rods
“I am a dealer in lightning-rods,” said the stranger, softening his tone”
Answer Three-and-twenty rods on five buildings
“In Criggan last month, I put up three-and-twenty rods on only five buildings.”
Answer The steeple
“Not on the tree and cupola, but the steeple.”
Answer Copper
“See: it is of the best of copper. Copper’s the best conductor.”
Answer Less than a third of a mile
“Crash! only three pulses—less than a third of a mile off—yonder, somewhere in that wood.”
Answer The bell-wire
“That bell-wire might blast you. Never touch bell-wire in a thunder-storm”
Answer A rug
“Have you a rug in the house? Rugs are non-conductors. Get one, that I may stand on it here, and you, too.”
Answer Men
“Do I dream? Man avoid man? and in danger-time, too.”
Answer Twenty dollars
“Only one rod, sir; cost, only twenty dollars.”
Answer That the Deity will not, of purpose, make war on man’s earth
“in the blue heavens I read in the rainbow, that the Deity will not, of purpose, make war on man’s earth.”
Answer He snaps it and flings it after the stranger
“I seized it; I snapped it; I dashed it; I trod it; and dragging the dark lightning-king out of my door, flung his elbowed, copper sceptre after him.”
Answer Travels in storm-time and drives a brave trade with the fears of man
“still travels in storm-time, and drives a brave trade with the fears of man.”
“The Lightning-Rod Man,” Putnam’s Monthly Magazine, August 1854; collected in The Piazza Tales (Dix & Edwards, New York, 1856). This text follows the Project Gutenberg transcription of The Piazza Tales (#15859). Public domain.