Illustration: SEA-SIDE WEATHER STUDIES. "THE SEVENTH WAVE."
I had been reading a lot of "Letters to the _Times_." That may account for any little confusion in the details of the subsequent events.
My interlocutor was tall and thin, and looming up lanky against a dusky sky, reminded me equally of an attenuated M.P., a phantom telegraph-pole, and PETER SCHLEMIL, the Shadowless Man.
"Glad to hear it," said I, earnestly. "I had been thinking lately that the distinguished _savant_ was going decidedly wrong."
"Ah! he understands _me!_" sighed the Spectre.
"Who and what are you, anyhow?" I inquired.
The lines of Long-thin-and-hungry seemed to shift and reshape.
"Ah!" came his voice, the same yet not the same, "elevation does not always give coolness, and one may be torrid and tempestuous even among the Alps."
Somehow this statement, though a truism, did not seem to fit on to previous remarks.
"I was once said to be 'Up in a balloon,'" continued Proteus (now looking rather like the Ancient Mariner,) "long and lean and brown, but letters written to the _Times_ even from the utmost height lately attained by the French Aëronauts--to say nothing of the top of the tallest Lightning Conductor--would, I fear, be hot and ill-balanced. Look at Mr. H. O. ARNOLD-FOSTER!"
"Perhaps--in a sense--we _are_ Lightning Conductors, you know," pursued my companion.
"Well we attract, and carry off harmlessly--it doesn't hurt us you see--the accumulated political electricity, which otherwise might rend and rive the State about which these Angry Amateurs are so passionately anxious."
"TYNDALL, GRIMTHORPE, and SYMONS, F.R.S., are entirely right," continued old Length-without-breadth; "A Lightning Conductor which does not conduct lightning, like a Leader who cannot lead, or a Follower who will not follow, is worse than a nullity, it is a nuisance and a danger."
"Quite so," I rejoined, grasping eagerly at something which seemed definite and comparatively relevant.
"Lightning Conductors are, in their way, as essential as Law and Order. But as TYNDALL says, in one case, and as I should say in the latter, all depends upon quality, efficiency, accurate adaptation to ends. Would you say, Oh! never mind about their quality or fitness, the first duty of the Executive is to maintain its Lightning Conductors?"