Political Economy

by Mark Twain

Annotated and retold by R. M. Hume

Original story published 1870 · In the public domain

Annotations and modern retelling © 2026 R. M. Hume

Political Economy

As Mark Twain wrote it, 1870

Political Economy is the basis of all good government. The wisest men of all ages have brought to bear upon this subject the—

[Here I was interrupted and informed that a stranger wished to see me down at the door. I went and confronted him, and asked to know his business, struggling all the time to keep a tight rein on my seething political-economy ideas, and not let them break away from me or get tangled in their harness. And privately I wished the stranger was in the bottom of the canal with a cargo of wheat on top of him. I was all in a fever, but he was cool. He said he was sorry to disturb me, but as he was passing he noticed that I needed some lightning-rods. I said, “Yes, yes—go on—what about it?” He said there was nothing about it, in particular—nothing except that he would like to put them up for me. I am new to housekeeping; have been used to hotels and boarding-houses all my life. Like anybody else of similar experience, I try to appear (to strangers) to be an old housekeeper; consequently I said in an offhand way that I had been intending for some time to have six or eight lightning-rods put up, but—The stranger started, and looked inquiringly at me, but I was serene. I thought that if I chanced to make any mistakes, he would not catch me by my countenance. He said he would rather have my custom than any man’s in town. I said, “All right,” and started off to wrestle with my great subject again, when he called me back and said it would be necessary to know exactly how many “points” I wanted put up, what parts of the house I wanted them on, and what quality of rod I preferred. It was close quarters for a man not used to the exigencies of housekeeping; but I went through creditably, and he probably never suspected that I was a novice. I told him to put up eight “points,” and put them all on the roof, and use the best quality of rod. He said he could furnish the “plain” article at 20 cents a foot; “coppered,” 25 cents; “zinc-plated spiral-twist,” at 30 cents, that would stop a streak of lightning any time, no matter where it was bound, and “render its errand harmless and its further progress apocryphal.” I said apocryphal was no slouch of a word, emanating from the source it did, but, philology aside, I liked the spiral-twist and would take that brand. Then he said he could make two hundred and fifty feet answer; but to do it right, and make the best job in town of it, and attract the admiration of the just and the unjust alike, and compel all parties to say they never saw a more symmetrical and hypothetical display of lightning-rods since they were born, he supposed he really couldn’t get along without four hundred, though he was not vindictive, and trusted he was willing to try. I said, go ahead and use four hundred, and make any kind of a job he pleased out of it, but let me get back to my work. So I got rid of him at last; and now, after half an hour spent in getting my train of political-economy thoughts coupled together again, I am ready to go on once more.]

richest treasures of their genius, their experience of life, and their learning. The great lights of commercial jurisprudence, international confraternity, and biological deviation, of all ages, all civilizations, and all nationalities, from Zoroaster down to Horace Greeley, have—

[Here I was interrupted again, and required to go down and confer further with that lightning-rod man. I hurried off, boiling and surging with prodigious thoughts wombed in words of such majesty that each one of them was in itself a straggling procession of syllables that might be fifteen minutes passing a given point, and once more I confronted him—he so calm and sweet, I so hot and frenzied. He was standing in the contemplative attitude of the Colossus of Rhodes, with one foot on my infant tuberose, and the other among my pansies, his hands on his hips, his hat-brim tilted forward, one eye shut and the other gazing critically and admiringly in the direction of my principal chimney. He said now there was a state of things to make a man glad to be alive; and added, “I leave it to you if you ever saw anything more deliriously picturesque than eight lightning-rods on one chimney?” I said I had no present recollection of anything that transcended it. He said that in his opinion nothing on earth but Niagara Falls was superior to it in the way of natural scenery. All that was needed now, he verily believed, to make my house a perfect balm to the eye, was to kind of touch up the other chimneys a little, and thus “add to the generous ‘coup d’oeil’ a soothing uniformity of achievement which would allay the excitement naturally consequent upon the ‘coup d’etat.’” I asked him if he learned to talk out of a book, and if I could borrow it anywhere? He smiled pleasantly, and said that his manner of speaking was not taught in books, and that nothing but familiarity with lightning could enable a man to handle his conversational style with impunity. He then figured up an estimate, and said that about eight more rods scattered about my roof would about fix me right, and he guessed five hundred feet of stuff would do it; and added that the first eight had got a little the start of him, so to speak, and used up a mere trifle of material more than he had calculated on—a hundred feet or along there. I said I was in a dreadful hurry, and I wished we could get this business permanently mapped out, so that I could go on with my work. He said, “I could have put up those eight rods, and marched off about my business—some men would have done it. But no; I said to myself, this man is a stranger to me, and I will die before I’ll wrong him; there ain’t lightning-rods enough on that house, and for one I’ll never stir out of my tracks till I’ve done as I would be done by, and told him so. Stranger, my duty is accomplished; if the recalcitrant and dephlogistic messenger of heaven strikes your—” “There, now, there,” I said, “put on the other eight—add five hundred feet of spiral-twist—do anything and everything you want to do; but calm your sufferings, and try to keep your feelings where you can reach them with the dictionary. Meanwhile, if we understand each other now, I will go to work again.”

I think I have been sitting here a full hour this time, trying to get back to where I was when my train of thought was broken up by the last interruption; but I believe I have accomplished it at last, and may venture to proceed again.]

wrestled with this great subject, and the greatest among them have found it a worthy adversary, and one that always comes up fresh and smiling after every throw. The great Confucius said that he would rather be a profound political economist than chief of police. Cicero frequently said that political economy was the grandest consummation that the human mind was capable of consuming; and even our own Greeley had said vaguely but forcibly that “Political—

[Here the lightning-rod man sent up another call for me. I went down in a state of mind bordering on impatience. He said he would rather have died than interrupt me, but when he was employed to do a job, and that job was expected to be done in a clean, workmanlike manner, and when it was finished and fatigue urged him to seek the rest and recreation he stood so much in need of, and he was about to do it, but looked up and saw at a glance that all the calculations had been a little out, and if a thunder-storm were to come up, and that house, which he felt a personal interest in, stood there with nothing on earth to protect it but sixteen lightning-rods—“Let us have peace!” I shrieked. “Put up a hundred and fifty! Put some on the kitchen! Put a dozen on the barn! Put a couple on the cow! Put one on the cook!—scatter them all over the persecuted place till it looks like a zinc-plated, spiral-twisted, silver-mounted canebrake! Move! Use up all the material you can get your hands on, and when you run out of lightning-rods put up ramrods, cam-rods, stair-rods, piston-rods—anything that will pander to your dismal appetite for artificial scenery, and bring respite to my raging brain and healing to my lacerated soul!” Wholly unmoved—further than to smile sweetly—this iron being simply turned back his wrist-bands daintily, and said he would now proceed to hump himself. Well, all that was nearly three hours ago. It is questionable whether I am calm enough yet to write on the noble theme of political economy, but I cannot resist the desire to try, for it is the one subject that is nearest to my heart and dearest to my brain of all this world’s philosophy.]

economy is heaven’s best boon to man.” When the loose but gifted Byron lay in his Venetian exile he observed that, if it could be granted him to go back and live his misspent life over again, he would give his lucid and unintoxicated intervals to the composition, not of frivolous rhymes, but of essays upon political economy. Washington loved this exquisite science; such names as Baker, Beckwith, Judson, Smith, are imperishably linked with it; and even imperial Homer, in the ninth book of the Iliad, has said:

Fiat justitia, ruat coelum,
Post mortem unum, ante bellum,
Hic jacet hoc, ex-parte res,
Politicum e-conomico est.

The grandeur of these conceptions of the old poet, together with the felicity of the wording which clothes them, and the sublimity of the imagery whereby they are illustrated, have singled out that stanza, and made it more celebrated than any that ever—

[“Now, not a word out of you—not a single word. Just state your bill and relapse into impenetrable silence for ever and ever on these premises. Nine hundred, dollars? Is that all? This check for the amount will be honored at any respectable bank in America. What is that multitude of people gathered in the street for? How?—‘looking at the lightning-rods!’ Bless my life, did they never see any lightning-rods before? Never saw ‘such a stack of them on one establishment,’ did I understand you to say? I will step down and critically observe this popular ebullition of ignorance.”]

THREE DAYS LATER.—We are all about worn out. For four-and-twenty hours our bristling premises were the talk and wonder of the town. The theaters languished, for their happiest scenic inventions were tame and commonplace compared with my lightning-rods. Our street was blocked night and day with spectators, and among them were many who came from the country to see. It was a blessed relief on the second day when a thunderstorm came up and the lightning began to “go for” my house, as the historian Josephus quaintly phrases it. It cleared the galleries, so to speak. In five minutes there was not a spectator within half a mile of my place; but all the high houses about that distance away were full, windows, roof, and all. And well they might be, for all the falling stars and Fourth-of-July fireworks of a generation, put together and rained down simultaneously out of heaven in one brilliant shower upon one helpless roof, would not have any advantage of the pyrotechnic display that was making my house so magnificently conspicuous in the general gloom of the storm.

By actual count, the lightning struck at my establishment seven hundred and sixty-four times in forty minutes, but tripped on one of those faithful rods every time, and slid down the spiral-twist and shot into the earth before it probably had time to be surprised at the way the thing was done. And through all that bombardment only one patch of slates was ripped up, and that was because, for a single instant, the rods in the vicinity were transporting all the lightning they could possibly accommodate. Well, nothing was ever seen like it since the world began. For one whole day and night not a member of my family stuck his head out of the window but he got the hair snatched off it as smooth as a billiard-ball; and, if the reader will believe me, not one of us ever dreamt of stirring abroad. But at last the awful siege came to an end because there was absolutely no more electricity left in the clouds above us within grappling distance of my insatiable rods. Then I sallied forth, and gathered daring workmen together, and not a bite or a nap did we take till the premises were utterly stripped of all their terrific armament except just three rods on the house, one on the kitchen, and one on the barn—and, behold, these remain there even unto this day. And then, and not till then, the people ventured to use our street again. I will remark here, in passing, that during that fearful time I did not continue my essay upon political economy. I am not even yet settled enough in nerve and brain to resume it.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN.—Parties having need of three thousand two hundred and eleven feet of best quality zinc-plated spiral-twist lightning-rod stuff, and sixteen hundred and thirty-one silver-tipped points, all in tolerable repair (and, although much worn by use, still equal to any ordinary emergency), can hear of a bargain by addressing the publisher.

Political Economy, Told Once More

A modern retelling by R. M. Hume

I had set aside the afternoon to write an essay on political economy. It is the noblest of subjects, and I meant to do it justice. I had got as far as declaring that political economy is the basis of all good government when a stranger appeared at my door.

He was sorry to trouble me, he said, but he had noticed in passing that I needed some lightning-rods. I am new to housekeeping and did not care to look it, so I said in an offhand way that yes, I had been meaning to put up six or eight. That was my mistake. He wanted to know how many points, on what parts of the roof, and in what quality of rod. I chose the zinc-plated spiral-twist, mostly because I liked the sound of it, and told him to use his judgment. His judgment ran to four hundred feet. I said fine, anything, only let me get back to my work.

I had just coupled my thoughts together again and reached the great lights of commercial jurisprudence when he called me back down. He was planted in my flower-bed in the attitude of the Colossus of Rhodes, one foot crushing a tuberose and the other set among the pansies, his hat tilted forward, one eye shut and the open one fixed in tender admiration on the eight rods now crowding my chimney. He wondered aloud whether I’d ever seen anything so picturesque. I hadn’t, I admitted. He thought a few more rods would about fix me right, and swore he’d die before he’d wrong a stranger by leaving the job half done. Put them up, I said. Put up anything. Only let me write.

It didn’t hold. He was back before I’d finished a sentence, worried that sixteen rods weren’t enough to save a house he’d taken such a personal interest in. Let us have peace, I shrieked. Put up a hundred and fifty! Put some on the kitchen, a dozen on the barn, one on the cow, one on the cook! He turned back his cuffs, smiled sweetly, and went off to hump himself.

The bill came to nine hundred dollars, and I paid it on the spot just to be rid of him. Then I noticed the crowd. Half the town was standing in my street with their heads tipped back, staring up at my roof, which by now bristled like a canebrake made of iron.

Three days later we were all worn out. For a full day and night the street stayed blocked with gawkers, until a thunderstorm mercifully cleared them off, because the lightning came straight for my house. By actual count it struck seven hundred and sixty-four times in forty minutes. Not one of us dared put his head out a window without getting the hair snatched off it as smooth as a billiard-ball. When at last there was no electricity left in the sky, I sent men up to strip the roof back down to three honest rods.

I have not gone back to my essay on political economy. I am not yet settled enough in nerve and brain to resume it. But should anyone happen to need three thousand feet of slightly used spiral-twist, and some sixteen hundred silver-tipped points, all in tolerable repair, they can hear of a bargain by applying to me.

What Twain Was Doing

Twain wrote this in 1870 for his monthly column in The Galaxy, a few years into keeping a house of his own. Men who went door to door selling rods and household improvements were a real nuisance of the day, and he had plainly met a few.

The whole sketch runs on one trick, two things happening in the same room. The narrator’s essay keeps trying to lift off in rolling, pompous sentences, and the salesman keeps hauling it back to earth in the middle of a word. Each bracketed interruption is longer than the last, until the essay is only wreckage lying between them.

What sinks the narrator is not the salesman. It is his own vanity. He will not say the three words that would end the whole thing, I don’t know, because he is busy playing the seasoned householder. Every rod on that roof is the price of not admitting ignorance.

The numbers carry the rest. Eight rods become four hundred feet, then a hundred and fifty, then a house struck seven hundred and sixty-four times in forty minutes. The rods he bought to protect the house are the reason the lightning comes for it.

A Note on This Edition

Twain’s words sit here as he wrote them, untouched, with short notes for what has aged out of common knowledge. The new material, the retelling and these notes, was written by R. M. Hume with the help of AI. Hume wrote the retelling and made the editorial decisions about the annotations, the framing, and what to carry into the modern version.

This one is clean comedy, with no violence to speak of. The single thing worth flagging is the solemn Latin stanza the narrator credits to Homer’s Iliad. It is nonsense, dog-Latin that means nothing and is certainly not Homer, and Twain trusted his readers to know it and laugh. A note points it out.

This joins the other stories in Mark Twain in an AI World, alongside The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, The Invalid’s Story, Journalism in Tennessee, The Stolen White Elephant, Baker’s Blue-Jay Yarn, How I Edited an Agricultural Paper Once, and the two little-boy sketches. Each sits beside Twain’s own text, word for word, so you can see exactly what was changed and what was not.

More on Twain’s method:
How Twain Said to Tell It →
 · 
The Rulebook Twain Hid in an Insult →