"If the fluid enters a room, for example, it runs along the bell
wires, inspects the works of the clock, and sometimes has the audacity
to pounce upon the money in your purse, even though a policeman should
happen to be in the kitchen at the time."
"Perhaps," remarked Willis, "it is Socialist or Red Republican in its
notions."
"It does not, however, patronise war," replied Jack; "I once heard of
it having melted a sword and left the scabbard intact."
"That, to say the least of it, is improbable," remarked Fritz. "The
hilt, or even the point, might have been fused; but even supposing the
electric fluid to have been capable of such flagrant preference, the
scabbard could not have held molten metal without being itself
consumed."
"Aye," remarked Willis, "there are plenty of non-sensical stories of
that kind in circulation, because nobody takes the trouble to test
their truth. Still, according to your own account, a man or woman runs
no danger from the lightning."
"I beg your pardon there, Willis; the electric fluid does not go out
of its way to attack a human being, but if one should-happen to be in
its way, it does not take time to request that individual to stand
aside, it simply passes through him, and leaves him or her, as the
case may be, a coagulated mass of inanimate tissues.
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