Having pointed out the sources of danger which you must try to avoid in a thunderstorm, I have nearly exhausted all the practical advice that I have at my command. But there are some occasions on which it may be possible, not only to avoid evident sources of danger, but to make special provision for your own security. Thus, for example, in the open country, if you stand a short distance from a wood, you may consider yourself as practically protected by a lightning conductor. For a wood, by its numerous branches and leaves, favors very much a quiet discharge of electricity, thus tending to suppress altogether the flash of lightning; and if the flash of lightning does come, it is much more likely to strike the wood than to strike you, because the wood is a far more prominent body, and offers, on the whole, an easier path to earth. In like manner, if you place yourself near a tall solitary tree, some twenty or thirty yards outside its longest branches, you will be in a position of comparative safety. If the storm overtake you in the open plain, far away from trees and buildings, you will be safer lying flat on the ground than standing erect. In an ordinary dwelling house, the best situation is probably the middle story, and the best position in the room is in the middle of the floor; provided, of course, that there is no gasalier hanging from the ceiling above or below you. Strictly speaking, the _middle of the room_ would be a still safer position than the middle of the floor; and nothing could be more perfect than the plan suggested by Franklin, to get into “a hammock, or swinging bed, suspended by silk cords, and equally distant from the walls on every side, as well as from the ceiling and floor, above and below.” An interesting case has been recently recorded, by a resident of Venezuela, which illustrates in a remarkable way the excellence of this advice. “The lightning,” he says, “struck a _rancho_--a small country house, built of wood and mud, and thatched with straw or large leaves--where one man slept in a hammock, another lay under the hammock on the ground, and three women were busy about the floor; there were also several hens and a pig. The man in the hammock did not receive any injury whatever, while the other four persons and the animals were killed.”[37] But, as I can hardly hope that many of you when the thunderstorm actually comes will find yourselves provided with a hammock, I would recommend, as more generally useful, another plan of Franklin’s, which is simply to sit on one chair in the middle of the floor and put your feet up on another. This arrangement will approach very nearly to absolute security if you take the further precaution, also mentioned by Franklin, of putting a feather bed or a couple of hair mattresses under the chairs.[38]