Now I must tell you of a surprise in which I took an active part. Some man thought he would separate a great crowd of us from our friends. Of course, he did not think really of _us_, but whatever he may have supposed he was doing, he succeeded in accumulating greater crowds of us together than he had done previously. He managed this by making simple machines to do the rubbing for him on a larger scale. The result was really too much for us; we were kept crowding on to a sort of brass comb arrangement from which we could not escape, as the metal was attached to a glass support. Talk about overcrowding! I had never experienced the like before, and I felt sure some catastrophe would happen. Suddenly there was a stampede, during which a great crowd of electrons forced their way across to a neighbouring object and thence to the earth. I can assure you it was no joke getting through the air. We all tried to leap together, but some of the crowd were forced back upon us; then bang forward we went again, back once more, and so on till we settled down to our normal condition. Of course all this surging to and fro occupied far less time than it takes to tell. Indeed, I could not tell you what a very small fraction of a second it took. I wish you had seen the experimenter's surprise as we made this jump. We caused such a bombardment in the air that there was a bright spark accompanied by a regular explosion. Some men ran away with the idea that electricity was a mysterious fire, which only showed itself when it mixed with the atmosphere. Nothing delighted us more, after our own surprise was over, than to have a chance of repeating these explosions, to the alarm of the experimenters. But the best sport of all was to come, and when I heard of it I was so disappointed that I had not been one of the sporting party. It came about in the following way. [Illustration: DAMAGE DONE BY A PARTY OF ELECTRONS _By permission of Dixon and Corbitt and R. S. Newall, Ltd._ _Glasgow_ When a myriad of electrons is discharged suddenly from a cloud to the earth, it happens sometimes that considerable damage is done. The above photograph is of a church steeple damaged by lightning in 1875. No lightning-conductor was provided, so the electrons had to get to earth by way of the steeple itself, with the disastrous result as shown.]