Taylor.“When Abraham sat at his tent door according to his custom, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied an old man stooping and leaning on his staff; weary with age and travel, coming towards him, who was an hundred years old. He received him kindly, washed his feet, provided supper, and caused him to sit down; but observing that the old man ate and prayed not, nor begged for a blessing on his meat, he asked him why he did not worship the God of heaven? The old man told him, that he worshipped the fire only and acknowledged no other god. At which answer Abraham grew so zealously angry, that he thrust the old man out of his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of the night and an unguarded condition. When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham, and asked him where the stranger was? He replied, I thrust him away, because he did not worship thee. God answered him, I have suffered him these hundred years, although he dishonoured me; and couldst not thou endure him one night, and when he gave thee no trouble? Upon this, saith the story, Abraham fetched him back again, and gave him hospitable entertainment and wise instruction. Go thou and do likewise and thy charity will be rewarded by the God of Abraham.”
Taylor.
“When Abraham sat at his tent door according to his custom, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied an old man stooping and leaning on his staff; weary with age and travel, coming towards him, who was an hundred years old. He received him kindly, washed his feet, provided supper, and caused him to sit down; but observing that the old man ate and prayed not, nor begged for a blessing on his meat, he asked him why he did not worship the God of heaven? The old man told him, that he worshipped the fire only and acknowledged no other god. At which answer Abraham grew so zealously angry, that he thrust the old man out of his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of the night and an unguarded condition. When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham, and asked him where the stranger was? He replied, I thrust him away, because he did not worship thee. God answered him, I have suffered him these hundred years, although he dishonoured me; and couldst not thou endure him one night, and when he gave thee no trouble? Upon this, saith the story, Abraham fetched him back again, and gave him hospitable entertainment and wise instruction. Go thou and do likewise and thy charity will be rewarded by the God of Abraham.”
Franklin.“¶1And it came to pass after these things, that Abraham sat in the door of his tent, about the going down of the sun. ¶2And behold a man, bent with age, coming from the way of the wilderness leaning on his staff. ¶3And Abraham rose and met him, and said unto him: Turn in, I pray thee, and wash thy feet, and tarry all night; and thou shalt arise early in the morning and go on thy way. ¶4But the man said, Nay, for I will abide under this tree. ¶5And Abraham pressed him greatly: so he turned and they went into the tent, and Abraham baked unleavened bread, and they did eat. ¶6And when Abraham saw that the man blessed not God he said unto him, wherefore dost thou not worship the Most High God, Creator of heaven and earth? ¶7And the man answered, and said, I do not worship thy God, neither do I call upon his name; for I have made to myself a god, which abideth in myhouse and provideth me with all things. ¶8And Abraham’s zeal was kindled against the man; and he arose and fell upon him, and drove him forth with blows into the wilderness. ¶9And at midnight God called unto Abraham saying, Abraham, where is the stranger? ¶10And Abraham answered and said, Lord, he would not worship thee, neither would he call upon thy name; therefore have I driven him out from before my face into the wilderness. ¶11And God said, have I borne with him these hundred and ninety and eight years, and nourished him, and Cloathed him, notwithstanding his rebellion against me; and couldest not thou, who art thyself a sinner, bear with him one night? ¶12And Abraham said, Let not the anger of the Lord wax hot against his servant; lo, I have sinned; forgive me I pray thee. ¶13And Abraham arose and went forth into the wilderness and sought diligently for the man and found him, and returned with him to the tent; and when he had entreated him kindly, he sent him away on the morrow with gifts. ¶14And God spake unto Abraham, saying, For this thy sin shall thy seed be afflicted four hundred years in a strange land. ¶15But for thy repentance will I deliver them; and they shall come forth with power and gladness of heart, and with much substance.”
Franklin.
“¶1And it came to pass after these things, that Abraham sat in the door of his tent, about the going down of the sun. ¶2And behold a man, bent with age, coming from the way of the wilderness leaning on his staff. ¶3And Abraham rose and met him, and said unto him: Turn in, I pray thee, and wash thy feet, and tarry all night; and thou shalt arise early in the morning and go on thy way. ¶4But the man said, Nay, for I will abide under this tree. ¶5And Abraham pressed him greatly: so he turned and they went into the tent, and Abraham baked unleavened bread, and they did eat. ¶6And when Abraham saw that the man blessed not God he said unto him, wherefore dost thou not worship the Most High God, Creator of heaven and earth? ¶7And the man answered, and said, I do not worship thy God, neither do I call upon his name; for I have made to myself a god, which abideth in myhouse and provideth me with all things. ¶8And Abraham’s zeal was kindled against the man; and he arose and fell upon him, and drove him forth with blows into the wilderness. ¶9And at midnight God called unto Abraham saying, Abraham, where is the stranger? ¶10And Abraham answered and said, Lord, he would not worship thee, neither would he call upon thy name; therefore have I driven him out from before my face into the wilderness. ¶11And God said, have I borne with him these hundred and ninety and eight years, and nourished him, and Cloathed him, notwithstanding his rebellion against me; and couldest not thou, who art thyself a sinner, bear with him one night? ¶12And Abraham said, Let not the anger of the Lord wax hot against his servant; lo, I have sinned; forgive me I pray thee. ¶13And Abraham arose and went forth into the wilderness and sought diligently for the man and found him, and returned with him to the tent; and when he had entreated him kindly, he sent him away on the morrow with gifts. ¶14And God spake unto Abraham, saying, For this thy sin shall thy seed be afflicted four hundred years in a strange land. ¶15But for thy repentance will I deliver them; and they shall come forth with power and gladness of heart, and with much substance.”
The parable was, indeed, older than Taylor for Taylor said he had found it in “The Jews’ Book,” and at length it was discovered in a Latin dedication of a rabbinical work, called “The Rod of Judah,” published at Amsterdam in 1651, which ascribed the parable to the Persian poet Saadi. None of them, however, had thought of introducing it into the Old Testament, nor had they told it so well as Franklin, who gave it a new currency, and it was reprinted as a half-penny tract and also in Lord Kames’s “Sketches of the History of Man.”
While on this question of plagiarism it may be said that Franklin’s admirable style was in part modelled on that of the famous Massachusetts divine, Cotton Mather, whom he had known and whose books he had read in his boyhood. The similarity is, indeed, quite striking, and for vigorous English he could hardly have had a better model. But he improved so much on Mather that his style is entirely his own. It is the most effective literary style ever used by an American. Nearly one hundred and fifty years have passed since his Autobiography was written, yet it is still read with delight by all classes of people, has been called for at some public libraries four hundred times a year, and shows as much promise of immortality as the poems of Longfellow or the romances of Hawthorne.
Besides his almanac and newspaper, Franklin extended his business by publishing books, consisting mostly of religious tracts and controversies. He also imported books from England, and sold them along with the lamp-black, soap, and groceries contained inthat strange little store and printing-office on Market Street. He sent one of his journeymen to Charleston to establish a branch printing-office, of which Franklin was to pay one-third of the expense and receive one-third of the profits. After continuing in this manner some five years, the Legislature of the province in 1736 elected him clerk of that body, which enabled him to retain the printing of the notes, laws, paper money, and other public jobs, which he tells us were very profitable.
The next year Colonel Spotswood, Postmaster-General of the colonies, made him deputy postmaster of Philadelphia. This appointment reinforced his other occupations. He could collect news for hisGazettemore easily, and also had greater facilities for distributing it to his subscribers. In those days the postmaster of a town usually owned a newspaper, because he could have the post-riders distribute copies of it without cost, and he did not allow them to carry any newspaper but his own. Franklin had been injured by the refusal of his predecessor to distribute hisGazette; but when he became postmaster, finding his subscriptions and advertisements much increased and his competitor’s newspaper declining, he magnanimously refused to retaliate, and allowed his riders to carry the rival journal.
How much money Franklin actually made in his business is difficult to determine, although many guesses have been made. He was, it would seem, more largely and widely engaged than any other printer in the colonies, for nearly all the importantprinting of the middle colonies and a large part of that of the southern colonies came to his office. He made enough to retire at forty-two years of age, having been working for himself only twenty years.
On retiring he turned over his printing and publishing interest to his foreman, David Hall, who was to carry on the business in his own way, but under the firm name of Franklin & Hall, and to pay Franklin a thousand pounds a year for eighteen years, at the end of which time Hall was to become sole proprietor. This thousand pounds which Franklin was to receive may be looked upon as an indication that before his retirement the business was yielding him annually something more than that sum, possibly almost two thousand pounds, as some have supposed.
He never again engaged actively in any gainful trade, and his retirement seems to have been caused by the passion for scientific research which a few years before had seized him, and by that trait of his character which sometimes appears in the form of a sort of indolence and at other times as a wilful determination to follow the bent of his inclinations and pleasures. Although extremely economical and thrifty in practice as well as in precept, he had very little love of money, and took no pleasure in business for mere business’ sake. The charges of sordidness and mean penny-wisdom are not borne out by any of the real facts of his life. It is not improbable that just before his retirement he had advanced far enough in his scientific experiments to see dimly in the future the chance of a great discovery and distinction.He certainly went to work with a will as soon as he got rid of the cares of the printing-office, and in a few years was rewarded.
He had invested some of his savings in houses and land in Philadelphia, and the thousand pounds (five thousand dollars) which he was to receive for eighteen years was a very good income in those times, and more than equivalent to ten thousand dollars at the present day. He moved from the bustle of Market Street and his home in the old printing, stationery, and grocery house, and is supposed to have taken a house at the southeast corner of Second and Race Streets. This was at the northern edge of the town, close to the river, where in the summer evenings he renewed his youthful fondness for swimming.
It must be confessed that very few self-made men, conducting a profitable business with the prospect of steady accumulation of money, have willingly resigned it in the prime of life, under the influence of such sentiments as appear to have moved him. But that intense and absolute devotion to business which is the prevailing mood of our times had not then begun in America, and it was rather the fashion to retire.
The years which followed his retirement, and before he became absorbed in political affairs, seem to have had for him a great deal of ideal happiness. He lived like a man of taste and a scholar accustomed to cultured surroundings more than like a self-made man who had battled for forty years with the material world. In writing to his mother, he said,—
“I read a great deal, ride a little, do a little business for myself, now and then for others, retire when I can, and go into company when I please; so the years roll round, and the last will come, when I would rather have it said, He lived usefully than He died rich.”
“I read a great deal, ride a little, do a little business for myself, now and then for others, retire when I can, and go into company when I please; so the years roll round, and the last will come, when I would rather have it said, He lived usefully than He died rich.”
After his withdrawal from business he remained postmaster of Philadelphia, and in 1753, after he had held that office for sixteen years, he was appointed Postmaster-General of all the colonies, with William Hunter, of Virginia, as his colleague, and he retained this position until dismissed from it by the British government in 1774, on the eve of the Revolution. There was some salary attached to these offices, that of Postmaster-General yielding three hundred pounds. The postmastership of Philadelphia entailed no difficult duties at that time, and his wife assisted him; but when he was made Postmaster-General he more than earned his salary during the first few years by making extensive journeys through the colonies to reform the system. The salary attached to the office was not to be allowed unless the office produced it; and during the first four years the unpaid salary of Franklin and his colleague amounted to nine hundred and fifty pounds. He procured faster post-riders, increased the number of mails between important places, made a charge for carrying newspapers, had all newspapers carried by the riders, and reduced some of the rates of postage.
But he was not the founder of the modern post-office system, nor was he the first Postmaster-General of America, as some of his biographers insist. He merely improved the system which he found and increasedits revenues as others have done before and since.
The leisure he sought by retirement was enjoyed but a few years. He became more and more involved in public affairs, and soon spent most of his time in England as agent of Pennsylvania or other colonies, and during the Revolution he was in France. There was a salary attached to these offices. As agent of Pennsylvania he received five hundred pounds a year, and when he represented other colonies he received from Massachusetts four hundred, from Georgia two hundred, and from New Jersey one hundred. These sums, together with the thousand pounds a year from Hall, would seem to be enough for a man of his habits; but apparently he used it all, and was often slow in paying his debts.
In a letter written to Mrs. Stevenson in London, while he was envoy to France, he expresses surprise that some of the London tradespeople still considered him their debtor for things obtained from them during his residence there some years before, and he asks Mrs. Stevenson, with whom he had lodged, how his account stands with her. The thousand pounds from Hall ceased in 1766, and after that his income must have been seriously diminished, for the return from his invested savings is supposed to have been only about seven hundred pounds. He appears to have overdrawn his account with Hall, for there is a manuscript letter in the possession of Mr. Howard Edwards, of Philadelphia, written by Hall March 1, 1770, urging Franklin to pay nine hundredand ninety-three pounds which had been due for three years.
He procured for his natural son, William, the royal governorship of New Jersey, and he was diligent all his life in getting government places for relatives. This practice does not appear to have been much disapproved of in his time; he was not subjected to abuse on account of it; and, indeed, nepotism is far preferable to some of the more modern methods.
When Governor of Pennsylvania, after the Revolution, he declined, we are told, to receive any salary for his three years’ service, accepting only his expenses for postage, which was high in those times, and amounted in this case to seventy-seven pounds for the three years. This is one of the innumerable statements about him in which the truth is distorted for the sake of eulogy. He did not decline to receive his salary, but he spent it in charity, and we find bequests of it in his will.
As minister to France he had at first five hundred pounds a year and his expenses, and this was paid. He was also promised a secretary at a salary of one thousand pounds a year; but, as the secretary was never sent, he did the work himself with the assistance of his grandson, William Temple Franklin, who was allowed only three hundred pounds a year.
He considered himself very much underpaid for his services in resisting the Stamp Act, for his mission to Canada in 1776 at the risk of his life, and for the long and laborious years which he spent in France. Certainly five hundred pounds a year and expenseswas very small pay for his diplomatic work in Paris, but during the last six years of his mission there he received two thousand five hundred pounds a year, which would seem to be sufficient compensation for acting as ambassador, as well as merchant to buy and ship supplies to the United States, and as financial agent to examine and accept innumerable bills of exchange drawn by the Continental Congress (Bigelow’s Works of Franklin, vol. ix. p. 127). In 1788, two years before his death, he made a statement of these claims for extra service and sent it to Congress, accompanied by a letter to his friend, Charles Thomson, the secretary.
He thought that Congress should recognize these services by a grant of land, an office, or in some other way, as was the custom in Europe when an ambassador returned from a long foreign service; and he reminded Thomson that both Arthur Lee and John Jay had been rewarded handsomely for similar services. But the old Congress under the Articles of Confederation was then just expiring, and took no notice of his petition; and when the new Congress came in under the Constitution, it does not appear that his claims were presented. It is a mistake to say, however, as some have done, that the United States never paid him for his services and still owes him money. These claims were for extra services which the government had never obligated itself to pay.
He died quite well off for those times, leaving an estate worth, it is supposed, considerably over one hundred thousand dollars. The rapid rise in thevalue of houses and land in Philadelphia after the Revolution accounts for a part of this sum. He owned five or six large houses in Philadelphia, the printing-house which he built for his grandson, and several small houses. He had also a number of vacant lots in the town, a house and lot in Boston, a tract of land in Nova Scotia, another large tract in Georgia, and still another in Ohio. His personal property, consisting mostly of bonds and money, was worth from sixty to seventy thousand dollars.
FOOTNOTES:[15]Pp. 209-217.[16]Bigelow’s Franklin from His Own Writings, vol. ii. p. 511.[17]Bigelow’s Works of Franklin, vol. v. p. 376; also vol. x. p. 78; Adams’s Works, vol. i. p. 659.
[15]Pp. 209-217.
[15]Pp. 209-217.
[16]Bigelow’s Franklin from His Own Writings, vol. ii. p. 511.
[16]Bigelow’s Franklin from His Own Writings, vol. ii. p. 511.
[17]Bigelow’s Works of Franklin, vol. v. p. 376; also vol. x. p. 78; Adams’s Works, vol. i. p. 659.
[17]Bigelow’s Works of Franklin, vol. v. p. 376; also vol. x. p. 78; Adams’s Works, vol. i. p. 659.
Theexact period at which Franklin began to turn his attention to original researches in science is difficult to determine. There are no traces of such efforts when he was a youth in Boston. He was not then interested in science, even in a boyish way. His instincts at that time led him almost exclusively in the direction of general reading and the training of himself in the literary art by verse-writing and by analyzing the essays of theSpectator.
The atmosphere of Boston was completely theological. There was no room, no opportunity, for science, and no inducement or even suggestion that would lead to it, still less to original research in it. We find Franklin in a state of rebellion against the prevailing tone of thought, writing against it in his brother’s newspaper at the risk of imprisonment, and in a manner more bitter and violent than anything he afterwards composed. If he had remained in Boston it is not likely that he would ever have taken seriously to science, for all his energies would have been absorbed in fighting those intolerant conditions which smothered all scientific inquiries.
In Pennsylvania he found the conditions reversed. The Quakers and the German sects which made up the majority of the people of that province in colonialtimes had more advanced ideas of liberty and free thought than any of the other religious bodies in America, and in consequence science flourished in Pennsylvania long before it gained entrance into the other colonies. The first American medical college, the first hospital, and the first separate dispensary were established there. Several citizens of Philadelphia who were contemporaries of Franklin achieved sufficient reputation in science to make their names well known in Europe.
David Rittenhouse invented the metallic thermometer, developed the construction of the compensation pendulum, and made valuable experiments on the compressibility of water. He became a famous astronomer, constructed an orrery to show the movements of the stars which was an improvement on all its predecessors, and conducted the observations of the transit of Venus in 1769. Pennsylvania was the only one of the colonies that took these observations, which in that year were taken by all the European governments in various parts of the world. The Legislature and public institutions, together with a large number of individuals, assisted in the undertaking, showing what very favorable conditions for science prevailed in the province.[18]
These were the conditions which seem to have aroused Franklin. Without them his mind tended more naturally to literature, politics, and schemes of philanthropy and reform; but when his strongintellect was once directed towards science, he easily excelled in it. Some of the early questions discussed by the Junto, such as “Is sound an entity or body?” and “How may the phenomena of vapors be explained?” show an inclination towards scientific research; and it is very likely that he studied such subjects more or less during the ten years which followed his beginning business for himself.
In hisGazettefor December 15, 1737, there is an essay on the causes of earthquakes, summarizing the various explanations which had been given by learned men, and this essay is supposed to have been written by him. Six years afterwards he made what has been usually considered his first discovery,—namely, that the northeast storms of the Atlantic coast move against the wind; or, in other words, that instead of these storms coming from the northeast, whence the wind blows, they come from the southwest. He was led to this discovery by attempting to observe an eclipse of the moon which occurred on the evening of October 21, 1743; but he was prevented by a heavy northeaster which did great damage on the coast. He was surprised to find that it had not prevented the people of Boston from seeing the eclipse. The storm, though coming from the northeast, swept over Philadelphia before it reached Boston. For several years he carefully collected information about these storms, and found in every instance that they began to leeward and were often more violent there than farther to windward.
He seems to have been the first person to observethese facts, but he took no pains to make his observations public, except in conversation or in letters to prominent men like Jared Eliot, of Connecticut, and these letters were not published until long afterwards. This was his method in all his investigations. He never wrote a book on science; he merely reported his investigations and experiments by letter, usually to learned people in England or France. There were no scientific periodicals in those days. The men who were interested in such things kept in touch with one another by means of correspondence and an occasional pamphlet or book.
During the same period in which he was making observations on northeast storms he invented the “Pennsylvania Fireplace,” as he called it, a new sort of stove which was a great improvement over the old methods of heating rooms. He published a complete description of this stove in 1745, and it is one of the most interesting essays he ever wrote. It is astonishing with what pleasure one can still read the first half of this essay written one hundred and fifty years ago on the driest of dry subjects. The language is so clear and beautiful, and the homely personality of the writer so manifest, that one is inclined to lay down the principle that the test of literary genius is the ability to be fascinating about stoves.
He explained the laws of hot air and its movements; the Holland stove, which afforded but little ventilation; the German stove, which was simply an iron box fed from outside, with no ventilating properties; and the great open fireplace fed with huge logs,which required such a draft to prevent the smoke from coming back into the room that the outer door had to be left open,—and if the door was shut the draft would draw the outer air whistling and howling through the crevices of the windows. His “Pennsylvania Fireplace” was what we would now call an open-fireplace stove. It was intended to be less wasteful of fuel than the ordinary fireplace and to give ventilation, while combining the heating power of the German and Holland stoves. It continued in common use for nearly a century, and modified forms of it are still called the Franklin stoves.
One of its greatest advantages was that it saved wood, which, for some time prior to the introduction of coal, had to be brought such a long distance that it was becoming very expensive. Franklin refused to take out a patent for his invention; for he was on principle opposed to patents, and said that as we enjoyed great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be willing to serve them by inventions of our own. He afterwards learned that a London ironmonger made a few changes in the “Pennsylvania Fireplace” and sold it as his own, gaining a small fortune.
Franklin’s invention was undoubtedly an improvement on the old methods of heating and ventilation; but he was not, as has been absurdly claimed, the founder of the “American stove system,” for that system very soon departed from his lines and went back to the air-tight stoves of Germany and Holland.
It was not until 1746 or 1747, after he had been making original researches in science for about fiveyears, that he took up the subject of electricity, and he was then forty-one years old. It appears that Mr. Peter Collinson, of London, who was interested in botany and other sciences, and corresponded largely on such subjects, had presented to the Philadelphia Library one of the glass tubes which were used at that time for producing electricity by rubbing them with silk or skin. Franklin began experimenting with this tube, and seems to have been fascinated by the new subject. On March 28, 1747, he wrote to Mr. Collinson thanking him for the tube, and saying that they had observed with its aid some phenomena which they thought to be new.
“For my own part, I never was before engaged in any study that so totally engrossed my attention and my time as this has lately done; for what with making experiments when I can be alone, and repeating them to my friends and acquaintance, who from the novelty of the thing, come continually in crowds to see them, I have, during some months past, had little leisure for anything else.”
“For my own part, I never was before engaged in any study that so totally engrossed my attention and my time as this has lately done; for what with making experiments when I can be alone, and repeating them to my friends and acquaintance, who from the novelty of the thing, come continually in crowds to see them, I have, during some months past, had little leisure for anything else.”
It will be observed that he speaks of crowds coming to see the experiments, and this confirms what I have already shown of the strong interest in science which prevailed at that time in Pennsylvania, and which had evidently first aroused Franklin. In fact, a renewed interest in science had been recently stirred up all over the world, and people who had never before thought much of such things became investigators. Voltaire, who resembled Franklin in many ways, had turned aside from literature, and at forty-one, the same age at which Franklin began the study of electricity, had become a man of science, and for four years devoted himself to experiments.
Franklin was by no means alone in his studies. Besides the crowds who were interested from mere curiosity, there were three men—Ebenezer Kinnersley, Thomas Hopkinson, and Philip Syng—who experimented with him, and it was no mere amateurish work in which these men were engaged. Franklin was their spokesman and reported the results of his and their labor by means of letters to Mr. Peter Collinson. Within six months Hopkinson had observed the power of points to throw off electricity, or electrical fire, as he called it, and Franklin had discovered and described what is now known as positive and negative electricity. Within the same time Syng had invented an electrical machine, consisting of a sphere revolved on an axis with a handle, which was better adapted for producing the electrical spark than the tube-rubbing practised in Europe.
The experiments and the letters to Collinson describing them continued, and about this time we find Franklin writing a long and apparently the first intelligent explanation of the action of the Leyden jar. Then followed attempts to explain thunder and lightning as phenomena of electricity, and on July 29, 1750, Franklin sent to Collinson a paper announcing the invention of the lightning-rod, together with an explanation of its action.
In these papers he also suggested an experiment which would prove positively that lightning was a form of electricity. The two phenomena were alike as regarded light, color, crooked direction, noise, swift motion, being conducted by metals, subsisting in water or ice, rending bodies, killing animals, meltingmetals, and setting fire to various substances. It remained to demonstrate with absolute certainty that lightning resembled electricity in being attracted by points; and for this purpose Franklin proposed that a man stand in a sort of sentry-box on the top of some high tower or steeple and with a pointed rod draw electricity from passing thunder-clouds.
This suggestion was successfully carried out in France, in the presence of the king, at the county-seat of the Duke D’Ayen; and afterwards Buffon, D’Alibard, and Du Lor confirmed it by experiments of their own. But they did not use steeples; they erected lofty iron rods, in one instance ninety-nine feet high. Nevertheless, it was in effect the same method that Franklin had suggested. The experiment was repeated in various forms in England, and the Philadelphia philosopher, postmaster, and author of “Poor Richard” became instantly famous as the discoverer of the identity of lightning with electricity.
Two years before these experiments were inaugurated he had retired from business for various reasons, chief among which was his strong desire to devote more time to science. His letters continue to be filled with closely reasoned details of all sorts of experiments. So earnest were these Philadelphia investigators, that when Kinnersley wrote complaining that in travelling to Boston he found difficulty in keeping up his experiments, Franklin, in reply, suggested a portable electrical apparatus which would not break on a journey.
In a letter written to Collinson on October 19, 1752, Franklin says he had heard of the successin France of the experiment he had suggested for drawing the lightning from clouds by means of an elevated metal rod; but in the mean time he had contrived another method for accomplishing the same result without the aid of a steeple or lofty iron rod. This was the kite experiment of which we have heard so much, and he goes on to describe it:
“Make a small cross of two light strips of cedar, the arms so long as to reach to the four corners of a large thin silk handkerchief when extended; tie the corners of the handkerchief to the extremities of the cross, so you have the body of a kite; which being properly accommodated with a tail, loop, and string, will rise in the air, like those made of paper; but this being of silk is fitter to bear the wet and wind of a thunder gust without tearing. To the top of the upright stick of the cross is to be fixed a very sharp pointed wire, rising a foot or more above the wood. To the end of the twine, next the hand, is to be tied a silk ribbon, and where the silk and twine join, a key may be fastened. This kite is to be raised when a thunder-gust appears to be coming on, and the person who holds the string must stand within a door or window, or under some cover, so that the silk ribbon may not be wet; and care must be taken that the twine does not touch the frame of the door or window. As soon as any of the thunder clouds come over the kite, the pointed wire will draw the electric fire from them, and the kite, with all the twine, will be electrified, and the loose filaments of the twine, will stand out every way, and be attracted by an approaching finger. And when the rain has wetted the kite and twine, so that it can conduct the electric fire freely, you will find it stream out plentifully from the key on the approach of your knuckle. At this key the phial may be charged: and from electric fire thus obtained, spirits may be kindled, and all the other electric experiments be performed, which are usually done by the help of a rubbed glass globe or tube, and thereby the sameness of the electric matter with that of lightning completely demonstrated.”
“Make a small cross of two light strips of cedar, the arms so long as to reach to the four corners of a large thin silk handkerchief when extended; tie the corners of the handkerchief to the extremities of the cross, so you have the body of a kite; which being properly accommodated with a tail, loop, and string, will rise in the air, like those made of paper; but this being of silk is fitter to bear the wet and wind of a thunder gust without tearing. To the top of the upright stick of the cross is to be fixed a very sharp pointed wire, rising a foot or more above the wood. To the end of the twine, next the hand, is to be tied a silk ribbon, and where the silk and twine join, a key may be fastened. This kite is to be raised when a thunder-gust appears to be coming on, and the person who holds the string must stand within a door or window, or under some cover, so that the silk ribbon may not be wet; and care must be taken that the twine does not touch the frame of the door or window. As soon as any of the thunder clouds come over the kite, the pointed wire will draw the electric fire from them, and the kite, with all the twine, will be electrified, and the loose filaments of the twine, will stand out every way, and be attracted by an approaching finger. And when the rain has wetted the kite and twine, so that it can conduct the electric fire freely, you will find it stream out plentifully from the key on the approach of your knuckle. At this key the phial may be charged: and from electric fire thus obtained, spirits may be kindled, and all the other electric experiments be performed, which are usually done by the help of a rubbed glass globe or tube, and thereby the sameness of the electric matter with that of lightning completely demonstrated.”
This is the only description by Franklin of the experiment which added so much to his reputation. Franklin and the kite became a story for school-books; innumerable pictures of him and his son drawing the lightning down the string were made and reproduced for a century or more in every conceivable form, and even engraved on some of our national currency.
The experiment was made in June, 1752; in the following October the above letter was written, and the news it contained appears to have rushed over the world without any effort on his part to spread it. He never wrote anything more concerning this experiment than the very simple and unaffected letter to Mr. Collinson. But people, of course, asked him about it, and from the details which they professed to have obtained grand statements have been built up describing his conduct and emotions on that memorable June afternoon on the outskirts of Philadelphia, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of the present Vine Street, near Fourth; how his heart stood still with anxiety lest the trial should fail; how with trembling hand he applied his knuckles to the key, and the wild exultation with which he saw success crown his efforts.
But it is safe to say that there were none of these theatrical exhibitions, and that he made the experiment in that matter-of-fact and probably half-humorous way in which he did everything. Nothing important depended on it, for he had already proved conclusively, not only by reasoning but by his suggested experiments which had been tried in Europe, that thunder and lightning were phenomena of electricity. The kite was used because there were in Philadelphia no high steeples on which he could trythe experiment that had proved his discovery in France.
But it was Franklin’s good fortune on a number of occasions to be placed in picturesque and striking situations, which greatly increased his fame. He did not foresee that kite-flying would be one of these, and as it was not essential to his discovery of the nature of lightning, he was disinclined at first to think much of it, and did not even report it to Mr. Collinson until after several months had elapsed. But the world fixed upon it instantly as something easy to remember. To this day it is the popular way of illustrating Franklin’s discovery, and is all that most people know of his contributions to science.
He went on steadily reporting his experiments to Collinson, and in 1753 was at work on the mistaken hypothesis of the sea being the grand source of lightning, but at the same time making the discovery of the negative and sometimes positive electricity of the clouds. He had a rod erected on his house to draw down into it the mystical fire of any passing clouds, with bells arranged to warn him when his apparatus was working; and it was about this time that he was struck senseless and almost killed while trying the effect of an electrical shock on a turkey.
Collinson kept his letters, and in May, 1751, had them published in a pamphlet called “New Experiments and Observations in Electricity made at Philadelphia in America.” It had immediately, like all of Franklin’s writings, a vast success, at first in France, and afterwards in England and other countries. Franklin was, strange to say, always morepopular in France than in either America or England. In England his experiments in electricity were at first laughed at, and the Royal Society refused to publish his letters in their proceedings. But after Collinson had secured their publication in a pamphlet, they were translated into German, Italian, and Latin, as well as into French, and were greatly admired not only for the discoveries and knowledge they revealed, but for their fascinating style and noble candor tinged occasionally with the most telling and homely humor.
It has been repeatedly charged that Franklin was indebted to his fellow-worker, Kinnersley, for his discoveries in electricity. The charge is so vaguely made that it is impossible to ascertain which of them are supposed to have been stolen. In Franklin’s letters on electricity there are frequent footnotes giving credit to Hopkinson and Syng for their original work, and there are also in his published works letters to and from Kinnersley. He and Kinnersley seem to have been always fast friends, and, so far as I can discover, the latter never accused Franklin of stealing from him.
After he had proved in such a brilliant manner that lightning was merely one of the forms or phenomena of that mysterious fire which appears when we rub a glass tube with buckskin, Franklin made no more discoveries in science; but his interest and patience of research were unabated. He cannot be ranked among the great men of science, the Newtons and Keplers, or the Humboldts, Huxleys, or Darwins. He belongs rather in the second class,among the minor discoverers. But his discovery of the nature of lightning was so striking and so capable of arousing the wonder of the masses of mankind, and his invention of the lightning-rod was regarded as so universally valuable, that he has received more popular applause than men whose achievements were greater and more important.
During the rest of his life his work in science was principally in the way of encouraging its study. He was always observing, collecting facts, and writing out his conclusions. The public business in which he was soon constantly employed, and the long years of his diplomatic service in England and France, were serious interruptions, and during the last part of his life it was not often that he could steal time for that loving investigation of nature which after his thirtieth year became the great passion of his life.
His command of language had seldom been put to better use than in explaining the rather subtle ideas and conceptions in the early development of electricity. Even now after the lapse of one hundred and fifty years we seem to gain a fresher understanding of that subject by reading his homely and beautiful explanations; and modern students would have an easier time if Franklin were still here to write their text-books. His subsequent letters and essays were many of them even more happily expressed than the famous letters on electricity.
In old editions of his works all his writings on science were collected in one place, so that they could be read consecutively, which was rather betterthan the modern strictly chronological plan by which they are scattered throughout eight or ten large volumes. As we look over one of the old editions we feel almost compelled to begin original research at once,—it seems so easy and pretty. There are long investigations about water-spouts and whirlwinds,—whether a water-spout ever actually touches the surface of the sea, and whether its action is downward from the sky or upward from the water. He interviewed sea-captains and received letters from people in the West Indies to help him, and those who had once come within the circle of his fascination were never weary of giving aid.
He investigated what he called the light in sea-water, now called phosphorescence. The cause of the saltness of the sea and the existence of masses of salt or salt-mines in the earth he explained by the theory that all the water of the world had once been salt, for sea-shells and the bones of fishes were found, he said, on high land; upheavals had isolated parts of the original water, which on evaporation had left the salt, and this being covered with earth, became a salt-mine. This explanation was given in a letter to his brother Peter, and is really a little essay on geology, which was then not known by that or any other name, but consisted merely of a few scattered observations.
Many of his most interesting explanations of phenomena appear in letters to the young women with whom he was on such friendly terms. Indeed, it has been said that he was never at his best except when writing to women. People believe, he tellsMiss Stevenson, that all rivers run into the sea, and he goes on to show in his most clever way that some rivers do not. The waters of the Delaware, for example, and the waters of the rivers that flow into Chesapeake Bay, probably never reach the ocean. The salt water backing up against them twice a day acts as a dam, and their fresh water is dissipated by evaporation. Only a few, like the Amazon and the Orinoco, are known to force their fresh water far out on the surface of the sea. In this same letter he describes the experiments he made to prove that dark colors absorb more of the sun’s rays, and are therefore warmer than white.
While representing Pennsylvania in England, and living with Mrs. Stevenson, in Craven Street, London, he made an experiment to prove that vessels move faster in deep than in shallow water. This was generally believed by seafaring men; but Franklin had a wooden trough made with a false bottom by which he could regulate the depth of water, and he put in it a little boat drawn by a string which ran over a pulley at the end of the trough, with a shilling attached for a weight. In this way he succeeded in demonstrating a natural law which, though known to practical men, had never been described in books of science.
He took much pains to collect information about the Gulf Stream. This wonderful river in the ocean has been long known, but the first people to observe it closely were the Nantucket whalemen, who found that their game was numerous on the edges of it, but was never seen within its warmwaters. In consequence of their more exact knowledge they were able to make faster voyages than other seamen. Franklin learned about it from them, and on his numerous voyages made many observations, which he carefully recorded. He obtained a map of it from one of the whalemen, which he caused to be engraved for the general benefit of navigation on the old London chart then universally used by sailors. But the British captains slighted it, and this, like his other efforts in science, was first appreciated in France.
He has been called the discoverer of the temperature of the Gulf Stream; but this statement is somewhat misleading. That the stream was warmer than the surrounding ocean seems to have been long known; but Franklin was the first to take its temperature at different points with a thermometer. He did this most systematically on several of his voyages, even when suffering severely from sea-sickness, and thus suggested the use of the thermometer in investigating ocean currents. He first took these temperatures in 1775, and the next year Dr. Charles Blagden, of the British army, took them while on the voyage to America with troops to suppress the Revolution. He and Franklin are ranked together as the first to show the value of an instrument which is now universally used in ocean experiments as well as in the practical navigation of ships.[19]
In the same careful manner he collected all that was known of the effect of oil in stilling waves bymaking the surface so smooth and slippery that the wind cannot act on it. So fascinated was he with this investigation that he had a cane made with a little receptacle for oil in the head of it, and when walking in the country in England experimented on every pond he passed. But it would be long to tell of all he wrote on light and heat, thevis inertiæof matter, magnetism, rainfall, evaporation, and the aurora borealis.
One of the discomforts of colonial times, when large open fireplaces were so common, was a smoky chimney. Franklin’s attention was drawn to this question about the time that he invented the Pennsylvania fireplaces, and he made an exhaustive study of the nature of smoke and heated air. He became very skilful in correcting defects in the chimneys of his friends’ houses, and while he was in England noblemen and distinguished people often sought his aid. It was not, however, until 1785, near the close of his life, that he put his knowledge in writing in a letter to Dr. Ingenhausz, physician to the Emperor of Austria. The letter was published and extensively circulated as the best summary of all that was known on this important question. It is as fresh and interesting to-day as when it was written, and well worth reading, because it explains so charmingly the philosophy of some phenomena of common occurrence which modern books of science are not at much pains to make clear.
His enemies, of course, ridiculed him as a chimney doctor, and his friends have gone to the other extreme in implying that he was the only man in the worldwho understood the action of heat and smoke, and that, alone and unaided, he delivered mankind from a great destroyer of their domestic comfort. But his letter shows that most of his knowledge and remedies were drawn from the French and Germans. In this, as in many other similar services, he was merely an excellent collector of scattered material, which he summarized so well that it was more available than before. He was by no means the only person in the world who could doctor a chimney; but there were few, if any, who could describe in such beautiful language the way in which it was done.
He invented a stove that would consume its own smoke, taking the principle from a Frenchman who had shown how the flame of a burning substance could be made to draw downward through the fuel, so that the smoke was burnt with the fuel. But the way in which this invention is usually described would lead one to suppose that it was entirely original with Franklin.
He was much interested in agriculture, and was an earnest advocate of mineral manures, encouraged grape culture, and helped to introduce the basket willow and broom-corn into the United States. He at one time owned a farm of three hundred acres near Burlington, New Jersey, where he tried agricultural experiments. He dabbled in medicine, as has been shown, and also wasted time over that ancient delusion, phonetic spelling.
Knowing, as we do, Franklin’s versatility, it is nevertheless somewhat of a surprise to find him venturing into the sphere of music. He is said tohave been able to play on the harp, the guitar, and the violin, but probably only in a philosopher’s way and not well on any of them. Some people in England had succeeded in constructing a musical instrument made of glasses, the idea being taken from the pleasant sound produced by passing a wet finger round the brim of a drinking-glass. When in England Franklin was so delighted with these instruments that he set about improving them. He had glasses specially moulded of a bell-like shape and ground with great care until each had its proper note. They were placed in a frame in such a way that they could all be set revolving at once by means of a treadle worked by the foot, and as they revolved they were played by the wet fingers pressed on their brims. He gave the name “Armonica” to his instrument, and describes its tones as “incomparably sweet beyond those of any other.” It is said to have been used in public concerts, and it was one of the curiosities at his famous Craven Street lodging-house in London, where he also had a fine electrical apparatus, and took pleasure in showing his English friends the American experiments of which they had heard so much.
He seems to have studied music with great care as a science, just as he studied the whirlwinds, the smoke, and the lightning; but he was unalterably opposed to the so-called modern music then becoming fashionable, and which is still to a great extent the music of our time. The pleasure derivedfrom it was, he said, not the natural pleasure caused by harmony of sounds, but rather that felt on seeing the surprising feats of tumblers and rope-dancers.
“Many pieces of it are mere compositions of tricks. I have sometimes, at a concert, attended by a common audience, placed myself so as to see all their faces, and observed no signs of pleasure in them during the performance of a great part that was admired by the performers themselves; while a plain old Scotch tune, which they disdained, and could scarcely be prevailed upon to play, gave manifest and general delight.”
“Many pieces of it are mere compositions of tricks. I have sometimes, at a concert, attended by a common audience, placed myself so as to see all their faces, and observed no signs of pleasure in them during the performance of a great part that was admired by the performers themselves; while a plain old Scotch tune, which they disdained, and could scarcely be prevailed upon to play, gave manifest and general delight.”
In a letter to Lord Kames which has been often quoted he explained at length, and for the most part in very technical language, the reasons for the superiority of the Scotch tunes.
“Farther, when we consider by whom these ancient tunes were composed and how they were first performed we shall see that such harmonical successions of sounds were natural and even necessary in their construction. They were composed by the minstrels of those days to be played on the harp accompanied by the voice. The harp was strung with wire, which gives a sound of long continuance and had no contrivance like that in the modern harpsichord, by which the sound of the preceding could be stopped the moment a succeeding note began. To avoid actual discord, it was therefore necessary that the succeeding emphatic note should be a chord with the preceding, as their sounds must exist at the same time. Hence arose that beauty in those tunes that has so long pleased, and will please forever, though men scarce know why.”
“Farther, when we consider by whom these ancient tunes were composed and how they were first performed we shall see that such harmonical successions of sounds were natural and even necessary in their construction. They were composed by the minstrels of those days to be played on the harp accompanied by the voice. The harp was strung with wire, which gives a sound of long continuance and had no contrivance like that in the modern harpsichord, by which the sound of the preceding could be stopped the moment a succeeding note began. To avoid actual discord, it was therefore necessary that the succeeding emphatic note should be a chord with the preceding, as their sounds must exist at the same time. Hence arose that beauty in those tunes that has so long pleased, and will please forever, though men scarce know why.”
Franklin’s numerous voyages naturally turned his mind to problems of the sea. He pondered much on the question whether the daily motion of the earth from west to east would increase the speed of a ship sailing eastward and retard it on a westward passage. He was not quite sure that the earth’s motion would have such an effect, but he thought it possible.
“I wish I had mathematics enough to satisfy myself whether the much shorter voyages made by ships bound hence to England, than by those from England hither, are not in some degree owing to the diurnal motion of the earth, and if so in what degree. It is a notion that has lately entered my mind; I know not if ever any other’s.” (Bigelow’s Works of Franklin, vol. ii. p. 14.)
“I wish I had mathematics enough to satisfy myself whether the much shorter voyages made by ships bound hence to England, than by those from England hither, are not in some degree owing to the diurnal motion of the earth, and if so in what degree. It is a notion that has lately entered my mind; I know not if ever any other’s.” (Bigelow’s Works of Franklin, vol. ii. p. 14.)
He referred to the subject again soon after, and finally a few years before his death,[20]but always as an unsettled question. The idea seems never to have got beyond the stage of investigation with him, but Parton has built up out of it a wonderful discovery.
“He conceived an idea still more practically useful, which has since given rise to a little library of nautical works, and conferred unmerited honor upon a naval charlatan—Maury. This idea was that by studying the form and motions of the earth and directing a ship’s course so that it shall partake of the earth’s diurnal motion a voyage may be materially shortened.” (Parton’s “Life of Franklin,” vol. ii. p. 72.)
“He conceived an idea still more practically useful, which has since given rise to a little library of nautical works, and conferred unmerited honor upon a naval charlatan—Maury. This idea was that by studying the form and motions of the earth and directing a ship’s course so that it shall partake of the earth’s diurnal motion a voyage may be materially shortened.” (Parton’s “Life of Franklin,” vol. ii. p. 72.)
This is certainly a most extraordinary statement to be made by a writer like Parton, who has given the main facts of Franklin’s life with considerable fidelity. He refers to it again in another passage, in which he says that this method of navigation is now used by all intelligent seamen. But there is no evidence that it was ever so used. He may have confused it with great circle sailing. The theory is an exploded one. There is no library of nautical works on the subject, and I think that the officers of the United States navy, the captains of the great ocean liners, and thousands of sailors all over the worldwould be very much surprised to hear Maury called a charlatan.
Maury’s wonderful investigations were not in the line of sailing a ship so as to take advantage of the earth’s diurnal motion, and could not have been suggested by such an idea. He explored the physical geography of the sea, and particularly the currents, trade-winds, and zones of calm. It was he who first worked out the shortest routes from place to place, which are still used. Although he never made a picturesque and brilliant discovery about lightning, and had not Franklin’s exquisite power of expression, he was a much more remarkable man of science.
In a long letter to Alphonsus Le Roy, of Paris, written in 1785, on his voyage home from France with Captain Truxton, Franklin summed up all his maritime observations, including what he knew of the Gulf Stream. This letter is full of most curious suggestions for the navigation of ships, and was accompanied by a plate of carefully drawn figures, which has been reproduced in most editions of his works.
So much attention had been given, he said, to shaping the hull of a vessel so as to offer the least resistance to the water, that it was time the sails were shaped so as to offer the least resistance to the air. He proposed to do this by making the sails smaller and increasing their number, and contrived a most curious rig (Fig. 4) which he thought would offer the least resistance both in sailing free and in beating to windward.