Part 29 (1/2)

”Could the lightning be controlled?” he began to ask. ”Could the power of the thunderbolt be disarmed?”

Every element can be made to obey its own laws. Water will bear up iron if the iron be hollow. But deeply and more deeply must the thoughts engage the mind of the philosopher. ”Is lightning electricity? Does electricity fill all s.p.a.ce?” He wrote two philosophical papers at this critical period of his life, when he sought to give up money-making and political life for the study of that science which would be most useful to man. He who gives up gains. He who is willing to deny himself the most shall have the most. He that loseth his life shall save it. He who seeketh the good of others shall find it in himself.

One of these papers was ent.i.tled ”Opinions and Conjectures concerning the Properties and Effects of the Electrical Matter, and the Means of preserving s.h.i.+ps and Buildings from Lightning, arising from Experiments and Observations at Philadelphia in 1749.”

In this treatise, which at last made his fame, he shows the similarity of electricity to lightning, and gives a description of an experiment in which a little lightning-rod had drawn away electricity from an artificial storm cloud. He says:

”If these things are so, may not the knowledge of this power of points be of use to mankind in preserving houses, churches, s.h.i.+ps, etc., from the stroke of lightning, by directing us to fix on the highest part of those edifices upright rods of iron made sharp as a needle, and gilt to prevent rusting, and from the foot of those rods a wire down the outside of the building into the ground, or down round one of the shrouds of a s.h.i.+p, and down her side till it reaches the water? Would not these pointed rods probably draw the electrical fire silently out of a cloud before it came nigh enough to strike, and thereby secure us from that most sudden and terrible mischief?”

A great discovery was at hand.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE GREAT DISCOVERY.

IT was a June day, 1752--one of the longest days of the year. Benjamin Franklin was then forty-six years of age.

The house garden was full of bloom; the trees were in leaf.a.ge, and there was the music of blooms in the hives of the bees.

Beyond the orchards and great trees the majestic Delaware rolled in purple splendor, dotted with slanting sails.

Nature was at the full tide of the year. The river winds swept over the meadows in green waves, where the bobolinks toppled in the joy of their songs.

It had been a hot morning, and billowy clouds began to rise in the still heat on the verge of the sky.

Benjamin Franklin sat amid the vines and roses of his door.

”William,” he said to his son, ”I am expecting a shower to-day. I have long been looking for one. I want you to remain with me and witness an experiment that I am about to make.”

Silence Dogood, or Father Franklin, then brought a kite out to the green lawn. The kite had a very long hempen string, and to the end of it, which he held in his hand, he began to attach some silk and a key.

”When I was a boy,” said Franklin, ”and lived in the town of Boston by the marshes, I made a curious experiment with a kite. I let it tow me along the water where I went swimming. I have always liked flying kites.

I hope that this one will bring me good luck should a shower come.”

”What do you expect to do with it, father?”

”If the cloud comes up with thunder, and lightning be electricity, I am going to try to secure a spark from the sky.”

The air was still. The cloud was growing into mountain-like peaks. The robins and thrushes were singing l.u.s.tily in the trees, as before a shower. The men in the cornfields and gardens paused in their work.

Presently a low sound of thunder rolled along the sky. The cloud now loomed high and darkened in the still, hot air.

”It is coming,” said Franklin, ”and the cloud will be a thunder gust. It is early in the season for such a cloud as that. See how black it grows!”

The kite was made of a large silk handkerchief fastened to a perpendicular stick, on the top of which was a piece of sharpened iron wire. The philosopher examined it carefully.

”What if you should receive a spark from the cloud, father?” asked the young man.