Part 23 (2/2)

=257. His Happy, Useful, and Prosperous Career in Philadelphia.=--For twenty years Franklin lived a prosperous life as an active business man of the good Quaker city. He had become noted for his integrity, sagacity, and prosperity. His newspaper became known for its sparkling and timely editorials. The most intelligent and influential men of the city met in his office to discuss the questions of the day.

The same year that Was.h.i.+ngton was born (1732) Franklin issued the first number of his _Poor Richard's Almanac_, which soon gained great fame for its wise and pithy sayings. The popularity which this little work maintained for twenty-five years was astonis.h.i.+ng. Its shrewd and quaint maxims soon became household words in almost every shop and home of the land.

Even with his increasing prosperity Franklin found time every day to devote many hours to his books. He became proficient in French, Spanish, Italian, and even Latin. He gave much time to music, and played with skill upon the harp, the guitar, and the violin.

This remarkable man now began to be at the head of many kinds of public and private enterprises, from treating with the Indians to plans for cleaning the streets. Honors, both public and private, were heaped upon him. He started a public library in Philadelphia, the first of its kind in America.

He invented the famous ”Franklin fireplace,” which proved very popular and is even in use to-day. The most trivial events would often suggest to him something that would secure beneficial results.

The story is told that Franklin saw one day in a ditch the fragments of a basket of yellow willow, in which some foreign goods had been brought into the country. One of the twigs had sprouted. He planted it; and it is said that it became the parent of all the yellow willows in our country.

=258. Franklin's Famous Kite Experiment.=--Franklin was a great student of the sciences, especially electricity. He wrote a pamphlet to prove that lightning and electricity are the same thing. The idea was sneered at, and people asked, ”Of what use is it?” To which the genial philosopher replied, ”What is the use of a child? It may become a man!” He hit on a plan to prove his theory.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRANKLIN'S FAMOUS KITE EXPERIMENT.]

This was the famous kite experiment which he tried in 1752. He made a kite of silk, fastened a piece of wire to the stick, and went out with his son to fly it during a thunderstorm. At the lower end of the hempen string was fastened a key, and below that a cord of silk, which is a non-conductor. He held the silk cord in his hand, and when a low thunder cloud pa.s.sed, he saw that the fibres of the string rose, separated, and stood on end, exactly as the hair does on one's head when one is charged with electricity as he stands on an insulating stool.

When Franklin brought his knuckles near the key that he had tied to the string, sparks came from the metal, and he felt slight shocks.

This discovery made a great sensation in the scientific world. Franklin at once became famous, took high rank as a man of science, and was afterwards known as ”Doctor Franklin.” He now invented the lightning rod, which has been in use ever since all over the civilized world.

=259. Entrance into a Broader Public Life.=--From this time Franklin began to occupy more important positions in public life. In 1754 he was sent on a mission to Albany to enlist the chiefs of the powerful ”Six Nations” to become allies of the English. On this journey he drew up a plan for the union of the colonies. It was almost like that by which they were afterwards bound together as a nation.

During the Braddock campaign Franklin in vain warned the haughty British general that ”the Indians would surprise, on its flanks, the slender line, nearly four miles long, which the army must make,” and would ”cut it like a thread into several pieces.” From his own purse Franklin advanced for this ill-starred expedition between six and seven thousand silver dollars.

The quarrels between the Pennsylvania a.s.sembly and the Proprietors in England became so bitter that Franklin was sent to England in 1757 as the sole commissioner to make an appeal to the English government. He was cordially received abroad and highly honored by the most eminent scientific men of the time. He returned home after an absence of nearly six years.

Franklin was now fifty-seven years old. He had an ample fortune, perfect health, and a superiority to most men in personal appearance and dignity. He hoped to withdraw from public life and give the rest of his days to the study of science.

=260. Franklin becomes a most Useful and Sagacious Helper to the Struggling Colonies.=--Great and momentous events, however, were at hand.

There was more important work for him to do. The struggling colonies, already taxed almost beyond endurance to carry on the war against the French and Indians, were allowed no representation nor voice in the matter of taxation. Franklin, with patriotic foresight and with keen force of logic, resisted the outrage. He declared it to be the ”mother of mischief.”

In 1764 Franklin was again sent by the a.s.sembly to England, to present to the British court the protest of the people against ”taxation without representation.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRANKLIN AT THE COURT OF FRANCE.]

From this time Franklin served the colonies in England as a most accomplished diplomatist, a vigorous writer, and a shrewd and sagacious agent. He failed to stop the pa.s.sage of the notorious Stamp Act, but he fought the measure so vigorously by his writings and discussions that he aroused bitter opposition to it among the industrial cla.s.ses, so that Parliament was compelled at last to repeal the obnoxious measure.

He was once brought before the House of Parliament and sharply questioned.

”Do you think,” asked the prime minister, ”the people of America would submit to pay the stamp duty if it was changed?”

”No, never,” said Franklin; ”the American people will never submit to it.”

The colonists received with unbounded delight the tidings of Franklin's masterly diplomacy and the repeal of the Stamp Act. Bells were rung, bonfires blazed, and cannon were fired. ”I never heard so much noise in my life,” wrote Franklin's daughter Sallie to him; ”the very children seem distracted.”

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