If electricity could be secured, acc.u.mulated, and discharged, what might not follow as the results of further experiments?

It was several days before the professor recovered from the shock. "I would not take a second shock," he said, "for the kingdom of France!"

Thus the Leyden jar came into use. The news of the experiment flew over Germany and Europe. Scientific people everywhere went to making Leyden jars and imprisoning electricity.

Society took up the invention as a wonder toy. Gunpowder was discharged from the point of the finger by persons charged on an insulating stool.

Electrical kisses pa.s.sed from bold lips to lips in social circles. Even timid people mounted up on cakes of resin that their friends might see their hair stand on end. Sir William Watson, of London, completed the electrical fountain by coating the bottle in and out with tinfoil.

The great news reached America. Franklin heard of it; no ears were more alert than his to profit by suggestions like this.

Mr. Peter Collinson, of London, sent to him an account of Professor Musschenbroek's magical bottle.

He told his friends of the Junto Club of the invention, and set them all to rubbing electric substances for sparks.

He had invented many useful things. A new force had fallen under the control of man. He must investigate it; he must experiment with it; he too must have a magical bottle.

"I never," he wrote in 1747, "was before engaged in any study that so totally engrossed my attention and time as this has lately done; for what with making experiments when I can be alone, and repeating them to my friends and acquaintances 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."

What was magnetism? What was electricity? What secrets of Nature might the magical bottle reveal? To what use might the new power which might be stored and imprisoned be put? Silence Dogood, ponder night and day over the curious toy. The world waits for you to speak, for Nature is about to reveal one of her greatest secrets to you--you who gave two penny rolls to the poor woman and child on the street, after Deborah Read, your wife now, had had her good laugh. Your good wife will laugh again some day, when you have further poked around among electrical tubes and bottles, and have brought your benevolent mind to bear upon some of the secrets contained in the magical bottle. You have added virtue to virtue; you are adding intelligence to intelligence; such things grow. Discoveries come to those who are prepared to receive them.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE ELECTRIFIED VIAL AND THE QUESTIONS IT RAISED.

THERE came from Europe to America at this time some electrical tubes, which being rubbed produced surprising results. To the curious they were toys, but to Franklin they were prophecies. There were three Philadelphians who joined with Franklin in the study of the effects that could be produced by these tubes and the Leyden vial.

Franklin's son William was verging on manhood. He was beyond the years that we find him experimenting with his father in the old pictures. He became the last royal Governor of New Jersey some years afterward, and a Tory, and his politics at that period was a sore grief to his father's heart. But he was a bright, free-hearted boy now, nearly twenty, and his father loved him, and the two were harmonious and were companions for each other.

Franklin, we may suppose, interested the boy in the bristling tubes and the magical bottle. The stored electricity in the latter was like the imprisoned genii of the Arabian Nights. Let the fairy loose, he suddenly mingled with native elements, and one could not gather him again. But another could be gathered.

The Philadelphia philosophers wondered greatly at the new effects that Franklin was able to produce from the tubes and the bottle. Did not the genii in the vial hold the secret of the earth, and might not the earth itself be a magnet, and might not magnetism fill interstellar s.p.a.ce?

The wonder grew, and its suggestions. One of the Philadelphia philosophers, Philip Sing, invented an electrical machine. A like machine had been made in Europe, but of this Mr. Sing did not know.

The Philadelphia philosophers discovered the power of metallic points to draw off electricity.

"Electricity is not created by friction," observed one of these men. "It is only collected by it."

"And all our experiments show," argued Franklin, "that electricity is positive and negative."

During the winter of 1746-'47 these men devoted as much of their time as they could spare to electrical experiments.

"William," said one of the philosophers to the son of Franklin one day, "you have brought your friends here to see the vial genii; he is a lively imp. Let me show you some new things which I found he can do."

He brought out a bottle of spirits and poured the liquid into a plate.

"Stand up on the insulating stool, my boy, and let me electrify you, and see if the imp loves liquor."

The lively lad obeyed. He pointed his finger down to the liquor in the plate. It burst into flame, startling the audience.

"Now," said another of the philosophers, "let me ask you to give me a magic torch."

He presented to his finger a candle with an alcoholic wick. The candle was at once lighted, emitting sparks as it began to burn.

"Hoi, hoi!" said the philosopher to the young visitors, "what do you think of a young man whose touch is fire? We have a Faust among us, sure!"

"Now, girls, which of you would like to try an experiment?" we may suppose Father Franklin to say, in the spirit of Poor Richard.

William stepped down, and an adventurous girl took his place on the experimental stool.

"You have all heard of the electric kiss," said Poor Richard. "Let this young lady give you one. I will prepare her for it."

He did.

Another girl stepped up to receive it. She expected to receive a spark from her friend's lips; but instead of a spark she received a shock that caused her to leap and to bend double, and to utter a piercing cry.

"I don't think that the kissing of young men and young women in public is altogether in good taste," said the philosophers, "but if any of you young men want to salute this lively young lady in that way, there will be in this case no objections."

But none of the young men cared to be thrown into convulsions by the innocent-looking la.s.s, who seemed to feel no discomfort.

Experiments like these filled the city and province with amazement. The philosopher made a spider of burned cork that would _run_, and cause other people to run who had not learned the wherefore of the curious experiment.

The wonderful Leyden vial became Franklin's companion. He liked ever to be experimenting in what the new force would do. What next? what next?

How like lightning was this electricity! How could he increase electrical force?

He says at the end of a long narrative:

"We made what we called an _electrical battery_, consisting of eleven panes of large sash-gla.s.s, armed with thin leaden plates pasted on each side, placed vertically, and supported at two inches distance on silk cords, with thick hooks of leaden wire, one from each side, standing upright, distant from each other, and convenient communications of wire and chain, from the giving side of one pane to the receiving side of the other, that so the whole might be charged together."

Franklin at this time was a stanch royalist. He made a figure of George II, with a crown, and so arranged it that the powerful electrical force might be stored in the _crown_.

"G.o.d bless him!" said the philosopher.

A young man seeing that the crown was very attractive, attempted to remove it. It was a thing that the philosopher had expected.

The youth touched the crown. He reeled, and started back with a stroke that filled him with amazement.

"So be it with all of King George's enemies!" said the philosophers.

"Never attempt to discrown the king."

"G.o.d bless him!" said Franklin. His son always continued to say this, but Franklin himself came to see that he who discrowns kings may be greater than kings, and that it became the duty of a people to discrown tyrannical kings, and to make a king of the popular will.

Franklin now resolved to give up his business affairs to others, to refuse political office, and to devote himself to science. The latter resolution he did not keep. He went to live on a retired spot on the Delaware, where he had a large garden, and could be left to his experiments and thoughts upon them. With him went the magical bottle and his interesting son William.

The power of metallic points to draw off lightning now filled his mind.