"Lightning is electricity," said Silence Dogood. "It can be drawn away from points of danger; no one need be struck by lightning if he will protect himself."

"G.o.d himself," once said a writer, "could not strike one by lightning if one were insulated, without violating his own laws."

And now came the consummation of one of the grandest experiments of time. He charged the Leyden jar from the clouds.

"Stand back!"

He touched his hand boldly to the magical bottle. A shock thrilled him.

His dreams had come true. He had conquered one of the most potent elements on earth.

The storm pa.s.sed, the clouds broke, the wind swept by, and the birds sang again over the bending clover. Night serene with stars came on.

That was probably the happiest day in all Franklin's eventful life. Like the patriarch of old, "his children were about him." He shared his triumph with the son whom he loved.

But--he sent a paper on the results of his observation in electricity to the Royal Society at London, in which he announced his discovery that lightning was electricity. The society did not deem it worth publishing; it was a neglected ma.n.u.script, and as for his theory in regard to the electric fluid and universality, that, we are told by Franklin's biographers, "was laughed at."

But his views had set all Europe to experimenting. Scientists everywhere were proving that his theories were true. France had become very much excited over the discovery, and was already hailing the philosopher's name with shouts of admiration. Franklin's fame filled Europe, and the greatest of British societies began to honor him. It was Doctor Franklin now!--The honorary degree came to him from many inst.i.tutions.--Doctor from England, Doctor from France, Doctor from American colleges.

The boy who had shared his penny rolls with the poor woman and her child sat down to hear the world praising him.

The facts that lightning was electricity or electricity was lightning, that it was positive and negative, that it could be controlled, that life could be made safe in the thunder gust, were but the beginning of a series of triumphs that have come to make messengers of the lightning, and brought the nations of the world in daily communication with each other. But the wizardlike Edison has shown that the influences direct and indirect of that June day of 1752 may have yet only begun. What magnetism and its currents are to reveal in another century we can not tell; it fills us with silence and awe to read the prophecies of the scientists of to-day. The electrical mystery is not only moving us and all things; we are burning it, we are making it medicine, health, life.

What may it not some day reveal in regard to a spiritual body or the human soul?

The centuries to come can only reveal what will be the end of Franklin's discovery that lightning might be controlled to become the protector and the servant of man. Even his imagination could hardly have forecast the achievements which the imp of the magical bottle would one day accomplish in this blind world. It is not that lightning is electricity, but that electricity is subject to laws, that has made the fiery substance the wonder-worker of the age.

If Uncle Ben, the poet, could have seen this day, how would his heart have rejoiced!

Jane Mecom--Jenny--heard of the fame of her brother by every paper brought by the post. She delighted to tell her old mother the weekly news about Benjamin. One day, when he had received honors from one of the great scientific societies, Abiah said to her daughter:

"You helped Ben in his early days--I can see now that you did."

"How, mother?"

"By believing in him when hardly any one else did. We build up people by believing in them. My dim eyes see it all now. I love to think of the past," she continued, "when you and Ben were so happy together--the days of Uncle Benjamin. I love to think of the old family Thanksgivings. What wonderful days were those when the old clock-cleaner came! How he took the dumb, dusty clock to pieces, and laid it out on the table! How Ben would say, 'you can never make that clock tick again!' and you, Jenny, whose faith never failed, would answer, 'Yes, Ben, he can!' How the old man would break open a walnut and extract the oil from the meat, and apply it with a feather to the little axles of the wheels, and then put the works together, and the clock would go better than before! Do you remember it, Jane? How, then, your wondering eyes would look upon the clock miracle and delight in your faith, and say, 'I told you so, Ben.'

How he would kiss you in your happiness that your prophecy had come true. He had said 'No' that you might say 'Yes.'"

"Do you think that his thoughts turn home, mother?"

There was a whir of wings in the chimney.

"More to a true nature than a noisy applause of the crowd is the simple faith of one honest heart," said Abiah Folger in return. "In the silence and desolation of life, which may come to all, such sympathy is the only fountain to which one can turn. Our best thoughts fly homeward like swallows to old chimneys, where they last year brooded over their young, and center in the true hearts left at the fireside. Every true heart is true to his home, and to the graves of those with whom it shared the years when life lay fair before it. Yes, Jane, he thinks of you."

She was right. Jenny had helped her brother by believing in him when he most needed such faith.

There is some good angel, some Jenny, who comes into every one's life.

Happy is he who feels the heart touch of such an one, and yields to such unselfish spiritual visions. To do this is to be led by a gentle hand into the best that there is in life.

In sacred hours the voices of these home angels come back to the silent chambers of the heart. We then see that our best hopes were in them, and wish that we could retune the broken chords of the past. The home voice is always true, and we find it so at last.

Franklin had little of his sister's sentiment, but when he thought of the old days, and of the simple hearts that were true to him there, he would say, "Beloved Boston." His heart was in the words. Boston was the town of Jenny.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

HOME-COMING IN DISGUISE.

THERE is a very delightful fiction, which may have blossomed from fact, which used to be found in schoolbooks, under the t.i.tle of "The Story of Franklin's Return to his Mother after a Long Absence."

It would have been quite like him to have returned to Boston in the guise of a stranger. Some one has said that he had a joke for everything, and that he would have put one into the Declaration of Independence had he been able.

The tendency to make proverbs that Franklin showed in his early years grew, and if he were not indeed as wise as King Solomon, no one since the days of that Oriental monarch has made and "sought out" so many proverbs and given them to the world.

The maxims of Poor Richard, which were at first given to the world through an almanac, spread everywhere. They were current in most Boston homes; they came back to the ears of Jamie the Scotchman--back, we say, for some of them were the echoes of Silence Dogood's life in the Puritan province.

Poor Richard's Almanac was a lively and curious miscellany, and its coming was an event in America. Franklin put the wisdom that he gained by experience into it. In the following resolution was the purpose of his life at this time: "I wished to live," he says, "without committing any fault at any time, and to conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into."

"But--but," he says, "I was surprised to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined; but I had the satisfaction of seeing them diminish." In the spirit of this effort to correct life and to learn wisdom from experience, he gave Poor Richard's Almanac annually to the world. Like some of the proverbs of Solomon, it taught the people life as he himself learned it. For years Franklin lived in Poor Richard, and it was his pulse beat, his open heart, that gave the annual its power.

All the sayings of Poor Richard were not original with Franklin. When a critical proverb, or a line from one of the poets, would express his idea or conviction better than he could himself, he used it. For example, he borrowed some beautiful lines from Pope, who in turn had received the leading thought from a satire of Horace.

While Franklin was learning wisdom from life, and expressing it through Poor Richard, he was studying French, Italian, and Spanish, and making himself the master of philosophy. "He who would thrive must rise at five," he makes Poor Richard say. He himself rose at five in the morning, and began the day with a bath and a prayer. Intelligence to intelligence!

Such was his life when Poor Richard was evolved.

Who was Poor Richard, whose influence came to lead the thought of the time?

Poor Richard was a comic almanac, or a character a.s.sumed by Benjamin Franklin, for the purpose of expressing his views of life. Having established a paper, Franklin saw the need of an annual and of an almanac, and he chose to combine the two, and to make the pamphlet a medium of hard sense in a rough, keen, droll way.

He introduces himself in this curious annual as "Richard Saunders,"

"Poor Richard." He has an industrious wife named Bridget. He publishes his almanac to earn a little money to meet his pressing wants. "The plain truth of the matter is," says this pretended almanac maker, "I am excessive poor, and my wife, good woman, is, I tell her, excessive proud; she cannot bear, she says, to sit spinning in her gown of tow, while I do nothing but gaze at the stars; and has threatened more than once to burn all my books and rattling-traps (as she calls my instruments) if I do not make some profitable use of them for the good of my family. The printer has offer'd me some considerable share of the profits, and I have thus began to comply with my dame's desire."

This t.i.tian Leeds was a pen name for his rival publisher, who also issued an almanac. The two had begun life in Philadelphia together as printers.

The way in which he refers to his rival in his new almanac, as a man about to die to fulfill the predictions of astrology, was so comical as to excite a lively interest. Would he die? If not, what would the _next_ almanac say of him? Mr. Leeds (Keimer) had a reputation of a knowledge of astronomy and astrology. In what way could Franklin have introduced a character to the public in the spirit of good-natured rivalry that would have awakened a more genuine curiosity?

The next year Poor Richard announced that his almanac had proved a success, and told the public the news that they were waiting for and much desired to hear: his wife Bridget had profited by it. She was now able to have a dinner-pot of her own, and something to put into it.

But how about t.i.tian Leeds, who was to die after the astrological prediction? The people awaited the news of the fate of this poor man, as we await the tidings of the end of a piece of statesmanship. He thus answers, "I can not say positively whether he is dead or alive," but as the author of the rival almanac had spoken very disrespectfully of him, and as Mr. Leeds when living was a gentleman, he concludes that Mr.

Leeds must be dead.

In these comic annuals there is not only the almanacs and the play upon t.i.tian Leeds, but a large amount of rude wisdom in the form of proverbs, aphorisms, and verses, most of which is original, but a part of which, as we have said, is apt quotation. The proverbs were everywhere quoted, and became a part of the national education. They became popular in France, and filled nearly all Europe. They are still quoted. Let us give you some of them:

"Who has deceived thee so oft as thyself?"

"Fly pleasures, and they will follow thee."

"Let thy child's first lesson be obedience, and the second will be what thou wilt."