True to His Home Part 27

CHAPTER XXIV.

FRANKLIN'S STRUGGLES WITH FRANKLIN.

AT the age of fifteen Franklin had avowed himself a deist, or theist, which must have grieved his parents, who were people of positive Christian faith. He loved to argue, and when he had learned the Socratic art of asking questions so as to lead one to confuse himself, and of answering questions in the subjunctive mood, he sought nothing more than disputations in the stanch Puritan town. His intimate friends were deists, but they came to early failure through want of faith or any positive moral conviction. Governor Keith was a deist.

The reader may ask what we mean by a deist here. A deist or theist in Franklin's time was one who believed in a G.o.d, but questioned the Christian faith and system. He was not an atheist. He held that a personal governing power directed all things after his own will and purpose. Under the providence of this Being things came and went, and man could not know how or why, but could simply believe that all that was was for the good of all.

At the age of twenty-two young Franklin began to see that life without faith had no meaning, but was failure. In the omnipotence of spiritual life and power the soul must share or die. Negations or denials did not satisfy him. This was a positive world, governed by spiritual law. To disobey these laws was loss and death.

He had been doing wrong. He had done wrong in yielding to his personal feelings in leaving home in the manner which he did. He had committed acts of social wrong. He had followed at times the law of the lower nature instead of the higher. He had become intimate with two friends who had led him into unworthy conduct, and over whom his own influence had not been good. He saw that the true value of life lies in its influence. There were things in his life that tended to ruin influence.

There were no harvests to be expected from the barren rocks of negation and denials of faith in the highest good. Sin gives one nothing that one can keep. He must change his life, he must obey perfectly the spiritual laws of his being. He saw it, and resolved to begin.

Now began a struggle between Benjamin Franklin the natural man and Benjamin Franklin the spiritual man that lasted for life. It became his purpose to gain the spiritual mastery, and to obey the laws of regeneration and eternal life.

Here are his first resolutions:

"Those who write of the art of poetry teach us that, if we would write what may be worth reading, we ought always, before we begin to form a regular plan and design of our piece; otherwise we shall be in danger of incongruity. I am apt to think it is the same as to life. I have never fixed a regular design in life, by which means it has been a confused variety of different scenes. I am now entering upon a new life; let me, therefore, make some resolutions, and form some scheme of action, that henceforth I may live in all respects like a rational creature.

"1. It is necessary for me to be extremely frugal for some time, till I have paid what I owe.

"2. To endeavor to speak truth in every instance, to give n.o.body expectations that are not likely to be answered, but aim at sincerity in every word and action; the most amiable excellence in a rational being.

"3. To apply myself industriously to whatever business I take in hand, and not divert my mind from my business by any foolish project of growing suddenly rich; for industry and patience are the surest means of plenty.

"4. I resolve to speak ill of no man whatever, not even in a matter of truth; but rather by some means excuse the faults I hear charged upon others, and, upon proper occasions, speak all the good I know of everybody."

But there must be a personal G.o.d, since he himself had personality, and he must seek a union of soul with his will beyond these mere moral resolutions.

At the age of twenty-two he composed a litany after the manner of the Episcopal Church, but adapted to his own conditions. In this he prays for help in the points where he had found himself to be morally and spiritually weak.

These pet.i.tions and resolutions show his inward struggles. They reveal his ideals, and to fulfill these ideals became the end of his life. For the acts of wrong which he had done in his period of adventures, and the unworthy life that he had then led, he tried to make reparation. The spiritual purpose of Benjamin Franklin had obtained the mastery over the natural man. Honor was his star, and more spiritual light was his desire and quest.

He married Miss Read, the young woman who had laughed at him when he had entered Philadelphia eating his penny roll, with two rolls of bread under his arm, and his superfluous clothing sticking out of his pocket.

He had neglected her during his adventures abroad, but she forgave him, and he had become in high moral resolution another man now.

As a printer in Philadelphia his paper voiced the public mind and heart on all which were then most worthy. To publish a paper that advocates the best sentiments of a virtuous people is the shortest way to influence in the world. Franklin found it so. The people sought in him the representative, and from the printing office he was pa.s.sed by natural and easy stages to the halls of legislation.

So these resolutions to master himself may be regarded as another step on the ladder of life. To benefit the world by inventions is a good thing, but to lift it by an example of self-control and an unselfish life is a n.o.bler thing, and on this plane we find young Franklin standing now. Franklin is the master of Franklin, and the influence of Silence Dogood through the press is filling the province of Pennsylvania. The paper which he established in Philadelphia was called the Pennsylvania Gazette. In connection with this he began to publish a very popular annual called Poor Richard's Almanac, about which we will tell you in another chapter.

Right doing is the way to advancement--Franklin had this resolution; a newspaper that voices the people is a way to advancement--such a one Franklin had founded; and good humor is a way to advancement, and of this Franklin found an expression in Poor Richard's Almanac which has not yet ceased to be quoted in the world. It was the means of conveying Silence Dogood's special messages to every one. It made the whole world happier. Franklin, on account of the wise sayings in the almanac, himself came to be called "Poor Richard."

CHAPTER XXV.

THE MAGICAL BOTTLE.

FRANKLIN is now a man of character, benevolence, wisdom, and humor. He is a printer, a publisher, a man whose thoughts are influencing public opinion. He is a very prosperous man; he is making money and reputation, but it is not the gaining of either of these that is true success, but of right influence. It is not the answer to the question, What are you worth? or What is your popularity? but What is your influence? that determines the value of a man.

He had founded life on right principles, and he had well learned the trade in his youth that leads a poor young man of right principles and n.o.bility to success. He took the right guideboard, and the "Please-everybody" Governor did him a good service when he showed him that to become a printer in Philadelphia would bring him influence, fame, and fortune. People who are well meaning, beyond the ability to fulfill their intentions, sometimes reveal to others what may be of most use to them. It was not altogether an unfortunate day when the wandering printer boy met Governor Keith.

In the midst of his prosperity Silence Dogood was constantly seeking out inventions to help people. When he was about thirty-four years of age, in the Poor Richard days, he saw that the forests were disappearing, and that there would be a need for the people to practice economy in the use of fuel. The fireplaces in the chimneys were great consumers of wood, and in many of them, to use the housewife's phrase, "the heat all went up the chimney." But that was not all; many of the chimneys of the good people smoked, and in making a fire rooms would be filled with smoke, or, to use again the housewife's term, "the smoke would all come out into the room."

When this was so the people would all flee to cold rooms with smarting eyes. New houses in which chimneys smoked were sometimes taken down or altered to make room for new chimneys that would draw. Franklin sought to bring relief to this sorry condition of affairs.

He invented the Franklin stove, from which the heat would go out into the room, and not "up the chimbly," to use a provincial word. This cheerful stove became a great comfort to the province, and to foreign countries as well. It saved fuel, and brought the heat of the fire into the room.

He long afterward began to study chimneys, and after much experiment found that those that smoked need not be taken down, but that only a draught was needed to cause the smoke to rise in rarefied air. The name of the Franklin stove added very greatly to Poor Richard's wisdom, in making for Franklin an American reputation, which also extended to Europe. His fame arose along original ways. Surely no one ever walked in such ways before.

He formed a club called the Junto, which became very prosperous, and gave strength to his local reputation. He also began a society for the study of universal knowledge, which was called the Philosophical Society.

A man can do the most when he is doing the most. One thing leads to another; one thing feeds another, and one does not suffer in health or nerves from the many things that one loves to do. It is disinclination or friction that wears one down. People who have been very busy in what they most loved to do have usually lived to be old, and come down to old age in the full exercise of their powers.

While Franklin was thus seeking how he could make himself useful to every one in many ways--for a purpose of usefulness finds many paths--his attention was called to a very curious discovery that had been made in the Dutch city of Leyden, in November, 1745. It was an electrical bottle called the Leyden jar.

Nature herself had been discharging on a stupendous scale her own Leyden jars through all generations, but no one seems to have understood these phenomena until this memorable year brought forth the magical little bottle which was a flashlight in the long darkness of time.

The Greeks had found that amber when rubbed would attract certain light substances, and the ancient philosophers and doctors had discovered the value of an electric shock from a torpedo in rheumatic complaints; that sparks would follow the rubbing of the fur of animals in cold air had also been noticed, but of magnetism, and of electricity, which is a current of magnetism, the world was ignorant, except as to some of its more common and obvious effects.

In 1600 Dr. Gilbert, of England, discovered that many other substances besides amber could be made to develop an attractive power. He also discovered that there are many substances that can not be electrically excited.

In 1650 Otto von Guericke, the inventor of the air-pump, made a machine which looked like a little grindstone--a wheel of sulphur mounted on a turning axle, which being used with friction produced powerful electrical sparks and lights. He found by experiments with this machine that bodies thus exerted by friction may impart electricity to other bodies, and that bodies so electrified may repel as well as attract.

Sir Isaac Newton made an electrical machine of gla.s.s, and Stephen Gray, in 1720, said that if a large amount of electricity could be _stored_, great results might be expected from it.

Charles Francois Dufay detected that there were two kinds of electricity, which he called "vitreous" and "resinous."

A great discovery was coming. The first beams of a new planet were rising. How did there come into existence the "magical bottle" known as the Leyden jar?

At Leyden three philosophers were experimenting in electricity. "We can produce electrical effects," said one. "If we could acc.u.mulate and retain electricity we would have power."

They electrified a cannon suspended by silk cords. A few minutes after ceasing to turn the handle of the electrical machine which supplied the cannon with fluid, the charge was gone.

"If we could surround an electrified body with a nonconducting substance," said Professor Musschenbroek, "we could imprison it; we could acc.u.mulate and store it." He added: "Gla.s.s is a nonconductor of electricity, and water is a good conductor. If I could charge with electricity water in a bottle, I could possess it and control it like other natural powers."

He attempted to do this. He suspended a wire from a charged cannon to the water in a bottle, but for a time no result followed.

One day, however, Mr. Cuneus, one of the scientists, while engaged in this experiment, chanced to touch the conductor with one hand and the electrified bottle with the other. It was a mere accident. He leaped in terror. What had happened? He had received an electric shock. What did it mean? A revolution in the use of one of the greatest of the occult forces of Nature.

Terror was followed by amazement. Mr. Cuneus told Professor Musschenbroek what had happened.

The professor repeated the experiment, with the same result.