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
nobility 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 glass, 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 accumulate 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 accumulate and store it." He added: "Glass 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.
If electricity could be secured, accumulated, 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 passed 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.