Palissy. "I was," he says, "all used up and dried up on account of such
toil, and the heat of the furnace. It was more than a month since I had
had a dry shirt on my body, and I felt as if I had reached the door of
the sepulchre."
In spite of the success which he had now attained, our potter had by no
means reached the end of his misfortunes. He sold his vases, but could
not get much for them, as there were but a few, of poor shapes; for
those which he had modelled himself had all failed to take the enamel,
and the successful ones were only common things, bought on credit. The
small sum which he got by selling them was not enough by any means to
cover his expenses, pay his debts, and restore order to the house from
which pretty much everything was burned up for firewood in his furnace.
However, he was supported and happy in the thought of his success. He
said to himself: "Why be sad, when you have found what you were seeking
for? Go on working, and you will put your enemies to shame."
Once more he succeeded in borrowing a little money. He hired a man to
help him; and for want of funds, he paid this man by giving him all his
own good clothes, while he went himself in rags. The furnace he had made
was coming to pieces on account of the intense heat he had maintained in
it for six days and nights during his last experiment. He pulled it to
pieces with his own hands, working with fingers bleeding and bound up in
bandages. Then he fetched water, sand, lime, and stone, and built by
himself a new furnace, "without any help or any repose. A feverish
resolution doubled my strength, and made me capable of doing things
which I should have imagined impossible."
This time the oven heats admirably, the enamels appear to be melting.
Palissy goes to rest, and dreams of his new vases, which must bring
enough to pay all his debts; his impatient creditors come in the morning
to see the things taken from the furnace. Palissy receives them
joyfully; he would like to invite the whole town.
When the pieces came out of the oven, they were shining and beautiful;
but--always but!--an accident had deprived them of all value. Little
stones, which formed a part of the mortar with which the furnace was
built, had burst with the heat, and spattered the enamel all over with
sharp fragments cutting like a razor, entirely spoiling it of course.
Still, the vases were so lovely in form, and the glaze was so beautiful,
that several people offered to buy them if they could have them cheap.
This the proud potter would not bear. Seizing the vases, he dashed them
to the ground; then utterly worn out, he went into the house and threw
himself on the bed. His wife followed him, and covered him with
reproaches for thus wasting the chance of making a few francs for the
family. Soon he recovered his elasticity, reflecting "that a man who has
tumbled into a ditch has but one duty, and that is to try to get out of
it."
He now set to work at his old business of painting upon glass, and after
several months had earned enough to start another batch of vases. Of
these, two or three were successful and sold to advantage; the rest were
spoiled by ashes which fell upon the enamel in the furnace while it was
soft. He therefore invented what he called a "lantern" of baked clay, to
put over the vases to protect them in baking. This expedient proved so
good that it is still used.
The enamel once discovered, it would be supposed that all trouble was
over; but it is not enough to invent a process,--to carry it out, all
sorts of little things have to be considered, the least of which, if not
attended to, may spoil all the rest. These multiplied accidents, with
all the privations and sufferings he had undergone, were attacking the
health of Palissy. He says in his simple style,--
"I was so used up in my person, that there was no shape or appearance of
curve on my arms or legs; my so-called legs, indeed, were but a straight
line, so that when I had gartered my stockings, as soon as I began to
walk, they were down on my heels."
His enamelled pottery now began to make a living for its inventor, but
so poor a living that many things were wanting,--for instance, a
suitable workshop. For five or six years he carried on the work in the
open air; either heat, rain, or cold spoiled many of his vases, while he
himself, exposed to the weather, "passed whole nights at the mercy of
rain and cold, without any aid, comfort, or companionship except that
of owls screeching on one side and dogs howling on the other.
Sometimes," he continues, "winds and tempests blew with such violence
inside and outside of my ovens, that I was obliged to leave, with a
total loss of all they contained. Several times when I had thus left
everything, without a dry rag upon me, on account of the rain, I came in
at midnight or daybreak without any light, staggering like a drunken
man, all broken down at the thought of my wasted toil; and then, all wet
and dirty as I was, I found in my bedroom the worst affliction of all,
which makes me wonder now why I was not consumed by grief." He means the
scolding and reproaches of his wife.
But the time came when his perseverance was rewarded, and his pottery
brought him the fame and money he deserved. He was able to make new
experiments, and add to the value of his discovery. Having obtained the
white enamel, he had the idea of tinting it with all sorts of colors,
which he did successfully. He then began to decorate his faience with
objects modelled from nature, such as animals, shells, leaves, and
branches. Lizards of a bright emerald color, with pointed heads and
slender tails, and snakes gliding between stones or curled upon a bank
of moss, crabs, frogs, and spiders, all of their natural colors, and
disposed in the midst of plants equally well imitated, are the
characteristic details of the work of Palissy.
These perfect imitations of Nature were taken actually from Nature
herself. Palissy prepared a group of real leaves and stones, putting the
little insects or animals he wished to represent in natural attitudes
amongst them. He fastened these reptiles, fishes, or insects in their
places by fine threads, and then made a mould of the whole in plaster of
Paris. When it was done, he removed the little animals from the mould
so carefully that he could use them over and over again.
Thus, after sixteen years passed in untiring energy, sixteen years of
anxiety and privation, the artist triumphed over all the obstacles
opposed to his genius. The humble potter, despised of all, became the
most important man in his town. His productions were sought for eagerly,
and his reputation established forever.
His life henceforth was not free from events, but these were not
connected with his invention. His fame came to the knowledge of the
queen mother Catherine de Médicis; for Francis I. was no longer living,
and Charles IX. had succeeded Francis II. upon the throne. He was
summoned to Court, and employed to build grottos, decorated with his
designs, by personages of distinction,--one especially for the queen
herself, which he describes in his Discourse of the "Jardin Delectable."
He was in Paris at the time of the terrible massacre of St. Bartholomew,
where, as he was a Huguenot, he would doubtless have perished but for
the protection of the queen, who helped him to escape with his family.
Later, however, in the midst of the troubles and terrors of the time, he
was thrown into the Bastille; and there he died, an old man of eighty
years.
VI.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
"We call the Americans a nation of inventors," said Fergus. "How long
has this been true?"
"That is a very curious question," said Uncle Fritz. "You remember we
were talking of it before. When I go back to think of the hundred and
fifty years before Bunker Hill, I think there must have been a great
many inglorious Miltons hidden away in the New England towns. Really,
the arts advanced very little between 1630 and 1775. Flint-locks had
come in, instead of match-locks. But, actually, the men at Bunker Hill
rested over the rail-fence old muskets which had been used in Queen
Anne's time; and to this day a 'Queen's arm' is a provincial phrase, in
New England, for one of these old weapons, not yet forgotten. That
inability to improve its own condition comes to a people which lets
another nation do its manufacturing for it. You see much the same thing
in Turkey and French Canada. Just as soon as they were thrown on their
own resources here, they began to invent."
"But," said Fergus, "there was certainly one great American inventor
before that time."
"You mean Franklin,--the greatest American yet, I suppose, if you mean
to measure greatness by intellectual power and intellectual achievement.
Yes; Franklin's great discovery, and the inventions which followed on
it, were made twenty-five years and more before Bunker Hill."
"What is the association between Franklin and Robinson Crusoe?" asked
Alice. "I never read of one but I think of the other."
Uncle Fritz's whole face beamed with approbation.
"You have started me upon one of my hobbies," said he; "but I must not
ride it too far. Franklin says himself that De Foe's 'Essay on Projects'
and Cotton Mather's 'Essay to do Good' were two books which perhaps gave
him a turn of thinking which had an influence on some of the events in
his after life. And you may notice how an 'Essay on Projects' might
start his passion for having things done better than in the ways he saw.
The books that he was brought up on and with were books of De Foe's own
time,--none of them more popular among reading people of Boston than De
Foe's own books, for De Foe was a great light among their friends in
England.
"If Robinson Crusoe, on his second voyage, which was in the year 1718,
had run into Boston for supplies, as he thought of doing; and if old
Judge Sewall had asked him to dinner,--as he would have been likely to
do, for Robinson was a godly old gentleman then, of intelligence and
fortune,--if there had been by accident a vacant place at the table at
the last moment, Judge Sewall might have sent round to Franklin's father
to ask him to come in. For the elder Franklin, though only a
tallow-chandler,--and only Goodman Franklin, not _Mr._ Franklin,--was a
member of the church, well esteemed. He led the singing at the Old South
after Judge Sewall's voice broke down.
"Nay, when one remembers how much Sewall had to do with printing, one
might imagine that the boy Ben Franklin should wait at the door with a
proof-sheet, and even take off his boy's hat as Robinson Crusoe came
in."
Here Bedford Long put in a remark:--
"There are things in Robinson Crusoe's accounts of his experiments in
making his pipkins, which ought to bring him into any book of American
inventors."
"I never thought before," said Fergus, "that De Foe's experiences in
making tiles and tobacco-pipes and drain-pipes fitted him for all that
learned discussion of glazing, when Robinson Crusoe makes his pots and
pans."
"Good!" said Uncle Fritz; "that must be so.--Well, as you say, Alice,
there are whole sentences in that narrative which you could suppose
Franklin wrote, and in his works whole sentences which would fit in
closely with De Foe's writing. The style of the younger man very closely
resembles that of the older."
"And Franklin would have been very much pleased to hear you say so."
"He was forever inventing," said Uncle Fritz. "As I said, he was worried
unless things could be better done. If he was in a storm, he wanted to
still the waves. If the chimney smoked, he wanted to make a better
fireplace. If he heard a girl play the musical-glasses, he must have and
make a better set."
"And if the house was struck by lightning, he went out and put up a
lightning-rod."
"He had a little book by which people should make themselves better; for
he rightly considered that unless a man could do this, he could make no
other improvement of much account."
And when Uncle Fritz had said this, he found the passage, which he bade
John read to them.
FRANKLIN'S METHOD OF GROWING BETTER.
"I made a little book in which I allotted a page for each of the
virtues. [He had classified the virtues and made a list of thirteen,
which will be named below.] I ruled each page with red ink, so as to
have seven columns, one for each day of the week, marking each column
with a letter for the day. I crossed these columns with thirteen red
lines, marking the beginning of each line with the first letter of one
of the virtues, on which line and in its proper column I might mark, by
a little black spot, every fault I found upon examination to have been
committed respecting that virtue upon that day. The thirteen virtues
were: 1. TEMPERANCE; 2. SILENCE; 3. ORDER; 4. RESOLUTION; 5. FRUGALITY;
6. INDUSTRY; 7. SINCERITY; 8. JUSTICE; 9. MODERATION; 10. CLEANLINESS;
11. TRANQUILLITY; 12. CHASTITY; 13. HUMILITY. Each of these appears, by
its full name or its initial, on every page of the book. But the full
name of one only appears on each page.
"My intention being to acquire the habitude of these virtues, I judged
it would be well not to distract my attention by attempting the whole at
once, but to fix it on one of them at a time, and when I should be
master of that, then to proceed to another,--and so on, till I should
have gone through the thirteen; and as the previous acquisition might
facilitate the acquisition of certain others, I arranged them with that
view. Temperance first, as it tends to procure that coolness and
clearness of head which is so necessary where constant vigilance has to
be kept up, and a guard maintained against the unremitting attraction of
ancient habits, and the force of perpetual temptations."[6] And so he
goes on to show how Temperance would prepare for Silence, Silence for
Order, Order for Resolution, and thus to the end.
Here is the first page of the book, with the marks for the first six of
the virtues.
+--------------------------------+
| TEMPERANCE. |
+--------------------------------+
| EAT NOT TO DULNESS. |
| |
| DRINK NOT TO ELEVATION. |
+----+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| | S.| M.| T.| W.|Th.| F.| S.|
| T. | | | | | | | |
| S. | * | * | | * | | * | |
| O. | * | * | * | | * | * | * |
| R. | | | * | | | * | |
| F. | | * | | | * | | |
| I. | | | * | | | | |
| S. | | | | | | | |
| J. | | | | | | | |
| M. | | | | | | | |
| C. | | | | | | | |
| T. | | | | | | | |
| C. | | | | | | | |
| H. | | | | | | | |
+----+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
"I determined to give a week's strict attention to each of the virtues
successively. Thus, in the first week my great guard was to avoid every
the least offence against _Temperance_, leaving the other virtues to
their ordinary chance, only marking every evening the faults of the
day. Thus, if in the first week I could keep my first line, marked T,
clear of spots, I supposed the habit of that virtue so much
strengthened, and its opposite weakened, that I might venture extending
my attention to include the next, and for the following week keep both
lines clear of spots. Proceeding thus to the last, I could go through a
course complete in thirteen weeks, and four courses in a year. And like
him who having a garden to weed does not attempt to eradicate all the
bad herbs at once, which would exceed his reach and his strength, but
works on one of the beds at a time, and, having accomplished the first,
proceeds to the second, so I should have, I hoped, the encouraging
pleasure of seeing on my pages the progress I made in virtue, by
clearing successively my lines of their spots, till in the end, by a
number of courses, I should be happy in viewing a clean book, after a
thirteen weeks' daily examination."
Uncle Fritz said that this plan of Franklin's had been quite a favorite
plan of different people at the end of the last century. Richard Lovell
Edgeworth, and Mr. Day, and a good many of the other reformers in
England, and many in France, really thought that if people only knew
what was right they would all begin and do it. They had to learn, by
their own experience or somebody's, that the difficulty was generally
deeper down.
There was a man, named Droz, who published a little book called "The Art
of being Happy," with tables on which every night you were to mark
yourself, as a school-mistress marks scholars at school, 10 for truth, 3
for temper, 5 for industry, 9 for frugality, and so on.[7]
"But in the long run," said Uncle Fritz, "there may be too much
self-examination. If you really look up and not down, and look forward
and not back, and loyally lend a hand, why, you can afford to look out
and not in, in general."
Fergus brought the talk back to the lightning-rod, and asked where was
the earliest hint of it.
The history seems to be this. In the year 1747 a gentleman named
Collinson sent to Franklin, from England or Scotland, one of the glass
tubes with which people were then trying electrical experiments.
Franklin was very much interested. He went on repeating the experiments
which had been made in England and on the Continent of Europe. With his
general love of society in such things, he had other glass tubes made,
and gave them to his friends.
He had one immense advantage over the wise men of England and France, in
the superior dryness of our air, which greatly favors such experiments.
Almost any one of the young Americans who will read this book has tried
the experiment of exciting electricity by shuffling across a Brussels
carpet on a dry floor, and then lighting the gas from a gas-jet by the
spark. But when you tell an Englishman in London that you have done
this, he thinks at first that you are making fun of him. For it is very
seldom that the air and the carpet and the floor are all dry enough for
the experiment to succeed in England. This difference of climate
accounts for the difficulty which the philosophers in England sometimes
found in repeating Dr. Franklin's experiments.
When it came to lightning and experiments about that, he had another
very great advantage; for we have many more thunder-storms than they
have. In the year 1752, when Mr. Watson was very eager to try the
lightning experiments in England, he seems to have had, in all the
summer, but two storms of thunder and lightning.
Franklin made his apparatus on a scale which now seems almost gigantic.
The "conductor" of an electrical machine such as you will generally see
in a college laboratory is seldom more than two feet long. Franklin's
conductor, which was hung by silk from the top of his room, was a
cylinder ten feet long and one foot in diameter, covered with gilt
paper. In his "Leyden battery" he used five glass jars, as big as large
water-pails,--they held nine gallons each. One night he had arranged to
kill a turkey by a shock from two of these. He received the shock
himself, by accident, and it almost killed him. He had a theory that if
turkeys were killed by electricity, the meat would perhaps be more
tender.
He acknowledges Mr. Collinson's present of the glass tube as early as
March 28, 1747. On the 11th of July he writes to Collinson that they
("we") had discovered the power of points to withdraw electricity
silently and continuously. On this discovery the lightning-rod is based.
He describes this quality, first observed by Mr. Hopkinson, in the
following letter:--
"The first is the wonderful effect of pointed bodies, both in _drawing
off_ and _throwing off_ the electrical fire.
"For example, place an iron shot, of three or four inches diameter, on
the mouth of a clean, dry glass bottle. By a fine silken thread from the
ceiling, right over the mouth of the bottle, suspend a small cork ball
about the bigness of a marble; the thread of such a length, as that the
cork ball may rest against the side of the shot. Electrify the shot, and
the ball will be repelled to the distance of four or five inches, more
or less, according to the quantity of electricity. When in this state,
if you present to the shot the point of a long, slender, sharp bodkin,
at six or eight inches distance, the repellency is instantly destroyed,
and the cork flies to the shot. A blunt body must be brought within an
inch and draw a spark, to produce the same effect. To prove that the
electrical fire is _drawn off_ by the point, if you take the blade of
the bodkin out of the wooden handle, and fix it in a stick of
sealing-wax, and then present it at the distance aforesaid, or if you
bring it very near, no such effect follows; but sliding one finger along
the wax till you touch the blade, the ball flies to the shot
immediately. If you present the point in the dark, you will see,
sometimes at a foot distance and more, a light gather upon it, like that
of a firefly or glow-worm; the less sharp the point, the nearer you must
bring it to observe the light; and at whatever distance you see the
light, you may draw off the electrical fire, and destroy the repellency.
If a cork ball so suspended be repelled by the tube, and a point be
presented quick to it, though at a considerable distance, it is
surprising to see how suddenly it flies back to the tube. Points of wood
will do near as well as those of iron, provided the wood is not dry; for
perfectly dry wood will no more conduct electricity than sealing-wax.
"To show that points will _throw off_ as well as _draw off_ the
electrical fire, lay a long, sharp needle upon the shot, and you cannot
electrize the shot so as to make it repel the cork ball. Or fix a needle
to the end of a suspended gun-barrel or iron rod, so as to point beyond
it like a little bayonet; and while it remains there, the gun-barrel or
rod cannot, by applying the tube to the other end, be electrized so as
to give a spark, the fire continually running out silently at the point.
In the dark you may see it make the same appearance as it does in the
case before mentioned."
The next summer, that of 1748, the experiments went so far, that in a
letter of Franklin's to Collinson he proposed the electrical
dinner-party, which was such a delight to Harry and Lucy:--
"Chagrined a little that we have been hitherto able to produce nothing
in this way of use to mankind, and the hot weather coming on when
electrical experiments are not so agreeable, it is proposed to put an
end to them for this season, somewhat humorously, in a party of pleasure
on the banks of the _Skuylkill_. Spirits, at the same time, are to be
fired by a spark sent from side to side through the river, without any
other conductor than the water; an experiment which we some time since
performed, to the amazement of many. A turkey is to be killed for our
dinner by the _electrical shock_, and roasted by the _electrical jack_,
before a fire kindled by the _electrified bottle_; when the healths of
all the famous electricians in England, Holland, France, and Germany are
to be drank in _electrified bumpers_, under the discharge of guns from
the _electrical battery_."
It was in a letter to Collinson of the next year, 1749,--as I suppose,
though it is not dated,--that the project of the lightning-rod first
appears. It is too long to copy. The paragraphs most important in this
view are the following:--
"42. An electrical spark, drawn from an irregular body at some distance,
is scarcely ever straight, but shows crooked and waving in the air. So
do the flashes of lightning, the clouds being very irregular bodies.
"43. As electrified clouds pass over a country, high hills and high
trees, lofty towers, spires, masts of ships, chimneys, &c., as so many
prominences and points, draw the electrical fire, and the whole cloud
discharges there.
"44. Dangerous, therefore, is it to take shelter under a tree during a
thunder-gust. It has been fatal to many, both men and beasts.
"45. It is safer to be in the open field for another reason. When the
clothes are wet, if a flash in its way to the ground should strike your
head, it may run in the water over the surface of your body; whereas, if
your clothes were dry, it would go through the body, because the blood
and other humors, containing so much water, are more ready conductors.
"Hence a wet rat cannot be killed by the exploding electrical bottle,
when a dry rat may."
In a letter of 1750, based upon observations made in 1749, Franklin said
distinctly, after describing some artificial lightning which he had
made:--