CHAPTER XXVII.
THE GREAT DISCOVERY.
It was a June day, 1752—one of the longest days of the year. Benjamin Franklin was then forty-six years of age.
The house garden was full of bloom; the trees were in leafage, and there was the music of blooms in the hives of the bees.
Beyond the orchards and great trees the majestic Delaware rolled in purple splendor, dotted with slanting sails.
Nature was at the full tide of the year. The river winds swept over the meadows in green waves, where the bobolinks toppled in the joy of their songs.
It had been a hot morning, and billowy clouds began to rise in the still heat on the verge of the sky.
Benjamin Franklin sat amid the vines and roses of his door.
"William," he said to his son, "I am expecting a shower to-day. I have long been looking for one. I want you to remain with me and witness an experiment that I am about to make."
Silence Dogood, or Father Franklin, then brought a kite out to the green lawn. The kite had a very long hempen string, and to the end of it, which he held in his hand, he began to attach some silk and a key.
"When I was a boy," said Franklin, "and lived in the town of Boston by the marshes, I made a curious experiment with a kite. I let it tow me along the water where I went swimming. I have always liked flying kites. I hope that this one will bring me good luck should a shower come."
"What do you expect to do with it, father?"
"If the cloud comes up with thunder, and lightning be electricity, I am going to try to secure a spark from the sky."
The air was still. The cloud was growing into mountain-like peaks. The robins and thrushes were singing lustily in the trees, as before a shower. The men in the cornfields and gardens paused in their work.
Presently a low sound of thunder rolled along the sky. The cloud now loomed high and darkened in the still, hot air.
"It is coming," said Franklin, "and the cloud will be a thunder gust. It is early in the season for such a cloud as that. See how black it grows!"
The kite was made of a large silk handkerchief fastened to a perpendicular stick, on the top of which was a piece of sharpened iron wire. The philosopher examined it carefully.
"What if you should receive a spark from the cloud, father?" asked the young man.
"I would then say lightning was electricity, and that it could be controlled, and that human life might be protected from the thunderbolt."
"But would not that thwart the providence of God?"
"No, it would merely cause a force of Nature to obey its own laws so as to protect life instead of destroying it."
The sky darkened. The sun went out. The sea birds flew inland and screamed. The field birds stood panting on the shrubs with drooping wings.
A rattling thunder peal crossed the sky. The wind began to rise, and to cause the early blasted young fruit to fall in the orchards. The waves on the Delaware curled white.
"Let us go to the cattle-shed," said Father Franklin. "I have been laughed at all my life, and do not care to have my neighbors tell the story of my experiment to others if I should fail."
The two went together to the cattle-shed on the green meadow.
The wind was roaring in the distance. The poultry were running home, and the cattle were seeking the shelter of the trees.
The cloud was now overhead. Dark sheets of rain in the horizon looked like walls of carbon reared against the sky. The lightning was sharp and frequent. There came a vivid flash followed by a peal of thunder that shook the hills.
"The cloud is overhead now," said Franklin.
He ran out into the green meadow and threw the kite against the wind.
It rose rapidly and was soon in the sky, drifting in the clouds that seemed full of the vengeful fluid.
At the termination of the hempen cord dangled the key, and the silk end was wound around the philosopher's hand.
The young man took charge of a Leyden jar which he had brought to the shed, in which to collect electricity from the clouds, should the experiment prove successful.
The cloud came on in its fury. The rain began to fall. Franklin and his son stood under the shed.
The air seemed electrified, but no electricity appeared in the hempen string. Franklin presented his knuckle to the key, but received no spark.
What was that?
The hempen string began to bristle like the hair of one electrified. Was it the wind? Was it electricity?
Benjamin Franklin now touched the key with thrilling emotion, while his son looked on with an excited face. It was a moment of destiny not only to the two experimenters in the dashing rain, but to the world. If Franklin should receive a spark from the key, it would change the currents of the world's events.
Flash!
It came clear and sharp. The heavens had responded to law—to the command of the human will guided by law.
Again, another spark.
The boy touches the key. He, too, is given the evidence that has been given to his father.
The two looked at each other.
"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."
"God 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 passed, 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 manuscript, 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 institutions.—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.