"'Romantic situations'! I should think so," said Mabel, laughing. "Is not that like the dear German man that wrote this? I see myself lugging my harmonica to the edge of the Kauterskill Falls."
"How do you know he was a German?" said Alice.
"Because, where John read 'the simpler method,' it says 'the before-mentioned method.' No Englishman or American in his senses ever said 'before-mentioned' if he could help himself."
"Do let us see how dear Dr. Franklin made his machine."
And the girls unfolded the old-fashioned picture, which is in the sixth volume of Sparks's Franklin, and read his description of it as he wrote it to Beccaria.
"Is it the Beccaria who did about capital punishment?" asked Fergus.
"No," Uncle Fritz said, "though they lived at the same time. They were not brothers. The capital-punishment man was the Marquis of Beccaria, and that of makes a great difference in Europe. This man 'did' electricity, as you would say; and his name is plain Beccaria without any of."
Then Mabel, commanding silence, at last read the letter to Beccaria. And when she had done, Uncle Fritz said that he should think there might be many a boy or girl who could not buy a piano or what he profanely called a Yang-Yang,—by which he meant a reed organ,—who would like to make a harmonica. The letter, in a part not copied here, tells how to tune the glasses. And any one who lived near a glass-factory, and was on the good-natured side of a good workman, could have the glasses made without much expense.
Letter of Franklin to J. B. Beccaria.
London, July 13, 1762.