Shortly arrived the packet from New York, with news of a far more dreadful thunder-clap which had bursted on poor George in America—the capture of his grand Canada army! which Lord North had promised him should soon bring the rebels to their marrow bones. The next day the following pasquinade made its appearance in the newspapers:
"While you, great George, intent to hunt,
Your sharp Conductors change to blunt,
The nation's out of joint;
Franklin a wiser course pursues,
And all your thunder fearless views,
By sticking to the POINT."
I cannot quit this subject without observing, that from Dr. Franklin's experiments it appears, that death by lightning, must be the easiest of all deaths.
"In September, 1752," says he, "six young Germans, apparently doubting the truth of the reported force of electricity, came to me to see," as they said, "if there was any thing in it. Having desired them to stand up side by side, I laid one end of my discharging rod on the head of the first; this laid his hand on the head of the second, that on the head of the third, and so on to the last, who held in his hand the chain that was attached to the lightning globe. On being asked if they were ready, they answered yes, and boldly desired that I would give them a thumper; I then gave them a shock; whereat they all dropped down together. When they got up, they declared that they had not felt any stroke; and wondered how they came to fall. Nor did any of them hear the crack, or see the light of it."
He tells another story equally curious. "A young woman, afflicted with symptoms of a palsy in the foot, came to receive an electrical shock. Heedlessly stooping too near the prime conductor, she received a smart stroke in the forehead, of which she fell like one perfectly lifeless on the floor. Instantly she got up again complaining of nothing, and wondering much why she fell, for that nothing of the sort had ever happened to her before."