Benjamin Franklin

by Paul Elmer More

Mrs. Franklin's temper was not of the serenest, and her manners perhaps were not such as would have honored him had she followed him into the great world; but she made him a good wife,—and we need not repeat the tattle which we are told is still current among some of the high families of Philadelphia. They had two children,—a son, the idol of his father's heart, who died as a child; and a daughter, who married Richard Bache, and is the ancestress of a large family.

In this happy home, and as his business prospered, Franklin found more and more time for study and self-improvement. In 1733 he began the acquisition of languages, teaching himself to read French fluently, and then passing on to Italian and Spanish. Chess was always a favorite amusement with him; and we can imagine the grave philosopher playing a cautious and invulnerable game, with now and then, when least expected, a brilliant sally. But his conscience seems always to have protested against the waste of time involved, and he now made use of the game to forward his studies. With his favorite antagonist he agreed that the victor in each game should impose some task in Italian, which the other on his honor was to complete before the next meeting. As his opponent was a pretty even match for him they both made steady progress in the language. In Latin he had had a year's instruction at school, and later in life he dabbled a little in that language; but his knowledge of the classics was always superficial, and he seems to have entertained something like a spite against them.

In 1732 Franklin began the publication of an almanac under the name of Richard Saunders, which he continued for twenty-five years, and which gained immense popularity as Poor Richard's Almanac. It was the flourishing time of such publications. Since the year 1639, when Stephen Daye printed his first almanac at Cambridge, these annual messages had increased in number until after theology they became perhaps the most genuine feature of colonial literature. And from the first they displayed the sort of shrewdness and humor which have always been characteristic of the American mind. So, too, the bulk of Poor Richard's production was humor, sometimes blunt and coarse, and sometimes instinct with the finest irony. Perhaps the best of Poor Richard's jokes is that played at the expense of Titan Leeds, his rival in Philadelphia. In the first issue Mr. Saunders announces the imminent death of his friend Titan Leeds: "He dies, by my calculation, made at his request, on October 17, 1733, 3 ho., 29 m., p.m., at the very instant of the ☌; of ☉ and ☿.[¹ ] By his own calculation, he will survive till the 26th of the same month. This small difference between us we have disputed whenever we have met these nine years past; but at length he is inclined to agree with my judgment. Which of us is most exact a little time will now determine. As, therefore, these Provinces may not longer expect to see any of his performances after this year, I think myself free to take up the task." Naturally Mr. Titan Leeds objected with strenuous voice to this summary manner of being shuffled out of the world; and Franklin's yearly protest that Leeds is really dead, and his appeal to the degenerating wit of Leeds's almanac to prove his assertion, is one of the most successful and malicious jokes ever perpetrated. We ought to add, however, that this venomous jest is borrowed bodily from Dean Swift's treatment of the poor almanac-maker, Partridge. Indeed it might be said of Franklin, as Molière said of himself, that he took his own wherever he found it.

But what gave the almanac its permanent fame was the cleverness of the maxims scattered through its pages. These wise saws Franklin gathered from far and wide, often, however, reshaping them and marking them, with the stamp of his peculiar genius. As might be expected, they are chiefly directed to instill the precepts of industry and frugality. On ceasing to edit the almanac in 1757 Franklin gathered together the best of these proverbs and wove them into a continuous narrative, which he pretends to have heard spoken at an auction by an old man called Father Abraham. This speech of Father Abraham became immediately famous, was reprinted in England, was translated into the languages of Europe, and still lives. It made the name of Poor Richard a household word the world over.

Franklin, however, had many intellectual interests besides reading and writing. He was always interested in music, himself playing the guitar and harp and violin; and one of his proudest achievements was the perfection of a musical instrument called the armonica, which consisted of a series of glasses so designed as to give forth the notes of the musical scale when chafed with the moistened finger.

He was moreover sensitive in his own way to the various spiritual movements that swept over the country. This was the period of wild revivals, when religion, entering into the converted soul with inconceivable violence, found expression in gasping shrieks, rigid faintings, and strong convulsions; and the leader of this movement, strange as it may seem, was a warm friend of Franklin's. George Whitefield first visited Philadelphia in 1739, and immediately filled the city with enthusiasm by his powerful oratory. Franklin was astonished at the hold he got on the people, especially as he assured them they were naturally half beasts and half devils; but our philosopher admits that he himself succumbed once to the preacher's spell. Whitefield was preaching a begging sermon for a project which Franklin did not approve, and the latter made a silent resolve that he would not contribute. He had in his pocket a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As the orator proceeded, he began to soften and concluded to give the copper. Another stroke of eloquence made him ashamed of that and determined him to give the silver; and the peroration was so admirable that he emptied his pocket wholly into the collector's dish, gold and all. But he was never too much carried away to omit analyzing and observing; and on one occasion, when Whitefield was preaching in the open air, he calculated by a clever experiment that the speaker might be heard by more than thirty thousand persons. Nor did he suffer Whitefield's cant phrases to pass unchallenged. At one time he invited the preacher to stop at his house, and Whitefield in accepting declared that if Franklin made the kind offer for Christ's sake he should not miss of a reward. To which the philosopher replied: "Don't let me be mistaken; it was not for Christ's sake, but for your sake."

This intimate acquaintance with Whitefield forms something like a bond of union between Franklin and his only intellectual compeer, Jonathan Edwards; and the different attitude of the two men towards the wandering revivalist is a good illustration of the great contrast in their characters. If Franklin may in some ways be called the typical American, yet the lonely, introverted, God-intoxicated soul of Edwards stands as a solemn witness to depths of understanding in his countrymen which Dr. Franklin's keen wit had no means of fathoming. But in one respect the two minds were alike: they were both acute observers of nature, and we have only to read Edwards's treatise on spiders, written when he was twelve years old, and to follow his later physical investigations, which indeed foreshadowed some of Franklin's electrical discoveries, to learn how brilliant a part he might have played in science if his intelligence had not been troubled by the terrible theology of the day. As for Franklin, we have seen the inquisitive bent of his mind in childhood, and as he grew older the habit of observing and recording and theorizing became his master passion. Though scarcely a professional scientist, his various discoveries in natural history and his mechanical inventions brought great renown to him as a man, and were even an important factor in the national struggle for independence.

Nothing was too small or too great to attract his investigating eyes. All his life he was interested in the phenomena of health and in the care of the body, and even as a boy, it will be remembered, he had experimented in the use of a vegetarian diet. He had his own theory in regard to colds, maintaining that they are not the result of exposure to a low temperature, but are due to foul air and to a relaxed state of the body,—as in general they no doubt are. His letters are full of clever protests against the common theory, and at times he was brought by his opinions into amusing conflict with the habits of other persons. On one occasion in a tavern he was compelled to occupy the same bed with John Adams, who, being an invalid and afraid of night air, shut down the window. "Oh!" says Franklin, "don't shut the window, we shall be suffocated." Adams answered that he feared the evening air. Dr. Franklin replied, "The air within the chamber will soon be, and indeed now is, worse than that without doors. Come, open the window and come to bed, and I will convince you. I believe you are not acquainted with my theory of colds." Whereupon Adams got into bed, and the Doctor began an harangue upon air and cold, respiration and perspiration, with which the Bostonian was so much amused that he soon fell asleep and left Franklin and his philosophy together. The effect of drafts on chimneys was just as interesting to our philosopher as their effect on the human system, and it was one of his diversions when visiting the great houses of England and Europe to cure smoky fireplaces. From chimneys to stoves is an easy step, and the invention of the so-called Pennsylvania stove is one of his best known achievements.

All his life he was an observer of the weather, and a student of the winds and tides. His first discovery in natural history was an observation of the fact that storms move against the wind, that is, for instance, that a northeast storm along the coast is felt at Philadelphia earlier than at Boston. He made a careful study of the temperature of the gulf stream in the Atlantic; and in a letter written when he was seventy-nine years old he gives a long account of his inventions and observations in nautical matters.

But his discoveries in electricity quite overshadow all his other work of the sort, and on them must rest his real claim to scientific renown. For many years the world had been amusing itself with various machines for making sparks and giving shocks, and after the discovery of the Leyden jar, in 1745, the manipulation of electrical toys and machines became the rage among scientists and even among the people of society. Just about this time a friend in England sent Franklin specimens of the glass tubes used to create electricity by friction, and immediately Franklin's inquisitive mind was fired to take up the new study. So fully indeed was his attention engrossed by the series of experiments he now undertook, alone and with several investigating friends in the city, that business became irksome to him and he retired from active management of the printing house. Besides making many ingenious toys and showy experiments, Franklin added three contributions of real importance to science.