207 



machine are the only important additions to electrostatics 

 that have since been made. The marvelous progress of this 

 century in the adaptation of electricity as a useful agent are 

 developments of chemical and magnetic electricity forms un- 

 known until after Franklin's death. His apt and simple 

 theory of an electric fluid, the excess or lack of which caused 

 positive and negative action, held sway for so many years that 

 to this day its nomenclature is retained in spite of defects re- 

 vealed by recent advances in knowledge. The splendid re- 

 sults of investigations made in our time call for a broader 

 conception which shall include Franklinism, Galvanism, and 

 Faradism, with those manifestations of energy at a distance 

 which seem to place electro-magnetic induction in the same 

 category with light and other radiant forces. 



But Franklin's fame as a philosopher who worked for the 

 improvement of man's estate shall remain amid all the theo- 

 retical changes of the future. It shall remain because it rests 

 upon the enduring truths he first laid bare ; because it was 

 builded with sound inductive methods; because it is guarded 

 b} T the grateful memories of mankind. Cheerfully then let us 

 commemorate the day of his death. It was the day when his 

 intelligence should at last be released from " its muddy vest- 

 ure," when, as he expressed it, he should be free to roam 

 through some of the systems Herschel has explored, free to 

 satisfy his curiosity concerning worlds he did not know. 



In introducing Dr. Henry M. Baird, Mr. Williams 

 said : 



The connection of Franklin with France lay deeper 

 than the accident of events or the needs of his native 

 land. Of all our greater men in the last century or in 



