124 ABBE— BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AS METEOROLOGIST. [April 20 



that all the details imitated his laboratory experiments. It is evi- 

 dent that he did not expect any very dangerous shock, or shall we 

 rather conclude that knowing the poor conducting power of the wet 

 kite string, he know that it would be unable to bring down any 

 really dangerous amount of electricity, and that he therefore would 

 not be risking his life when he touched his finger to the key and 

 received those first delightful sparks of natural electricity from 

 the clouds. 



From boyhood Franklin had been accustomed to drill himself in 

 all the arts of a good debater. Whatever subject was up for dis- 

 cussion he kept it in mind during his daily work and jotted down 

 on opposite sides of a sheet of paper the arguments pro and con; 

 the considerations that should have weight or none; the reasons for 

 thinking this way or that. After crossing off all unimportant mat- 

 ters he would reduce the whole argument to a few terse sentences 

 arranged in logical order. Precisely the same course was followed 

 when in later years he turned his attention to natural philosophy. 

 He tells us that having become prosperous in business by strict 

 logical attention to every consideration that made for success, he, in 

 1747, believed himself to be in a position to retire from active busi- 

 ness. He therefore engaged Mr. Hall as his partner, to take most 

 of the labor of the concern off his mind. He built himself a new 

 house, bought the electrical apparatus of Dr. Spence, of Boston, 

 and added other pieces and proposed to devote himself to a life of 

 philosophical inquiry, of literature and elegant ease. In this he was 

 disappointed, as he writes many years afterwards. " My neighbors, 

 finding that I was a man of leisure, insisted upon my carrying on 

 many public duties, and finally sent me to the Assembly; so that 

 my philosophical inquiries were greatly interrupted." His sci- 

 entific reputation has, in fact, rested largely upon the work that he 

 did in Philadelphia and London between 1747 and 1757, much of 

 which was published many years later. At the close of that period 

 his correspondence, observations and notes on experimental work seem 

 to have been boxed up previous to his starting for London on his first 

 mission for the people as against the Proprietors. Eventually his 

 collection was removed for safety to the country outside of Phila- 

 delphia ; a part of it was lost during the revolutionary troubles, and 



