FRANKLIN'S KITE EXPERIMENT. 589 



lie began to experiment for himself by drawing sparks with 

 the brass wire. 



"I repeated the experiment at least six times in about 

 four minutes in the presence of many persons," he writes 

 to the absent D'Alibard, u and every time the experiment 

 lasted the space of a pater and an ave." He managed to 

 touch the rod himself and got a rather severe shock; but he 

 wrote the letter to D'Alibard and sent it off by Cornier be- 

 fore he left the scene. 



" Franklin's idea ceases to be a conjecture," says D'Ali- 

 bard, in concluding his report to the French Academy 

 " here it has become a reality." 



De Lor, in Paris, followed, on May i8th, with an iron 

 rod 99 feet high, from which he drew off sparks freely dur- 

 ing a thunderstorm. 



Such was the intelligence which reached Franklin. It 

 is not difficult to imagine the amazement with which he 

 received it. True, these French philosophers had osten- 

 sibly made the experiment but how? 



With rods, one of which would not overtop buildings in 

 Philadelphia, and the other, though twice as high, still, in 

 his belief, far from being sufficiently lofty. That sparks 

 had been drawn from rods which ended in the air close to 

 the earth's surface, and not within hundreds of feet of the 

 clouds was not conclusive. This was the experiment in 

 one sense, and yet, in another, it was not. It showed that 

 the rods had become electrified but not necessarily that 

 the lightning had electrified them or had passed over them. 



Again the question pressed upon him could he not 

 make the test himself? This time a way flashed across his 

 mind one of the boldest conceptions ever imagined by 

 man. Why not cause the fierce fires of the heavens to de- 

 scend so that he may place them side by side with the puny 

 sparks and flashes of his globes and jars and so see the 

 identity? Why not send up a kite into the very heart of the 

 thunder-cloud, and bring the lightning down on its cord? 



