4 PIONEERS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 



knowledge among the members that may very well have borne 

 fruit later in the formation of the larger and more learned 

 body, of which the Junto was the forerunner, if not the direct 

 parent. Certain of these questions pertain to the nature of 

 sound is it an entity or a body ? to the origin of vapours; the 

 extent of the domain of self-interest ; the best form of govern- 

 ment and the first ; whether one form of government can suit 

 all mankind ; the reason for the tides being higher in the Bay 

 of Fundy than in the Delaware ; the safety of paper money ; 

 knowledge of happiness; the utilization of the lakes; the cause 

 of smoky chimneys ; why candle flames are spiral ; and sub- 

 jects relating to metaphysics and human nature. 



Franklin's plan for the members of the Junto to bring their 

 books together and form a library for common consultation 

 did not work well in practice, and was given up after the end 

 of the first year; but the idea of the collection kept a-working 

 in Franklin's mind, and he started a subscription for a public 

 library. The institution was chartered and became, Franklin 

 says, " the mother of all the North American subscription libra- 

 ries . . . a great thing itself, and continually increasing." * Of 

 its immediate results, Franklin relates that it " soon manifested 

 its utility, was imitated by other towns and in other provinces. 

 The libraries were augmented by donations; reading became 

 fashionable; and our people, having no public amusements to 

 divert their attention from study, became better acquainted 

 with books, and in a few years were observed by strangers to 

 be better instructed and more intelligent than people of the 

 same rank generally are in other countries." To Franklin the 

 library afforded the means of improvement by constant study, 

 for which he set apart an hour or two each day, and thus, he 

 says, supplied in some degree the lack of the learned education 

 which his father had once intended for him. 



The inscribed tablet on the front of the building of the 

 library bears record that it was instituted at the instance of 

 Benjamin Franklin. Thomas Penn, presenting the library with 

 an air pump in 1738, accredited the Library Company with being 

 "the first that encouraged knowledge and learning in the Prov- 

 ince of Pennsylvania." " The praise is not ill deserved," says 

 Duyckinck, as at the time of the foundation of the library 



* The Philadelphia Library, on Fifth Street, facing the State House Square. 



