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ingenious experiments in the investigation of these matters, and by 
his brilliant discoveries made before he had reached the middle 
period of his life, he acquired throughout Europe a reputation as a 
philosopher; and the results of his labors were widely published in 
France and Germany, as well as in England. In his memoirs he 
gives a brief account of the way he was drawn into scientific stud- 
ies, and how the seed was sown which brought forth the ripened 
fruit ; but the preparation of the soil in which the seed was planted 
dates back to his childhood, when he was reading Defoe, Mather, 
and other writers, or even to an earlier period. For a full quarter 
of a century before the Revolutionary War broke out, he had 
gained such fame in Europe for his attainments, and was so widely 
known for his fairness, that, when acting as a diplomatist during 
the political troubles of the Colonies, great weight. was always given 
to his opinions. 
By the help of that subtle power which Franklin’s genius first 
described, audible speech is now conveyed to far distant places, 
messages are sent instantaneously across the continent and under 
the seas, and the words of Puck have become a reality: 
«Tl put a girdle round about the earth 
In forty minutes.” 
Through the aid of this mysterious agency, dwellings and thor- 
oughfares are illuminated, and means of transit multiplied in the 
streets of crowded cities, where it is made to take the place of the 
horse; and yet to-day mankind stands only on the threshold of 
its possibilities. 
Whether the career of the practical printer or of the sagacious 
statesman or of the profound philosopher be considered, Franklin’s 
life was certainly a remarkable one. It would be difficult, if not 
impossible, to name another man so distinguished in a triple char- 
acter and so fully equipped in all his parts. By dint of genius 
alone, he arose to high eminence, and took his place with the great 
men of the age, where he was easily their peer, and where he main- 
tained his rank until the day of his death. 
One of Franklin’s early acts, fraught with great benefit to schol- 
arship, was the founding, one hundred and fifty years ago, of the 
American Philosophical Society, the oldest scientific body in 
America and one of the oldest in any country,—whose numerous 
publications, covering a broad variety of subjects and extending 
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