AS Citizen and Philanthropist 49 



posed square lamps with ventilation instead of the round 

 globes imported from England, which became immedi- 

 ately smoky and dim. 



And for none of his manifold inventions would he 

 take out a patent, but presented them all freely to the 

 public. 



Those steel-grey eyes observed everything from the 

 lightning in the skies to an improvement in spectacles, 

 from smoky chimneys to currents in the ocean, from 

 the best rigging for ships to stoves for burning pit-coal. 



Franklin's last official act before leaving France, in 

 1785, was the signing of the treaty between Prussia and 

 the United States. The twenty-third article of this 

 treaty, written by Franklin, constitutes one of the fair- 

 est jewels in the crown of his philanthropy, — a philan- 

 thropy so broad that it embraces every nation that 

 *' heaven's air in this huge rondure hems." It is the 

 article against privateering, and in favour of the free- 

 dom of trade and of the protection of private property 

 in time of war. This standard of philanthropy and of 

 justice is so exalted that even yet (I speak under cor- 

 rection), a hundred and twenty years later, the nations 

 of the earth are but just beginning to acknowledge and 

 obey it. 



Thus he passed his life. Serving his fellow-citizens 

 for fifty years, breathing the breath of civic devotion 

 into a newly born nation, and welding the hoop of 



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