ouds. He confesses that
he cannot imagine why the points should possess this curious power,
but urges that facts seem to demonstrate it.

One day, for the entertainment of his friends, he had made
arrangements to kill a turkey with an electric shock. Two large jars
were heavily charged. Incautiously manipulating, he took the shock
himself. In the following language, he describes the effect:

"The flash was very great, and the crack was as loud as a
pistol; yet my senses being instantly gone, I neither saw
the one nor heard the other; nor did I feel the stroke on my
hand, though I afterwards found it raised a round swelling
where the fire entered, as big as half a pistol bullet.

"I then felt what I know not well how to describe, a
universal blow throughout my whole body from head to foot,
which seemed within as well as without; after which the
first thing I took notice of was a violent, quick shaking of
my body, which gradually remitting, my sense as gradually
returned, and then, I thought the bottle must be discharged,
but could not conceive how, till at last I perceived the
chain in my hand, and recollected what I had been about to
do.

"That part of my hand and fingers which held the chain, was
left white as though the blood had been driven out; and
remained so eight or ten minutes after, feeling like dead
flesh; and I had numbness in my arms and the back of my neck
which continued to the next morning, but wore off."

Franklin was much mortified at his awkwardness in this experiment. He
declared it to be a notorious blunder, and compared it with the folly
of the Irishman, who wishing to steal some gun-powder, bored a hole
through the cask with red hot iron. But notwithstanding this warning,
not long afterwards, in endeavoring to give a shock to a paralytic
patient, he received the whole charge himself, and was knocked flat
and senseless on the floor.

In the spring of 1752, Franklin tried his world renowned experiment
with the kite. A June thunder cloud was rising in all its majesty.
Franklin, accompanied by his son, repaired to a field secretly, being
afraid of the ridicule of the people. Here he raised the kite, made of
a large silk handkerchief. The top of the perpendicular stick was
pointed with a sharp metallic rod. The string was hemp with the
exception of the part held in the hand, which was silk; at the end