s preaching in the open air, he calculated
by a clever experiment that the speaker might be heard by more than
thirty thousand persons. Nor did he suffer Whitefield's cant phrases to
pass unchallenged. At one time he invited the preacher to stop at his
house, and Whitefield in accepting declared that if Franklin made the
kind offer for Christ's sake he should not miss of a reward. To which
the philosopher replied: "Don't let me be mistaken; it was not for
_Christ's_ sake, but for _your_ sake."

This intimate acquaintance with Whitefield forms something like a bond
of union between Franklin and his only intellectual compeer, Jonathan
Edwards; and the different attitude of the two men towards the
wandering revivalist is a good illustration of the great contrast in
their characters. If Franklin may in some ways be called the typical
American, yet the lonely, introverted, God-intoxicated soul of Edwards
stands as a solemn witness to depths of understanding in his countrymen
which Dr. Franklin's keen wit had no means of fathoming. But in one
respect the two minds were alike: they were both acute observers of
nature, and we have only to read Edwards's treatise on spiders, written
when he was twelve years old, and to follow his later physical
investigations, which indeed foreshadowed some of Franklin's electrical
discoveries, to learn how brilliant a part he might have played in
science if his intelligence had not been troubled by the terrible
theology of the day. As for Franklin, we have seen the inquisitive bent
of his mind in childhood, and as he grew older the habit of observing
and recording and theorizing became his master passion. Though scarcely
a professional scientist, his various discoveries in natural history
and his mechanical inventions brought great renown to him as a man, and
were even an important factor in the national struggle for
independence.

Nothing was too small or too great to attract his investigating eyes.
All his life he was interested in the phenomena of health and in the
care of the body, and even as a boy, it will be remembered, he had
experimented in the use of a vegetarian diet. He had his own theory in
regard to colds, maintaining that they are not the result of exposure
to a low temperature, but are due to foul air and to a relaxed state of
the body,--as in general they no doubt are. His letters are full of
clever protests against the common theory, and at times he was brought
by his opinio