independence, and was elected to the second
Continental Congress.

1776--On Committee of Five to frame the
Declaration of Independence. Appointed
commissioner to solicit aid from France.

1778--Secured a treaty of alliance with
France.

1781--Member of the commission to negotiate
a treaty of peace with Great Britain.

1785--President of the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania.

1787--Assisted in framing the Constitution
of the United States.

1790--Died at his home in Philadelphia,
eighty-four years of age.

"Stranded in London in 1725;" in 1748 retiring from business "with an
estimated fortune of seventy-five thousand dollars"--a real fortune in
those days--besides an assured income of five thousand dollars a year from
his publishing business. Here is advancement!

Franklin the Scientist.

If Franklin had remained in retirement he would be remembered as a
successful colonial gentleman who contributed many maxims and proverbs to
the literature of common sense.

But about this time men who had the leisure were everywhere playing with
electricity. Experiments in natural science happened to be a fad, much as
in recent years have been experiments in table-lifting, automatic writing,
and other phenomena of what is called the "subliminal self."

Franklin studied electricity with the rest, but with the difference that
he made his electrical work amount to something. The results of his
experiments were published, arousing a great deal of interest in Europe.

The suggestion that thunder and lightning are electrical phenomena similar
to those produced artificially was made by Franklin in 1749. The idea was
not altogether new. He, however, emphasized it, and proposed an experiment
by which the identity of the two manifestations of the electric fluid
might be proved.

His scheme involved the erection of an iron rod on a church steeple or
high tower to draw electricity from passing clouds. The experiment was
first actually carried out by a Frenchman, D'Alibard.

When Franklin made his famous experiment with the kite in 1752 the theory
he was seeking to prove had already been established. Yet the credit of
the discovery belongs to him by right of prior suggestion.

Franklin offered, instead of the two-fluid theory of electricity, the then
revolutionary one-fluid theory; discovered the poisonous nature of air
breathed out from the lungs; made i