The candle
was at once lighted, emitting sparks as it began to burn.

"Hoi, hoi!" said the philosopher to the young visitors, "what do you
think of a young man whose touch is fire? We have a Faust among us,
sure!"

"Now, girls, which of you would like to try an experiment?" we may
suppose Father Franklin to say, in the spirit of Poor Richard.

William stepped down, and an adventurous girl took his place on the
experimental stool.

"You have all heard of the electric kiss," said Poor Richard. "Let this
young lady give you one. I will prepare her for it."

He did.

Another girl stepped up to receive it. She expected to receive a spark
from her friend's lips; but instead of a spark she received a shock that
caused her to leap and to bend double, and to utter a piercing cry.

"I don't think that the kissing of young men and young women in public
is altogether in good taste," said the philosophers, "but if any of you
young men want to salute this lively young lady in that way, there will
be in this case no objections."

But none of the young men cared to be thrown into convulsions by the
innocent-looking lass, who seemed to feel no discomfort.

Experiments like these filled the city and province with amazement. The
philosopher made a spider of burned cork that would _run_, and cause
other people to run who had not learned the wherefore of the curious
experiment.

The wonderful Leyden vial became Franklin's companion. He liked ever to
be experimenting in what the new force would do. What next? what next?
How like lightning was this electricity! How could he increase
electrical force?

He says at the end of a long narrative:

"We made what we called an _electrical battery_, consisting of eleven
panes of large sash-glass, armed with thin leaden plates pasted on each
side, placed vertically, and supported at two inches distance on silk
cords, with thick hooks of leaden wire, one from each side, standing
upright, distant from each other, and convenient communications of wire
and chain, from the giving side of one pane to the receiving side of the
other, that so the whole might be charged together."

Franklin at this time was a stanch royalist. He made a figure of George
II, with a crown, and so arranged it that the powerful electrical force
might be stored in the _crown_.

"God bless him!" said the philosopher.

A young man seeing that the crown was very attractive, attempted to
remove it. It was a thing that