the philosopher had expected.

The youth touched the crown. He reeled, and started back with a stroke
that filled him with amazement.

"So be it with all of King George's enemies!" said the philosophers.
"Never attempt to discrown the king."

"God bless him!" said Franklin. His son always continued to say this,
but Franklin himself came to see that he who discrowns kings may be
greater than kings, and that it became the duty of a people to discrown
tyrannical kings, and to make a king of the popular will.

Franklin now resolved to give up his business affairs to others, to
refuse political office, and to devote himself to science. The latter
resolution he did not keep. He went to live on a retired spot on the
Delaware, where he had a large garden, and could be left to his
experiments and thoughts upon them. With him went the magical bottle and
his interesting son William.

The power of metallic points to draw off lightning now filled his mind.
"Could the lightning be controlled?" he began to ask. "Could the power
of the thunderbolt be disarmed?"

Every element can be made to obey its own laws. Water will bear up iron
if the iron be hollow. But deeply and more deeply must the thoughts
engage the mind of the philosopher. "Is lightning electricity? Does
electricity fill all space?" He wrote two philosophical papers at this
critical period of his life, when he sought to give up money-making and
political life for the study of that science which would be most useful
to man. He who gives up gains. He who is willing to deny himself the
most shall have the most. He that loseth his life shall save it. He who
seeketh the good of others shall find it in himself.

One of these papers was entitled "Opinions and Conjectures concerning
the Properties and Effects of the Electrical Matter, and the Means of
preserving Ships and Buildings from Lightning, arising from Experiments
and Observations at Philadelphia in 1749."

In this treatise, which at last made his fame, he shows the similarity
of electricity to lightning, and gives a description of an experiment in
which a little lightning-rod had drawn away electricity from an
artificial storm cloud. He says:

"If these things are so, may not the knowledge of this power of points
be of use to mankind in preserving houses, churches, ships, etc., from
the stroke of lightning, by directing us to fix on the highest part of
those edifices upright rods of iron made sharp as a needle,