invented the
lightning-rod to catch it. Houses that had got along perfectly well for
years without any lightning at all, now thought they must have a rod to
catch a portion of it every time it came around. Nearly every house in
the country was equipped with a lightning-rod through Franklin's direct
agency. You, with your superior New England intelligence, succeeded in
ridding yourselves of him; but in Pennsylvania, though we have made a
great many laudable efforts in a similar direction, somehow or other we
have never once succeeded in getting rid of a lightning-rod agent.
[Laughter.] Then the lightning was introduced on the telegraph wires,
and now we have the duplex and quadruplex instruments, by which any
number of messages can be sent from opposite ends of the same wire at
the same time, and they all appear to arrive at the front in good order.
Electricians have not yet told us which messages lies down and which one
steps over it, but they all seem to bring up in the right camp without
confusion. I shouldn't wonder if this principle were introduced before
long in the operating of railroads. We may then see trains running in
opposite directions pass each other on a single-track road. [Laughter.]

There was a New England quartermaster in charge of railroads in
Tennessee, who tried to introduce this principle during the war. The
result was discouraging. He succeeded in telescoping two or three
trains every day. He seemed to think that the easiest way to shorten up
a long train and get it on a short siding was to telescope it. I have
always thought that if that man's attention had been turned in an
astronomical direction, he would have been the first man to telescope
the satellites of Mars. [Laughter.]

The latest invention in the application of electricity is the telephone.
By means of it we may be able soon to sit in our houses, and hear all
the speeches, without going to the New England dinner. The telephone
enables an orchestra to keep at a distance of miles away when it plays.
If the instrument can be made to keep hand-organs at a distance, its
popularity will be indescribable. The worst form I have ever known an
invention to take was one that was introduced in a country town, when I
was a boy, by a Yankee of musical turn of mind, who came along and
taught every branch of education by singing. He taught geography by
singing, and to combine accuracy of memory with patriotism, he taught
the multiplication-table to t