CHAPTER XXXVII.
A curious demonstration of Dr. Franklin's philosophy of lightning. About thirty-four years after this date, when Doctor Franklin, by his opposition to Lord North's measures, had become very unpopular, George III. was persuaded to pull down the _sharp points_ of that "HOARY REBEL," and set up the _blunts_ of an impudent quack, because, forsooth, he was a _loyal subject_! Scarcely were the _sharps_ taken down from the palace, to which, during thirty four years, they had been an excellent safeguard, before a dismal cloud rose upon the city, black as midnight, and when right over the palace discharged a cataract of electric fluid, with horrid glare and thunder, stunning all ears, blinding all eyes, and suffocating every sense with the smell of sulphur. The famous _blunt conductors_ presented no point to catch the bolt, which, dashing at the stately edifice, tore away all its gable end, marring the best apartments, and killing several of the king's servants.
Shortly arrived the packet from New York, with news of a far more dreadful thunder-clap which had bursted on poor George in America--the capture of his grand Canada army! which Lord North had promised him should soon bring the rebels to their marrow bones. The next day the following pasquinade made its appearance in the newspapers:
"While you, great George, intent to hunt, Your sharp Conductors change to blunt, The nation's out of joint; Franklin a wiser course pursues, And all your thunder fearless views, By sticking to the POINT."
I cannot quit this subject without observing, that from Dr. Franklin's experiments it appears, that death by lightning, must be the easiest of all deaths.
"In September, 1752," says he, "six young Germans, apparently doubting the truth of the reported force of electricity, came to me to see," as they said, "if there was _any thing in it_. Having desired them to stand up side by side, I laid one end of my discharging rod on the head of the first; this laid his hand on the head of the second, that on the head of the third, and so on to the last, who held in his hand the chain that was attached to the lightning globe. On being asked if they were ready, they answered _yes_, and boldly desired that I would give them a _thumper_; I then gave them a shock; whereat they all dropped down together. When they got up, they declared that they had not felt any stroke; and wondered how they came to fall. Nor did any of them _hear_ the crack, or _see_ the light of it."
He tells another story equally curious. "A young woman, afflicted with symptoms of a palsy in the foot, came to receive an electrical shock. Heedlessly stooping too near the prime conductor, she received a smart stroke in the forehead, of which she fell like one perfectly lifeless on the floor. Instantly she got up again complaining of nothing, and wondering much why she fell, for that nothing of the sort had ever happened to her before."
Nay, he also tells us of himself, that by accident, he received a shock which in an instant brought him to the floor, without giving him time to _see, hear, or feel any thing of the matter_! Hence he concludes, and I think with good reason, that all who dread the idea of pain in dying, would do well to pray, if it be God's will, to die of _coelataction_, as the ancients called it, or a _touch from heaven_.
It is worthy of remark, that persons thus knocked down, do not _stagger_, or fall _lengthwise_, but as if deprived instantaneously of strength and firmness, they sink down at once, doubled or folded together, or as we say, "_all in a heap_."
Dr. Franklin seldom suffered any thing to escape him. From the power of lightning to dissolve the hardest metals, he caught an idea favourable to cooking and matrimony. First, an old dunghill cock killed in the morning by a shock from his electrical jar, by dinner was become so tender that both the doctor and several of his literary friends pronounced it equal to a young pheasant. Second, an old bachelor thought to be far gone in a consumption, had hardly received more than a couple of dozen smart shocks of electricity, before he turned into courting with great spirit, and presently got himself a wife.
If electrical jars could be had cheap, this discovery concerning the old dunghill cock might prove a good hint to those gentlemen in the _tavern-keeping_ line, who are so very frugal that they will not keep up a coop full of young poultry, fat and fine, and always ready for the traveller, but prefer giving him the pain, long after his arrival at their door, to hear the lean tenants of the dunghill flying and squalling from the pursuit of the barking dogs and noisy servants.
And as to the experiment on the other kind of old CAPON, the grunting wheezing old bachelor, it clearly points to the wish often expressed by Dr. Franklin, viz. "_that the legislature would order an electrical machine, large enough to kill a turkey cock at least, to be placed in every parish, at the cost and for the benefit of all the old bachelors of the same_."