dollars a year, which in those times was a comfortable independence
anywhere. He retired with the universal respect of the community both as
a business man and a man of culture. Thus far his career was not
extraordinary, not differing much from that of thousands of others in
the mercantile history of this country, or any other country. By
industry, sagacity, and thrift he had simply surmounted the necessity of
work, and had so improved his leisure hours by reading and study as to
be on an intellectual equality with anybody in the most populous and
wealthy city in the country. Had he died before 1747 his name probably
would not have descended to our times. He would have had only a local
reputation as a philanthropical, intelligent, and successful business
man, a printer by trade, who could both write and talk well, but was not
able to make a better speech on a public occasion than many others who
had no pretension to fame.

But a new career was opened to Franklin with the attainment of leisure
and independence,--the career of a scientific investigator. The subject
which most interested him was electricity, just then exciting great
interest in Europe. In 1746 he attended in Boston a lecture on
electricity by Dr. Spence, of Scotland, which induced him to make
experiments himself, the result of which was to demonstrate to his mind
the identity of the electrical current with lightning. What the new,
mysterious power was, of course he could not tell, nor could any one
else. All he knew was that sparks, under certain conditions, were
emitted from clothing, furs, amber, jet, glass, sealing-wax, and other
substances when excited by friction, and that the power thus producing
the electric sparks would repel and attract. That amber, when rubbed,
possesses the property of attracting and repelling light bodies was
known to Thales and Pliny, and subsequent philosophers discovered that
other substances also were capable of electrical excitation. In process