[Illustration: A DEADLY ONSLAUGHT.]

Many believe that Franklin's other scientific experiments were productive
of more lasting benefit to mankind than this, but I do not agree with
them.

This paper was called the _New England Courant_. It was edited jointly by
James and Benjamin Franklin, and was started to supply a long-felt want.
Benjamin edited a part of the time and James a part of the time. The idea
of having two editors was not for the purpose of giving volume to the
editorial page, but it was necessary for one to run the paper while the
other was in jail. In those days you couldn't sass the king, and then,
when the king came in the office the next day and stopped his paper, and
took out his ad., you couldn't put it off on "our informant" and go right
along with the paper. You had to go to jail, while your subscribers
wondered why their paper did not come, and the paste soured in the tin
dippers in the sanctum, and the circus passed by on the other side.

[Illustration: STOPPING HIS PAPER.]

How many of us to-day, fellow journalists, would be willing to stay in
jail while the lawn festival and the kangaroo came and went? Who, of all
our company, would go to a prison cell for the cause of freedom while a
double-column ad. of sixteen aggregated circuses, and eleven congresses of
ferocious beasts, fierce and fragrant from their native lair, went by us?

At the age of 17, Ben got disgusted with his brother, and went to
Philadelphia and New York, where he got a chance to "sub" for a few weeks,
and then got a regular "sit." Franklin was a good printer, and finally got
to be a foreman. He made an excellent foreman, sitting by the hour in the