[Illustration:  FRANKLIN FLYING A KITE.]

120.  Franklin invents the lightning-rod; Doctor Franklin.—­But Franklin did not stop at that.  He said, If I can draw down electricity from the sky with a kite-string, I can draw it still better with a tall, sharp-pointed iron rod.  He put up such a rod on his house in Philadelphia; it was the first lightning-rod in the world.  Soon other people began to put them up:  so this was another gift of his to the city which he loved.  Every good lightning-rod which has since been erected to protect buildings has been a copy of that invented by Franklin.

People now began to talk, not only in this country but in Europe, about his electrical experiments and discoveries.  The oldest college in Scotland[18] gave him a title of honor and called him Doctor—­a word which means a learned man.  From this time, Franklin the printer was no longer plain Mr. Franklin, but Dr. Franklin.

Dr. Franklin did not think that he had found out all that could be found out about electricity; he believed that he had simply made a beginning, and that other men would discover still greater things that could be done with it.  Do you think he was mistaken about that?

[Footnote 18:  The University of St. Andrews.]

121.  Franklin in the Revolutionary War; Franklin and the map of the United States.—­When the war of the Revolution broke out, Dr. Franklin did a great work for his country.  He did not fight battles like Washington, but he did something just as useful.  First, he helped write the Declaration of Independence, by which we declared ourselves free from the rule of the king of England; next, he went to France to get aid for us.  We were then too poor to pay our soldiers; he got the king of France to let us have money to give them.

[Illustration:  FRANKLIN’S CANE AND WASHINGTON’S REVOLUTIONARY SWORD.  (Preserved in the Patent Office, Washington.)]

Franklin lived to see the Revolution ended and America free.  When he died, full of years and of honors, he was buried in Philadelphia.  Twenty thousand people went to his funeral.

[Illustration:  FRANKLIN’S GRAVE IN CHRIST CHURCH BURIAL-GROUND, PHILADELPHIA.]

If you wish to see what the country thinks of him, you have only to look at a large map of the United States, and count up how many times you find his name on it.  You will find that more than two hundred counties and towns are called FRANKLIN.

122.  Summary.—­Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston nearly two hundred years ago.  He went to Philadelphia when he was seventeen.  He started a newspaper there, opened the first public library, and did many other things to help the city.  He discovered that lightning and electricity are the same thing, and he invented the lightning-rod to protect buildings.  In the Revolution, he got large sums of money from the king of France to pay our soldiers and to help Washington fight the battles which ended in making America free.