But there was one inveterate old inventor that you had to get rid of, and you put him on to us Pennsylvanians—­Benjamin Franklin. [Laughter.] Instead of stopping in New York, in Wall Street, as such men usually do, he continued on into Pennsylvania to pursue his kiting operations.  He never could let well enough alone.  Instead of allowing the lightning to occupy the heavens as the sole theatre for its pyrotechnic displays, he showed it how to get down on to the earth, and then he 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 the tune of Yankee Doodle. [Laughter.] This worked