upward and onward,
so, too, he was never tired of helping others. He started the first
public library in Philadelphia, which was also the first in America.
He set on foot the first fire-engine company and the first military
company in that city. He got the people to pave the muddy streets
with stone; he helped to build the first academy,--now called the
University of Pennsylvania,--and he also helped to build the first
hospital.

118. Franklin's experiments[16] with electricity; the wonderful
bottle; the picture of the king of England.--While doing these things
and publishing his paper besides, Franklin found time to make
experiments with electricity. Very little was then known about this
wonderful power, but a Dutchman, living in the city of Leyden[17]
in Holland, had discovered a way of bottling it up in what is called
a Leyden Jar. Franklin had one of these jars, and he was never tired
of seeing what new and strange thing he could do with it.

He contrived a picture of the king of England with a movable gilt
crown on his head. Then he connected the crown by a long wire with
the Leyden Jar. When he wanted some fun he would dare any one to go
up to the picture and take off the king's crown. Why that's easy
enough, a man would say, and would walk up and seize the crown. But
no sooner had he touched it than he would get an electric shock which
would make his fingers tingle as they never tingled before. With a
loud Oh! Oh! he would let go of the crown, and start back in utter
astonishment, not knowing what had hurt him.

[Illustration: FRANKLIN PLAYING A JOKE WITH THE KING'S CROWN.]

[Footnote 16: Experiments: here an experiment is a trial made to
discover something unknown. Franklin made these experiments or
trials with electricity and with thunder clouds in order to find out
what he could about them.]

[Footnote 17: Leyden: see map in paragraph 62.]

119. The electrical kite.--But Franklin's greatest experiment was
made one day in sober earnest with a kite. He believed that the
electricity in the bottle, or Leyden Jar, was the same thing as the
lightning we see in a thunder-storm. He knew well enough how to get
an electric spark from the jar, for he had once killed a turkey with
it for dinner; but how could he get a spark from a cloud in the sky?

He thought about it for a long time; then he made a kite out of a
silk handkerchief, and fastened a sharp iron point to the upright
stick of the kite. One day, w