This, Monsieur, is an account given in haste, but simple and true, which I attest, and you may depend on my being ready to give evidence of this event on every opportunity. Coiffier was the first who made the experiment, and repeated it several times; it was only on account of what he had seen that he sent to ask me to come. If other witnesses than he and I are necessary, you will find them. Coiffier is in haste to set out.
I am, with respectful consideration, Monsieur,
Yours, &c., [Signed] RAULET, _Prior of Marly_.
"I do not understand," said Uncle Fritz, "how it happened that no one attempted the experiment before. Franklin had proposed it, very distinctly, in 1750. His friend Dr. Stuber says that he was waiting for the erection of a steeple in Philadelphia. You see, the Quakers, who had founded this city, would have none; they derided what they called 'steeple-houses,' little foreseeing what advantage could be drawn from a steeple.
"Meanwhile, in 1750, in October, he did take a view of New York from the 'Dutch Church steeple,' which had been struck by lightning in the spring of that year. And here he was able to confirm his theory, by seeing that 'wire is a good conductor of lightning, as it is of electricity.'"
While some of the children were reading these electrical passages, others were turning over the next volume; and to their great delight, they found a picture of the "Musical Glasses."
"I never had the slightest idea what musical glasses were," said Jack; and he spouted from Goldsmith the passage from "The Vicar of Wakefield," where the fashionable ladies from London talked about "Shakspeare and the musical glasses."
"Were they Dr. Franklin's musical glasses?"
"I never thought of that," said Uncle Fritz, well pleased; "but I think it is so. John, look and see what year 'The Vicar of Wakefield' was written in."
John turned to the Cyclopædia, and it proved that Goldsmith wrote that book in 1766.
"And you see," said Uncle Fritz, "that it was in 1762 that Franklin made his improvement, and that Mr. Puckeridge, the Irish gentleman, had arranged his glasses before. I think you would find that the instrument gradually worked its way into fashion,--slowly, as such things then did in England,--and that Goldsmith knew about Dr. Franklin's modification.