though the water proceeds forward to the gate, the motion which began there runs backward, if one may so speak, to the upper end of the race, where the water is last in motion."

About the same time, Franklin invented that pleasant fire-place, the Franklin stove, which warmed one generation of colonial Americans, and another generation of American citizens, and began what we may call the American stove system, one of the wonders of the industrial world. In many country nooks, the Franklin stove is still used, particularly in the South; and most of us can at least remember its cheerful fire. It was the wastefulness of the old fire-places, the growing scarcity of wood, and the time-honored nuisance of smoking chimneys, that set Franklin at work upon this simple and elegant invention. Coal, then, was not known to exist in the colonies, and wood was fast receding from the large towns. To promote the introduction of his stoves, the inventor wrote an extensive and very ingenious pamphlet, in which he expounded the entire philosophy of house-warming, and explained the working of the new apparatus. Franklin, however, had not the least pecuniary interest in the invention, and never derived profit from it. "I made a present of the model," he says, "to Mr. Robert Grace, one of my early friends, who, having an iron furnace, found the casting of the plates for these stoves a profitable thing, as they were growing in demand."

Thus, the members of the Junto played into each other's hands and pockets. The Governor of Pennsylvania, Franklin adds, “was so pleased with the construction of this stove, that he offered to give me a patent for the sole vending of them for a term of years; but I declined it, from a principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions, viz. : That as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously. An ironmonger in London, however, assuming a good deal of my pamphlet, and working it up into his own, and making some small change in the machine, which rather hurt its operation, got a patent for it there, and made, as I was told, a little fortune by it."

Which shows how wise is the patent system, that secures the control and the profit of an invention to the inventor. But Franklin was all his life haunted with the noble fallacy, that he who

serves his country, should serve it for nothing. It became, at a later day, one of his most fixed and cherished maxims of policy, that the holders of public office should not be paid any thing but honor; the work of the state being done by men who had earned leisure by a successful conduct of private business.

The activity of Franklin's mind was shown in his trifling amusements. During the sessions of the Assembly, he had to endure many dull hours, perched in his seat as clerk, listening to debates in which he could take no part. His friend Logan showed him one day a French book of "Magical Squares," an idle game of the last century. Franklin, who had made these squares in his youth, now beguiled the tedium of the daily session by producing squares of extreme intricacy, surpassing all that had ever been done in that way. The following, for example, is one of his magical squares:

This square, as explained by its contriver, contains astonishing properties: every straight row (horizontal or vertical) added together makes 260, and each half row half 260. The bent row of eight numbers ascending and descending diagonally, viz., from 16 ascending to 10, and from 23 descending to 17, and every one of its parallel bent rows of eight numbers, makes 260. Also, the bent row

from 52 descending to 54, and from 43 ascending to 45, and every one of its parallel bent rows of eight numbers, makes 260. Also, the bent row from 45 to 43, descending to the left, and from 23 to 17, descending to the right, and every one of its parallel bent rows of eight numbers, makes 260. Also, the bent row from 52 to 54, descending to the right, and from 10 to 16, descending to the left, and every one of its parallel bent rows of eight numbers, makes 260. Also, the parallel bent rows next to the above-mentioned, which are shortened to three numbers ascending and three descending, &c., as from 53 to 4 ascending, and from 29 to 44 descending, make, with the two corner numbers, 260. Also, the two numbers, 14, 61, ascending, and 36, 19, descending, with the lower four numbers situated like them, viz. 50, 1, descending, and 32, 47, ascending, make 260. And, lastly, the four corner numbers, with the four middle numbers, make 260.

But even these are not all the properties of this marvelous square. Its contriver declared that it has "five other curious ones," which he does not explain; but which the ingenious reader may discover if he can. Nor was this the most wonderful of Franklin's magical squares. He made one of 16 cells in each row, which besides possessing the properties of the square given above (the amount, however added, being always 2056), had also this most remarkable peculiarity: a square hole being cut in a piece of paper of such a size as to take in and show through it just sixteen of the little squares, when laid on the greater square, the sum of the sixteen numbers, so appearing through the hole, wherever it was placed on the greater square, should likewise make 2056.

This square was executed in a single evening. It excited the boundless wonder of Mr. Logan, to whom Franklin sent it, and who styled it a "most stupendous piece." Franklin himself jocularly said it was the "most magically magical of any magic square ever made by any magician." Mr. Logan alludes to these squares in one of his letters to Peter Collinson of London: "Our Benjamin Franklin is certainly an extraordinary man, one of a singular good judgment, but of equal modesty. He is clerk of our Assembly, and there, for want of other employment, while he sat idle, he took it into his head to think of magical squares, in which he outdid Frenicle himself, who published above eighty pages in folio on that subject alone.” *

* Sparks, vi., 100. Where other specimens of Franklin's magical squares may be found.

It does a good man good to prosper in his business. It expands, cheers, softens, frees, and humbles him. Inherited wealth is a doubtful good. To convert it into a blessing requires in the recipient uncommon virtue and good sense: it generally proves too much for the weakness of human nature, and prevents a man from becom

ing a serviceable citizen. But the moderate, gradual, and safe prosperity which results from the skillful, thoughtful, and diligent prosecution of a legitimate business or trade, is a vast and lasting benefit, and bestows upon its possessor the means of noble gratifications.

Franklin still prospered. His Gazette became the leading newspaper of all the region between New York and Charleston. Poor Richard continued to amuse the whole country, to the great profit of its printer, who was obliged to put it to press early in October, in order to get a supply of copies to the remote colonies by the beginning of the new year. All the best jobs of printing given out by the provinces of New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Deleware, fell to the office of Franklin; who, by means of his partnerships, had a share also in the good things of Virginia, New York, the Carolinas, and Georgia. His school-books, his hand-books of farriery, agriculture, and medicine, his numberless small pamphlets, his considerable importations from England, all contributed to swell his gains. The great number of German emigrants gave new importance every summer to his German printing office. His two places of postmaster and clerk to the Assembly brought in a little. money and much profitable work. He had a small and inexpensive family, an industrious and saving wife; and his own habits were such as enable a man to get out of life the maximum of enjoyment with the minimum of expenditure. His luxuries were a book, a long bathe in the river, the Junto, music, conversation, minute observations of nature, and rural excursions. He lived, moreover, in a place which in the course of his business career became the chief town of the colonies.

There was,

Did he become a millionaire, then? By no means. I believe, but one fortune of a million dollars made in the thirteen colonies. Franklin was in a way to acquire, in time, a modest competence for, in the colonies, the gains of business were moderate, even when conducted with the tact, the energy, and the prudence of a Franklin. Probably his business, in the most prosperous years, did not yield a profit of more than two thousand pounds sterling. But there was not, probably, another printer in the colonies whose annual profits exceeded five hundred pounds.

As he throve in business, he grew in the esteem of his townsmen, and began to take the lead in their affairs. He tried first to