Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans | Page 7

the string, Franklin saw a swarm of ants going down the string. They marched in a line, one after another. Soon there were two lines of ants on the string. The ants in one line were going down to get at the sweet food. The ants in the other line were marching up the other side of the string to go home. Do you think that the greedy ant told the other ants about the jar?
And did he tell them that there was a string by which an ant could get there?
And did he tell it by speaking, or by signs that he made with his feelers?
If you watch two ants when they meet, you will see that they touch their feelers together, as if they said "Good-morning!"
[Illustration: FRANKLIN ASKS THE SUNSHINE SOMETHING.]
One day Franklin was eating dinner at the house of a friend. The lady of the house, when she poured out the coffee, found that it was not hot.
She said, "I am sorry that the coffee is cold. It is because the servant forgot to scour the coffee-pot. Coffee gets cold more quickly when the coffee-pot is not bright."
This set Franklin to thinking. He thought that a black or dull thing would cool more quickly than a white or bright one. That made him think that a black thing would take in heat more quickly than a white one.
He wanted to find out if this were true or not. There was no-body who knew, so there was no-body to ask. But Franklin thought that he would ask the sunshine. Maybe the sunshine would tell him whether a black thing would heat more quickly than a white thing.
But how could he ask the sunshine?
There was snow on the ground. Franklin spread a white cloth on the snow. Then he spread a black cloth on the snow near the white one. When he came to look at them, he saw that the snow under the black cloth melted away much sooner than that under the white cloth.
That is the way that the sunshine told him that black would take in heat more quickly than white. After he had found this out, many people got white hats to wear in the summer time. A white hat is cooler than a black one.
Some time when there is snow on the ground, you can take a white and a black cloth and ask the sunshine the same question.

FRANKLIN AND THE KITE.
When Franklin wanted to know whether the ants could talk or not, he asked the ants, and they told him. When he wanted to know some-thing else, he asked the sunshine about it, as you have read in another story. That is the way that Franklin came to know so many things. He knew how to ask questions of every-thing.
Once he asked the light-ning a question. And the light-ning gave him an answer.
Before the time of Franklin, people did not know what light-ning was. They did not know what made the thunder. Franklin thought much about it. At last he proved what it was. He asked the lightning a question, and made it tell what it was. To tell you this story, I shall have to use one big word. Maybe it is too big for some of my little friends that will read this book. Let us divide it into parts. Then you will not be afraid of it. The big word is e-lec-tric-i-ty.
Those of you who live in towns have seen the streets lighted by e-lec-tric-i-ty. But in Franklin's time there were no such lights. People knew very little about this strange thing with a big name.
But Franklin found out many things about it that nobody had ever known before. He began to think that the little sparks he got from e-lec-tric-i-ty were small flashes of lightning. He thought that the little cracking sound of these sparks was a kind of baby thunder.
So he thought that he would try to catch a little bit of lightning. Perhaps he could put it into one of the little bottles used to hold e-lec-tric-i-ty. Then if it behaved like e-lec-tric-i-ty, he would know what it was. But catching lightning is not easy. How do you think he did it?
First he made a kite. It was not a kite just like a boy's kite. He wanted a kite that would fly when it rained. Rain would spoil a paper kite in a minute. So Franklin used a silk hand-ker-chief to cover his kite, instead of paper.
[Illustration: Franklin's Discovery.]
He put a little sharp-pointed wire at the top of his kite. This was a kind of lightning rod to draw the lightning into the kite. His kite string was a common hemp string. To this he tied a key, because lightning will follow metal. The end of