Having quarrelled with Keimer, Franklin entered into partnership with a young man named Meredith, and commenced publishing a paper in opposition to one which had been started by his former employer. Meredith proving negligent of business, Franklin was enabled by his friends to dissolve the partnership, and to take the entire business into his own hands. His steady adherence to habits of industry and economy had brought him comparative wealth; and he now married Miss Read, whom he had met on his first arrival in Philadelphia. In 1732 Franklin began the publication of "Poor Richard's Almanac," which soon became celebrated for its important lessons of practical morality. These were subsequently collected in a little volume, and are still highly esteemed both in England and America. His high character for probity and intelligence induced the citizens of Philadelphia to intrust him with the management of public affairs; he was appointed clerk of the general assembly, postmaster, and alderman, and was put by the governor into the commission of the peace. All the hours he could spare from business he now devoted to objects of local utility, and the city of Philadelphia is indebted to him for some of its finest buildings and best institutions. As his wealth increased he obtained leisure to devote himself to the study of philosophy, and to take a leading part in political life. We shall first look at his philosophical labors, by which his name first became known abroad. His attention was drawn to the subject of electricity in 1746, by some experiments exhibited by Dr. Spence, who had come to Boston from Scotland. These isolated experiments were made with no regard to system, and led to no results. A glass tube, and some other apparatus that had been sent to Franklin by a friend in London, enabled him to repeat and verify these experiments. He soon began to devise new forms of investigation for himself, and at length made the great discovery, which may be said to be the foundation of electrical science, that there is a positive and negative state of electricity. By this fact he explained the phenomenon of the Leyden phial, which at that time excited great attention in Europe, and had foiled the sagacity of its principal philosophers. In the course of his investigations he was led to suspect the identity of lightning and the electric fluid; and he resolved to test this happy conjecture by a direct experiment. His apparatus was simply a paper-kite with a key attached to the tail. Having raised the kite during a thunder-storm, he watched the result with great anxiety; after an interval of painful suspense, he saw the filaments of the string exhibit by their motion signs of electrical action; he drew in the kite, and, presenting his knuckles to the key, received a strong spark, which of course decided the success of the experiment. Repeated sparks were drawn from the key, a phial was charged, a shock given, and the identity of lightning with the electric