One curious result of the experiments made by Dr. Watson and his friends, and which they themselves probably did not expect, was the breaking out of a sort of public frenzy for making like trials, but after the most childish fashion. Everybody who had, or thought he had, the least tincture of science in him, procured a long glass tube, and went on rubbing it assiduously with his handkerchief, sitting in dark rooms and cellars, so as to be better able to watch the first appearance of the ‘electric fire.’ Ladies and gentlemen alike went on rubbing, with desperate energy, as if the fate of the world depended on their exertions. They sold ‘electrical tubes’ in pastry shops; every draper praised his own handkerchiefs as the best for rubbing; and lecturers upon electricity went about through the length and breadth of the land, with glass rods in their hands, delivering wonderful harangues, and trying to explain to gaping multitudes the mysteries of nature as regards electricity. The lecturers even crossed the Atlantic to America, visiting the chief towns, and preaching to large assemblies in places-- Where blind and naked ignorance Delivers brawling judgments, unabashed On all things, all day long. If it was a ludicrous spectacle to see these wandering lecturers, with their glass tubes and pocket-handkerchiefs, the movement nevertheless produced, apparently quite by accident, a striking result. It occurred through one of the peripatetic preachers of electric revelation coming face to face with Benjamin Franklin, a printer established at Philadelphia, when on a visit to his native town of Boston, Massachusetts, North America.