But he didn't. Franklin had inspired him with a passion for invention: he rubbed amber with wool, made a battery and applied the scheme in a crude way to the healing art. He wrote articles on electricity and even foreshadowed the latter-day announcement that electricity is life. And all the time he discussed economics, and gave out through speech and written word his views as to the rights of the people. He saw the needs of the poor--he perceived how through lack of nourishment there developed a craving for stimulants, and observed how disease and death fasten themselves upon the ill-fed and the ill-taught. To alleviate the suffering of the poor, he opened a dispensary as he had done in London, and gave free medical attendance to all who applied. At this dispensary, he gave lectures on certain days upon hygiene, at which times he never failed to introduce his essence of Rousseau and Voltaire. Some one called him "the people's friend." The name stuck--he liked it. In August, Seventeen Hundred Eighty-nine, this "terrible dwarf" was standing on his barrel in Paris haranguing crowds with an oratory that was tremendous in its impassioned quality. Men stopped to laugh and remained to applaud. Not only did he denounce the nobility, but he saw danger in the liberal leaders, and among others, Mirabeau came in for scathing scorn. Of all the insane paradoxes this one is the most paradoxical--that men will hate those who are most like themselves. Family feuds, and the wrangles of denominations that, to outsiders, hold the same faith, are common. When churches are locked in America, it is done to keep Christians out. Christians fight Christians much more than they fight the devil. Marat had grown to be a power among the lower classes--he was their friend, their physician, their advocate. He had no fear of interruption and never sought to pacify. At his belt, within easy reach, and in open sight, he carried a dagger. The crowds that hung upon his words were swayed to rank unreason by his impassioned eloquence. Marat fell a victim to his own eloquence, and the madness of the mob reacted upon him. Like the dyer's hand, he became subdued to that in which he worked. Suspicion and rebellion filled his soul. Wealth to him was an offense--he had not the prophetic vision to see the rise of capitalism and all the splendid industrial evolution which the world is today working out. Society to him was all founded on wrong premises, and he would uproot it. In bitter words he denounced the Assembly and declared that all of its members, including Mirabeau, should be hanged for their inaction in not giving the people relief from their oppressors.