Stories of Great Americans for Little AmericansEggleston, Edward
History
Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans
Eggleston, Edward
United States -- Biography -- Juvenile literature
After a while he got hungry again, perhaps. He thought about that jar
of sweets at the end of a string. Then perhaps he told the other ants.
Maybe he let them know that there was a string by which they could get
down to the jar.
In about half an hour after the ant had gone up 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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