Sometimes he would take the figures of the sun, moon, and earth, cut in papers, and fix them on wires, nicely balanced. Then, by the force of the electric fluid, he would set them a-going in most harmonious style--the earth revolving round her own axis; the moon round the earth; and both round the sun; all exactly according to the course which the hand of the Creator had prescribed to these mighty orbs. For the sake of those who have never considered this wonderful attraction of lightning to iron rods, I beg leave to relate the following very extraordinary and daring experiments of Dr. Franklin. In a large chamber, which he kept for his electrical apparatus and experiments, he suspended a number of bells, all connected by wires, and communicating, through the gable end of the house, with the large lightning rods that descended along the chimney to the ground. His aim in this contrivance was, that he might know whenever a lightning cloud passed over his house in the night; and also what freight of electrical fluid it carried about with it. For, as it seldom passes, without paying a loving visit to his rod, so it always told, with great honesty, the amount of its inflammable cargo, especially if it was ample; in which case, it was always sure to set the bells a ringing at a terrible rate. And besides these, he had numbers of men and women of the Lilliputian stature, cut in paper, and so artfully attached to the clappers, that as soon as the bells began to ring, the men and women began to dance also, and all of them more and more merrily, according as this extraordinary kind of music played up more briskly. But though, for the amusement of his friends, Franklin would sometimes set his bells and dolls to ringing and dancing, by his electricity, yet his main object was, to invite the lightnings to be the bell ringers, and dancing masters to his puppets, that, as before observed, he might become better acquainted with the nature of lightning, and thus extend his electrical experiments and knowledge. But it must be owned, that when the lightnings were drawn down for this purpose among the bells and wires of his chamber, the entertainment was almost too terrible to be agreeable to any but philosophers. The elegant J. Dickinson, Esq. informed me, that he was at Dr. Franklin's one evening, with a large party, when a dreadful cloud began to rise, with distant thunder and lightning. The ladies, panic struck, as usual, were all in a prodigious bustle for their bonnets, to get home. The doctor entreated them not to be frightened; for that they were in the safest house in Philadelphia; and indeed, jokingly offered to underwrite their lives at the low premium of a groat a head.