Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/177

Rh Spring of 1753 about taking charge of the English School, which resulted in his connection with the Academy. His powers as a speaker made successful the Lectures on Electricity which he undertook, and which brought his name more prominently before the different communities in which he exhibited his interesting experiments, than other congenial friends who had not the like need to turn their accomplishments to useful purposes. Franklin gave him a letter of introduction, 5 September, 1751, to James Bowdoin when he is about visiting Boston:

As you are curious in electricity, I take the freedom of introducing to you, my friend Mr. Kinnersley, who visits Boston with a complete apparatus for experimental lectures on that subject. He has given great satisfaction to all that have heard him here, and I believe you will be pleased with his performance. He is quite a stranger in Boston; and as you will find him a sensible worthy man, I hope he will be favored with your countenance, and the encouragement which that must procure him among your friends.

In writing to Cadwallader Colden on 14 September, 1752, Franklin says : "I am sorry you could not see Mr. Kinnersley's Lectures; they would have pleased you." Kinnersley's correspondence with Franklin was continued over many years, his last letter to Franklin which we have being written him to London 13 October, 1770; extracts from it have been given in the sketch of Franklin's life on a previous page, and all display the ardor of a learned enthusiast who in communicating his observations and experiments to an older friend appears to seek his concurrence if not approval in their results, who in turn responds with like eagerness to his friend whether from the quiet of his home or amid his public duties while abroad.

In 1757, Mr. Kinnersley received the degree of M.A. from his College, and in 1758 became a member of the American Philosophical Society. We shall see traces of his steps through his College duties, until his three score of years with a feeble constitution induced him to lay down his professorship, and he