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"Well, it's hardly likely the boss would let you cross the run," replied Arblaster. "He'd be a d d fool if he did." "I'm afraid there's no use asking him, Priestley," added Nelson. "He won't make a thoroughfare of the run, at any price.
Vernon, paid John's bill, and transacted some other business, by the time the sloop was ready to sail, they proceeded to Philadelphia. There is no record preserved of his experience on the sloop between New York and Philadelphia, except a paragraph in a letter written by Doctor Franklin to Doctor Priestley, in 1780, when the former was seventy-four years of age.
He wrote as readily and fully of the hideousness of slavery to Meusnier and Warville in France, or to Price and Priestley in England, as to any of his neighbors; but, as public servant of the nation, writing to Hammond or Viar, representatives of foreign powers, he made no apology for our miseries.
All this must sound odd to you; but these are my predominant feelings when I sit down to write to you, and I should put force upon my mind, were I to reject them, Yet I rejoice, and feel my privilege with gratitude, when I have been reading some wise book, such as I have just been reading, Priestley on Philosophical Necessity, in the thought that I enjoy a kind of communion, a kind of friendship even, with the great and good.
One might also mention the great Lavoisier, Magellan the Jesuit philosopher, and a dozen other scientific, ecclesiastical, and political celebrities. The Memoir, however, is almost as remarkable for what it does not tell concerning these people as for what it does. Priestley was not anecdotal. And he is only a little less reticent about himself than he is about others.
Nevertheless, it is as certain as anything can be, that Joseph Priestley was no gloomy fanatic, but as cheerful and kindly a soul as ever breathed, the idol of children; a man who was hated only by those who did not know him, and who charmed away the bitterest prejudices in personal intercourse; a man who never lost a friend, and the best testimony to whose worth is the generous and tender warmth with which his many friends vied with one another in rendering him substantial help, in all the crises of his career.
Inasmuch as substances burned more vigorously and brilliantly in the new air than in common air, Priestley argued that the new air was more ready, more eager, than ordinary air, to receive phlogiston; and, therefore, that the new air contained less phlogiston than ordinary air, or, perhaps, no phlogiston.
I have before spoken of the exceptional favor we owed to Dr. and Mrs. Priestley. It enabled us to leave London feeling that we had tried, at least, to show our grateful sense of all the attentions bestowed upon us.
Don't kindle a fire, unless you want to get lagged. And Priestley would get to the boundary by ten o'clock on the morrow, without the loss of a beast; thanking heaven that he had n't been escorted by Arblaster or Butler, and racking his invention to provide for the coming night. One more little incident enlivened the monotony of my journey to Alf's hut.
Encouraged by Franklin, he wrote a "History of Electricity," which was published in 1767, and appears to have met with considerable success. In the same year, Priestley left Warrington to become the minister of a congregation at Leeds; and, here, happening to live next door to a public brewery, as he says,
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