A Franklin stove. An amusing discussion arose in 1909 in the columns of Notes and Queries as to the meaning of the word in quot. 1867.

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1841.  [A certain booby] was told that the Franklin stove would save half the wood. Well, said he, I will buy two stoves, and that will save all the wood.—Mr. Arnold of Tennessee in the House of Representatives: Cong. Globe, p. 452, App.

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1858.  We have our Franklin Stove, with all its accompaniments, and even now its flickering blaze lights up the chambers of our imagination, with the cheering associations of many a half-forgotten reverie!—Yale Lit. Mag., xxiii. 204 (April). (Italics in the original.)

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1867.  

        And bushed asparagus in faded green
Added its shiver to the franklin clean.
Lowell, ‘Fitz-Adam’s Story,’ Atlantic Mag., Jan.    

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*** The word was used in 1817 to signify a lightning-conductor.—See Mr. Albert Matthews’s note in Notes and Queries, 11 S. iii. 486.

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