SCENE IV. _Rodrigue_ and _Fell_, the Apothecary

_Rodrigue._ You promised to have this Pandolpho upon his Bier in less than a Week; 'tis more than a Month since, and he still walks and stares me in the face.

_Fell._ True and yet I have done my best Endeavours. In various ways I have given the Miscreant as much Poison as would have kill'd an Elephant. He has swallow'd Dose after Dose; far from hurting him, he seems the better for it. He hath a wonderfully strong Constitution. I find I can not kill him but by cutting his Throat, and that, as I take it, is not my Business.

_Rodrigue._ Then it must be mine.

Another letter, signed "A Londoner," illustrates the difficulty which the sober good-sense of Franklin, always disposed to reduce things to their material terms, experienced in understanding the recklessness with which the British Government was hazarding the commercial value of the colonies.

To us in the Way of Trade comes now, and has long come [he said] all the superlucration arising from their Labours. But will our reviling them as Cheats, Hypocrites, Scoundrels, Traitors, Cowards, Tyrants, &c., &c., according to the present Court Mode in all our Papers, make them more our Friends, more fond of our Merchandise? Did ever any Tradesmen succeed, who attempted to drub Customers into his Shop? And will honest JOHN BULL, the Farmer, be long satisfied with Servants, that before his Face attempt to kill his _Plow Horses?_

In his eager desire to influence public sentiment in England in behalf of the Colonies, Franklin even devised and distributed a rude copper plate engraving, visualizing the woful condition to which Great Britain would be reduced, if she persisted in her harsh and unwise conduct towards her colonies. Many impressions of this engraving were struck off at his request on the cards which he occasionally used in writing his notes, and the design he also had printed for circulation on half sheets of paper with an explanation and a moral of his composition. The details of the illustration, which are all duly elucidated in the explanation, are those of abject and irredeemable ruin. The limbs of Britannia, duly labelled Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and New England respectively, lie scattered about her, and she herself, with her eyes and arm stumps, uplifted to Heaven, is seen sliding off the globe, with a streamer inscribed _Date Obolum Bellisario_ thrown across all that remains of her legs. Her shield, which she is unable to handle, lies useless by her side. The leg, labelled New England, has been transfixed by her lance. The hand of the arm, labelled Pennsylvania, has released its grasp upon a small spray of laurel. The English oak has lost its crown, and stands a bare trunk with briars and thorns at its feet, and a single dry branch sticks out from its side. In the background are Britannia's ships with brooms at their topmastheads denoting that they are for sale. The moral of the whole was that the Thames and the Ohio, Edinburgh and Dublin were all one, and that invidious discriminations in favor of one part of the Empire to the prejudice of the rest could not fail to be attended with the most disastrous consequences to the whole State.

Nothing produced by Franklin between the date of his return from his second mission to England and his departure from America for France needs to be noticed. The two or three papers from his pen, which belong to this period, are distinctly below his ordinary standards of composition. Nor are any of the graver writings composed by him during the remainder of his life with some exceptions very noteworthy. In one, his comparison of Great Britain and the United States in regard to the basis of credit in the two countries, he presented with no little ability the proposition that, by reason of general industry, frugality, ability, prudence and virtue, America was a much safer debtor than Britain; to say nothing of the satisfaction that generous minds were bound to feel in reflecting that by loans to America they were opposing tyranny, and aiding the cause of liberty, which was the cause of all mankind. The object of this paper was to forward the loan of two millions of pounds sterling that the United States were desirous of procuring abroad. Unfortunately, the matter was one not to be settled by argument but by the Bourse, which has a barometric reasoning of its own. In another paper, thrown into the form of a catechism, Franklin, by a series of clever questions and answers, brings to the attention of the world the fact that it would take one hundred and forty-eight years, one hundred and nine days and twenty-two hours for a man to count the English national debt, though he counted at the rate of one hundred shillings per minute, during twelve hours of each day. That the shillings, making up this enormous sum, would weigh sixty-one millions, seven hundred and fifty-two thousand, four hundred and seventy-six Troy pounds, that it would take three hundred and fourteen ships, of one hundred tons each, or thirty-one thousand, four hundred and fifty-two carts to move them, and that, if laid close together in a straight line, they would stretch more than twice around the circumference of the earth, are other facts elicited by the questions of the catechism. It concludes in this manner:

Q. When will government be able to pay the principal?

A. When there is more money in England's treasury than there is in all Europe.

Q. And when will that be?

A. Never.

This was very ingenious and clever, and has been imitated a hundred times over since by _ad captandum_ statisticians, but it needed an interest default on the part of John Bull to make it effective.

Franklin's conceit in the Edict that Saxony was as much the mother country of England as England was of America was, it must be admitted, made to do rather more than its share of service. It reappeared in his _Vindication and Offer from Congress to Parliament_, when, in repelling the charge that America was ungrateful to England, he said that there was much more reason for retorting that charge on Britain which not only never contributed any aid, nor afforded, by an exclusive commerce, any advantages, to Saxony, _her_ mother country, but no longer since than the last war, without the least provocation, subsidized the King of Prussia, while he ravaged that mother country, and carried fire and sword into its capital, the fine City of Dresden.

The same conceit also reappeared a second time in the _Dialogue between Britain, France, Spain, Holland, Saxony and America_, which he wrote soon after he arrived in France as one of our envoys. In this lively dialogue, Britain beseeches Spain, France and Holland successively not to supply America with arms. Spain reminds her of her intervention in behalf of the Dutch, and expresses surprise at her impudence. France reminds her of her intervention in behalf of the Huguenots, and tells her that she must be a little silly, and Holland ends by informing her defiantly that, with the prospect of a good market for brimstone, she, Holland, would make no scruple of even sending her ships to Hell, and supplying the Devil with it. America then takes a hand, and denounces Britain as a bloodthirsty bully, to which Britain replies as quickly as her choking rage will permit by denouncing America as a wicked--Whig-Presbyterian--serpent. To this America rejoins with the statement that she will not surrender her liberty and property but with her life, and some additional statements which cause Britain to exclaim: "You impudent b--h! Am not I your Mother Country? Is that not a sufficient Title to your Respect and Obedience?" At this point Saxony, for the first time breaks in:

"_Mother Country!_ Hah, hah, he! What Respect have _you_ the front to claim as a Mother Country? You know that _I_ am _your_ Mother Country, and yet you pay me none. Nay, it is but the other day, that you hired Ruffians to rob me on the Highway, and burn my House. For shame! Hide your Face and hold your Tongue. If you continue this Conduct, you will make yourself the Contempt of Europe!"

This is too much for even the assurance of the dauntless termagant who, before the American war was over, was to be engaged in conflict at one time with every one of the other parties to the dialogue except Saxony.

"O Lord," she exclaims in despair, "where are my friends?" The question does not remain long unanswered.

"_France, Spain, Holland, and Saxony, all together_. Friends! Believe us, you have none, nor ever will have any, 'till you mend your Manners. How can we, who are your Neighbours, have any regard for you, or expect any Equity from you, should your Power increase, when we see how basely and unjustly you have us'd both _your own Mother--and your own Children_?"

With such rollicking fun, did Franklin, beguile his Gibeonite tasks.

A letter of information to those who would remove to America, an essay on the _Elective Franchises enjoyed by the Small Boroughs in England_, the three essays on Smoky Chimneys, the New Stove, and Maritime Topics, _The Retort Courteous_, in which some pithy reasons were given why Americans were slow in paying their old debts to British merchants, the _Observations Relative to the Intentions of the Original Founders of the Academy in Philadelphia_, the _Address of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage_, the _Plan for Improving the Condition of the Free Blacks_, the essay on _The Internal State of America_ and the paper on _Good Whig Principles_ make up the bulk of the graver pamphlets and papers written by Franklin between the beginning of his mission to France and his death. Some, if not all, of them have already come in for our attention, and most of them invite no special comment. All, like everything that he wrote, even the _marginalia_ on the books that he read, have some kind of salt in them that keeps them sweet, assert itself as time will.

Other serious papers of Franklin, not inspired by political motives, belong to an earlier date, and, with the exception of those, to which we have more than barely referred in previous chapters of this book, call for a word of comment. Two, _The Hints for Those that would be Rich_ and the _Advice to a Young Tradesman_ are merely echoes of _Poor Richard's Almanac_ but are good examples of the teachings that make Franklin the most effective of all propagandists. "He that loses 5s. not only loses that Sum, but all the Advantage that might be made by turning it in Dealing, which, by the time that a young Man becomes old, amounts to a comfortable Bag of Money." This is a typical sentence taken from the Hints. After reading such a discourse as the _Advice to a Young Tradesman_, it is easy enough to see why it was that pecuniary truisms took on new life when vitalized by the mind of Franklin. Money he tells the young tradesman is of the prolific, generating nature. "He that kills a breeding sow, destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation. He that murders a crown, destroys all that it might have produced, even scores of pounds." The young novice is also told that the most trifling actions that affect a man's credit are to be regarded. "The sound of your hammer at five in the morning, or nine at night, heard by a creditor, makes him easy six months longer; but, if he sees you at a billiard-table, or hears your voice at a tavern, when you should be at work, he sends for his money the next day." The paper ends with this pointed sermon:

In short, the way to wealth, if you desire it, is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two words, _industry_ and _frugality_; that is, waste neither _time_ nor _money_, but make the best use of both. Without industry and frugality nothing will do, and with them everything. He that gets all he can honestly, and saves all he gets (necessary expenses excepted) will certainly become _rich_, if that Being who governs the world, to whom all should look for a blessing on their honest endeavours, doth not, in his wise providence, otherwise determine.

Scattered through the works of Franklin are various miscellaneous productions of no slight literary value. The _Parable against Persecution_ was an ancient conception, old, we are told by Jeremy Taylor in his _Liberty of Prophesying_, as the Jews' Books. Franklin never claimed more credit for it, as he stated in a letter to Vaughan, "than what related to the style, and the addition of the concluding threatening and promise." These qualifications, however, leave him quite a different measure of credit from that of an artist who merely touches up a portrait by another hand, as a perusal of the parable will satisfy any reader. The incident, upon which the story turns, is the reception by Abraham into his tent of a stranger who fails to bless God at meat. Abraham expels him from the tent with blows for not worshipping the most high God, Creator of Heaven and Earth; only to be rebuked by the Almighty in these impressive words: "Have I borne with him these hundred and ninety and eight years, and nourished him, and cloathed him, notwithstanding his rebellion against me; and couldst not thou, who art thyself a sinner, bear with him one night?"

Only less felicitous was Franklin's _Parable on Brotherly Love_. Simeon, Levi and Judah are successively denied by their brother Reuben the use of an axe which he had bought of the Ishmaelite merchants, and which he highly prized. Therefore, they buy axes themselves from the Ishmaelites, and, as luck will have it, while Reuben is hewing timber on the river bank, his axe slips into the water and is lost. Reuben then applies to each of his three brothers in turn for the use of their axes. Simeon reminds him of his selfishness, and flatly refuses. Levi reproaches him, but adds that he will be better than he, and will lend his axe to him. Reuben, however, is too ashamed to accept it. Judah, seeing the grief and shame in his countenance, anticipates the request and exclaims, "My brother, I know thy loss; but why should it trouble thee? Lo, have I not an axe that will serve both thee and me!" And then the lovely parable continues in these words:

And Reuben fell on his neck, and kissed him, with tears, saying, "Thy kindness is great, but thy goodness in forgiving me is greater. Thou art indeed my brother, and whilst I live, will I surely love thee."

And Judah said, "Let us also love our other brethren: behold, are we not all of one blood?" And Joseph saw these things, and reported them to his father Jacob.

And Jacob said, "Reuben did wrong, but he repented. Simeon also did wrong; and Levi was not altogether blameless. But the heart of Judah is princely. Judah hath the soul of a king. His father's children shall bow down before him, and he shall rule over his brethren."

The papers contributed by Franklin to the _Busy-Body_ and the _Pennsylvania Gazette_ clearly indicate the influence of Addison and Steele. The Ridentius and Eugenius of the second issue, Ridentius, the wight, who gave himself an hour's diversion on the cock of a man's hat, the heels of his shoes or on one of his unguarded expressions or personal defects, Eugenius who preferred to make himself a public jest rather than be at the pains of seeing his friend in confusion, pale phantoms though they be, are palpably imitations of the Spectator and Tatler. So are the Cato of the third issue of the _Busy-Body_, whose countenance revealed habits of virtue that made one forget his homespun linen and seven days' beard, and the Cretico of the same issue, the "sowre Philosopher" who commanded nothing better from his dependents than the submissive deportment, which was like the worship paid by the Indians to the Devil.

Unlike these characters, the Patience of the fourth issue of the _Busy-Body_ is a real creature of flesh and blood. She writes to the Busy-Body for advice, informing him that she is a single woman, and keeps a shop in the town for her livelihood, and has a certain neighbor, who is really agreeable company enough, and has for some time been an intimate of hers, but who, of late, has tried her out of all patience by her frequent and long visits. She cannot do a thing in the world but this friend must know all about it, and her friend has besides two children just big enough to run about and do petty mischief, who accompany their mother on her visits and put things in the shop out of sorts; so that the writer has all the trouble and pesterment of children without the pleasure--of calling them her own.

Pray, Sir [concludes the unhappy Patience], tell me what I shall do; and talk a little against such unreasonable Visiting in your next Paper; tho' I would not have her affronted with me for a great Deal, for sincerely I love her and her Children, as well, I think, as a Neighbour can, and she buys a great many Things in a Year at my Shop. But I would beg her to consider that she uses me unmercifully, Tho' I believe it is only for want of Thought. But I have twenty Things more to tell you besides all this: There is a handsome Gentleman, that has a Mind (I don't question) to make love to me, but he can't get the least Opportunity to--O dear! here she comes again; I must conclude, yours, &c.

This letter is made the subject of some sensible comments by the _Busy-Body_ on the importance of remembering the words of the Wise Man, "Withdraw thy Foot from the House of thy Neighbour, lest he grow weary of thee, and so hate thee." Later the same caution was to be conveyed in Poor Richard's, "Fish and Visitors smell after three days." The paper ends with the approval by the _Busy-Body_ of the Turkish practice of admonishing guests that it is time for them to go, without actually asking them to do so, by having a chafing dish with the grateful incense of smoking aloes rising from it brought into the room and applied to their beards.

Even more lifelike than Patience are Anthony Afterwit, Celia Single, Mr. and Mrs. Careless and Alice Addertongue, the figures brought to our eye by the _Pennsylvania Gazette_. Indeed, Addison himself would have had no occasion to be ashamed of them, if they had been figments of his own fancy. In his letter to the editor of the _Gazette_, Anthony Afterwit told him that about the time that he first addressed his spouse her father let it be known that, if she married a man of his liking, he would give two hundred pounds with her on the day of marriage, and that he had made some fine plans, and had even, in some measure, neglected his business on the strength of this assurance, but that, when the old gentleman saw that the writer was pretty well engaged, he, without assigning any reason, grew very angry, forbade him the house and told his daughter that, if she married him, he would not give her a farthing. However (as the father foresaw), he stole a wedding, and took his wife to his house, where they were not in quite so poor a condition as the couple described in the Scotch song who had

"Neither Pot nor Pan, But four bare Legs together,"

for he had a house tolerably furnished for an ordinary man. His wife, however, was strongly inclined to be a gentlewoman. His old-fashioned looking-glass was one day broke, "_No Mortal could tell which way_," she said, and was succeeded by a large fashionable one. This in turn led to another table more suitable to such a glass, and the new table to some very handsome chairs. Thus, by degrees, he found all his old furniture stored up in the garret and everything below altered for the better.

Then, on one pretext or another, came along a tea-table with all its appurtenances of china and silver, a maid, a clock, and a pacing mare, for which he paid twenty pounds. The result was that, receiving a very severe dun, which mentioned the next court, he began in earnest to project relief. His dear having gone over the river the preceding Monday to see a relation, and stay a fortnight, because she could not bear the heat of the town, he took his turn at alterations. He dismissed the maid, bag and baggage; he sold the pacing mare, and bought a good milch cow with three pounds of the money; he disposed of the tea-table, and put a spinning wheel in its place; he stuffed nine empty tea canisters with flax, and with some of the money, derived from the sale of the tea-furniture, he bought a set of knitting needles; "for to tell you a truth, which I would have go no farther," added honest Anthony, "_I begin to want stockings_." The stately clock he transformed into an hour glass, by which he had gained a good round sum, and one of the pieces of the old looking-glass, squared and framed, supplied the place of the old one. In short, the face of things was quite changed, and he had paid his debts and found money in his pocket. His good dame was expected home next Friday, and, if she could conform with his new scheme of living, they would be the happiest couple, perhaps, in the Province, and, by the blessings of God, might soon be in thriving circumstances. He had reserved the great glass for her, and he would allow her, when she came in, to be taken suddenly ill with the _headache_, the _stomachache_, the fainting fits, or whatever other disorder she might think more proper, and she might retire to bed as soon as she pleased, but, if he did not find her in perfect health, both of body and mind, the next morning, away would go the aforesaid great glass, with several other trinkets, to the _vendue_ that very day.

That the wife of Anthony did succumb to the situation, we know, for it was an unfortunate reference to her that caused Celia Single to write her letter to the editor of the _Gazette_. During the morning of the preceding Wednesday, she said, she happened to be in at Mrs. Careless', when the husband of that lady returned from market, and showed his wife some balls of thread which he had bought. "My Dear," says he, "I like mightily these Stockings, which I yesterday saw Neighbour Afterwit knitting for her Husband, of Thread of her own Spinning. I should be glad to have some such stockins myself: I understand that your Maid Mary is a very good Knitter, and seeing this Thread in Market, I have bought it, that the Girl may make a Pair or two for me." Then, according to Celia, there took place in her presence a dialogue between husband and wife so animated that, knowing as she did that a man and his wife are apt to quarrel more violently, when before strangers, than when by themselves, she got up and went out hastily. She was glad, however, to understand from Mary, who came to her of an errand in the evening, that the couple dined together pretty peaceably (the balls of thread, that had caused the difference, being thrown into the kitchen fire).

The story, beginning with the reply of Mrs. Careless to the offensive suggestion of Mr. Careless, is too good not to be reproduced in full.

Mrs. Careless was just then at the Glass, dressing her Head, and turning about with the Pins in her Mouth, "Lord, Child," says she, "are you crazy? What Time has Mary to knit? Who must do the Work, I wonder, if you set her to Knitting?" "Perhaps, my Dear," says he, "you have a mind to knit 'em yourself; I remember, when I courted you, I once heard you say, that you had learn'd to knit of your Mother." "I knit Stockins for you!" says she; "not I truly! There are poor Women enough in Town, that can knit; if you please, you may employ them." "Well, but my Dear," says he, "you know _a penny sav'd is a penny got_, A pin a day is a groat a year, every little makes a muckle, and there is neither Sin nor Shame in Knitting a pair of Stockins; why should you express such a mighty Aversion to it? As to _poor_ Women, you know we are not People of Quality, we have no Income to maintain us but what arises from my Labour and Industry: Methinks you should not be at all displeas'd, if you have an Opportunity to get something as well as myself."

"I wonder," says she, "how you can propose such a thing to me; did not you always tell me you would maintain me like a Gentlewoman? If I had married Captain ----, he would have scorn'd even to mention Knitting of Stockins." "Prithee," says he, (a little nettled,) "what do you tell me of your Captains? If you could have had him, I suppose you would, or perhaps you did not very well like him. If I did promise to maintain you like a Gentlewoman, I suppose 'tis time enough for that, when you know how to behave like one; Meanwhile 'tis your Duty to help make me able. How long, d'ye think, I can maintain you at your present Rate of Living?" "Pray," says she, (somewhat fiercely, and dashing the Puff into the Powder-box,) "don't use me after this Manner, for I assure you I won't bear it. This is the Fruit of your poison Newspapers; there shall come no more here, I promise you." "Bless us," says he, "what an unaccountable thing is this? Must a Tradesman's Daughter, and the Wife of a Tradesman, necessarily and instantly be a Gentlewoman? You had no Portion; I am forc'd to work for a Living; you are too great to do the like; there's the Door, go and live upon your Estate, if you can find it; in short, I don't desire to be troubled w'ye."

And then it was that Celia Single gathered up her skirts and left.

The letter from Alice Addertongue to the editor of the _Gazette_ is exactly in the manner of the _School for Scandal_, written many years later. She is a young girl of about thirty-five, she says, and lives at present with her mother. Like the Emperor, who, if a day passed over his head, during which he had conferred no benefit on any man, was in the habit of saying, _Diem perdidi_, _I have lost a Day_, she would make use of the same expression, were it possible for a day to pass over her head, during which she had failed to scandalize someone; a misfortune, thanks be praised, that had not befallen her these dozen years.

My mother, good Woman, and I [the forked tongue plays precisely as it might have done in the mouth of Lady Sneerwell] have heretofore differ'd upon this Account. She argu'd, that Scandal spoilt all good Conversation; and I insisted, that without it there would be no such Thing. Our Disputes once rose so high, that we parted Tea-Tables, and I concluded to entertain my Acquaintance in the Kitchin. The first Day of this Separation we both drank Tea at the same Time, but she with her Visitors in the Parlor. She would not hear of the least Objection to anyone's Character, but began a new sort of Discourse in some queer philosophical Manner as this; "I am mightily pleas'd sometimes," says she, "when I observe and consider, that the World is not so bad as People out of humour imagine it to be. There is something amiable, some good Quality or other, in everybody. If we were only to speak of People that are least respected, there is such a one is very dutiful to her Father, and methinks has a fine Set of Teeth; such a one is very respectful to her Husband; such a one is very kind to her poor Neighbours, and besides has a very handsome Shape; such a one is always ready to serve a Friend, and in my opinion there is not a Woman in Town that has a more agreable Air and Gait." This fine kind of Talk, which lasted near half an Hour, she concluded by saying, "I do not doubt but everyone of you have made the like Observations, and I should be glad to have the Conversation continu'd upon this Subject." Just at that Juncture I peep'd in at the Door, and never in my Life before saw such a Set of simple vacant Countenances. They looked somehow neither glad, nor sorry, nor angry, nor pleas'd, nor indifferent, nor attentive; but (excuse the Simile) like so many blue wooden images of Rie Doe. I in the Kitchin had already begun a ridiculous Story of Mr. ----'s Intrigue with his Maid, and his Wife's Behaviour upon the Discovery; at some Passages we laugh'd heartily, and one of the gravest of Mama's Company, without making any Answer to her Discourse, got up _to go and see what the Girls were so merry about_: She was follow'd by a Second, and shortly by a Third, till at last the old Gentlewoman found herself quite alone, and, being convinc'd that her Project was impracticable, came herself and finish'd her Tea with us; ever since which _Saul also has been among the Prophets_, and our Disputes lie dormant.

It was in the _Pennsylvania Gazette_, too, that Franklin published his "Dialogue between Philocles and Horatio," in which Philocles twice meets Horatio in the fields, and, in accents full of persuasive blandishment, diverts his feet from the pursuit of sensual pleasure into paths of contentment and peace. In the first dialogue, the moralist takes as his thesis the proposition that self-denial is not only the most reasonable but the most pleasant thing in the world. In the second, he holds up to Horatio the constant and durable happiness, so unlike the chequered, fleeting pleasures of Sense, which springs from acts of humanity, friendship, generosity and benevolence. One maxim in the last dialogue is worth many of the sayings of Poor Richard: "The Foundation of all Virtue and Happiness is Thinking rightly."

Other papers from the hand of Franklin that appeared in the _Gazette_ were _A Witch Trial at Mount Holly_, _An Apology for Printers_, _A Meditation on a Quart Mugg_, _Shavers and Trimmers_, and _Exporting of Felons to the Colonies_.

In the "Witch Trial at Mount Holly," Franklin describes in a highly humorous manner the results of the ordeals to which a man and a woman, accused by a man and a woman of witchcraft, were subjected. One of these ordeals consisted in weighing the accused in scales against a Bible for the purpose of seeing whether it would prove too heavy for them.

Then [the facetious narrative relates] came out of the House a grave, tall Man carrying the Holy Writ before the supposed Wizard etc., (as solemely as the Sword-Bearer of London before the Lord Mayor) the Wizard was first put in the Scale, and over him was read a Chapter out of the Books of Moses, and then the Bible was put in the other Scale, (which, being kept down before) was immediately let go; but, to the great surprize of the Spectators, Flesh and Bones came down plump, and outweighed that great good Book by abundance. After the same Manner the others were served, and their Lumps of Mortality severally were too heavy for Moses and all the Prophets and Apostles.

This ordeal was followed by the Trial by Water. Both accused and accusers were stripped, except that the women were not deprived of their shifts, bound hand and foot and let down into the water by ropes from the side of a barge. The rest is thus told:

The accused man being thin and spare with some Difficulty began to sink at last; but the rest, every one of them, swam very light upon the Water. A Sailor in the Flat jump'd out upon the Back of the Man accused thinking to drive him down to the Bottom; but the Person bound, without any Help, came up some time before the other. The Woman Accuser being told that she did not sink, would be duck'd a second Time; when she swam again as light as before. Upon which she declared, That she believed the Accused had bewitched her to make her so light, and that she would be duck'd again a Hundred Times but she would duck the Devil out of her. The Accused Man, being surpriz'd at his own swimming, was not so confident of his Innocence as before, but said, "If I am a Witch, it is more than I know." The more thinking Part of the Spectators were of Opinion that any Person so bound and placed in the Water (unless they were mere Skin and Bones) would swim, till their breath was gone, and their Lungs fill'd with Water. But it being the general Belief of the Populace that the Women's Shifts and the Garters with which they were bound help'd to support them, it is said they are to be tried again the next Warm Weather, naked.

In the "Apology for Printers," Franklin defends his guild with much point and good sense, in terms modern enough to be fully applicable to newspapers at the present time. It was inspired by the resentment which his advertisement relating to Sea Hens and Black Gowns excited, and, though written in a half-humorous style, states the difficulties of an editor, between his duty to publish everything, and the certainty of private resentment, if he does, with about as much felicity of presentation as they are ever likely to be stated. Among the various solid reasons, set forth in formal numerical sequence, that he gave, by way of mitigation, for publishing the advertisement, he mentioned these, too:

"6. That I got Five Shillings by it.

"7. That none who are angry with me would have given me so much to let it alone."

In answer to the accusation that printers sometimes printed vicious or silly things not worth reading, he charged the fact up to the vicious taste of the public itself. He had known, he said, a very numerous impression of Robin Hood's songs to go off in the Province at 2 s. per book in less than a twelvemonth, when a small quantity of David's Psalms (an excellent version) had lain upon his hands about twice that long.

* * * * *

In the "Meditation on a Quart Mugg" Franklin begins with the exclamation, "WRETCHED, miserable, and unhappy Mug!" and traces with mock sympathy all the misfortunes of its ignoble and squalid career from the time that it is first forced into the company of boisterous sots, who lay all their nonsense, noise, profane swearing, cursing and quarrelling on it, though it speaks not a word, until the inevitable hour when it is broken into pieces, and finds its way for the most part back to Mother Earth. The paper is only a trifle, but a trifle fashioned with no little skill to hit the fancy of an age that, as Franklin's "Drunkard's Vocabulary" (also published in the _Gazette_) shows, had innumerable cant terms for the condition for which the mug was held to such an unjust responsibility.

The paper on "Shavers and Trimmers" is not so happy and well sustained, but its classifications of the different species of persons, answering these descriptions, is not without humor. One sentence in it, when Franklin speaks of the species of Shavers and Trimmers, who "cover (what is called by an eminent Preacher) _their poor Dust_ in tinsel Cloaths and gaudy Plumes of Feathers," reads like a paragraph in the _Courant_. "A competent Share of religious Horror thrown into the Countenance," he says, "with proper Distortions of the Face, and the Addition of a lank Head of Hair, or a long Wig and Band, commands a most profound Respect to Insolence and Ignorance."

The paper on the "Exporting of Felons to the Colonies" is marked by the grim, biting irony of Swift, but was no severer than the practice of setting British criminals at large in America deserved. Such tender parental concern, Franklin said, called aloud for due returns of gratitude and duty, and he suggested that these returns should assume the form of rattlesnakes, "Felons-convict from the Beginning of the World." In the spring of the year, when they first crept out of their holes, they were feeble, heavy, slow and easily taken, and, if a small bounty was allowed per head, some thousands might be collected annually, and transported to Britain. There he proposed that they should be carefully distributed in St. James' Park, in the Spring Gardens, and other pleasure resorts about London, and in the gardens of all the nobility and gentry throughout the nation, but particularly in the gardens of the Prime Ministers, the Lords of Trade and Members of Parliament; for to them they were most particularly obliged. Such a paper, it is needless to say, was better calculated for its purpose than a thousand appeals of the ordinary type would have been.

The speech of Polly Baker is one of the most famous of Franklin's _jeux d'esprit_. The introduction to it states that it was delivered when she was prosecuted for the fifth time for having a bastard child, and with such effect that the court decided not to punish her; indeed with such effect that one of her judges even married her the next day, and in time had fifteen children by her. The perfectly ingenuous manner in which the traverser refuses to admit that she has committed any offence whatever and insists that, in default of honorable suitors, she has but dutifully, though irregularly, complied with the first and great command of nature and nature's God--increase and multiply--is undoubtedly, coarse as it is, a stroke of art, but the performance is too gross for modern scruples.

More decorous reading is the fictitious discourse by a Spanish Jesuit on the "Meanes of disposing the Enemie to Peace," which Franklin, during his first mission to England, contributed to the _London Chronicle_ for the purpose of rousing the English people to a sense of the artifices, that were being employed by the French to build up a party in England for peace at any price. In the introduction to the discourse, it is stated that it was taken from a book containing a number of discourses, addressed by the Jesuit to the King of Spain in 1629, and that nothing was needed to render it _apropos_ to the existing situation of England except the substitution of France for Spain. The discourse points out in detail, with shrewd insight into all the selfish and timid impulses, by which a society is corrupted or enervated, when cunningly practised upon, the different classes in the country of the enemy that could be manipulated in one way or another until no sound but that of Peace, Peace, Peace would be heard from any quarter.

_The Craven Street Gazette_, written in mock court language, and replete with the subtle suggestions of household intimacy, is one of the most exquisite triumphs of Franklin's wit and fancy.

This morning [it begins], Queen Margaret, accompanied by her first maid of honour, Miss Franklin, (Sally Franklin) set out for Rochester. Immediately on their departure, the whole street was in tears--from a heavy shower of rain. It is whispered, that the new family administration which took place on her Majesty's departure, promises, like all other new administrations, to govern much better than the old one.

We hear, that the great person (so called from his enormous size), of a certain family in a certain street, is grievously affected at the late changes, and could hardly be comforted this morning, though the new ministry promised him a roasted shoulder of mutton and potatoes for his dinner.

It is said, that the same great person intended to pay his respects to another great personage this day, at St. James's, it being coronation-day; hoping thereby a little to amuse his grief; but was prevented by an accident, Queen Margaret, or her maid of honour having carried off the key of the drawers, so that the lady of the bed-chamber could not come at a laced shirt for his Highness. Great clamours were made on this occasion against her Majesty.

And so the _Gazette_ goes on, gay and graceful as the play of sunshine on the surface of a dimpled sea, from incident to incident that took place during the absence of Queen Margaret (Mrs. Stevenson) and Miss Franklin, investing each with a ceremonious dignity and importance that never descend to buffoonery.

These are some of the occurrences chronicled as taking place on the first Sunday after the departure of the Queen. Walking up and down in his room we might observe was one of Franklin's ways of taking exercise.

Lord and Lady Hewson walked after dinner to Kensington, to pay their duty to the Dowager, and Dr. Fatsides made four hundred and sixty-nine turns in his dining-room, as the exact distance of a visit to the lovely Lady Barwell, whom he did not find at home; so there was no struggle for and against a kiss, and he sat down to dream in the easy-chair that he had it without any trouble.

And these are some of the observations made under the date of the succeeding Tuesday.

It is remark'd, that the Skies have wept every Day in Craven Street, the Absence of the Queen.

The Publick may be assured that this Morning a certain _great_ Personage was asked very complaisantly by the Mistress of the Household, if he would chuse to have the Blade-Bone of Saturday's Mutton that had been kept for his Dinner to-day _broil'd_ or _cold_. _He answer'd gravely, If there is any Flesh on it, it may be broil'd; if not, it may as well be cold._ Orders were accordingly given for Broiling it. But when it came to Table, there was indeed so very little Flesh, or rather none, (Puss having din'd on it yesterday after Nanny)[57] that if our new Administration had been as good Oeconomists as they would be thought, the Expence of Broiling might well have been saved to the Publick, and carried to the Sinking Fund. It is assured the _great_ Person bears all with infinite Patience. But the Nation is astonish'd at the insolent Presumption, that dares treat so much Mildness in so cruel a manner!

Under the same date is made the announcement that at six o'clock, that afternoon, news had come by the post that her Majesty arrived safely at Rochester on Saturday night. "The Bells," the _Gazette_ adds, "immediately rang--for Candles to illuminate the Parlour, the Court went into Cribbidge, and the Evening concluded with every other Demonstration of Joy." This is followed by a letter to the _Gazette_ from a person signing himself "Indignation," who says that he makes no doubt of the truth of the statement that a certain great person is half-starved on the blade-bone of a sheep by a set of the most careless, worthless, thoughtless, inconsiderate, corrupt, ignorant, blundering, foolish, crafty & knavish ministers that ever got into a house and pretended to govern a family and provide a dinner. "Alas for the poor old England of Craven Street!" this correspondent exclaims, "If they continue in Power another Week, the Nation will be ruined. Undone, totally undone, if I and my Friends are not appointed to succeed them."

This letter is accompanied by another signed, "A Hater of Scandal," which takes "Indignation" to task, and declares that the writer believes that, even if the Angel Gabriel would condescend to be their minister, and provide their dinners, he would scarcely escape newspaper defamation from a gang of hungry, ever-restless, discontented and malicious scribblers. It was a piece of justice, he declared, that the publisher of the _Gazette_ owed to their righteous administration to undeceive the public on this occasion by assuring them of the fact, which is that there was provided and actually smoking on the table under his royal nose at the same instant as the blade-bone as fine a piece of ribs of beef roasted as ever knife was put into, with potatoes, horse-radish, pickled walnuts &c. which his Highness might have eaten, if so he had pleased to do.

Along with the political intelligence and the letters the _Gazette_ also contains these notices and stock quotations:

MARRIAGES, none since our last--but Puss begins to go a Courting.

DEATHS, In the back Closet and elsewhere, many poor Mice.

STOCKS Biscuit--very low. Buckwheat & Indian Meal--both sour. Tea, lowering daily--in the Canister. Wine, shut.

The _Petition of the Letter Z_ was a humorous offshoot of Franklin's Reformed Alphabet. In a formal complaint after the manner of a bill in chancery, to the worshipful Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Censor-General, Z complains that his claims to respect are as good as those of the other letters of the Alphabet, but that he had not only been placed at its tail, when he had as much right as any of his companions to be at its head, but by the injustice of his enemies had been totally excluded from the word WISE and his place filled by a little hissing, crooked, serpentine, venomous letter, called S, though it must be evident to his worship and to all the world that W, I, S, E does not spell _Wize_ but _Wise_. The petition ends with the prayer that, in consideration of his long-suffering and patience, the petitioner may be placed at the head of the Alphabet, and that S may be turned out of the word _wise_, and the Petitioner employed instead of him.

Z did not make out his case, for at the foot of the petition is appended this order: "Mr. Bickerstaff, having examined the allegations of the above petition, judges and determines, that Z be admonished to be content with his station, forbear reflections upon his brother letters, and remember his own small usefulness, and the little occasion there is for him in the Republic of Letters, since S whom he so despises can so well serve instead of him."

Some of the liveliest of the lighter papers of Franklin were written during the course of his French Mission. His inimitable _Journey to the Elysian Fields_ and _Conte_ have already received our attention in an earlier chapter. Among the others was _The Sale of the Hessians_, _The Supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle_, _The Ephemera_, _The Whistle_, his letter to the Abbe de la Roche, communicating to him the _petite chanson a boire_ that he had written forty years before, his letter to the Abbe Morellet on wine, the _Dialogue between him and the Gout_, _The Handsome and Deformed Leg_ and _The Economical Project_. If there was nothing else to support the claim of Franklin to the authorship of _The Sale of the Hessians_, the difficulty of abridging it would be one proof. Its humor is as trenchant as that of Frederick the Great in levying the same toll upon these hirelings, when passing through his dominions on their way to America, pursuant to the mercenary engagements between their German masters and George III., as that levied by him upon other cattle. The paper is thrown into the form of a letter from the Count De Schaumbergh to the Baron Hohendorf, commanding the Hessian troops in America. It begins as follows:

MONSIEUR DE BARON:--On my return from Naples, I received at Rome your letter of the 27th December of last year. I have learned with unspeakable pleasure the courage our troops exhibited at Trenton, and you cannot imagine my joy on being told that of the 1,950 Hessians engaged in the fight, but 345 escaped. There were just 1,605 men killed, and I can not sufficiently commend your prudence in sending an exact list of the dead to my minister in London. This precaution was the more necessary, as the report sent to the English Ministry does not give but 1,455 dead. This would make 483,450 florins instead of 643,500 which I am entitled to demand under our convention. You will comprehend the prejudice which such an error would work in my finances, and I do not doubt you will take the necessary pains to prove that Lord North's list is false and yours correct.

This is another paragraph:

I am about to send to you some new recruits. Don't economize them. Remember glory before all things. Glory is true wealth. There is nothing degrades the soldier like the love of money. He must care only for honour and reputation, but this reputation must be acquired in the midst of dangers. A battle gained without costing the conqueror any blood is an inglorious success, while the conquered cover themselves with glory by perishing with their arms in their hands. Do you remember that of the 300 Lacedaemonians who defended the defile of Thermopylae, not one returned? How happy should I be could I say the same of my brave Hessians!

It is true that their King, Leonidas, perished with them: but things have changed, and it is no longer the custom for princes of the empire to go and fight in America for a cause with which they have no concern.

The Baron is further commended for sending back to Europe that Dr. Crumerus who was so successful in curing dysentery, and is told that it is better that the Hessians should burst in their barracks than fly in a battle, and tarnish the glory of the Count's arms.

Besides [the Count continues], you know that they pay me as killed for all who die from disease, and I don't get a farthing for runaways. My trip to Italy, which has cost me enormously, makes it desirable that there should be a great mortality among them. You will therefore promise promotion to all who expose themselves; you will exhort them to seek glory in the midst of dangers; you will say to Major Maundorff that I am not at all content with his saving the 345 men who escaped the massacre of Trenton. Through the whole campaign he has not had ten men killed in consequence of his orders. Finally, let it be your principal object to prolong the war and avoid a decisive engagement on either side, for I have made arrangements for a grand Italian opera, and I do not wish to be obliged to give it up. Meantime I pray God, my dear Baron de Hohendorf, to have you in his holy and gracious keeping.

The _Supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle_ is distinguished by the same sort of cool, dry mocking verisimilitude. Captain Gerrish, of the New England Militia, is supposed to write a letter in which he says that the members of a recent expedition against the Indians were struck with horror to find among the packages of peltry captured by them eight large ones containing scalps of their unhappy country-folks taken in the last three years by the Seneca Indians from the heads of inhabitants of the frontiers of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and sent by them as a present to Colonel Haldimand, the Governor of Canada; to be forwarded by him to England. The scalps, Captain Gerrish asserts, were accompanied by a curious letter to the Governor from one, James Craufurd. Then is set forth this letter which describes with the minuteness of a mercantile invoice the contents of each of the eight packages of scalps, some of Congress soldiers, some of farmers surprised in their houses at night, some of farmers killed in their houses by day, some of farmers killed in the fields, some of women, some of boys, some of girls and some of little infants ripped from the womb. The contents of several of the packages are described as mixed lots. The letter also fully explains the Indian triumphal marks painted upon the different scalps, which were all cured, dried and stretched like the pelts of the otter or beaver on hoops. The black circle denoted that the victim had perished at night, the little red foot that he had died in defence of his life and family, the little yellow flame that he had been tortured at the stake. The hair braided in the Indian fashion meant that the victim was a mother, other tokens that the victim was a boy or a girl. A band fixed to the hoop of one of the scalps signified that the head to which it had been attached was that of a rebel clergyman. Many gruesome tokens are explained in the same systematic and businesslike manner. Along with several other passages from a speech of Conejogatchie in Council, the letter also communicates one in which the speaker declares that his people wished the scalps to be sent across the water to the great King that he might regard them and be refreshed. In concluding his own letter, Captain Gerrish states that Lieutenant Fitzgerald would have undertaken to convey the scalps to England and to hang them all up some dark night on the trees in St. James' Park, where they could be seen from the King and Queen's Palaces in the morning. But this proposal, the _Chronicle_ says, was not approved in Boston. It was proposed instead to make the scalps up in decent little packets, and to seal and direct them; one to the King containing a sample of every kind for his museum, one to the Queen, with some of women and children; the rest to be distributed among both Houses of Parliament, and a double quantity to be given to the Bishops. The relations of the _Chronicle_ to this production were, of course, as purely fictitious as every other part of it. Associated with the performance, as another publication in the _Chronicle_, is a fictitious letter, too, from Paul Jones to Sir Joseph Yorke, the English Ambassador to Holland, in which he defends himself with considerable spirit from the charge of being a pirate, and reminds Sir Joseph of the freebooting principles upon which England was waging war against America. When he read this letter, Horace Walpole wrote to the Countess of Ossory, "Have you seen in the papers an excellent letter of Paul Jones to Sir Joseph Yorke? Elle nous dit bien des verites! I doubt poor Sir Joseph cannot answer them! Dr. Franklin himself, I should think, was the author. It is certainly written by a first-rate pen, and not by a common man of war."

_The Ephemera_ was addressed to Madame Brillon, and is one of the most justly famous of all Franklin's writings. In a letter to William Carmichael, he states that the thought was partly taken from a little piece of some unknown writer, which he had met with fifty years before in a newspaper. Another proof, we might say in passing, how little disposed Franklin was to borrow from Richard Jackson, or any one else without due acknowledgment.

So dependent is every part of this paper for its effect upon the whole that to quote only a portion of it would be as futile as an effort to divide a bubble without destroying it. These are the precise words in full of this bewitching little production:

You may remember, my dear friend, that when we lately spent that happy day in the delightful garden and sweet society of the Moulin Joly, I stopt a little in one of our walks, and staid some time behind the company. We had been shown numberless skeletons of a kind of little fly, called an ephemera, whose successive generations, we were told, were bred and expired within the day. I happened to see a living company of them on a leaf, who appeared to be engaged in conversation. You know I understand all the inferior animal tongues; my too great application to the study of them is the best excuse I can give for the little progress I have made in your charming language. I listened through curiosity to the discourse of these little creatures; but as they, in their national vivacity, spoke three or four together, I could make but little of their conversation. I found, however, by some broken expressions that I heard now and then, they were disputing warmly on the merit of two foreign musicians, one a _cousin_, the other a _moscheto_; in which dispute they spent their time, seemingly as regardless of the shortness of life as if they had been sure of living a month. Happy people! thought I, you are certainly under a wise, just, and mild government, since you have no public grievances to complain of, nor any subject of contention but the perfections and imperfections of foreign music. I turned my head from them to an old grey-headed one, who was single on another leaf, and talking to himself. Being amused with his soliloquy, I put it down in writing, in hopes it will likewise amuse her to whom I am so much indebted for the most pleasing of all amusements, her delicious company and heavenly harmony.

It was [said he] the opinion of learned philosophers of our race, who lived and flourished long before my time, that this vast world, the Moulin Joly, could not itself subsist more than eighteen hours; and I think there was some foundation for that opinion, since, by the apparent motion of the great luminary that gives life to all nature, and which in my time has evidently declined considerably towards the ocean at the end of our earth, it must then finish its course, be extinguished in the waters that surround us, and leave the world in cold and darkness, necessarily producing universal death and destruction. I have lived seven of those hours, a great age, being no less than four hundred and twenty minutes of time. How very few of us continue so long! I have seen generations born, flourish, and expire. My present friends are the children and grandchildren of the friends of my youth, who _are now_, alas, no more! And I must soon follow them; for, by the course of nature, though still in health, I cannot expect to live above seven or eight minutes longer. What now avails all my toil and labor, in amassing honey-dew on this leaf, which I cannot live to enjoy! What the political struggles I have been engaged in, for the good of my compatriot inhabitants of this bush, or my philosophical studies for the benefit of our race in general! for, in politics, what can laws do without morals? Our present race of ephemerae will in a course of minutes become corrupt, like those of other and older bushes, and consequently as wretched. And in philosophy how small our progress! Alas! art is long, and life is short! My friends would comfort me with the idea of a name, they say, I shall leave behind me; and they tell me I have lived long enough to nature and to glory. But what will fame be to an ephemera who no longer exists? And what will become of all history in the eighteenth hour, when the world itself, even the whole Moulin Joly, shall come to its end, and be buried in universal ruin?

To me, after all my eager pursuits, no solid pleasures now remain, but the reflection of a long life spent in meaning well, the sensible conversation of a few good lady ephemerae, and now and then a kind smile and a tune from the ever amiable _Brillante_.

_The Whistle_, too, was addressed to Madame Brillon and is also one of the most celebrated of Franklin's bagatelles, but is scarcely equal, we think, to the best of them.

In his opinion, Franklin said, they might all draw more good from the world than they did if they would take care not to give too much for whistles. With this foreword, he tells his story. When a child of seven years of age, his friends on a holiday filled his pocket with coppers, and, being charmed with the sound of a whistle that he met by the way in the hands of another boy, he voluntarily offered, and gave all his money for one. He then came home, and went whistling all over the house, much pleased with his whistle, but disturbing the entire family. But his brothers and sisters told him that he had given four times as much for the whistle as it was worth, put him in mind of what good things he might have bought with the rest of the money and laughed at him so much for his folly that he cried with vexation. The lesson, however, was of use to him, so that often, when he was tempted to buy some unnecessary thing, he said to himself, "_Don't give too much for the whistle_," and he saved his money. And so, when he grew up, came into the world and observed the actions of men, he thought he met with many, very many who gave too much for the whistle.

He then mentions who some of these men were, the man ambitious of court favor, the man covetous of political popularity, the miser, the slave of pleasure, the devotee of fashion, the beautiful, sweet-tempered girl, married to an ill-natured brute of a husband, and, after the mention of each, comes the running comment, "This man gives too much for his whistle," or its equivalent.

Yet [Franklin concludes], I ought to have charity for these unhappy people, when I consider, that, with all this wisdom of which I am boasting, there are certain things in the world so tempting, for example, the apples of King John, which happily are not to be bought; for if they were put to sale by auction, I might very easily be led to ruin myself in the purchase, and find that I had once more given too much for the _whistle_.

The reader has already had occasion to know what kind of fruit these apples of King John were, and in whose orchard they grew.

To realize what an indifferent poet Franklin was, and yet at the same time what a master of prose, one has but to first read his _petite chanson a boire_ beginning,

"Fair Venus calls; her voice obey,"

and then his letter to the Abbe Morellet on wine. The letter was written to repay the Abbe for some of his excellent drinking songs.

"In vino veritas," said the sage, [is the way Franklin begins]. Before Noah, when men had nothing but water to drink, they could not find the truth, so they went astray, and became abominably wicked, and were justly exterminated by the water that they were fond of drinking. Good man Noah, seeing that this bad drink had been the death of all his contemporaries, contracted an aversion to it, and God to quench his thirst, created the vine, and revealed to him the art of making wine. With its aid, Noah discovered many and many a truth, and, since his time, the word "divine" has been in use, meaning originally to discover by means of wine.... Since that time, too, all excellent things, even deities themselves, have been called divine or divinities.

Men speak of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage of Cana as a miracle. But this change is worked every day by the goodness of God under our eyes. Witness the water, that falls from the skies upon our vineyards, and then passes into the roots of the vines to be converted into wine, a constant proof that God loves us, and that he is pleased to see us happy. The miracle in question was performed merely to hasten the operation on an occasion of sudden need that made it indispensable.

It is true that God has also taught men how to reduce wine to water; but what kind of water? Why _l'eau-de-vie_.

Franklin then begs his Christian brother to be kindly and beneficent like God and not to spoil his good work. When he saw his table companion pour wine into his glass he should not hasten to pour water into it. Why should he desire to drown the truth? His neighbor was likely to know better what suited him than he. Perhaps he does not like water, perhaps he wishes only a few drops of it out of complaisance to the fashion of the day, perhaps he does not wish another to see how little he puts in his glass. Water then should be offered only to children; it was a false and annoying form of politeness to do otherwise. This the writer told the Abbe as a man of the world, and he would end as he had begun, like a good Christian, by making one very important religious observation suggested by the Holy Scriptures. While the Apostle Paul had gravely advised Timothy to put wine into his water for his health, not one of the Apostles, nor any of the Holy Fathers, had ever advised anyone to put water into wine.

The "Dialogue between Franklin and the Gout" owes its value not so much to its humor as to the knowledge that it incidentally affords us of the personal habits of the former and his intimacy with Madame Helvetius and Madame Brillon. Along with the reproaches and twinges of pain which evoke repeated Ehs! and Ohs! from Franklin, as the colloquy proceeds, the Gout contrives to communicate to us no little information on these subjects in terms in which physiology, hygiene and gallantry are each made to do duty. He tells Franklin that he, the Gout, very well knows that the quantity of meat and drink proper for a man, who takes a reasonable degree of exercise, is too much for another who never takes any. If his, Franklin's, situation in life is a sedentary one, his amusements and recreations at least should be active. He ought to walk or ride, or, if the weather prevents that, play at billiards. But, instead of gaining an appetite for breakfast by salutary exercise, he amuses himself with books, pamphlets or newspapers, which commonly are not worth the reading. Yet he eats an inordinate breakfast, four dishes of tea, with cream, and one or two buttered toasts, with slices of hung beef, which the Gout fancies are not things the most easily digested. Immediately afterwards he sits down to write at his desk or converse with persons who apply to him on business. Thus the time passes till one without any kind of bodily exercise. This might be pardoned out of regard, as Franklin said, for his sedentary condition, but what is his practice after dinner? Walking in the beautiful gardens of those friends with whom he had dined would be the choice of men of sense. His was to be fixed down to chess, where he was found engaged for two or three hours! This was his perpetual recreation, which was the least eligible of any for a sedentary man, because, instead of accelerating the motion of the fluids, the rigid attention it required helped to retard the circulation and obstruct internal secretions. Wrapped in the speculations of this wretched game, he destroyed his constitution. What could be expected from such a course of living but a body replete with stagnant humours, ready to fall a prey to all kinds of dangerous maladies, if he, the Gout, did not occasionally bring him relief by agitating those humors, and so purifying or dissipating them. If it was in some nook or alley in Paris deprived of walks that Franklin played awhile at chess after dinner, this might be excusable, but the same taste prevailed with him in Paris, at Auteuil Montmartre or Sanois, places where there were the finest, gardens and walks, a pure air, beautiful women and most agreeable and instructive conversation; all of which he might enjoy by frequenting the walks. At this point, Franklin, after some more prolonged Ehs! and Ohs!, manages to remind the Gout that it is not fair to say that he takes no exercise when he does so very often in going out to dine and returning in his carriage; but this statement the Gout brushes brusquely aside. That of all imaginable exercises, he asserts, is the most slight and insignificant, if Franklin alludes to the motion of a carriage suspended on springs. By observing the degree of heat obtained by different kinds of motion, we may form an estimate of the quantity of exercise given by each. Thus, for example, if Franklin should turn out to walk in winter with cold feet, in an hour's time he would be in a glow all over; if he should ride on horseback, the same effect would scarcely be perceived by four hours' round trotting, but, if he should loll in a carriage, such as he had mentioned, he might travel all day, and gladly enter the last inn to warm his feet by a fire.[58] Providence has appointed few to roll in carriages, while it has given to all a pair of legs, which are machines infinitely more commodious and serviceable. He should observe, when he walked, that all his weight was alternately thrown from one leg to the other; this occasions a great pressure upon the vessels of the foot, and repels their contents. When relieved by the weight being thrown on the other foot, the vessels of the first are allowed to replenish, and, by a return of this weight, this repulsion again succeeds; thus accelerating the circulation of the blood, with the result that the cheeks are ruddy and the health established.

Behold [the Gout is then artfully made to say], your fair friend at Auteuil (Madame Helvetius); a lady who received from bounteous nature more really useful science, than half a dozen such pretenders to philosophy as you have been able to extract from all your books. When she honours you with a visit, it is on foot. She walks all hours of the day, and leaves indolence, and its concomitant maladies, to be endured by her horses. In this see at once the preservative of her health and personal charms.

Nor does the Gout go off before he is with equal art made to say a flattering word about the Brillons.

You know [he declares], M. Brillon's gardens, and what fine walks they contain; you know the handsome flight of an hundred steps, which lead from the terrace above to the lawn below. You have been in the practice of visiting this amiable family twice a week, after dinner, and it is a maxim of your own, that "a man may take as much exercise in walking a mile, up and down stairs, as in ten on level ground." What an opportunity was here for you to have had exercise in both these ways. Did you embrace it, and how often?

Franklin is bound to admit that he cannot immediately answer the question, and the Gout answers it for him. "Not once," he says, and then goes on to chide Franklin with the fact that, during the summer, he is in the habit of going to M. Brillon's at six o'clock and contenting himself with the view from his terrace, tea and the chess-board, though the charming lady, with her lovely children and friends, are eager to walk with him, and entertain him with their agreeable conversation.

A little more interchange of conversation and poor Franklin in despair asks, "What then would you have me do with my carriage?" and the Gout replies, "Burn it if you choose; you would at least get heat out of it once in this way." In the end, Franklin promises that, if his persecutor will only leave him, he will never more play at chess, but will take exercise daily, and live temperately--a promise the Gout tells him that, with a few months of good health, "will be forgotten like the forms of last year's clouds."

"The Handsome and Deformed Leg" divides the world into two classes, the happy, who fix their eyes on the bright side of things and enjoy everything, and the unhappy, who fix their eyes on the dark side of things, and criticise everything; and thereby render themselves completely odious. An old philosophical friend of his, Franklin said, carefully avoided any intimacy with the latter class of people. He had, like other philosophers, a thermometer to show him the heat of the weather, and a barometer to mark when it was likely to prove good or bad; but, there being no instrument invented to discern at first sight whether a person had their unpleasant disposition, he, for that purpose, made use of his legs, one of which was remarkably handsome, and the other, by some accident, crooked and deformed. If a stranger, at the first interview, regarded his ugly leg more than his handsome one, he doubted him. If he spoke of it and took no notice of the handsome leg, that was sufficient to determine this philosopher to have no further acquaintance with him.

Everybody [concludes Franklin] has not this two-legged Instrument, but every one with a little Attention, may observe Signs of that carping, fault-finding Disposition, & take the same Resolution of avoiding the Acquaintance of those infected with it. I therefore advise those critical, querulous, discontented, unhappy People, that if they wish to be respected and belov'd by others, & happy in themselves they should _leave off looking at the ugly leg_.

"The Economical Project" is a happy combination of humor and prudential instruction, and was written about the time when the Quinquet lamp was an object of general public curiosity. An inquiry having been started on one occasion in his presence, Franklin says, as to whether its brightness was not offset by its lavish consumption of oil, he went home, and to bed, three or four hours after midnight, with his head full of the subject. At about six in the morning, he was awakened by a noise, and was surprised to find his room full of light. At first, he imagined that he was surrounded by a number of Quinquet lamps, but, on rubbing his eyes, he perceived that the light came in at the windows, and, when he got up and looked out to see what caused it, he saw the sun just rising above the horizon. His servant had forgotten the preceding evening to close the shutters. Looking at his watch, and finding that it was but six o'clock, and still thinking it something extraordinary that the sun should rise so early, he consulted an almanac, and ascertained that it was just the hour for sunrise on that day, and, moreover, he learned from the almanac that the sun would rise still earlier every day till towards the end of June. His readers, he was sure, would be as much astonished as he was when they heard that the sun rises so early, and especially when he assured them that it gives light as soon as it rises. He was convinced of this. He was certain of his fact. One could not be more certain of any fact. On repeating his observation the three following mornings, he found always precisely the same result.

Yet when he spoke of the matter it was to incredulous countenances. One auditor, a learned natural philosopher, assured him that he must certainly be mistaken as to the light coming into his room, for, it being well known that there could be no light abroad at that hour, it followed that none could enter from without, and that, of consequence, his open windows, instead of letting in the light, must have only served to let out the darkness. This philosopher, Franklin confessed, puzzled him a little, but subsequent observation confirmed him in his first opinion. On the strength of these facts, Franklin enters upon a series of elaborate calculations to demonstrate that, between the 20th of March and 20th of September, the Parisians, because of their habit of preferring candlelight in the evening to sunlight in the morning, had consumed sixty-four millions and fifty thousand pounds of candles, which, at an average price of thirty sols per pound, made ninety-six millions and seventy-five thousand livres tournois. An immense sum! that the City of Paris might save every year by the economy of using sunshine instead of candles; to say nothing of the period of the year during which the days are shorter. This computation is succeeded by a number of suggestions as to the different means by which such of the Parisians as did not amend their hours upon learning from this paper that it is daylight when the sun rises could be induced to reform their habits.

For his discovery, Franklin further said that he demanded neither place, pension, exclusive privilege nor any other reward whatever. He was looking only to the honor of it. He would not deny, when he was assailed by little, envious minds, that the ancients knew that the sun rises at certain hours. They too possibly had almanacs, but it does not follow that they knew that it gives light as soon as it rises. That was what he claimed as his discovery. It was certainly unknown to the moderns, at least to the Parisians; which to prove he need use but one plain, simple argument. It was impossible that a people as well-instructed, judicious and prudent as any in the world, all professing to be lovers of economy, and subject to onerous taxation, should have lived so long by the smoky, unwholesome and enormously expensive light of candles, if they had really known that they might have as much pure light of the sun for nothing.

_A Letter from China_ in which a sailor, who had passed some time in that country, is made to narrate in a simple, bald way what he saw and experienced while there, is worth reading, if only because of the evidence that it furnishes that almost every trifle from Franklin's pen has a certain literary quality. One sentence in the letter at any rate possesses the true Franklin flavor; that in which the wanderer states that in China stealing, robbing and housebreaking are punished severely, but that cheating is free there in everything, as cheating in horses is among gentlemen in England.

Other humorous or satirical compositions from the hand of Franklin belong to the period between his return from the French mission and his death.

His letter to the _Pennsylvania Gazette_ on the _Abuse of the Press_, deprecates in a familiar and jocular way the scurrilous license which marked the newspaper controversies of the time. After recalling insulting epithets heaped upon other public servants, he mentions that he, too, the unanimous choice as President of the Council and Assembly of Pennsylvania, had been denounced as "_An old Rogue_," who had given his assent to the Federal Constitution merely to avoid the refunding of money that he had purloined from the United States.

There is--indeed [the letter ends], a good deal of manifest _Inconsistency_ in all this, and yet a Stranger, seeing it in your own Prints, tho' he does not believe it all, may probably believe enough of it to conclude, that Pennsylvania is peopled by a Set of the most unprincipled, wicked, rascally and quarrelsome Scoundrels upon the Face of the Globe. I have sometimes, indeed, suspected that those Papers are the Manufacture of foreign Enemies among you, who write with a view of disgracing your Country, and making you appear contemptible and detestable all the World over; but then I wonder at the Indiscretion of your Printers in publishing such Writings! There is, however, one of your _Inconsistencies_ that consoles me a little, which is, that tho' _living_, you give one another the characters of Devils; _dead_, you are all Angels! It is delightful, when any of you die, to read what good Husbands, good Fathers, good Friends, good Citizens, and good Christians you were, concluding with a Scrap of Poetry that places you, with certainty, every one in Heaven. So that I think Pennsylvania a good country _to dye in_, though a very bad one to _live in_.

The _Comparison of the Conduct of the Ancient Jews and of the Anti-Federalists in the United States of America_ belongs to the same category as _Plain Truth_ rather than to the class of writings which Franklin termed "Bagatelles." The parallel, however, between the jealousy, worked upon by insidious men, pretending public good, but with nothing really in view except private interest, which led the Israelites to oppose the establishment of the New Constitution, after the flight from Egypt, and the hostility of the Anti-Federalists to the work of the Convention of 1787, is pursued with such cleverness as to lift it out of the province of the ordinary newspaper essay. There is an unwonted strain of solemnity in its last sentences.

To conclude [Franklin declares], I beg I may not be understood to infer, that our General Convention was divinely inspired, when it form'd the new federal Constitution, merely because that Constitution has been unreasonably and vehemently opposed; yet I must own I have so much Faith in the general Government of the world by _Providence_, that I can hardly conceive a Transaction of such momentous Importance to the Welfare of Millions now existing, and to exist in the Posterity of a great Nation, should be suffered to pass without being in some degree influenc'd, guided, and governed by that omnipotent, omnipresent and beneficent Ruler, in whom all inferior Spirits live, and move, and have their Being.

Of the _Account of the Supremest Court of Judicature in Pennsylvania, viz., the Court of the Press_, in which Franklin suggested that formal cognizance should be taken of the Cudgel as well as of the Liberty of the Press, we have already said enough.

The pretended speech of Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim, a member of the Divan of Algiers against the Petition of the Erika or Purists, asking that Piracy and Slavery be abolished, was written by him on the eve of his death, and is one of his best satirical thrusts. It was a parody on a speech that had been lately delivered in Congress in defence of negro slavery by Mr. Jackson of Georgia, and its wit consists in the art with which it appositely urges in justification of the Algerian practice of plundering and enslaving Christians all the considerations urged by Jackson in his plea for African slavery. In his letter, conveying Sidi's speech to the _Federal Gazette_, Franklin states that it might be found in Martin's Account of the former's consulship, anno 1687, and we are told that this statement caused many persons to apply to bookstores and libraries for Martin's supposed work. Then, as now, there could be no better means for determining how matter-of-fact a person was than to test his sense of humor with one of Franklin's facetious cheats.

The exact time at which the _Petition of the Left Hand to those who have the Superintendency of Education_ was written is unknown. Its _motif_ is not unlike that of the _Petition of the Letter Z_. It complains that from infancy the petitioner had been led to consider her sister as a being of more elevated rank. She had been suffered to grow up without the least instruction while nothing was spared in the education of the latter, who had had masters to teach her writing, drawing, music and other accomplishments. If by chance the Petitioner touched a pencil, a pen or a needle, she was bitterly rebuked, and more than once had been beaten for being awkward and wanting a graceful manner.

But conceive not Sirs [says the left hand further], that my complaints are instigated merely by vanity. No; my uneasiness is occasioned by an object much more serious. It is the practice in our family, that the whole business of providing for its subsistence falls upon my sister and myself. If any indisposition should attack my sister,--and I mention it in confidence upon this occasion, that she is subject to the gout, the rheumatism, and cramp, without making mention of other accidents,--what would be the fate of our poor family? Must not the regret of our parents be excessive, at having placed so great a difference between sisters who are so perfectly equal? Alas! we must perish from distress; for it would not be in my power even to scrawl a suppliant petition for relief, having been obliged to employ the hand of another in transcribing the request which I have now the honour to prefer to you.

One of the essays of Franklin is an essay which he termed a "bagatelle," but which is of a different cast from most of his papers bearing that designation. This is the essay on the _Morals of Chess_. As a mere literary production, it possesses remarkable merit, but it is more valuable still for the singular union of wisdom and benevolence found in all of the writer's precepts relating to the conduct of life. It is only upon the contracted face of an ordinary chess-board that the sagacious reflections and salutary counsels of this paper are based, but many of them are quite extensive enough in their application to be suitable for the morals of the wider chess-board on which men and women themselves are the pawns, and the universal currents of human nature and human existence the players. By playing at chess, Franklin thought, we may learn foresight, circumspection, caution and hopefulness. When playing it, if the agreement is that the rules of the game shall be strictly observed, they should be strictly observed by both parties. If the agreement is that they shall not be strictly observed, one party should claim no indulgence for himself that he is not willing to grant to his adversary. No false move should ever be made by a player to extricate himself from a difficulty or to gain an advantage. There can be no pleasure in playing with a person once detected in such an unfair practice. If your adversary is long in playing, you should not hurry him, or express any uneasiness at his delay, nor sing, nor whistle, nor look at your watch, nor take up a book to read, nor tap with your feet on the floor, or with your fingers on the table, nor do anything that may disturb his attention. For all these things displease, and they do not show your skill in playing but your craftiness or your rudeness.

* * * * *

You should not endeavor to amuse and deceive your adversary by pretending to have made bad moves in order to render him confident and careless and inattentive to your schemes. This is fraud and deceit, not skill. If you gain the victory, you should not give way to exultation or insult, nor show too much pleasure. On the contrary, you should endeavor to console your adversary, and soothe his wounded pride by every sort of civil expression that may be used with truth, such as, "You understand the game better than I, but you are a little inattentive," or "You play too fast," or "You had the best of the game, but something happened to divert your thoughts, and that turned it in my favour." If you are simply a spectator, you should observe the most perfect silence; for, if you give advice, you offend both parties, him, against whom you give it, because it may cause the loss of his game, him, in whose favour you give it, because though it be good, and he follows it, he loses the pleasure he might have had, if you had permitted him to think until it had occurred to himself.

And thus this essay, so full of wholesome, kind advice from a counsellor, who loved men none the less because he knew all their failings and foibles as well as virtues, continues a little longer, until the reader, already won over to its perfect rectitude of sentiment and purpose, entirely forgets how obvious are all the truisms of its stating that he has so often offended. The measure of self-abnegation, suggested by the conclusion of the essay, is, we fear, rather too exacting for the tug of chess-board selfishness upon the weaker side of human nature. If it is agreed that the rules of the game are not to be rigorously enforced, then, says Franklin, moderate your desire of victory over your adversary, and be pleased with one over yourself. Do not snatch eagerly at every advantage offered by his unskilfulness or inattention, but point out to him kindly that by such a move he places or leaves a piece in danger and unsupported; or that by another he will put his king in a perilous situation &c. "By this generous civility (so opposite to the unfairness above forbidden) you may, indeed, happen to lose the game to your opponent," the close of the essay declares, "but you will win what is better, his esteem, his respect, and his affection, together with the silent approbation and goodwill of impartial spectators."

We shall not linger upon the letters of Franklin. The substance of them has already been worked into this book too freely for that. It is sufficient to say that they are among the very best in the English language. It would be idle to compare them with those of Gray, Horace Walpole, Cowper, Byron or Fitzgerald, the acknowledged masters of that form of composition. Franklin was not a conscious man of letters at all, and is not to be judged by such academic standards. If he was, we might say that Cowper aerated with a little of Walpole most nearly, though, after all, but remotely, suggests a true conception of what Franklin was as a letter-writer. Few men were ever saner than Cowper was during his really lucid intervals; but then Cowper was not a man of business, a statesman or a philosopher, and the elixir of Walpole's gaiety differs from that of Franklin's as a stimulant of the wine-shop differs from fresh air and sunshine. The official and semi-official letters of Franklin contain some of the most solid and sagacious of his reflections and observations on political topics. His familiar letters to his kinsfolk and friends often run out into thoughts upon the management of our individual lives and our relations to the visible and invisible universe which are likely to be a part of the currency of human wisdom as long as human society lasts. And almost all of his known letters have value enough to make us feel, when still another of the thousands written by him happens to be reclaimed from loss, as Reuben in his parable might have felt, if he had recovered his precious axe.

Among the cleverest of his letters was his familiar one to his daughter on the Order of the Cincinnati. If his advice had been asked, he said, he perhaps would not have objected to their wearing their ribbon and badge themselves, if they derived pleasure from such trivial things, but he certainly should have objected to the idea of making the honor hereditary. And this was the amusing and original way in which he presented his views on the subject:

For Honour, worthily obtain'd (as for Example that of our Officers), is in its Nature a _personal_ Thing, and incommunicable to any but those who had some Share in obtaining it. Thus among the Chinese, the most ancient, and from long Experience the wisest of Nations, honour does not _descend_, but _ascends_. If a man from his Learning, his Wisdom, or his Valour, is promoted by the Emperor to the Rank of Mandarin, his Parents are immediately entitled to all the same Ceremonies of Respect from the People, that are establish'd as due to the Mandarin himself; on the supposition that it must have been owing to the Education, Instruction, and good Example afforded him by his Parents, that he was rendered capable of serving the Publick.

This _ascending_ Honour is therefore useful to the State, as it encourages Parents to give their Children a good and virtuous Education. But the _descending Honour_, to Posterity who could have no Share in obtaining it, is not only groundless and absurd, but often hurtful to that Posterity, since it is apt to make them proud, disdaining to be employ'd in useful Arts, and thence falling into Poverty, and all the Meannesses, Servility, and Wretchedness attending it; which is the present case with much of what is called the _Noblesse_ in Europe. Or if to keep up the Dignity of the Family, Estates are entailed entire on the Eldest male heir, another Pest to Industry and Improvement of the Country is introduc'd, which will be followed by all the odious mixture of pride and Beggary, and idleness, that have half depopulated [and _decultivated_] Spain; occasioning continual Extinction of Families by the Discouragements of Marriage [and neglect in the improvement of estates].

I wish, therefore, that the Cincinnati, if they must go on with their Project, would direct the Badges of their Order to be worn by their Parents, instead of handing them down to their Children. It would be a good Precedent, and might have good Effects. It would also be a kind of Obedience to the Fourth Commandment, in which God enjoins us to honour our Father and Mother, but has nowhere directed us to honour our Children. And certainly no mode of honouring those immediate Authors of our Being can be more effectual, than that of doing praiseworthy Actions, which reflect Honour on those who gave us our Education; or more becoming, than that of manifesting, by some public Expression or Token, that it is to their Instruction and Example we ascribe the Merit of those Actions.

But the Absurdity of _descending Honours_ is not a mere Matter of philosophical Opinion; it is capable of mathematical Demonstration. A Man's Son, for instance, is but half of his Family, the other half belonging to the Family of his Wife. His Son, too, marrying into another Family, his Share in the Grandson is but a fourth; in the Great Grandson, by the same Process, it is but an Eighth; in the next Generation a Sixteenth; the next a Thirty-second; the next a Sixty-fourth; the next an Hundred and Twenty-eighth; the next a Two hundred and Fifty-sixth; and the next a Five hundred and twelfth; thus in nine Generations, which will not require more than 300 years (no very great Antiquity for a Family), our present Chevalier of the Order of Cincinnatus's Share in the then existing Knight, will be but a 512th part; which, allowing the present certain Fidelity of American Wives to be insur'd down through all those Nine Generations, is so small a Consideration, that methinks no reasonable Man would hazard for the sake of it the disagreeable Consequences of the Jealousy, Envy, and Ill will of his Countrymen.

Let us go back with our Calculation from this young Noble, the 512th part of the present Knight, thro' his nine Generations, till we return to the year of the Institution. He must have had a Father and Mother, they are two. Each of them had a Father and Mother, they are four. Those of the next preceding Generation will be eight, the next Sixteen, the next thirty-two, the next sixty-four, the next one hundred and Twenty-eight, the next Two hundred and fifty-six, and the ninth in this Retrocession Five hundred and twelve, who must be now existing, and all contribute their Proportion of this future _Chevalier de Cincinnatus_. These, with the rest, make together as follows:

2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 ---- 1022

One Thousand and Twenty-two Men and Women, contributors to the formation of one Knight. And if we are to have a Thousand of these future Knights, there must be now and hereafter existing One Million and Twenty-two Thousand Fathers and Mothers, who are to contribute to their Production, unless a Part of the Number are employ'd in making more Knights than One. Let us strike off then the 22,000, on the Supposition of this double Employ, and then consider whether, after a reasonable Estimation of the Number of Rogues, and Fools, and Royalists and Scoundrels and Prostitutes, that are mix'd with, and help to make up necessarily their Million of Predecessors, Posterity will have much reason to boast of the noble Blood of the then existing Set of Chevaliers de Cincinnatus. [The future genealogists, too, of these Chevaliers, in proving the lineal descent of their honour through so many generations (even supposing honour capable in its nature of descending), will only prove the small share of this honour, which can be justly claimed by any one of them; since the above simple process in arithmetic makes it quite plain and clear that, in proportion as the antiquity of the family shall augment, the right to the honour of the ancestor will diminish; and a few generations more would reduce it to something so small as to be very near an absolute nullity.] I hope, therefore, that the Order will drop this part of their project, and content themselves, as the Knights of the Garter, Bath, Thistle, St. Louis, and other Orders of Europe do, with a Life Enjoyment of their little Badge and Ribband, and let the Distinction die with those who have merited it. This I imagine will give no offence. For my own part, I shall think it a Convenience, when I go into a Company where there may be Faces unknown to me, if I discover, by this Badge, the Persons who merit some particular Expression of my Respect; and it will save modest Virtue the Trouble of calling for our Regard, by awkward roundabout Intimations of having been heretofore employ'd in the Continental Service.

The Gentleman, who made the Voyage to France to provide the Ribands and Medals, has executed his Commission. To me they seem tolerably done; but all such Things are criticis'd. Some find Fault with the Latin, as wanting classic Elegance and Correctness; and, since our Nine Universities were not able to furnish better Latin, it was pity, they say, that the Mottos had not been in English. Others object to the Title, as not properly assumable by any but Gen. Washington, [and a few others] who serv'd without Pay. Others object to the _Bald Eagle_ as looking too much like a _Dindon_, or Turkey. For my own Part, I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen as the Representative of our Country; he is a Bird of bad moral Character; he does not get his living honestly; you may have seen him perch'd on some dead Tree, near the River where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing-Hawk; and, when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the support of his Mate and young ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him, and takes it from him. With all this Injustice he is never in good Case; but, like those among Men who live by Sharping and Robbing, he is generally poor, and often very lousy. Besides, he is a rank Coward; the little _King Bird_, not bigger than a Sparrow, attacks him boldly and drives him out of the District. He is therefore by no means a proper emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America, who have driven all the _King-birds_ from our Country; though exactly fit for that Order of Knights, which the French call _Chevaliers d'Industrie_.

I am, on this account, not displeas'd that the Figure is not known as a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turk'y. For in Truth, the Turk'y is in comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America. Eagles have been found in all Countries, but the Turk'y was peculiar to ours; the first of the Species seen in Europe being brought to France by the Jesuits from Canada, and serv'd up at the Wedding Table of Charles the Ninth. He is, [though a little vain and silly, it is true, but not the worse emblem for that,] a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards, who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a _red_ Coat on.

Nor need we dwell longer either upon Franklin as a poet. Considered seriously as such, he was undoubtedly one of the kind, that, as Horace says, neither Gods nor men can endure. But he should not be seriously regarded as a poet at all. We should bring no severer judgment, to his couplets than was brought to them by the plowmen and frontiersmen, who kept _Poor Richard's Almanac_ suspended over their mantelpieces; and his anacreontics should be read, as they were sung, after the edge of criticism has been dulled by a bottle or so. It is only fair to Poor Richard, however, to say that no one had a poorer opinion of his gifts as a poet than himself. "I know as thee," he says in one of his prefaces, "that I am no _Poet born_: and it is a Trade I never learnt, nor indeed could learn. _If I make Verses, 'tis in Spight of Nature and my Stars, I write._" In another preface, after honoring his friend Taylor, of Ephemerides fame, with a considerable number of lines, he exclaims: "Souse down into Prose again, my Muse; for Poetry's no more thy Element, than Air is that of the Flying-Fish." And we need go no further than one of Franklin's lively letters to Polly, at which we have already glanced, to satisfy ourselves that he placed quite as low an estimate on his verses as Poor Richard did on his. Speaking of the Muse, which he mentioned in his letter as having visited him that morning, he observes in his light-hearted way:

This Muse appear'd to be no Housewife. I suppose few of them are. She was _drest_ (if the Expression is allowable) in an _Undress_, a kind of slatternly _Negligee_, neither neat nor clean, nor well made; and she has given the same sort of Dress to my Piece. On reviewing it, I would have reform'd the lines and made them all of a Length, as I am told Lines ought to be; but I find I can't lengthen the short ones without stretching them on the Rack, and I think it would be equally cruel to cut off any Part of the long ones. Besides the Superfluity of _these_ makes up for the Deficiency of _those_; and so, from a Principle of Justice, I leave them at full Length, that I may give you, at least in one Sense of the Word, _good Measure_.

Of all the productions of Franklin, the _Autobiography_ and _Poor Richard's Almanac_, are those upon which his literary fame will chiefly rest. Of the former, we have already said too much to say much more about it. It is the only thing written by Franklin that can properly be called a book, and even it is marked by the brevity which he regarded as one of the essentials of good writing. If he did not write other books, it was not, so far as we can see, because, as has been charged, he lacked constructive capacity, but rather because, when he resorted to the pen, he did it not for literary celebrity, but for practical purposes of the hour, best subserved by brief essays or papers. It is true that in writing the early chapters of the _Autobiography_, which brought his life down to the year 1730, he was not exactly writing for the moment, but, still, the motive by which he was actuated was a purely practical one. "They were written to my Son," he said in a letter to Matthew Carey, "and intended only as Information to my Family." Even in the later chapters, which brought his life down to his fiftieth year, he still had a similar incentive to literary effort, highly congenial with the general bent of his character, that is to say, the opportunity that they afforded him to point to his business success as an example of what might be accomplished by frugality and industry. "What is to follow," he wrote to the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, "will be of more important Transactions: But it seems to me that what is done will be of more general Use to young Readers; as exemplifying strongly the Effects of prudent and imprudent Conduct in the Commencement of a Life of Business." Two days later, he wrote to Benjamin Vaughan from Philadelphia that he was diligently employed in writing the _Autobiography_, to which his persuasions had not a little contributed.

To shorten the work [he said], as well as for other reasons, I omit all facts and transactions, that may not have a tendency to benefit the young reader, by showing him from my example, and my success in emerging from poverty, and acquiring some degree of wealth, power, and reputation, the advantages of certain modes of conduct which I observed, and of avoiding the errors which were prejudicial to me.

To the limited nature of the inducements to the composition of the _Autobiography_, disclosed by these letters, it was due that the interest of Franklin in the subsequent continuation of the work was too languid for the completion of the whole plan of the _Autobiography_, as intimated in the Hints which he gives of its intended scope, notwithstanding the urgent appeals which his friends never ceased to make to him to complete it.

If one of the effects of the fearless self-arraignment of the _Autobiography_ has been to lower the standing of Franklin in some respects with posterity, we should remember the unselfish motive, which induced him to turn his youthful errors to the profit of others, and also the fact that he had his own misgivings about the bearing upon his reputation of such outspoken self-exposure, and submitted the propriety of publishing the _Autobiography_ unreservedly to the judgment of friends who were certainly competent judges in every regard of what the moral sense of their time would approve.

I am not without my Doubts concerning the Memoirs, whether it would be proper to publish them, or not, at least during my Life time [he wrote to the Duc de la Rochefoucauld], and I am persuaded there are many Things that would, in Case of Publication, be best omitted; I therefore request it most earnestly of you, my dear Friend, that you would examine them carefully & critically, with M. Le Veillard, and give me your candid & friendly Advice thereupon, as soon as you can conveniently.

Later, he wrote to Benjamin Vaughan from Philadelphia that he had, of late, been so interrupted by extreme pain, which obliged him to have recourse to opium, that, between the effects of both, he had but little time, in which he could write anything, but that his grandson was copying what was done, which would be sent to Vaughan for his opinion by the next vessel; for he found it a difficult task to speak decently and properly of one's own conduct, and felt the want of a judicious friend to encourage him in scratching out. The next time that Franklin wrote to Vaughan it was when opium alone could render existence tolerable to him, but in the interim, he had happily discovered that he could dictate even when he could not write.

What is already done [he said] I now send you, with an earnest request that you and my good friend Dr. Price [later in the letter he calls him "my dear Dr. Price"] would be so good as to take the trouble of reading it, critically examining it, and giving me your candid opinion whether I had best publish or suppress it; and if the first, then what parts had better be expunged or altered. I shall rely upon your opinions, for I am now grown so old and feeble in mind, as well as body, that I can not place any confidence in my own judgment.

Of the same tenor was a still later letter to M. Le Veillard, in which Franklin expressed the hope that Le Veillard would, with the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, read the Memoirs over carefully, examine them critically and send him his friendly, candid opinion of the parts that he would advise him to correct or expunge, in case he should think that the work was generally proper to be published, but, if he judged otherwise, that he would inform him of that fact, too, as soon as possible, and prevent him from incurring further trouble in the endeavor to finish the work. The world has reason to be thankful that the fate of the _Autobiography_ should thus have been left to the decision of men who, even if they had not lived in the eighteenth century, would have been robust enough, in point of intelligence and morals, to believe that the youthful _errata_ laid bare in that book were more than atoned for by the manly and generous aims that inspired it.

Of the _Autobiography_ it is enough now to say that it is one of the few books which have arrested and permanently riveted the attention of the whole civilized world. Commenting in it on the copy of _Pilgrim's Progress_, "in Dutch, finely printed on good paper, with copper cuts," which the drunken Dutchman, whom he drew up by the shock-pate from the waters of New York Bay, on his first journey to Philadelphia, handed to him to dry, Franklin says: "I have since found that it has been translated into most of the languages of Europe, and suppose it has been more generally read than any other book, except perhaps the Bible." The _Autobiography_ is hardly less popular. It, too, has been translated into most of the languages of Europe, and has been printed and reprinted until it is one of the most widely-read books in existence. Such it is likely to remain always, not simply because it was written by a very famous man, who possessed, to an extraordinary degree, the power of impressing his thoughts and fancies on the hearts and imagination of the human race, but because it tells a story of self-conquest and self-promotion full of warning, guidance and hope for every human being, who wishes to make the best of his own opportunities and powers. As a mere composition, dressed though it is like the poetic Muse described by Franklin in his letter to Polly "in a kind of slatternly Negligee," it is one of the masterpieces of literature. Its very careless loquacity is but suggestive of a mind overflowing with its own profusion of experience and reflection. There is no better test of the extent, to which a writer has proved himself equal to the highest possibilities of his art, than to ask how readily his conceptions can be pictured; for the mind of a great writer is but a gallery hung with such pictures as the painter reduces to material form and color. Tried by this test, the universal popularity of the _Autobiography_ can be readily understood. The Book of Genesis, the plays of Shakespeare, _Pilgrim's Progress_, the novels of Sir Walter Scott, are not more easily illustrated than are the incidents depicted to the life in its early chapters. Some of them wear a hard and coarse aspect as if they had been struck off from ruder plates than any belonging to the present state of the art of engraving, but this is only another proof of the fidelity of Franklin to his eighteenth century background. We might as well quarrel with the squalor and sluttishess of Hogarth's scenes.

_Poor Richard's Almanac_, including the "Way to Wealth," or Father Abraham's Speech is Franklin's other master-work. One would hardly look to almanac-making for a classic contribution to letters, but it is not extravagant to say that Poor Richard is one of the most lifelike figures in the literature of the world. Nestor, Falstaff, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Sir Roger de Coverley, Captain Dugald Dalgetty and Colonel Newcome are not more distinctly delineated, or rather we should say are not more manifest to the eye and palpable to the touch. To the people of Pennsylvania, its tradesmen, its farmers, even its rude borderers, he was a personage fully as real as the colonial governor at Philadelphia, and far more popular. Thousands of its inhabitants never turned over the pages of any other book except those of the Bible. And finally the wise sayings of Poor Richard, in the form of the "Way to Wealth," applicable as they were to the primal and universal conditions of human existence everywhere, became known from the Thames to the Ganges. The middle of the eighteenth century was the heyday of almanac-making, and the best proof of the durable stuff, of which _Poor Richard's Almanac_ was woven, is the utter oblivion that has overtaken all his competitors except those who are preserved in his pages like flies in amber. The prefaces of _Poor Richard_, the proverbial maxims with which his almanacs are bestrewn, the compendious speech on which these maxims are finally strung like bright beads, have survived, because they were adapted, with consummate art, to the simple habits and mental wants of the rude audience, to which they were addressed. For upwards of thirty years, Poor Richard, with a distinctness and consistency of character as perfect as those of Santa Claus, made his annual bow to the People of Pennsylvania, and served up to their delighted palates his highly seasoned _ollapodrida_ of mock astrology, homely wisdom and coarse jollity in prose and verse. Sometimes the humor is mere horse laughter. But always the shrewd, worldly-wise, merry-tempered old philomath and stargazer hits the fancy of his readers with unerring accuracy between wind and water. His weather predictions and prognostications of planetary conjunctions are just serious enough for unlettered rustics whose minds have been partially but not wholly disabused of the belief that rain comes with the change of the moon. His proverbs are the proverbs of men whose lives are too meagre and straitened to permit them to forget his saying that if you will not hear Reason she'll surely rap your knuckles. His humor is the humor of men whose grave, weather-beaten features do not relax into a smile or grin except under the compelling influence of some broad joke or ridiculous spectacle. Just as the most successful inventor is the one who invents the device that has the widest application to material uses, so the most successful writer is the one who conceives the thoughts that have the widest application to the moral and intellectual needs of mankind. The thoughts that Poor Richard conceived or adopted are such thoughts; for what he taught was full of significance to every man who desires to obtain a correct insight into the moral and economic laws that govern the world for the purpose of winning its favor; which means all men except those who either prey on the world or merely drift along with its current.

In the Prefaces to his _Almanac_, Poor Richard manages to keep both his wife Bridget and himself close to the footlights. In the first preface, he says that, if he were to declare that he wrote almanacs with no other view than of the public good, he should not be sincere.

The plain Truth of the Matter is [he confesses], I am excessive poor, and my Wife, good Woman, is, I tell her, excessive proud; she cannot bear, she says, to sit spinning in her Shift of Tow, while I do nothing but gaze at the Stars; and has threatned more than once to burn all my Books and Rattling-Traps (as she calls my Instruments) if I do not make some profitable Use of them for the Good of my Family.

In the preface of the succeeding year he announces that the patronage of his readers the year before had made his circumstances much easier. His wife had been enabled to get a pot of her own, and was no longer obliged to borrow one from a neighbor; nor had they ever since been without something of their own to put in it. She had also got a pair of shoes, two new shifts, and a new, warm petticoat, and for his part he had bought a second-hand coat, so good that he was no longer ashamed to go to town or be seen there. These things had rendered Bridget's temper so much more pacific than it used to be that he might say that he had slept more, and more quietly within the last year than in the three foregoing years put together.

In a later preface, he declares that, if the generous purchaser of his labors could see how often his fi-pence helped to light up the comfortable fire, line the pot, fill the cup and make glad the heart of a poor man and an honest good old woman, he would not think his money ill laid out, though the almanac of his Friend and Servant, R. Saunders, were one half blank paper.

A year later, Mistress Saunders avails herself of the fact that her good man had set out the week before for Potowmack to visit an old stargazer of his acquaintance, and to see about a little place for the couple to settle, and end their days on, to scratch out the preface to the copy of the almanac for that year which he had left behind him for the press, because it had undertaken to let the world know that she, who had already been held out in former prefaces as proud and loud and the possessor of a new petticoat, had lately, forsooth, taken a fancy to drink a little tea now and then. Upon looking over the months, she saw that he had put in abundance of foul weather this year, and therefore she had scattered here and there, where she could find room, some fair, pleasant sunshiny days for the good women to dry their clothes in. If what she promised did not come to pass, she would at any rate have shown her goodwill.

In the next preface, referring to the impression that the great yearly demand for his almanac had made him so rich that he should call himself Poor Dick no longer, and pretending that he and the printer were different persons, Poor Richard says:

When I first begun to publish, the Printer made a fair Agreement with me for my copies, by Virtue of which he runs _away with_ the greatest Part of the Profit--However much good may't do him; I do not grudge it him; he is a Man I have a great Regard for, and I wish his Profit ten times greater than it is. For I am, dear Reader, his as well as thy

_Affectionate Friend_, R. SAUNDERS.

But the five pence came in too rapidly for the almanac-maker to persist in putting up a poor mouth of this kind. In his twelfth year, after frankly admitting that he had labored not for the benefit of the public but for the benefit of his own dear self, not forgetting in the meantime his gracious consort and Duchess, the peaceful, quiet, silent Lady Bridget, he states that, whether his labors had been of any service to the public or not, he must acknowledge that they had been of service to him.

It was by such personal touches as these that Poor Richard made Bridget and himself as familiar to his patrons as the signs of the Zodiac. Astrology itself was, of course, too good a subject for keen ridicule to be spared. Formerly, Poor Richard declares in one preface, no prince would make war or peace, nor any general fight a battle without first consulting an astrologer, who examined the aspects and configurations of the heavenly bodies, and marked the lucky hour. But "now," he goes on, "the noble art (more shame to the age we live in) is dwindled into contempt; the Great neglect us, Empires make Leagues, and Parliaments Laws without advising with us; and scarce any other use is made of our learned labours than to find the best time of cutting corns or gelding Pigs."

In many sly ways, Poor Richard let his readers know that his forecasts are not to be accepted too seriously. It is no wonder, he says in his fifth preface, that, among the multitude of astrological predictions, some few should fail; for, without any defect in the art itself, 'tis well known that a small error, a single wrong figure overseen in a calculation, may occasion great mistakes, but, however the almanac-makers might miss it in other things, he believed it would be generally allowed that they always hit the day of the month, and that, he supposed, was esteemed one of the most useful things in an almanac. In another issue of the almanac, he indulges in a great variety of confident predictions as to the year 1739. The crabs will go sidelong and the rope-makers backwards, the belly will wag before, and another part of the body, which we shall not name, but he does, will sit down first, Mercury will so confound the speech of people that, when a Pennsylvanian will wish to say panther, he will say _painter_, and, when a New Yorker will attempt to say _this_, he will say _diss_, and the people of New England and Cape May will not be able to say _cow_ for their lives, but will be forced to say _keow_ by a certain involuntary twist in the root of their tongues. As for Connecticut men and Marylanders, they will not be able to open their mouths but _sir_ shall be the first or last syllable they will pronounce, and sometimes both.

Some of his other predictions are that the stone blind will see but very little, the deaf will hear but poorly and the dumb will not speak very plain, while whole flocks, herds and droves of sheep, swine and oxen, cocks and hens, ducks and drakes, geese and ganders will go to pot, but the mortality will not be altogether so great among cats, dogs and horses. As for age, it will be incurable because of the years past, and, towards the fall, some people will be seized with an unaccountable inclination to eat their own ears. But the worst disease of all will be a certain most horrid, dreadful, malignant, catching, perverse and odious malady, almost epidemical, insomuch that many will run mad upon it. "I quake for very Fear," exclaims Poor Richard, "when I think on't; for I assure you very few will escape this Disease, which is called by the learned Albumazar _Lacko'mony_."

That the orange trees in Greenland will go near to fare the worse for the cold, that oats will be a great help to horses and that there will not be much more bacon than swine, are still other prophecies hazarded by the astrologer.

In another preface, he declares that he has gone into retirement, and that it is time for an old man such as he is to think of preparing for his Great Remove. Then follow these impatient statements:

The perpetual Teasing of both Neighbours and Strangers, to calculate Nativities, give Judgments on Schemes, erect Figures, discover Thieves, detect Horse-Stealers, describe the Route of Run-a-ways and stray'd Cattle; the Croud of Visitors with a 1000 trifling Questions; _will my Ship return Safe?_ _Will my Mare win the Race?_ _Will her next Colt be a Pacer?_ _When will my Wife die?_ _Who shall be my Husband, and HOW LONG first?_ _When is the best time to cut Hair, trim Locks or sow Sallad?_ These and the like Impertinences I have now neither Taste nor Leisure for. I have had enough of 'em. All that these angry Folks can say, will never provoke me to tell them where I live. I would eat my Nails first.

At times the horse laughter is even slightly flavored with the stercoraceous smell of the stable.

Ignorant Men [says Poor Richard in his seventh preface] wonder how we Astrologers foretell the Weather so exactly, unless we deal with the old black Devil. Alas! 'tis as easy as.... For Instance; the Stargazer peeps at the heavens thro' a long Glass: He sees perhaps TAURUS, or the Great Bull, in a mighty Chafe, stamping on the Floor of his House, swinging his Tail about, stretching out his Neck, and opening wide his Mouth. 'Tis natural from these Appearances to judge that this furious Bull is puffing, blowing and roaring. Distance being consider'd and Time allow'd for all this to come down, there you have Wind and Thunder. He spies perhaps VIRGO (or the Virgin;) she turns her Head round as it were to see if anybody observ'd her; then crouching down gently, with her Hands on her Knees, she looks wistfully for a while right forward. He judges rightly what she's about: And having calculated the Distance and allow'd Time for its Falling, finds that next Spring we shall have a fine _April_ shower.

In his preface for 1754, Poor Richard advances the proposition that the first astrologers were honest husbandmen, and he proceeds to prove it partly by the names of the Zodiacal signs, which were related for the most part, he asserts, to rural affairs. The Ram, the Bull, the Twins, the Crab, the Lion, the Wench, the Balance, the Scorpion, the Archer, the Goat, the Waterbearer, the Fish, one by one he tells them off in the course of his demonstration, making his own comments on their several meanings as he goes along. The Lion and the Wench, he says, were intended by the Ancients to mark the summer months and dog days when those creatures were most mischievous. The Balance, one of the autumnal signs, was intended by them to mark out the time for weighing and selling the summer's produce, or for holding courts of justice in which they might plague themselves and their neighbors. The Scorpion, with the sting in his tail, certainly denoted the paying of costs. The Goat accompanies the short days and long nights of winter, to show the season of mirth, feasting and jollity; for what could Capricorn mean but dancing or cutting of capers? Lastly came Pisces, or the two Shads, to signify the approaching return of those fish up the rivers. "Make your Wears, hawl your Seins, Catch 'em and pickle 'em, my Friends," advised Poor Richard "they are excellent Relishars of Old Cyder."

But Poor Richard's prefaces are not altogether made up of hearty, hilarious jests and loud guffaws. The raillery, with which he plies his rival philomath, Titan Leeds, would be as admirable as any humor in his writings, if it were not borrowed so manifestly from Dean Swift's ridicule of Partridge, the almanac-maker. In his very first preface in 1733, he says that he would have published an almanac many years before had he not been restrained by his regard for his good friend and fellow-student, Mr. Titan Leeds, whose interest he was extremely unwilling to hurt.

But this Obstacle (I am far from speaking it with Pleasure) [declares Poor Richard] is soon to be removed, since inexorable Death, who was never known to respect Merit, has already prepared the mortal Dart, the fatal Sister has already extended her destroying Shears, and that ingenious Man must soon be taken from us. He dies, by my Calculation made at his Request, on Oct. 17, 1733. 3 h. 29 m. P.M. at the very instant of the conjunction of Sun and Mercury. By his own Calculation he will survive till the 26th of the same Month. This small Difference between us we have disputed whenever we have met these 9 Years past; but at length he is inclinable to agree with my Judgment: Which of us is most exact, a little Time will now determine. As therefore these Provinces may not longer expect to see any of his Performances after this Year, I think myself free to take up the Task, and request a share of the publick Encouragement.

To these assertions Leeds returned a hot answer in his American Almanac for the succeeding year. Notwithstanding the false prediction of the writer, who proposed to succeed him in the writing of almanacs, he had, he said, by the mercy of God lived to write a diary for the year 1734 and to publish the folly and ignorance of the presumptuous author, whom he did not scruple, in the rising tide of his wrath, to term "a Fool and a Lyar" and "a conceited Scribler." This, of course, was just what Poor Richard was calculating on. In his next preface, he is at his very best.

In the Preface to my last Almanack [he says], I foretold the Death of my dear old Friend and Fellow-Student, the learned and ingenious Mr. _Titan Leeds_, which was to be on the 17th of _October_, 1733, 3 h. 29 m. P.M. at the very Instant of the conjunction of Sun and Mercury. By his own Calculation he was to survive till the 26th of the same Month, and expire in the Time of the Eclipse, near 11 o'clock A.M. At which of these Times he died, or whether he be really yet dead, I can not at this present Writing positively assure my Readers; forasmuch as a Disorder in my own Family demanded my Presence, and would not permit me as I had intended, to be with him in his last Moments, to receive his last Embrace, to close his Eyes, and do the Duty of a Friend in performing the last Offices to the Departed. Therefore it is that I can not positively affirm whether he be dead or not; for the Stars only show to the Skilful, what will happen in the natural and universal Chain of Causes and Effects; but 'tis well known, that the Events which would otherwise certainly happen at certain Times in the Course of Nature are sometimes set aside or postpon'd for wise and good Reasons by the immediate particular Dispositions of Providence; which particular Dispositions the Stars can by no Means discover or foreshow. There is however (and I can not speak it without Sorrow) there is the strongest Probability that my dear Friend is no more; for there appears in his Name, as I am assured, an Almanack for the year 1734, in which I am treated in a very gross and unhandsome Manner; in which I am called _a false Predicter_, _an Ignorant_, _a conceited Scribler_, _a Fool_, _and a Lyar_. Mr. Leeds was too well bred to use any Man so indecently and so scurrilously, and moreover his Esteem and Affection for me was extraordinary: So that it is to be feared that Pamphlet may be only a Contrivance of somebody or other, who hopes perhaps to sell two or three Years Almanacks still, by the sole Force and Virtue of Mr. _Leed's_ Name; but certainly, to put Words into the Mouth of a Gentleman and a Man of Letters, against his Friend, which the meanest and most scandalous of the People might be asham'd to utter even in a drunken Quarrel, is an unpardonable Injury to his Memory, and an Imposition upon the Publick.

Mr. _Leeds_ was not only profoundly skilful in the useful Science he profess'd, but he was a Man of _exemplary_ Sobriety, a most _sincere Friend_, and an _exact Performer of his Word_. These valuable Qualifications, with many others so much endear'd him to me, that although it should be so, that, contrary to all Probability, contrary to my Prediction and his own, he might possibly be yet alive, yet my Loss of Honour as a Prognosticator, can not afford me so much Mortification, as his Life, Health and Safety would give me Joy and Satisfaction.

By these observations, the burden was again imposed upon Titan Leeds of demonstrating that he was still alive, and accordingly in his next preface his indignant shade did not fail to take notice of them.

But, with the succeeding revolution of the earth about the sun, Poor Richard was at his sport again.

Whatever may be the Musick of the Spheres [he said], how great soever the Harmony of the Stars, 'tis certain there is no Harmony among the Stargazers; but they are perpetually growling and snarling at one another like strange Curs, or like some Men at their Wives: I had resolved to keep the Peace on my own part, and affront none of them; and I shall persist in that Resolution: But having receiv'd much Abuse from _Titan Leeds_ deceas'd (_Titan Leeds_ when living would not have us'd me so!) I say, having receiv'd much Abuse from the Ghost of _Titan Leeds_, who pretends to be still living, and to write Almanacks in Spight of me and my Predictions, I can not help saying, that tho' I take it patiently, I take it very unkindly. And whatever he may pretend, 'tis undoubtedly true that he is really defunct and dead. First because the Stars are seldom disappointed, never but in the Case of wise Men, _sapiens dominabitur astris_, and they foreshow'd his Death at the Time I predicted it. Secondly, 'Twas requisite and necessary he should die punctually at that Time, for the Honour of Astrology, the Art professed both by him and his Father before him. Thirdly, 'Tis plain to every one that reads his two last Almanacks (for 1734 and 35) that they are not written with that _Life_ his Performances use to be written with; the Wit is low and flat, the little Hints dull and spiritless, nothing smart in them but _Hudibras's Verses_ against Astrology at the Heads of the Months in the last, which no Astrologer but a _dead one_ would have inserted, and no man _living_ would or could write such Stuff as the rest.

In a later preface, Poor Richard complains that certain ill-willers of his, despited at the great reputation that he had gained by exactly predicting another man's death, had endeavored to deprive him of it all at once in the most effective manner by reporting that he himself was never alive. It was not civil treatment, he said, to endeavor to deprive him of his very being, and to reduce him to a non-entity in the opinion of the public; but, so long as he knew himself to walk about, eat, drink and sleep, he was satisfied that there was really such a man as he was, whatever they might say to the contrary. As his printer seemed as unwilling to father his offspring as he was to lose the credit of them, to clear him entirely as well as to vindicate his own honor he made this public and serious declaration, which he desired might be believed, to wit, that what he had written theretofore and did now write neither had been nor was written by any other man or men, person or persons whatsoever. Those who were not satisfied with this must needs be very unreasonable.

To cap the climax of all this fun, Poor Richard finally published, in one of his prefaces, a letter, alleged by him to have been written to him by Titan Leeds from the other world, which stated that the writer was grieved at the aspersions cast on Poor Richard by avaricious publishers of almanacs, who envied his success, and pretended that the writer remained alive many years after the hour predicted for his death by Poor Richard, and certified that he, Titan Leeds, did die presently at that hour with a variation only of 5 m. 53 sec.; which must be allowed to be no great matter in such cases. Nay more, in this letter Titan Leeds was made to predict that another Pennsylvania philomath and competitor of Poor Richard, one John Jerman would be openly reconciled to the Church of Rome, and give all his goods and chattels to the Chapel, being perverted by a certain country schoolmaster.

In a former year, Poor Richard had already charged Jerman with making such flexible prophecies as "Snow here or in New England," "Rain here or in South Carolina," "Cold to the Northward," "Warm to the Southward." If he were to adopt that method, he said, he would not be so likely to have his mistakes detected, but he did not consider that it would be of any service to anybody to know what weather it was 1000 miles off, and therefore he always set down positively what weather his reader would have, be he where he might be at the time. All he modestly desired was only the favorable allowance of a day or two before and a day or two after the precise day against which the weather was set.

On another previous occasion, Poor Richard had made his readers a promise about Jerman which he does not seem to have ever redeemed. "When my Brother J-m-n," he said, "erected a Scheme to know which was best for his sick Horse, to sup a new-laid Egg, or a little Broth, he found that the Stars plainly gave their Verdict for Broth, and the Horse having sup'd his Broth;--Now, what do you think became of that Horse? You shall know in my next."

When the prediction of Titan Leeds from beyond the grave that Jerman would apostatize was duly published, the latter resented it; and, in his Almanac for the year 1742, Poor Richard felt it necessary to say a word about the matter himself.

My last Adversary [he declared] is J. J--n, Philomat., who _declares and protests_ (in his preface, 1741) that the _false Prophecy put in my Almanack, concerning him, the Year before, is altogether_ false and untrue: _and that I am one of Baal's false Prophets_. This _false, false Prophecy_ he speaks of, related to his Reconciliation with the Church of Rome; which, notwithstanding his Declaring and Protesting, is, I fear, too true. Two Things in his elegiac Verses confirm me in this Suspicion. He calls the first of _November_ by the name of _All Hallows Day_. Reader; does not this smell of Popery? Does it in the least savour of the pure Language of Friends? But the plainest Thing is; his Adoration of Saints, which he confesses to be his Practice, in these Words, page 4.

"When any Trouble did me befal, To my dear _Mary_ then I would call."

Did he think the whole World were so stupid as not to take Notice of this? So ignorant as not to know, that all Catholicks pay the highest Regard to the _Virgin Mary_? Ah! Friend _John_, we must allow you to be a _Poet_, but you are certainly no Protestant. I could heartily wish your Religion were as good as your Verses.

Mingled with the other contents of _Poor Richard's Almanac_ were pointed maxims and sayings worthy of Lord John Russell's happy definition of a proverb "the wit of one and the wisdom of many," and at times first- or second-hand verses also.

Among the best of the latter are the following:

When Robin now three days had married been, And all his friends and neighbours gave him joy, This question of his wife he asked then, Why till her marriage day she proved so coy? Indeed said he, 'twas well thou didst not yield, For doubtless then my purpose was to leave thee: O, sir, I once before was so beguil'd, And was resolved the next should not deceive me.

Poetry for December, 1734

By Mrs. Bridget Saunders, my Dutchess in answer to the December verses of last year.

He that for the sake of drink neglects his trade, And spends each night in taverns till 'tis late, And rises when the sun is four hours high, And ne'er regards his starving family, God in his mercy may do much to save him But, woe to the poor wife, whose lot is to have him.

* * * *

Time eateth all things, could old poets say. But times are chang'd, our times _drink_ all away

* * * *

Old Batchelor would have a wife that's wise, Fair, rich and young a maiden for his bed; Not proud, nor churlish, but of faultless size A country housewife in the city bred. He's a nice fool and long in vain hath staid; He should bespeak her, there's none ready made.

And this is Poor Richard's version of how Cupid and Campaspe played for kisses:

My love and I for kisses play'd, She would keep stakes, I was content, But when I won, she would be paid, This made me ask her what she meant: Quoth she, since you are in the wrangling vein Here take your kisses, give me mine again.

The first preface to _Poor Richard's Almanac_ appeared in the issue for 1733. In 1758, the proverbs and sayings, scattered through the preceding issues of the publication, were assembled in the _Way to Wealth_ or _Father Abraham's Speech_. Even John Bach McMaster in his brief, though admirable, work on Franklin as a man of letters found that he could not abridge this renowned production; so we offer no apology for inserting it here in its entirety:

COURTEOUS READER

I have heard that nothing gives an Author so great Pleasure, as to find his Works respectfully quoted by other learned Authors. This Pleasure I have seldom enjoyed; for tho' I have been, if I may say it without Vanity, an _eminent Author_ of Almanacks annually now a full Quarter of a Century, my Brother Authors in the same Way, for what Reason I know not, have ever been very sparing in their Applauses, and no other Author has taken the least Notice of me, so that did not my Writings produce me some solid _Pudding_, the great Deficiency of _Praise_ would have quite discouraged me.

I concluded at length, that the People were the best Judges of my Merit; for they buy my Works; and besides, in my Rambles, where I am not personally known, I have frequently heard one or other of my Adages repeated, with, _as Poor Richard says_, at the End on 't; this gave me some Satisfaction, as it showed not only that my Instructions were regarded, but discovered likewise some Respect for my Authority; and I own, that to encourage the Practice of remembering and repeating those wise Sentences, I have sometimes _quoted myself_ with great Gravity.

Judge, then how much I must have been gratified by an Incident I am going to relate to you. I stopt my Horse lately where a great Number of People were collected at a Vendue of Merchant Goods. The Hour of Sale not being come, they were conversing on the Badness of the Times and one of the Company call'd to a plain clean old Man, with white Locks, "Pray, Father Abraham, what think you of the Times? Won't these heavy Taxes quite ruin the Country? How shall we be ever able to pay them? What would you advise us to?" Father _Abraham_ stood up, and reply'd, "If you'd have my Advice, I'll give it you in short, for _A Word to the Wise is enough_, and _many Words won't fill a Bushel_, as _Poor Richard_ says." They join'd in desiring him to speak his Mind, and gathering round him, he proceeded as follows;

"Friends," says he, "and Neighbours, the Taxes are indeed very heavy, and if those laid on by the Government were the only Ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our _Idleness_, three times as much by our Pride, and four times as much by our _Folly_; and from these Taxes the Commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing an Abatement. However let us hearken to good Advice, and something may be done for us; _God helps them that help themselves_, as _Poor Richard_ says, in his Almanack of 1733.

"It would be thought a hard Government that should tax its People one-tenth Part of their _Time_, to be employed in its Service. But _Idleness_ taxes many of us much more, if we reckon all that is spent in absolute _Sloth_, or doing of nothing, with that which is spent in idle Employments or Amusements, that amount to nothing. _Sloth_, by bringing on Diseases, absolutely shortens Life. _Sloth, like Rust, consumes faster than Labour wears; while the used Key is always bright_ as _Poor Richard_ says. _But dost thou love Life, then do not squander Time, for that's the stuff Life is made of_, as _Poor Richard_ says. How much more than is necessary do we spend in sleep, forgetting that _The sleeping Fox catches no Poultry_, and that _There will be sleeping enough in the Grave_, as _Poor Richard_ says.

"_If Time be of all Things the most precious, wasting Time must be_, as _Poor Richard_ says, _the greatest Prodigality_; since, as he elsewhere tells us, _Lost Time is never found again; and what we call Time enough, always proves little enough_: Let us then be up and doing, and doing to the Purpose; so by Diligence shall we do more with less Perplexity. _Sloth makes all Things difficult, but Industry all easy_, as _Poor Richard_ says; and _He that riseth late must trot all Day, and shall scarce overtake his Business at Night_; while _Laziness travels so slowly, that Poverty soon overtakes him_, as we read in _Poor Richard_, who adds, _Drive thy Business, let not that drive thee_; and _Early to Bed, and early to rise, makes a Man healthy, wealthy, and wise_.

"So what signifies _wishing_ and _hoping_ for better Times. We may make these Times better, if we bestir ourselves. _Industry need not wish_, as _Poor Richard_ says, _and he that lives upon Hope will die fasting_. _There are no Gains without Pains; then Help Hands, for I have no Lands_, or if I have, they are smartly taxed. And, as _Poor Richard_ likewise observes, _He that hath a Trade hath an Estate; and he that hath a Calling, hath an Office of Profit_ and Honour; but then the _Trade_ must be worked at, and the _Calling_ well followed, or neither the _Estate_ nor the _Office_ will enable us to pay our Taxes. If we are industrious, we shall never starve; for, as _Poor Richard_ says, _At the working Man's House Hunger looks in, but dares not enter_. Nor will the Bailiff or the Constable enter, for _Industry pays Debts, while Despair encreaseth them_, says _Poor Richard_. What though you have found no Treasure, nor has any rich Relation left you a Legacy, _Diligence is the Mother of Goodluck_ as _Poor Richard_ says _and God gives all Things to Industry_. _Then plough deep, while Sluggards sleep, and you shall have Corn to sell and to keep_, says _Poor Dick_. Work while it is called To-day, for you know not how much you may be hindered To-morrow, which makes _Poor Richard_ say, _One to-day is worth two To-morrows_, and farther, _Have you somewhat to do To-morrow, do it To-day_. If you were a Servant, would you not be ashamed that a good Master should catch you idle? Are you then your own Master, _be ashamed to catch yourself idle_, as _Poor Dick_ says. When there is so much to be done for yourself, your Family, your Country, and your gracious King, be up by Peep of Day; _Let not the Sun look down and say, Inglorious here he lies_. Handle your Tools without Mittens; remember that _The Cat in Gloves catches no Mice_, as _Poor Richard_ says. 'Tis true there is much to be done, and perhaps you are weak-handed, but stick to it steadily; and you will see great Effects, for _Constant Dropping wears away Stones_, and by _Diligence and Patience the Mouse ate in two the Cable_; and _Little Strokes fell great Oaks_, as _Poor Richard_ says in his Almanack, the Year I cannot just now remember.

"Methinks I hear some of you say, _Must a Man afford himself no Leisure?_ I will tell thee, my friend, what _Poor Richard_ says, _Employ thy Time well, if thou meanest to gain Leisure; and, since thou are not sure of a Minute, throw not away an Hour_. Leisure is Time for doing something useful; this Leisure the diligent Man will obtain, but the lazy Man never; so that, as _Poor Richard_ says _A Life of Leisure and a Life of Laziness are two Things_. Do you imagine that Sloth will afford you more Comfort than Labour? No, for as _Poor Richard_ says, _Trouble springs from Idleness, and grievous Toil from needless Ease. Many without Labour, would live by their Wits only, but they break for want of Stock._ Whereas Industry gives Comfort, and Plenty, and Respect: _Fly Pleasures, and they'll follow you_. _The diligent Spinner has a large Shift; and now I have a Sheep and a Cow, everybody bids me good Morrow_; all which is well said by _Poor Richard_.

"But with our Industry, we must likewise be _steady_, _settled_, and _careful_, and oversee our own Affairs _with our own Eyes_, and not trust too much to others; for, as _Poor Richard_ says

_I never saw an oft-removed Tree, Nor yet an oft-removed Family, That throve so well as those that settled be._

And again, _Three Removes is as bad as a Fire_; and again, _Keep thy Shop, and thy Shop will keep thee_; and again, _If you would have your Business done, go; if not, send_, and again,

_He that by the Plough would thrive, Himself must either hold or drive._

And again, _The Eye of a Master will do more Work than both his Hands_; and again, _Want of Care does us more Damage than Want of Knowledge_; and again, _Not to oversee Workmen, is to leave them your Purse open_. Trusting too much to others' Care is the Ruin of many; for, as the Almanack says, _In the Affairs of this World, Men are saved, not by Faith, but by the Want of it_; but a Man's own Care is profitable; for, saith _Poor Dick_, _Learning is to the Studious_, and _Riches to the Careful_, as well as _Power to the Bold, and Heaven to the Virtuous_, And farther, _If you would have a faithful Servant, and one that you like, serve yourself_. And again, he adviseth to Circumspection and Care, even in the smallest Matters, because sometimes _A little Neglect may breed great Mischief_; adding, _for want of a Nail the Shoe was lost; for want of a Shoe the Horse was lost; and for want of a Horse the Rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the Enemy; all for want of Care about a Horse-shoe Nail_.

"So much for Industry, my Friends, and Attention to one's own Business; but to these we must add _Frugality_, if we would make our _Industry_ more certainly successful. A Man may, if he knows not how to save as he gets, _keep his Nose all his Life to the Grindstone_, and die not worth a Groat at last. A _fat Kitchen makes a lean Will_, as _Poor Richard_ says; and

_Many Estates are spent in the Getting,_ _Since Women for Tea forsook Spinning and Knitting,_ _And Men for Punch forsook Hewing and Splitting._

_If you would be wealthy_, says he, in another Almanack, _think of Saving as well as of Getting: The Indies have not made Spain rich, because her Outgoes are greater than her Incomes_.

"Away then with your expensive Follies, and you will not then have so much Cause to complain of hard Times, heavy Taxes, and chargeable Families; for, as _Poor Dick_ says,

Women and Wine, Game and Deceit, Make the Wealth small and the Wants great.

And farther, _What maintains one Vice, would bring up two Children_. You may think perhaps, that a _little_ Tea, or a _little_ Punch now and then, Diet a _little_ more costly, Clothes, a _little_ finer, and a _little_ Entertainment now and then, can be no _great_ Matter; but remember what _Poor Richard_ says, _Many a Little makes a Mickle_; and farther, _Beware of little Expences; A small Leak will sink a great Ship_; and again, _Who Dainties love, shall Beggars prove_; and moreover, _Fools make Feasts, and wise Men eat them_.

"Here you are all got together at this Vendue of _Fineries_ and _Knicknacks_. You call them _Goods_; but if you do not take Care, they will prove _Evils_ to some of you. You expect they will be sold _Cheap_, and perhaps they may for less than they cost; but if you have no Occasion for them, they must be _dear_ to you. Remember what _Poor Richard_ says; _Buy what thou hast no Need of, and ere long thou shalt sell thy Necessaries_. And again, _At a great Pennyworth pause a while_: He means, that perhaps the Cheapness is _apparent_ only, and not _Real_; or the bargain by straitening thee in thy Business, may do thee more Harm than Good. For in another Place he says, _Many have been ruined by buying good Pennyworths._ Again, _Poor Richard_ says, _'tis foolish to lay out Money in a Purchase of Repentance_; and yet this Folly is practised every Day at Vendues, for want of minding the Almanack. _Wise Men_, as _Poor Dick_ says, _learn by others Harms, Fools scarcely by their own_; but _felix quem faciunt aliena pericula cautum_. Many a one, for the Sake of Finery on the Back, have gone with a hungry Belly, and half-starved their Families. _Silks and Sattins, Scarlet and Velvets_, as _Poor Richard_ says, _put out the Kitchen Fire_.

"These are not the _Necessaries of Life_; they can scarcely be called the _Conveniences_; and yet only because they look pretty, how many _want_ to _have_ them! The _artificial_ Wants of Mankind thus become more numerous than the _Natural_; and, as _Poor Dick_ says, _for one poor Person, there are an hundred indigent_. By these, and other Extravagancies, the Genteel are reduced to poverty, and forced to borrow of those whom they formerly despised, but who through Industry and Frugality have maintained their Standing; in which Case it appears plainly, that _A Ploughman on his Legs is higher than a Gentleman on his Knees_, as _Poor Richard_ says. Perhaps they have had a small Estate left them, which they knew not the Getting of; they think, _'tis Day, and will never be Night_; that a little to be spent out of so much, is not worth minding; _a Child and a Fool_, as _Poor Richard_ says, _imagine Twenty shillings and Twenty Years can never be spent_ but, _always taking out of the Meal-tub, and never putting in, soon comes to the Bottom_; as _Poor Dick_ says, _When the Well's dry, they know the Worth of Water_. But this they might have known before, if they had taken his Advice; _If you would know the Value of Money, go and try to borrow some; for, he that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing_; and indeed so does he that lends to such People, when he goes _to get it in again_. _Poor Dick_ farther advises, and says,

_Fond Pride of Dress is sure a very Curse;_ _E'er Fancy you consult, consult your Purse._

And again, _Pride is as loud a Beggar as Want, and a great deal more saucy_. When you have bought one fine Thing, you must buy ten more, that your Appearance may be all of a Piece; but _Poor Dick_ says, '_Tis easier to suppress the first Desire, than to satisfy all that follow it_. And 'tis as truly Folly for the Poor to ape the Rich, as for the Frog to swell, in order to equal the ox.

_Great Estates may venture more,_ _But little Boats should keep near Shore._

'Tis, however, a Folly soon punished; for _Pride that dines on Vanity, sups on Contempt_, as _Poor Richard_ says. And in another Place, _Pride breakfasted with Plenty, dined with Poverty, and supped with Infamy_. And after all, of what Use is this _Pride of Appearance_, for which so much is risked so much is suffered? It cannot promote Health, or ease Pain; it makes no Increase of Merit in the Person, it creates Envy, it hastens Misfortune.

_What is a Butterfly? At best_ _He's but a Caterpillar drest_ _The gaudy Fop's his Picture just,_

as _Poor Richard_ says.

"But what Madness must it be to _run in Debt_ for these Superfluities! We are offered, by the Terms of this Vendue, _Six Months' Credit_; and that perhaps has induced some of us to attend it, because we cannot spare the ready Money, and hope now to be fine without it. But, ah, think what you do when you run in Debt; _you give to another Power over your Liberty_. If you cannot pay at the Time, you will be ashamed to see your Creditor; you will be in Fear when you speak to him; you will make poor pitiful sneaking Excuses, and by Degrees come to lose your Veracity, and sink into base downright lying; for, as _Poor Richard_ says _The second Vice is Lying, the first is running in Debt_. And again, to the same Purpose, _Lying rides upon Debt's Back_. Whereas a free-born _Englishman_ ought not to be ashamed or afraid to see or speak to any Man living. But Poverty often deprives a Man of all Spirit and Virtue: _'Tis hard for an empty Bag to stand upright_, as _Poor Richard_ truly says.

"What would you think of that Prince, or that Government, who should issue an Edict forbidding you to dress like a Gentleman or a Gentlewoman, on Pain of Imprisonment or Servitude? Would you not say, that you were free, have a Right to dress as you please, and that such an Edict would be a Breach of your Privileges, and such a Government tyrannical? And yet you are about to put yourself under that Tyranny, when you run in Debt for such Dress! Your Creditor has Authority, at his Pleasure to deprive you of your Liberty, by confining you in Goal for Life, or to sell you for a Servant, if you should not be able to pay him! When you have got your Bargain, you may, perhaps, think little of Payment; but _Creditors_, _Poor Richard_ tells us, _have better Memories than Debtors_; _and_ in another Place says, _Creditors are a superstitious Sect, great Observers of set Days and Times_. The Day comes round before you are aware, and the Demand is made before you are prepared to satisfy it, Or if you bear your Debt in Mind, the Term which at first seemes so long, will, as it lessens, appear extreamly short. _Time_ will seem to have added Wings to his Heels as well as Shoulders. _Those have a short Lent_, saith _Poor Richard_, _who owe Money to be paid at Easter_. Then since, as he says, _The Borrower is a Slave to the Lender, and the Debtor to the Creditor_, disdain the Chain, preserve your Freedom; and maintain your Independency; Be _industrious_ and _free_; be _frugal_ and _free_. At present, perhaps, you may think yourself in thriving Circumstances, and that you can bear a little Extravagance without Injury; but,

_For Age and Want, save while you may;_ _No Morning Sun lasts a whole Day._

as _Poor Richard_ says. Gain may be temporary and uncertain, but ever while you live, Expence is constant and certain; and _'tis easier to build two Chimnies, than to keep one in Fuel_, as _Poor Richard_ says. So, _Rather go to Bed supperless than rise in Debt_.

_Get what you can, and what you get hold;_ _'Tis the Stone that will turn all your lead into Gold,_

as _Poor Richard_ says. And when you have got the Philosopher's Stone, sure you will no longer complain of bad Times, or the Difficulty of paying Taxes.

"This Doctrine, my Friends, is _Reason_ and _Wisdom_; but after all, do not depend too much upon your own _Industry_, and _Frugality_, and _Prudence_, though excellent Things, for they may all be blasted without the Blessing of Heaven; and therefore, ask that Blessing humbly, and be not uncharitable to those that at present seem to want it, but comfort and help them. Remember, _Job_ suffered, and was afterwards prosperous.

"And now to conclude, _Experience keeps a dear School, but Fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that_; for it is true, _we may give Advice, but we cannot give Conduct_, as _Poor Richard_ says: However, remember this, _They that won't be counselled, can't be helped_, as _Poor Richard_ says: and farther, That, _if you will not hear Reason, she'll surely rap your Knuckles_."

Thus the old Gentleman ended his Harangue. The People heard it and approved the Doctrine, and immediately practised the contrary, just as if it had been a common Sermon; for the Vendue opened, and they began to buy extravagantly, notwithstanding, his Cautions and their own Fear of Taxes. I found the good Man had thoroughly studied my Almanacks, and digested all I had dropt on these Topicks during the Course of Five and twenty Years. The frequent Mention he made of me must have tired any one else, but my Vanity was wonderfully delighted with it, though I was conscious that not a tenth Part of the Wisdom was my own, which he ascribed to me, but rather the _Gleanings_ I had made of the Sense of all Ages and Nations. However, I resolved to be the better for the Echo of it; and though I had at first determined to buy Stuff for a new Coat, I went away resolved to wear my old One a little longer. _Reader_, if thou wilt do the same, thy Profit will be as great as mine, _I am, as ever, thine to serve thee_,

RICHARD SAUNDERS.

Imperfect as this chapter is, it is adequate enough, we hope, to make the reader feel that Sydney Smith was not altogether insensible to natural obligations when he told his daughter that he would disinherit her, if she did not admire everything written by Franklin.

SUMMARY

Such was Benjamin Franklin, as mirrored for the most part in his own written and oral utterances. Whether his fame is measured by what he actually accomplished, or by the impression that he made upon his contemporaries, or by the influence that he still exercises over the human mind, he was a truly great man.[59] Not simply because he was one of the principal actors in a revolutionary movement destined to establish in the free air of the Western World on lasting foundations, and on a scale of moral and material grandeur, of which history furnishes few examples, a state, without king, noble or pontiff, and deriving its inspiration and energy solely from the will of the People; nor yet merely because his brilliant discoveries in the province of electricity conspicuously helped to convert one of the most elusive and defiant of all the forces of nature into an humble and useful drudge of modern industry and progress; nor yet merely because, in addition to many other productions, marked by the indefinable charm of unerring literary intuition, he wrote several which are read in every part of the globe where a printed page is read; nor even because of all these things combined. They are, of course, the main pillars upon which his splendid fame rests. But what imparts to Franklin his aspect of greatness, and endows him with his irresistible appeal to the interest and admiration of the whole human race is the striking extent to which he was, in point of both precept and example, representative of human existence in all its more rational, more fruitful and more sympathetic manifestations. His vision was not that of the enthusiast; his was no Pentecostal tongue--cloven and aflame. He took little account of the higher spiritual forces which at times derange all the sober, prudent calculations of such a materialist as Poor Richard, and his message to mankind was blemished, as we have seen, by the excessive emphasis placed by it upon pecuniary thrift and the relations of pecuniary thrift to sound morals as well as physical comfort. But all the same, limited to the terrestrial horizon as he is, he must be reckoned one of the great leaders and teachers of humanity. He loved existence, shared it joyously and generously with his fellow-creatures, and vindicated its essential worth by bringing to bear upon everything connected with the conduct of life the maxims of a serene and almost infallible wisdom, and by responding with a mind as completely free from the prejudices and errors of his age as if he had lived a hundred years later, and with a heart as completely unconstrained by local considerations as if men were all of one blood and one country, to every suggestion that tended to make human beings happier, more intelligent and worthier in every respect of the universe which he found so delightful. It is this harmony with the world about him, this insight into what that world requires of everyone who seeks, to make his way in it, this enlightenment, this sympathy with human aspirations and needs everywhere, together with the rare strain of graphic and kindly instruction by which they were accompanied that cause the name of Franklin to be so often associated with those of the other great men whose fame is not the possession of a single class or land, but of all mankind. The result is that, when the faces of the few individuals, who are recognized by the entire world as having in the different ages of human history rendered service to the entire world, are ranged in plastic repose above the shelves of some public library or along the walls of some other institution, founded for the promotion of human knowledge or well-being, the calm, meditative face of Franklin is rarely missing.

It is to be regretted that a character so admirable and amiable in all leading respects as his, so strongly fortified by the cardinal virtues of modesty, veracity, integrity and courage, and so sweetly flavored with all the finer charities of human benevolence and affection, should in some particulars have fallen short of proper standards of conduct. But it is only just to remember that the measure of his lapses from correct conduct is to be mainly found in humorous license, for which the best men of his own age, like Dr. Price and Charles Carroll of Carrollton, had only a laugh,[60] and in offences against sexual morality, which, except so far as they assumed in his youth the form of casual intercourse with low women, whose reputations were already too sorely injured to be further wounded, consisted altogether in the adoption by a singularly versatile nature of a foreign code of manners which imposed upon the members of the society, by which it was formed, the necessity of affecting the language of gallantry even when gallantry itself was not actually practised. There is at any rate no evidence to show that the long married life of Franklin, so full of domestic concord and tenderness, was ever sullied by the slightest violation of conjugal fidelity.

On the whole, therefore, it is not strange that, repelled as we are at times by some passing episode or revelation in his life or character, everyone who has lingered upon his career finds it hard to turn away from it except with something akin to the feelings of those friends who clung to him so fondly. He was so kind, so considerate, so affectionate, so eager to do good, both to individuals and whole communities, that we half forget the human conventions that his bountiful intellect and heart overflowed. Of him it can at least be said that, if he had some of a man's failings, he had all of a man's merits; and his biographer, in taking leave of him, may well, mindful of his eminent virtues as well as of his brilliant achievements and services, waive all defence of the few vulnerable features of his life and conduct by summing up the final balance of his deserts in the single word engraved upon the pedestal of one of his busts in Paris at the time of his death. That word was "Vir"--a Man, a very Man.

FOOTNOTES:

[56] What Sir Walter Scott said of Jonathan Swift is as true of Franklin: "Swift executed his various and numerous works as a carpenter forms wedges, mallets, or other implements of his art, not with the purpose of distinguishing himself, by the workmanship bestowed on the tools themselves, but solely in order to render them fit for accomplishing a certain purpose, beyond which they were of no value in his eyes."

[57] There is the following reference to Nanny in a letter from Franklin to Deborah, dated June 10, 1770, "Poor Nanny was drawn in to marry a worthless Fellow, who got all her Money, and then ran away and left her. So she is return'd to her old Service with Mrs. Stevenson, poorer than ever, but seems pretty patient, only looks dejected."

[58] These conclusions about physical exercise had been previously expounded by Franklin to his son in a letter, dated Aug. 19, 1772, in which he expressed his concern at hearing that William was not well. In that connection they do not seem quite so pedantic. The writer thought that, when tested by the amount of corporeal warmth produced, there was, roughly speaking, more exercise in riding one mile on horseback than five in a coach, more in walking one mile on foot than five on horseback, and more in walking one mile up and down stairs than five on a level floor. He also had a good word to say for the use of the dumb-bell as a "compendious" form of exercise; stating that by the use of dumb-bells he had in forty swings quickened his pulse from sixty to one hundred beats in a minute, counted by a second watch. Warmth, he supposed, generally increased with a rapid pulse. Upon one occasion in France, when John Adams told him that he fancied that he did not exercise so much as he was wont, he replied: "Yes, I walk a league every day in my chamber. I walk quick, and for an hour, so that I go a league; I make a point of religion of it."

[59] In the judgment of Matthew Arnold, Franklin was "a man who was the very incarnation of sanity and clear sense, a man the most considerable, it seems to me, whom America has yet produced."

[60] In his _Jeu d'esprit_, commonly known as _The Choice of a Mistress_, Franklin gave various reasons why an elderly mistress should be preferred to a younger one; and, in a letter to him on Aug. 12, 1777, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, after expressing the hope that he continued to enjoy his usual health and the flow of spirits, which contributed to make the jaunt to Canada so agreeable to his fellow-travellers, adds: "Mr. John Carroll, and Chase are both well; the latter is now at Congress, and has been so fully and constantly employed that I believe he has not had leisure to refute your reasons in favor of the old ladies."

INDEX

A

A Letter from China, i., 95; ii., 487

Abuse of the Press, ii., 488

Account of the Negotiation in London for effecting a Reconciliation between Great Britain and her American Colonies, ii., 446

Account of the New-Invented Pennsylvanian Fireplaces, i., 15, 358; ii., 8, 401, 424

Account of the Supremest Court of Judicature of Pennsylvania, i., 342; ii., 489

Adams, Abigail, i., 492; ii., 232

Adams, John, i., 6, 35, 61, 149, 161, 284, 480, 483, 484, 486; ii., 6 (note), 8, 7 (note), 96, 220 (note), 237, 241, 242, 244, 245, 246, 252, 252 (note), 256, 257, 257 (note), 258 (note), 259, 261, 263, 274, 278, 287, 288, 290, 291, 294, 312, 316, 319, 320, 322, 342, 414, 443, 483 (note)

Adams, John Quincy, i., 486

Adams, Miss, i., 478, 485, 488, 493; ii., 9

Address of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, ii., 454

Advice to a Young Tradesman, ii., 455

Albany Congress, ii., 141

Alexander, Miss (Mariamne Williams), i., 211, 469, 542 (note)

Alexander, William, i., 469, 495

Alison, Francis, Vice-Provost, i., 131

Allen, Chief Justice William, i., 170, 174, 337

Alleyne, John, i., 105, 442

American Philosophical Society, i., 128 (note)

Answers to Strahan's Queries, ii., 446

Apology for Printers, i., 93; ii., 464, 465

Arabian Tale, i., 73

Argo, The, i., 146

Arnold, Matthew, ii., 527 (note)

Art of Procuring Pleasant Dreams, i., 412, 489

Art of Virtue, i., 29, 34, 98, 521

Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion, i., 72, 113

Austin, Jonathan Loring, ii., 250

Autobiography, i., 16, 19, 22, 343, 349, 432, 531, 537; ii., 27, 35, 424, 441, 499

B

Babcock, Dr. Joshua, ii., 172

Bache, Benjamin Franklin, i., 45, 238, 239, 241, 255, 256, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 266, 388, 390, 406, 486

Bache, Richard, i., 46, 212, 236, 237, 238, 239, 254, 257, 259, 262, 263, 300, 349, 390, 481; ii., 24, 349 (note)

Bache, Sally, i., 37, 38, 70, 71, 99, 103, 110, 212, 225, 228, 235, 238, 240, 241, 243, 244, 246, 248, 253, 254, 255, 255 (note), 257, 259, 260, 261, 263, 264, 265, 266, 272, 273, 287, 340, 373, 393; ii., 277, 494

Bache, William, i., 257, 260, 261

Baker, Speech of Polly, ii., 467

Balzac, Honore de, ii., 16 (note)

Bancroft, Dr. Edward, i., 542 (note); ii., 221, 224, 250

Bancroft, George, i., 542 (note)

Banks, Sir Joseph, i., 107, 154; ii., 378, 384, 385, 386, 392

Barclay, David, i., 423

Barclay, Thomas, ii., 296, 315 (note)

Bard, Dr. and Mrs. John, i., 4, 332, 333; ii., 43

Bartram, John, i., 35, 146, 334, 421; ii., 23

Baskerville, John, ii., 15

Bathurst, Lord and Lady, i., 224

Baynes, John, ii., 7 (note), 348

Beatty, Rev. Mr., i., 93

Beccaria, Giambatista, ii., 22, 378, 400

Benezet, Anthony, i., 347

Benger, Elliot, i., 174

Bentham, Jeremy, ii., 221, 223, 225

Bigelow, John, i., 24, 37, 540

Bingham, Mr. Wm., ii., 283

Blount, Dorothea, i., 380, 386, 391, 454

Bond, Dr. Thomas, i., 140, 145, 180, 246, 331, 420

Boston, City of, i., 8, 151, 312

Boufflers, Madame de, i., 479 (note)

Bouquet, Col. Henry, i., 95, 340; ii., 21

Bourbon, Don Gabriel de, ii., 236

Bowdoin, James, i., 352, 353, 354; ii., 203, 218, 230, 383, 403

Braddock, General, i., 177

Bradford, Andrew, ii., 21, 37, 62, 69, 74, 75, 88

Bradford, William, ii., 35, 37

Breintnal, Joseph, i., 180, 326; ii., 67

Bridgen, Edward, i., 442

Brillon, Madame, i., 19, 47, 92, 229, 265, 478, 487, 494, 500, 529, 540; ii., 22, 476, 478, 481, 484

Brillon, M., i., 485

Brougham, Lord, ii., 227 (note), 362

Broughton, Sarah, i., 214

Brown, Dr., i., 99

Brownell, George, i., 138; ii., 28

Brownrigg, William, ii., 392

Buffon, Comte de, i., 530; ii., 379

Burke, Edmund, i., 20, 116, 442, 443; ii., 1, 195, 221, 223, 224

Byles, Mather, i., 264, 354

C

Cabanis, Pierre Jean Georges, i., 488, 491

Cadross, Lord, ii., 408

Camden, Lord, ii., 195, 210

Canada Pamphlet, ii., 439, 444

Canton, John, i., 438

Capefigue, i., 21 (note)

Carlyle, Alexander, i., 38

Carlyle, Thomas, i., 11, 303 (note)

Carmichael, Wm., i., 322, 485, 500; ii., 5, 257, 260, 263, 268, 274, 330 (note), 476

Carroll of Carrollton, Charles, i., 321; ii., 237, 241, 331 (note), 529

Carroll, John, i., 321; ii., 238, 240, 529 (note)

Cats, The Very Humble Petition to Madame Helvetius from her, i., 488, 497

Causes of the American Discontents, ii., 189

Chastellux, Marquis de, i., 263, 503, 530, 532

Chatham, Lord, i., 20, 438; ii., 98, 180, 183, 195, 208, 210, 223, 229

Chaumont, M. Donatien LeRay de, i., 479, 515, 532; ii., 25, 249, 250, 263

Chaumont, Madame Donatien LeRay de, i., 482

Chaumont, Donatien LeRay de (the younger), i., 481

Chess, Essay on the Morals of, i., 516; ii., 491

Choice of a Mistress, ii., 529 (note)

Christ Church, Philadelphia, i., 23, 70, 130, 170, 346, 363

Cincinnati, Franklin's letter on the, ii., 494

Clapham, Col., i., 188

Clare, Lord, ii., 338 (note)

Clifton, John, i., 145

Clinton, Gov. George, i., 170

Cochin, ii., 359 (note)

Colden, Cadwallader, i., 15; ii., 79, 90, 382, 407, 408

Coleman, William, i., 246, 326; ii., 64, 64 (note), 66

Collas, Mr., i., 298

Collins, John, i., 90, 160, 200, 323; ii., 35, 58, 428

Collinson, Peter, i., 123, 124, 133, 178, 180, 361, 449; ii., 17, 23, 123, 126, 137, 150, 151, 152, 154, 192, 342, 352, 353, 354, 356, 357, 361, 362, 367, 368, 371, 372, 375, 378, 381, 397, 398, 416

Committee of Correspondence in Massachusetts, ii., 205

Comparison of the Conduct of the Ancient Jews and the Anti-Federalists, ii., 489

Condorcet, Marquis de, i., 530; ii., 350

Conte, i., 64

Conway, Madame, i., 43 (note)

Conygham, Capt. Gustavus, ii., 283, 297, 298

Cook, Capt. James, i., 154

Cool Thoughts, ii., 102, 128

Coombe, Rev. Thomas, i., 81, 346

Cooper, Dr. Samuel, i., 21, 352, 353, 472, 486; ii., 25, 165, 170, 182, 203, 212, 218, 228, 250, 267, 341, 414

Council of Brutes, The, i., 440

Courant, The Boston, i., 83, 357; ii., 30, 31, 85, 429, 434

Craven Street Gazette, i., 372; ii., 468

Croghan, George, i., 182; ii., 418

Cushing, Thomas, i., 405, 470; ii., 81, 170, 172, 175, 191, 199, 203, 204, 210, 213, 218, 219, 229, 261 (note)

Cutler, Dr. Manasseh, i., 226; ii., 7

D

D'Alibard, Thomas Francis, i., 474; ii., 354, 355, 383

Danforth, Samuel, i., 355

Dartmouth, Lord, ii., 215

Davenport, Josiah, i., 217, 271, 286, 311

Davenport, Sarah, i., 286, 301

Davy, Sir Humphry, ii., 361

Deane, Silas, i., 318, 322, 334; ii., 237, 249, 250, 255 (note), 262, 263 (note), 265, 306

DeForbach, Madame, i., 528

DeLancey, James, ii., 142

Denham, Mr., ii., 43, 44, 45, 50, 52

Denny, Gov. William, i., 204; ii., 112, 120, 122, 155

DeNeufville, ii., 294

DeSaussure, M., ii., 414

D'Houdetot, Comtesse, i., 487, 522

Dialogue between Franklin and the Gout, i., 501; ii., 472, 481

Dialogue between Philocles and Horatio, i., 32; ii., 464

Dialogue between X Y and Z, i., 184

Dick, Sir Alexander, i., 463, 466; ii., 403

Dick, Lady, i., 464

Dickinson, John, ii., 128, 136, 137, 233, 234, 247, 333, 334

Digges, Thomas, i., 408; ii., 303

Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, i., 87, 90, 202; ii., 435

Doniol, Henri, i., 542 (note)

Dove, Mr., i., 136

Dowse, Elizabeth, i., 280, 281, 304

Drinkers' Dictionary, i., 160

Dubourg, Dr. Barbeu, i., 474, 530, 533; ii., 237, 274, 412

Dumas, Chas. W. F., i., 155; ii., 236, 259 (note)

Dunbar, Col., i., 182

Dunning, John, ii., 221, 222, 223

DuPont (DeNemours), i., 474, 530, 533; ii., 274

E

Economical Project, ii., 472, 485

Edict by the King of Prussia, ii., 436, 446

Editor of a Newspaper, To the, i., 401; ii., 188

Elective Franchises Enjoyed by the Small Boroughs in England, ii., 454

Eliot, Jared, i., 131, 335, 356; ii., 24, 344, 416

Ephemera, The, i., 500; ii., 472, 476

Epitaph by Franklin on himself, i., 114

Evans, Cadwallader, i., 311, 342, 343, 348; ii., 184, 202, 346, 409

Evans, Lewis, i., 220 (note)

Exporting of Felons to the Colonies, ii., 464, 467

F

Falconer, Capt. Nathaniel, i., 311, 401, 476

Father Abraham's Speech, ii., 517

Fisher, Daniel, i., 215, 216, 229

Fisher, Mary, i., 15, 303

Fisher, Sydney George, i., 36; ii., 4 (note)

Flainville, Mlle., i., 43 (note), 528, 529

Folger, Peter, i., 268, 269, 270, 270 (note)

Ford, Paul Leicester, i., 2; ii., 92

Fothergill, Dr. John, i., 242, 252, 320, 391, 421; ii., 118, 119, 126, 230, 354

Foucault, Madame, i., 482

Fox, Charles James, ii., 221, 224, 227 (note)

Foxcroft, John, i., 43, 213, 312, 346; ii., 81

Foxcroft, Mrs. John, i., 43

Francis, Tench, i., 129

Franklin, Abiah, i., 13, 37, 78, 85, 266, 268, 270, 271, 272; ii., 41

FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN: _General Comments on his Life and Character_ Wrote for purely practical reasons, i., 4. Stands out from both European and American backgrounds, 9. His shortcomings, 18. Atoned for his early offences, 26. Summary of his career and character, ii., 527. _His Moral Standing and System_ Not covetous, i., 12. Unselfish relations to patents, 15. Candor of Autobiography responsible for almost every blemish on his reputation, 17, 22. Attacks on his character, 17, 21 (note). Coarser side of his character, 17. Contemporary tributes to his moral worth, 18. His prudential view of morality, 23, 31. Real extent of his moral offences, 24, 34. Had no objection to repeating his life, 24, 112, 113. Motives back of Autobiography, 25. Atoned for his offences, 26. System of Morals adopted by him, 26. Story of the axe, 27. Observations on vanity, 28. Freedom from dogmatism, 28. His cheerful disposition, 29, 112. Art of Virtue, 29, 97, 98. United Party for Virtue, 31. Society of the Free and Easy, 31. His relations to eating and drinking, 35, 385. His standing in point of sexual morality, 35, 204. William Franklin, his natural son, 37. Franklin's contentment with his life, 42 (note). Supposed natural daughter, 43. William Temple Franklin, his natural grandson, 44. Story of the crying boy and the grandmother, 44. _His Religious Views_ Gratitude to God, i., 51. Faith in Providence, 52. Confidence in a future state, 53. Utterances about death and sleep, 57. Saying about orthodoxy, 58. Want of sympathy with purely theological and sectarian side of religion, 58, 63, 68, 78, 88. A trustee to hold Whitefield meeting-house, 59. Early doubts, 60. Impartial attitude towards sects, 61. Relations to Whitefield, 61. His Conte, 65. Letter to Weems and Gantt, 65. Views about heretics, 67. About bigotry, 67. Rev. Mr. Hemphill, 69. Comments on sermons, 70. Connection with Christ Church, Philadelphia, 70. Habits as to church attendance, 70, 71. His Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion, 71. Collaboration with Le Despencer in the reform of the Book of Common Prayer, 74. Suggestion about prayers in Federal Convention, 78. Views about practical religion, 78. Effect of early environment on his beliefs, 82. Attacks of Courant on intolerance, 83. Youthful skepticism, 84, 85. Falls asleep in Quaker meeting-house, 84. London nun, 86. Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, 87. Picture of Christ mentioned by Parson Weems, 88. Miraculous element in Religion foreign to his nature, 88. Purely practical character of his relations to Religion, 89. Recession from youthful skepticism, 90. Latterday beliefs as expressed to Madame Brillon and Ezra Stiles, 91. Priestley's comments on his Christianity, 92. His jests at the expense of the clergy and religion, 93. Lack of reality about his religious faith but no scoffer, 97. Injunctions to his wife and daughter about church attendance, 99. Dr. Brown's travesty on Bible, 99. Strictures by Franklin on letter against doctrine of special providence, 100. _As Philanthropist and Citizen_ Observation on escape from shipwreck, i., 102. Humorous remarks on workings of human reason, 103. Eager interest in increase of his species, 103. Aversion to war, 107. Comments on existence of evil in the world, 107 (note). His freedom from misanthropy, 111. Lines on Landlord of Life and Time, 113. His famous epitaph, 114. His desire to revisit world after death, 115. Nothing less than a Friend of Man, 116. Termed "lover of his species" by Burke, 116. Indebtedness to Mather's Essays to do Good, 117. Character of doer of good that most highly prized by him, 117. His saying, that power of one man for doing good is prodigious, 117. The Junto, 117. The Philadelphia City Library, 122. His comments on importance of modesty in promoting public objects, 122. The Philadelphia City Watch, 125. The Philadelphia Fire Company, 126. The Philadelphia Academy, 127, 128. The Philadelphia Philosophical Society, 127. His opposition to Latin and Greek, 137. His pedagogic insight, 138. His early education, 138. His bequest to schools of Boston, 138 (note). His self-education, 139. His observations on proper methods of teaching languages, 140. The Philadelphia Hospital, 140. Advice to Rev. Gilbert Tennent to solicit from everybody, 142. Paving projects, 143. Remarks on triviality of origin of human felicity, 144. Philadelphia City lighting, 145. Significance of Franklin's services to Philadelphia, 146. Suggests voyage of the Argo to the Arctics, 146. Efforts in behalf of Kalm and Bartram, the naturalists, 146. Efforts in behalf of silk culture, 146. Gifts to Philadelphia hospital, 147. Purchases for and gifts to Harvard College, 147. Services in connection with negro emancipation, the free blacks, the Bray Fund and the Society for benefit of poor Germans, 147. Comments on Germans in Pennsylvania, 147, 148 (note). Introduces yellow willow and rhubarb plant, 148. Disseminates broom-corn seed, 148. Proves value of plaster, 148. Suggests insurance against storms, etc., 148. Essay on Maize, 149. John Adams' story of the grapevines, 149. Franklin's prayer that he might be useful to his fellow-creatures, 150. His trick for doing much with little money, 150. His posthumous benefactions to Boston and Philadelphia, 151. Breadth of his philanthropy, 153. Supports plan for supplying New Zealand with certain quadrupeds, 153. Protects Capt. Cook, 154. Also Moravian Mission vessel, 155. Also Irish ship for West Indian relief, 155. Enforces rule "free ships, free goods," 155. Approves exemption of non-combatants from penalties of war, 155. Stipulation against privateering in Prussian Treaty, 156. Detestation of privateering, 156. Franklin no Quaker or visionary, 157. Story of Logan and William Penn, 157. Physical characteristics of Franklin, 158. Youthful love of water, 158. Story of the purloined building stones and Josiah Franklin's lecture, 159. Was a boxing boy, 159 (note). Adventure on the Isle of Wight, 159. How he punished Collins, 160. His firmness of character, 161. Letter of rebuke to Capt. Landais, 162. Circumstances which produced Plain Truth, 163. Results of this pamphlet, 169. Journey to New York in quest of cannon, 170. Close relations at this time with Governor and Council, 171. Draws up fast proclamation, 171. Bearing of Quakers in regard to defence of Pennsylvania, 171. Advice of young man to Franklin to resign his office as Clerk to Assembly, 172. Franklin as an office-holder, 172. Forehandedness about office in keeping with his advice to grandson, 174 (note). Real extent of opposition of Quakers to defensive warfare, 174. Relations of Franklin and his son to Braddock expedition, 177. Pusillanimous conduct of Col. Dunbar, 182. Dunbar violates promise to return servants, 183. Franklin's Militia Bill, 183. Dialogue between X Y and Z, 184. Governor offers to make Franklin a general, 185. Takes charge of N. W. frontier of Pennsylvania, 185. Incidents on his way to and at Gnadenhutten, 186. Returns to Philadelphia and is elected Colonel, 188. His regiment and experiences as Colonel, 189. Summary of military services of Franklin, 190. Massacre of Indians by Paxton Boys and its denunciation by Franklin, 191. _His Family Relations_ Generous conduct to his brother James, i., 198. And to James' son, 199. Story of Franklin and Deborah, 205. Their marriage, 211. Her helpfulness to him, 211. Advises her not to make an expensive wedding for their daughter Sally, 212. Letter of rebuke from him to her, 213. Deborah and Sarah Broughton's charges, 214. Incidents relating to Deborah told by Daniel Fisher in his Diary, 215. Later improved relations between Deborah and William Franklin, 217, 218. Resolute conduct of Deborah when house threatened, 217. Devotion of Deborah to Franklin, 219, 221. Her illiteracy, 220, 222, 223. Supplies sent by her to Franklin when absent, 223. Absences of Franklin from her, 224. Her aversion to the sea, 224. Transatlantic voyages of Franklin, 224 (note). Efforts of Strahan to get Deborah to England, 225, 227. Early correspondence between Strahan and Franklin as to the latter's daughter Sally, 225. Personal appearance of this daughter, 226. Affection of Franklin for Deborah, 228. Loyalty to her irreproachable, 229. Verses on his Plain Country Joan, 230. References to Deborah in his letters to Catherine Ray, 231. Correspondence between him and Deborah, 231. References to his daughter in his letters to Deborah, 235. Portrait of his daughter, 236 (note). His son-in-law, Richard Bache, 236. His grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache, 238, 239, 240, 256, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 266. His godson, William Hewson, 239. Other children of his daughter, 240. Francis Folger, son of Franklin, 240. "Franky" not his son, 240. References to Deborah's relations in Franklin's letters to her, 241. References to William Franklin in these letters, 241. References to servants, 242. References to Franklin's Pennsylvania friends, 244. References to his new house, 245. Exchanges of gifts between Franklin and Deborah, 246. Gifts to his daughter, 248. Familiarity with household affairs and articles, 249. Occasional home-sickness, 250. Illness when in England, 251. Deborah's ill-health, 252. Letters to his daughter and her husband, 253. Letter from her to him about housekeeping for her mother, 255 (note). Sally's hatred of South Carolinians, 259. William Bache, Franklin's grandson, 260, 261. Bequest of diamonds to Sally by Franklin, 261. Appoints Richard Bache to office, 262. On his return from his second mission he resided with the Baches, 261. And after his return from France, 263. Comments on Sally Bache by Marbois and De Chastellux, 263. Domestic conditions surrounding Franklin towards his end, 263, 265. Later relations between Franklin and his son William, 264, 264 (note). Family of Sally Bache at close of Franklin's life, 265, 266. Franklin's father and mother, 266. Story told by his father, 268. Franklin's grandfather, Peter Folger, 269. The Folgers, 270. Franklin's letters to his father and mother, 270. Her letters to him, 272. Letters to his sister Jane about their parents, 273. Estate left by his father, 274. Loving relations of Franklin with his kinsfolk, 274. His uncles John and Thomas and grandfather Thomas, 274, 275. His uncle Benjamin, 275. This uncle's poetry books, 275. And collection of pamphlets, 277. Samuel Franklin, grandson of this uncle, 277. Remaining relations of Franklin in England in 1767, 277. His letter to a Franklin at Koenigsberg, 277. Had exact account of Franklins from 1555, 278. Observations on Jemmy Franklin, 278. Bequest to his brother James' descendants, 279. Franklin's four brothers who died young and his brother Josiah, 279. His brothers John and Peter, 279, 280 (note). His letter to Peter's widow, 280. His brother Samuel, 280. His sister Dowse, 280. Wise and feeling letter about her, 280. His sister Mrs. Holmes, 282. His sister Lydia Scott, 282. His sister Anne Harris and her descendants, 282. Her daughter Grace Harris and her husband Jonathan Williams and her sons, 283. His sister Sarah Davenport, 286. Letter from him to Josiah Davenport refusing him an office, 286. Relations between him and his sister Jane Mecom and her family, 287. Bequests by Franklin to members of his father's family, 301. Relations between him and Deborah's family, 301. Sharp letter to James Read, 301. Franklin's interest in his ancestors, 302. Notes on subject by his uncle Benjamin, 302. Visit to his relation, Mary Fisher, in England, 303. Old Tythes Book sent by Carlyle to Edw. Everett, 303 (note). Thomas Franklin, 305. Deborah's English relations, 306. Sally Franklin and her father Thomas Franklin, of Lutterworth, 306. Letter from Josiah Franklin about his ancestors, 307. _His American Friends_ Friends who accompanied him to Trenton, i., 310. House full of friends on his return from England in 1762, 311. Rejoicing over his safe return to England, 311. His friends "along the Continent," 311. Many friends in New England, 312. Visits to Boston, 312. Description of his return from New England in 1755, 312. Accidents to Franklin, 312. Friends in New York and New Jersey, 314. Visits to Maryland and Virginia, 314. Friends in Charleston, 315. Dr. Garden, Dr. Lining, Henry Laurens and John Laurens, 315. Death of John Laurens, 316 (note). Relations between Franklin and Washington, 316. Widespread fame of the two in America, 317 (note). Relations between Franklin and Jefferson, 318. Humorous stories about Franklin by Jefferson, 318, 321 (note). Franklin and Charles Carroll of Carrollton, 321. Franklin and John Carroll, 321. Franklin and William Carmichael, 322. James Ralph and other young Philadelphia friends of Franklin, 323. Ralph's version of 18th Psalm, 324. Comments of author on Ralph, 325 (note). Junto friends, 326. Hugh Roberts, 328. Philip Syng, 330. Samuel Rhoads, 330. Luke Morris, 331. Dr. Thomas Bond, 332. Dr. John Bard, 332. Dr. Benjamin Rush, 332. Stories about Franklin by Dr. Rush, 333. John Bartram, 334. John Hughes, 336. Thomas Hopkinson, 337. Effect of Whitefield's eloquence on him, 338. Francis Hopkinson, 338. Col. Henry Bouquet, 340. Lee and Izard, Franklin's only two enemies, 340. Warning to his daughter about his enemies, 340. Dr. Cadwallader Evans, 342. Abel James and Thomas Wharton, 343. Samuel Wharton, 343. Ebenezer Kinnersley, 345. John Foxcroft and Rev. Thos. Coombe, 346. James Wright and Susannah Wright, 346. Anthony Benezet, 347. Joseph Galloway, 347. James Logan, David Hall and Charles Thomson, 350. David Rittenhouse, 350. John Jay, 350. Josiah Quincy, John Winthrop and Dr. Samuel Cooper, 352. James Bowdoin, 352. Young Josiah Quincy, 352. Mather Byles, 354. Samuel Danforth, 355. Jared Eliot, 356. Dr. Ezra Stiles, 362. Dr. Samuel Johnson, 363, 364. Jared Ingersoll, 364. Catherine Ray, 364. _His British Friends_ Mrs. Margaret Stevenson, i., 372. Polly Stevenson, 374. Wm. Strahan, 392. Jonathan Shipley, Bishop of St. Asaph's, 405. Catherine Louisa Shipley, 407, 409, 410, 412, 417, 417 (note). Georgiana Shipley, 407, 410, 413. Anna Maria Shipley, 411, 412. Dr. John Pringle, 415, 416, 417, 417 (note). Dr. John Fothergill, 421. David Barclay, 423. Franklin a "clubable" man, 424. Dr. Price, 425. Dr. Joseph Priestley, 429. Benjamin Vaughan, 432. Dr. John Hawkesworth and John Stanley, 437. John Sargent, 438. John Canton, 438. Dr. Alexander Small, 439. John Alleyne, 442. Edward Bridgen, 442. Edmund Burke, 443. Mrs. Thompson, 442, 443. John Whitehurst, 442, 445. Anthony Tissington, 442, 445. Thomas Viny, 442, 445. Caleb Whitefoord, 442, 447, 447 (note). Peter Collinson, 447. Rev. George Whitefield, 447, 449. David Hartley, 447, 456. Ballad of Auld Robin Gray, 460. The Farce, God-send or the Wreckers, 462. George Whatley, 447, 463. Lord LeDespencer, 447, 452. James Hutton, 447, 453. Sir Alexander Dick, 463. Lady Alexander Dick, 464. Lord Kames, 464. Scotch social conditions in 1759, 464, 465. David Hume, 467. William Alexander, 469. Mariamne Williams, wife of Jonathan Williams, Jr., 469. Sir Edward Newenham, 469. Richard Jackson, 470. Gen. Horatio Gates, 470. Gen. Charles Lee, 470, 471. Benjamin West, 470, 471. Mrs. Benjamin West, 472. Raphael West, 472. Mr. Mead, 472. _His French Friends_ Social life of Franklin in France, i., 473, 474. His love of France and the French people, 476. His opinion of the French people, 476. DuPont De Nemours, 474, 530, 533. D'Alibard, 474. Dr. Barbeu Dubourg, 474, 530, 533. Relations to French women, 477. Franklin's residence at Passy, 479. LeRay de Chaumont, 479. LeRay de Chaumont, the younger, 481. DeChaumont's family, 482. Madame Foucault, 482. Her kiss, 482. Madame Chaumont, her comments on supposed attack of John Paul Jones on an old woman, 482. Her comment on the engagement of Mlle. Passy to the Marquis de Tonnerre, 483. Franklin's witty letter to the mother of this girl, 483. Franklin's mode of life at Paris, 483. His salary, 484. His letter to John Adams about American criticism on his mode of life, 484. His hospitality at Passy, 485. Dinners mentioned by Miss Adams, 485. Story of the Abbe Raynal and American degeneracy, 485. Letter from John Quincy Adams to Franklin, 486. Franklin's visiting list, 486. Entertainments attended by Franklin, 486. Madame Helvetius, 487. Madame Brillon, 487, 500. Comtesse D'Houdetot, 487, 522. Fete Champetre, 523. Jean Georges Cabanis, 488. Abbe Morellet, 488. Abbe de la Roche, 488. Abbe Morellet's Very Humble Petition to Madame Helvetius from her Cats, 488. Letter to the Abbe de la Roche from Franklin with regard to Madame Helvetius, 489. The Journey to the Elysian Fields, 489. Letters from Franklin to Cabanis, 491. Description of Madame Helvetius by Abigail Adams, 492. Comment by Miss Adams on Madame Helvetius, 493. The Abbes, 496. Feeling letters from Abbe Morellet to Franklin, 497, 498. The Abbe Morellet's drinking song, 498. The Abbe Morellet's observations on good rum, 499. Franklin's drinking song, 499. Essay on the Morals of Chess, 516. Madame Jean Baptiste Le Roy, 526. Jean Baptiste Le Roy, 527. Pierre Le Roy, 528. Charles Le Roy, 528. David Le Roy, 528. Madame Lavoisier, 528. Madame de Forbach, 528. Mlle. Flainville, 528, 529. Buffon, 530. Condorcet, 530. Lafayette, 530. Madame de Lafayette, 531. Duc de la Rochefoucauld, 530, 531. Lavoisier, 530, 532. Chastellux, 530, 532. Ferdinand Grand, 530, 532. LeVeillard, 530, 537. Madame LeVeillard, 537. Jefferson's letter to LeVeillard about the Autobiography, 540. Letter from LeVeillard to Franklin about Mesdames Helvetius and Brillon, 540. Letter from LeVeillard's daughter to Franklin, 541. Dr. Jan Ingenhousz, 541. Debt due him by Samuel Wharton, 541. Mrs. Paschal, 542 (note). Thomas Mifflin, 542 (note). Wm. Hunter, 542 (note). Thomas Pownall, 542 (note). Mr. and Mrs. Jean Holker, 542 (note). Monthieu, 542 (note). Madame La Marck, 542 (note). Dr. Edward Bancroft, 542 (note). Marquis de Turgot, 542 (note). _His Personal and Social Characteristics_ Humorous observations on Vanity, i., 28. Franklin's physique, 158. Early eagerness of Franklin for the sea, 158. Portraits of Franklin, 233 (note). Sterner virtues of Franklin, ii., 1. Statement of Franklin to Hancock that they must all hang together, 2. Franklin slow to anger, 3. His integrity, 3. Description of Franklin by Dr. Cutler, 7. His wit, 7. His humor, 8. Story of the powder cask, 9. Story of the anchor, 9. Story of the hot iron, 10. Story of the Archbishop and the queen, 10. The story of omnia vanitas, 11. The story of the onions, 11. Duelling story, 12. His bon mots, 12. His love of practical jokes, 15. Remarks on man as a sociable being, 16. Early Socratic method of arguing, 16. Franklin's modesty and lack of dogmatism, i., 28; ii., 17. His level-headedness, 18. His dislike of disputation, 18. Franklin a good listener, 19. His amiable, generous disposition, i., 29; ii., 20, 22. His love of games, 21. His physical appetites, 21. His fondness for music, 22. His armonica. 22. Cheerfulness under suffering, 22. Benignity of mind, 23. His habit of making gifts, 23. His loyalty in friendship, 24. His interest in his friend's children, 25. Franklin's physical exercises, 483 (note). _As a Man of Business_ General Comments on, ii., 26. Main calling that of printer, 27. Set as a boy to cutting wicks, 28. Taken around among workmen by Josiah, 28. Josiah makes a printer of him, 29. Becomes apprentice to his brother, 29. Nature of his brother's publications, 29. James Franklin embroiled with magistracy, 30. Courant issued in name of Franklin, 33. Rubs between Franklin and his brother, 34. Absconds from Boston, 35. Passage from New York to New Jersey, 35. Dr. Brown, the infidel, 36. The kindly old woman at Burlington, 36. Lands at Philadelphia, 36. Falls asleep in Quaker Meeting-house, 37. Puts up at the Crooked Billet, 37. Calls on Andrew Bradford, 37. Calls on Keimer, 37. Keimer's printing outfit and elegy, 38. Works for Bradford and Keimer, 39. Is brought to the notice of Sir William Keith, 39. Keith and Col. French call on him, 40. Returns to Boston, 41. Keith's promises, 41. Continues at work with Keimer, 42. Keith's continued deceit, 42, 43. Sails for London, 43, 44. Discovers Keith's perfidy, 44. Makes a friend of Andrew Hamilton, 45. And repays his kindness, 45. Ralph a stumbling block to him in London, 45. Franklin is employed at Palmer's, 46. And at Watts', 46. Relations to his fellow-printers in London, 47, 48. Lodges with a Catholic widow, 49. His skill as a swimmer, 49. Is employed by Mr. Denham, 50. Is invited by Sir Wm. Wyndham to teach his sons how to swim, 50. Returns to Philadelphia and meets Keith on the street, 51. Habits in London, 51 (note). Mr. Denham dies, 52. Franklin nearly dies, 52. Story of Mr. Denham, 52. Franklin goes back to Keimer, 53. Keimer's other hands, 53. Keimer benefits by Franklin's inventive faculty, 54. Franklin quits Keimer, 55. Meredith proposes partnership to Franklin, 56. The latter is employed by Keimer again, 56. And again proves very useful to him, 57. New Jersey job, 57. Story of Cotton Mather, 57. Franklin attracts the attention of Governor Burnet, 58. Acquires good will of prominent New Jersey men, 58. Portrait of Keimer by Franklin, 59. Prediction of Isaac Decow as to Franklin, 59. Meredith and Franklin enter into partnership, 59. First money earned by them, 60. Samuel Mickle, the croaker, 60. New firm helped by members of The Junto, 61. Franklin's industry wins attention, 61. Webb betrays Franklin, 62. Franklin buys Keimer's newspaper, 62. Franklin founds Pennsylvania Gazette, 63. Its practical value to him, 63. On the brink of ruin, 63. Meredith a drunkard, 64. Coleman and Grace come to Franklin's aid, 64, 64 (note). Partnership of Meredith and Franklin dissolved, 65. Franklin continues, 66. Advocates more paper money, 66. Secures paper money printing contracts, 67. Opens up a stationery shop, 67. Employs a compositor, 67. Personal and business habits at this time, 67. Keimer goes to Barbadoes, 68. His railings at fortune, 68. David Harry declines Franklin's offer of partnership, 69. Franklin seeks a wife, 69. Franklin's industry in business, 70. His frugality, 70. Establishes his Poor Richard's Almanac, 71. Its success, 71. Principles on which Franklin conducted the Pennsylvania Gazette, 71. Extends his printing business, 72. Establishes a German newspaper and a magazine, 74. Latter project betrayed by John Webbe, 74. Chosen Clerk of General Assembly and appointed Postmaster, 75. Refuses to retaliate Bradford's meanness, 75. Business value of office of Clerk, 75. Conciliates a member of the Assembly, 76. Business increases, 77. Gazette profitable, 77. Admits Hall to partnership, 77. Terms of partnership, 78. Business income of Franklin, 78. Profits from the Gazette, 78. Franklin's interest in art of printing, 78 (note). Disagreement between him and Hall over a copyright, 79. Franklin burns his fingers with the Stamp Tax, 80. Appointed Comptroller of Post Office accounts, 80. Appointed Deputy Postmaster-General, 80. Success in managing Post Office, 81, 82. Comments of Franklin on his removal from office of Postmaster, 81. Gives Post Office patronage to relations, 83. Income of Franklin from other sources than business, 83. Appointed Postmaster General of the United States, 84. Gift of land to him by State of Georgia, 84. His estate at his death, 85. Character of the Pennsylvania Gazette, 86. Books published by Franklin, 90. Sold other books, 91. Miscellaneous side of his business, 91. Sold bond servants and negroes, 92. Mrs. Read's ointments, 93. _As a Statesman_ Appointed Clerk of General Assembly, ii., 95. Appointed and elected to other offices including a seat in the Assembly, 95. Minor legislation in which he had a hand, 95 (note). Lacking in fluency but spoke to the point, 96. Influence very great in every Assembly in which he sat, 96. Remarks on the importance of character to an orator, 97. Political positions occupied by him, 97. Not easily imposed on by mere glibness, but alive to eloquence like that of Lord Chatham, 98. Repeatedly re-elected to Assembly, 98. Usually with the majority, 98 (note). A true democrat, 98. Detested arbitrary power, 99. Conservative, yet liberal, 99. Believed in universal suffrage and law of gavelkind, 100. History of the conflict between the Proprietary and Popular Parties in Pennsylvania, 100. And reasons therefor, 101. Value of the Penn Estate in Pennsylvania, 102, 102 (note). Strictures of Franklin on the Proprietary Government, 102, 104, 107. Traffic in legislation, 104. Despicable conduct of the Proprietaries, 106. Bitterness of the struggle between the Proprietaries and the Assembly, 108. Stand of the Quakers in the struggle, 108. Franklin the leader of the Popular Party, 109. His relations to Governors of Pennsylvania during the struggle, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114. Story about a dinner at the house of Governor Morris, 110. Reply of Shirley to Franklin at a banquet, 112. Governor Denny brings over gold medal to Franklin, 112. Plies Franklin with solicitations, 112. Franklin appointed agent to go to England, 114. Lord Loudon intervenes in the conflict, 114. Vacillating conduct of Lord Loudon about sailing, 114. "Always on horseback, and never rides on," said Innis, 115. Long detention of Franklin at New York, 115. Franklin's opinion of Lord Loudon, 117, 117 (note). Loudon's reply to Franklin about filling his own pockets, 118. Franklin arrives in London, 118. Interview with Lord Granville, 118. Meeting between Proprietaries and Franklin, 119. Settlement of dispute with Proprietaries, 120. Franklin thanks Assembly, 122. His personal relations to the Proprietaries and their governors, 122. Proprietary oppression, 124. Governor Penn's dependence on Franklin, 126. Letter to Dr. Fothergill from Franklin about the Proprietary, 127. Factional dissensions in Pennsylvania, 127. Popular conflict with Governor Penn, 127. Franklin elected Speaker, 129. Writes preface to Galloway's speech, 129. Denunciation of Proprietaries by him, 130. Lapidary attacks on Thomas and Richard Penn by him, 132. Factious attacks on him in prose and verse, 133. Franklin defeated at election, 135. Franklin attacks fairness of the election, 136. Wearies of political contentions, 137. Recommends son of Thomas Penn to good will of Dickinson, 138. Scathing comments by Franklin on Thomas Penn's meanness, 138. Philadelphia merchants raise sum to send him abroad as agent, 140. Pennsylvania feud sinks into the background, 140. The Albany Congress, 141. A day's journey under colonial conditions, 143 (note). Letters from Franklin to Shirley on the colonial connection, 146. Letter to James Parker from Franklin anticipating Albany Plan of Union, 151. Franklin and the Indians, 152. Humorous stories about the Indians told by him, 157, 158 (note). Distinction enjoyed by him in England during his first and second missions, 162. General relations to England before Revolution, 163, 164 (note). Loyalty to England and its king, 163, 170. Subsequent change of attitude, 168. Willingness to accept office under the Duke of Grafton, 169. His counsels of moderation, 170. First of all an American, 171. His gloomy pictures of Irish and Scotch conditions, 172. Favorable view of American conditions taken by him as contrasted with foreign, 171. Parliamentary corruption, 174, 206. Franklin's familiarity with American conditions, 177. His foresight into the American future, 178, 191, 193, 204. Misconstruction produced by his fairness during colonial contest, 178. His view of legal tie between England and the Colonies and Parliamentary supremacy, 178. An imperialist, 182, 191. Favored representation of Colonies in Parliament, but realized its impracticability, 184, 187. General position taken by Franklin in colonial contest, 185. His relations to the Stamp Act, 187, 194, 206, 230. English haughtiness towards, and ignorance of, Colonies, 188. Misrepresentations by Colonial Governors, 189. Economic restrictions on Colonies, 190. Views in regard to the taxation of the Colonies, 192. And in regard to English emigration, 192. Influence exerted by Franklin as colonial agent, 194. Impartiality of Franklin during colonial contest, 196. Summary of argument addressed by him to the British and American Public, 196. His advice to the Colonies, 201. His final sense of certainty of armed conflict, 205. Comments on tea duty, 207. Refusal to recognize Franklin as agent, 207, 211. His comments on rejection of Chatham's plan, 208. Draws up angry protest, 209. Lord Sandwich attacks him as enemy of England, 210. Franklin's relations to Hillsborough, 211. His opinion of Lord Dartmouth, 216. Wedderburn's tirade against Franklin, 222. Efforts of Franklin after dismissal from office to avert war, 229. He leaves England, 231. His reputation at this time very high, 231. Elected to Congress, 232. His services in Congress, 232, 235, 241. Made member of committee to visit Washington's camp, 234. Early stand in favor of independence, 235. Interviews French stranger, 235. Made member of committee of secret correspondence with foreign friends of America, 236. His mission to Canada, 237. His relations to the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation, 241. Devises seal, 242. Offers lure to Hessians, 242. Meets Lord Howe, 242. Other services by Franklin at beginning of Revolution, 246. His political hobbies, 249 (note). Goes to France, 249. Receives news of Burgoyne's surrender, 250. Peculiar fitness of Franklin for French mission, 251. Unfitness of his colleagues, 252. Rubs between John Adams and Vergennes, 252. Vergennes' opinion of John Adams, 253. Comments on John Adams by Franklin, 253. Jefferson's opinion of John Adams, 254 (note). Vergennes' strictures on Arthur Lee and Izard, 255, 255 (note). Vergennes' opinion of Franklin, 255. Judgments on Arthur Lee, 255 (note). Jay's dislike of the French, 256. John Laurens comes to Paris, 256. Deane's efficiency, 257 (note). Inutility of Franklin's colleagues, 257, 273. Testimony of John Adams as to tempers of Arthur Lee and Izard, 258 (note). Adams' vanity, 258 (note). A young state should be like a young virgin, thought Franklin, 259 (note). Franklin not to blame for enmity of his colleagues, 259. Causes of Lee's enmity to Franklin purely selfish, 260. Arthur Lee's character, 262. Jealousy of Franklin felt by Arthur Lee and Adams, 263, 263 (note). Rebukes from Franklin to Arthur Lee, 264. Disputatious and artful natures of Arthur and William Lee, 265. Trunk entrusted to Franklin by William Lee, 266. Franklin's opinion of Arthur Lee, 267. His opinion of William Lee, 269. Treacherous conduct of William Lee and Izard, 270. Relations of Franklin to Izard, 271. Izard's passionate temper, 272, 272 (note). Enmity of colleagues ascribed by Franklin to envy, 274. Franklin's first French friends, 274. Franklin's fame when in France, 274. His academic degrees, 274, 274 (note). Special causes underlying fame of Franklin in France, 275, 276 (note), 280. Comments of Count Segur on the American envoys, 276 (note). John Adams' testimony to fame of Franklin, 278. Meeting between Voltaire and Franklin, 278. Apotheosis of Voltaire, 279. Franklin's opinion of Vergennes, 280. Jefferson on Franklin in France, 281. History of pecuniary aids obtained by Franklin from France, 281. His remark about the Mississippi, 285. His relations to bills of exchange, 295. To dispatches, 295. Duty devolved on him of purchasing supplies and fitting out ships, 296. This duty disagreeable to him, 296. Was also a Judge in Admiralty, 297. Success of American privateers, 297. Franklin advises attacks on English cities, 298. His relations to John Paul Jones, 299. His efforts for the release of American prisoners, 300. Rascality of Thomas Digges, 303. Services by Thomas Wren to American prisoners, 304. Pressure on Franklin for place in American army, 304. Applications of Messrs. Lith and Pellion, 307. Inquiries about America made of Franklin, 308. Beset by beggars, 308. Intense feelings aroused in Franklin by war, 309. Hutton's mission to France, 309. Pulteney's mission, 310. Mission of Hartley and Hammond, 311. Weissenstein's mission, 311. Sir William Jones' mission, 313. Audit of Franklin's accounts, 315 (note). Adams' accusation of subserviency to the French against Franklin, 316. Vergennes' persistency of character, 317 (note). Comment of D'Aranda on M. de Maurepas and Vergennes, 317 (note). Franklin justified in opposing signing of preliminary treaty of peace without consent of Vergennes, 319. Franklin's efforts to acquire Canada, 321. Final treaty of peace signed, 329. Franklin resigns, 329. Returns to Pennsylvania and is further honored, 329. Elected a member of Federal Convention of 1787, 329. Jefferson's estimate of Franklin as a man, 330 (note). Part taken by Franklin in the Convention of 1787, 330. Reaction in his liberalism, 331 (note). Franklin and paper currency, 336. Franklin and free trade, 342. Franklin and export duties, 345. Franklin and pauperism, 345. Franklin and agriculture, 346. Franklin and the criminal laws, 347. Franklin and imprisonment for debt, 348. Franklin and slavery 348. _As a Man of Science_ Indifference to his inventions, i., 15. Early interest of Franklin in science, ii., 350, 352. Essentially a man of science, 351. His three essays written at sea, 351. Relations of Franklin to electricity, 352. Qualifications of Franklin for scientific inquiry, 379. Franklin's interest in balloons, 384. Franklin's study of marsh gas and effect of oil on water, 390. Franklin's inquiry into the effect of depth of water on speed and navigation, 394. His interest in the Gulf Stream, 395. Franklin and pulse glasses, 396. Inventions of Franklin, 396. Franklin and magic squares, 397. Franklin's alphabet and reform spelling, 398. Franklin and the armonica, 400. The Franklin stove, 401, 404. Chimney, place improvements by Franklin, 403. Franklin and smoky chimneys, 404. Franklin and ventilation, 405. Distraction to which Franklin was subject in the pursuit of science, 406. Cruder reflections of Franklin on scientific subjects 407. Franklin's relations to medicine, 407. Franklin and the dry bellyache, 408. Franklin's ideas about colds, 410. Franklin lectures John Adams on open windows, 414. Franklin and waterspouts, whirlwinds and northeast storms, 415. Franklin on light, 416. Loose Thoughts on a Universal Fluid, 417. Franklin on the conservation of matter, 417. Franklin and the mastodon, 417. Letter from Franklin to Gebelin on language variations, 418. Franklin and astronomy, 419. Franklin and refrigeration, 419. Franklin and geology, 420. Franklin and the physical convulsions of the earth, 421. _As a Writer_ Lost letters, i., 5. Way to Wealth known to whole civilized globe, 13. Franklin first American man of letters in the opinion of Hume, ii., 423. Franklin an author for practical purposes only, 423. Indifference to his own writings, 424. Franklin foresaw increased patronage of English authors, 425. Manner in which he was educated, 425. His early love of books, 426. His ballads, 427. His controversy with Collins, 428. Means adopted by him to improve himself as a writer, 428. Silence Dogood letters, 429. Meets Governor Burnet, 434. Forms acquaintance with Ralph and other lovers of reading in Philadelphia, 434. Love of books, 434. Franklin's scruples about niceties of authorship and printing, 435. Criticism of Hume on his use of words, 439. Franklin's conception of good writing, 440. Advice to Benjamin Vaughn as to writing, 440. General character of Franklin's writings, 441. His fable of the eagle and the hare, 443. Canada pamphlet, 439, 444. Papers written by Franklin on the Colonial controversy before his return from his second mission to England, 446. Effect of the Edict by the King of Prussia and its companion satire, 447. Letters to the Public Advertiser, 449. Dialogue between Rodrigue and Fell, the apothecary, 449. Copper plate engraving designed by Franklin, 450. Papers written by Franklin in France to promote the American Cause, 451. His dialogue between Britain and other countries, 452. Graver latter-day writings by Franklin, 454. His papers on how to grow rich, 455. Parable against Persecution, 456. Parable on Brotherly Love, 456. Papers contributed by Franklin to the Busybody and the Pennsylvania Gazette, 457. Speech of Polly Baker, 467. Means of Disposing the Enemy to Peace, 468. Craven Street Gazette, 468. Petition of the Letter Z, 471. Sale of the Hessians, 472. Supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle, 472, 474. The Ephemera, 472, 476. The Whistle, 472, 478. His petite chanson a boire, 472, 479. His letter to the Abbe Morellet on wine, 472, 480. Dialogue between Franklin and the Gout, 472, 481. Handsome and Deformed Leg, 472, 484. Economical Project, 472, 485. A Letter from China, 487. Abuse of the Press, 488. Comparison of the Conduct of the Ancient Jews and of the Anti-Federalists, 489. Account of the Supremest Court of Judicature in Pennsylvania, 489. Speech of Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim against the Erika, 489. Petition of the Left Hand, 490. Morals of Chess, 491. Franklin's letters, 492. His letter on the Cincinnati, 494. General observations on the history and contents of the Autobiography, 499. General observations on Poor Richard's Almanac, 503. The Way to Wealth, or Father Abraham's Speech, 517

Franklin, Benjamin (Franklin's uncle), i., 60, 82, 275, 276, 277, 289, 304

Franklin College, Pa., i., 15

Franklin, Deborah, i., 52, 70, 88, 99, 103, 205, 211, 218, 224 (note), 290, 303, 306, 307, 314, 336, 346, 367, 372, 373, 423, 449, 489; ii., 23, 45, 70, 79, 93, 470 (note)

Franklin, Francis Folger, i., 70, 240

Franklin in France, by the Hales, ii., 6 (note)

Franklin, James, i., 83, 199, 279, 301; ii., 29, 30, 41, 426, 427

Franklin, James, Jr., i., 199, 278, 279

Franklin, John (Franklin's brother), i., 53, 94, 274, 278, 279, 296

Franklin, John (Franklin's uncle), i., 274, 277

Franklin, Josiah (Franklin's father), i., 60, 78, 82, 85, 158, 159, 200, 266, 267, 268, 270, 274, 304, 307; ii., 28, 41, 428

Franklin, Josiah, Jr., i., 158, 276, 279

Franklin, Peter, i., 279, 280 (note); ii., 83

Franklin, Sally (daughter of Thomas Franklin, of Lutterworth), i., 277, 306; ii., 469

Franklin, Samuel (Franklin's brother), i., 280, 301

Franklin, Samuel (son of Franklin's Uncle Benjamin), ii., 29

Franklin, Samuel (grandson of Franklin's Uncle Benjamin), i., 275, 277

Franklin, Thomas (Franklin's uncle), i., 38, 275, 303, 305

Franklin, Thomas (Franklin's grandfather), i., 275

Franklin, Thomas (of Lutterworth), i., 277, 306

Franklin, William, i., 26, 36, 44, 48, 134, 173, 178, 216, 218, 236, 238, 241, 262, 264, 264 (note), 273, 295, 305, 337, 348, 375, 379, 393, 453, 474, 476; ii., 82, 83, 98, 104 (note), 134, 166, 175, 177, 178, 181, 185, 207, 338 (note), 436, 448, 483 (note)

Franklin, Mrs. William, i., 40, 255, 264 (note)

Franklin, William Temple, i., 44, 92, 93, 174 (note), 261, 264 (note), 372, 388, 390, 453, 482, 497, 530, 539; ii., 24, 224, 247, 255, 295, 306

French, Col. ii., 40, 43

G

Galloway, Joseph, i., 5, 253, 343, 347; ii., 100, 128, 129, 135, 136, 174, 175, 176, 201, 206, 210, 339

Gantt, Edward, i., 65

Garden, Dr. Alexander, i., 315

Gates, Gen. Horatio, i., 470

Gazetteer, Letter to, ii., 202

Gebelin, Antoine Court de, ii., 418

General Magazine and Historical Chronicle for all the British Plantations in America, ii., 74

George III, i., 418, 419, 453, 455, 457; ii., 99, 165

Gladstone, Wm. E., ii., 168, 204

Godfrey, Mrs., i., 208

Godfrey, Thomas, i., 118, 326, 327; ii,. 59

Grace, Robert, i., 15, 118, 301, 326; ii., 64, 64 (note), 66

Grafton, Duke of, ii., 169, 227 (note)

Grand, Ferdinand, i., 513, 530, 532; ii., 85

Granville, Lord, i., 448; ii., 118

Greene, Gen. Nathanael, ii., 232

Grenville, George, ii., 140, 190, 338, 339 (note)

H

Hall, David, i., 133, 244, 350; ii., 4 (note), 77, 79, 167

Hamilton, Andrew, ii., 43, 45, 63, 67

Hamilton, Gov. James, ii., 107, 109, 110, 141, 145

Hancock, John, ii., 2, 312

Handsome and Deformed Leg, ii., 472, 484

Harris, Anne, i., 282, 301

Harris, Grace, i., 283

Harry, David, ii., 54, 69

Hartley, David, i., 57, 108, 153, 447, 456, 542 (note), 543; ii., 301, 302, 311

Hawkesworth, Dr. John, i., 57, 380, 437; ii., 394

Helvetius, M., i., 489

Helvetius, Madame, i., 487, 518, 529, 540; ii., 481, 483

Hemphill, Rev. Mr., i., 69

Herschel, Sir William, ii., 419

Hewson, Elizabeth, i., 262, 387, 390

Hewson, Mary (Polly Stevenson), i., 19, 35, 56, 107, 133, 224 (note), 243, 261, 262, 372, 373, 374, 471; ii., 165, 167, 399, 412, 469, 499

Hewson, Dr. William, i., 19, 384, 385; ii., 469

Hewson, William (Franklin's godson), i., 239, 388, 390

Hints for Those that would be Rich, ii., 455

Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania from its Origin, i., 39 (note)

Hodgson, William, ii., 303

Holker, Jean, i., 542 (note)

Holker, Mrs. Jean, i., 542 (note)

Holmes, Abdiel, ii., 24

Holmes, Mary, i., 282

Holmes, Capt. Robert, i., 282; ii., 39, 53

Hopkinson, Francis, i., 246, 338, 339, 341; ii., 277

Hopkinson, Thomas, i., 339; ii., 379

Howe, Lord, i., 154, 423; ii., 184, 230, 242, 424

Hubbard (or Partridge), Elizabeth, i., 20, 43 (note), 53, 64, 265, 355, 477; ii., 9

Huey, Joseph, i., 79, 153

Hughes, John, i., 217, 222, 336; ii., 25, 155, 167

Hume, David, i., 466, 467; ii., 423, 425

Hunter, William, i., 542 (note); ii., 80, 81

Huntingdon, Samuel, i., 47; ii., 287, 317

Hutchinson Letters, Tract Relative to the Affair of, ii., 183, 207, 217, 446

Hutchinson, Gov. Thomas, ii., 142, 195, 217, 226

Hutton, James, i., 447, 453

I

Idea of the English School Sketched out for the Consideration of the Trustees of the Philadelphia Academy, i., 138

Increase of Mankind, Essay on, ii., 191, 193, 348, 424

Ingenhousz, Jan, i., 5, 45 (note), 263, 334, 345, 418, 419, 421, 472, 532, 541; ii., 138, 374, 379, 388, 389, 406, 415

Ingersoll, Jared, i., 95, 356, 364

Interest of Great Britain Considered with Regard to her Colonies, etc., ii., 444

Internal State of America, The, ii., 347, 454

Izard, Ralph, ii., 221, 250, 255 (note), 256, 258 (note), 268, 270, 271, 274

J

Jackson, Richard, i., 147, 361, 470; ii., 136, 156, 158, 165, 346, 444

Jackson, William, ii., 288

James, Abel, i., 18, 253, 342, 539; ii., 100

Jay, John, i., 263, 339, 341, 350, 487; ii., 4, 84, 235, 255 (note), 256, 257, 258 (note), 284, 285, 288, 290, 291, 292, 316, 319, 320, 321, 324, 333

Jefferson, Thomas, i., 6, 18, 318, 485, 540; ii., 8, 17, 96, 235, 241, 242, 249, 255 (note), 281, 330 (note), 424

Jenyns, Soame, ii., 338

Johnson, Samuel, i., 130, 311, 356, 363

Johnson, Gov. William, ii., 160

Jones, Dr. John, i., 112

Jones, John Paul, i., 482, 485; ii., 263, 268, 290, 299, 301, 476

Jones, Sir William, i., 411, 412, 416; ii., 313

Jordan, Thomas, i., 57, 438

Journal of the Negotiation for Peace with Great Britain, i., 9; ii., 5

Journal of a Voyage from London to Philadelphia, i., 32; ii., 16, 350

Journey to the Elysian Fields, i., 489

Junius, ii., 227 (note)

Junto, The, i., 117; ii., 9, 66

K

Kalm, Peter, i., 124, 146

Kames, Lord, i., 20, 29, 98, 196, 391, 464, 466; ii., 166, 177, 187, 191, 400, 424

Keimer, Samuel, i., 85, 206; ii., 37, 51, 53, 62, 68, 69

Keith, Sir William, i., 90, 282; ii., 20, 39, 40, 41, 51

Kelly and Fry, Doctors, i., 134, 135

Kent, Benjamin, i., 64, 64 (note)

Kinnersley, Ebenezer, i., 246, 345; ii., 353, 379

L

Lafayette, Marquis de, i., 48, 485, 503, 530; ii., 256, 298

Lafayette, Madame de, i., 531

LaLuzerne, Chevalier de, ii., 253, 319, 324, 327

LaMarck, Madame, i., 542 (note)

Landais, Peter, i., 162; ii., 268

Lathrop, Rev. John, i., 8, 115

Laurens, Henry, i., 315; ii., 5, 6 (note), 25, 255 (note), 257 (note), 284, 388

Laurens, Col. John, i., 315, 316 (note); ii., 256, 288

Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent, i., 530, 532

Lavoisier, Madame, i., 477, 528

Lawrence, Col., i., 170

Lee, Arthur, i., 21 (note), 284, 285 (note), 469; ii., 7 (note), 221, 236, 237, 249, 250, 252 (note), 255, 255 (note), 256, 258 (note), 260, 263 (note), 267, 268, 271, 274

Lee, Gen. Charles, i., 71, 470, 471

Lee, John, ii., 221, 222

Lee, Ludlow, i., 285 (note)

Lee, William, i., 285 (note); ii., 250, 265, 266, 270

LeDespencer, Lord (Sir Francis, Dashwood), i., 74, 391, 447, 452; ii., 216, 448

LeRoy, Charles, i., 528

LeRoy, David, i., 528

LeRoy, Jean Baptiste, i., 526; ii., 170, 354, 388, 413

LeRoy, Madame Jean Baptiste, i., 526

LeRoy, Pierre, i., 528

Lettsom, Dr. John Coakley, i., 421, 422

Le Veillard, M. Louis, i., 389, 501, 521, 530, 537; ii., 342, 344

Le Veillard, Madame, i., 530, 537

Le Veillard, Mlle., i., 541

Lining, John, i., 315; ii., 373 (note), 381, 397 (note), 419

Lith, M., ii., 307

Livezey, Thomas, i., 344

Livingston, Robert R., i., 480; ii., 241, 253, 292, 293, 304, 326, 327, 345

Lloyd, Thomas, ii., 152

Logan, James, i., 132, 158, 171, 350; ii., 17, 90, 397

Logan, Miss, ii., 20

Loose Thoughts on a Universal Fluid, ii., 417

Lor, M. de, ii., 355

Loudon, Lord, ii., 112, 114, 117 (note)

Lovell, James, ii., 13, 301, 305, 345

M

Madison, James, ii., 330, 335

Maize, Essay on, i., 149

Mansfield, Lord, ii., 121, 227 (note), 448

Marat, Jean Paul, ii., 277

Marbois, i., 263; ii., 324, 327

Maritime Observations, i., 528

Marshall, Humphrey, i., 421; ii., 344 (note)

Martin, David, i., 131

Martin, Henri, i., 473

Maseres, Francis, i., 441 (note)

Mather, Cotton, i., 83, 117, 269; ii., 57

Mather, Rev. Increase, i., 83, 117

Mather, Samuel, i., 117; ii., 57

Maurepas, M. de, ii., 317 (note)

Meanes of Disposing the Enemie to Peace, ii., 468

Mecom, Benny, i., 286, 291, 297; ii., 73

Mecom, Mrs. Benny, i., 294

Mecom, Edward, i., 291

Mecom, Jane, i., 20, 31 (note), 52, 68, 71, 80, 95, 107 (note), 172, 177, 240, 270, 273, 274, 278, 279, 281, 282, 284, 287, 295, 297, 354, 371, 372, 477; ii., 10, 22, 187, 203, 399

Meditation on a Quart Mugg, ii., 464, 466

Meredith, Hugh, i., 326; ii., 53, 55, 63

Mesmer, ii., 407

Mifflin, Thomas, i., 542 (note)

Militia Act, i., 183; ii., 126

Mitchell, Dr., ii., 354

Montaudouin, M., i., 56

Monthieu, John Joseph, i., 542 (note)

Morellet, Abbe, i., 229, 488, 495, 496, 497, 513, 518; ii., 7 (note), 274, 394, 472, 480

Morellet, Abbe, Franklin's letter to, on wine, ii., 472

Morris, Eleanor, i., 277

Morris, Robert, i., 159 (note); ii., 19, 24, 253, 254, 257 (note), 266, 291, 292, 330

Morris, Gov. Robert Hunter, i., 185; ii., 19, 104, 104 (note), 109, 111

Morris, Robert and Thomas Leach, ii., 203

Morris, Thomas, ii., 266, 269

Moustiers, Comte de, i., 477 (note)

N

Narrative of the Late Massacres in Lancaster County, i., 194

Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency, ii., 66

Neave, Oliver, ii., 383

Newenham, Sir Edward, i., 5, 469

New York, ii., 35 (note)

New Zealand, i., 153

Nogaret, Felix, ii., 18

Nollet, Abbe, ii., 354, 382

Norris, Isaac, ii., 129, 141, 155

North, Lord, ii., 5, 221, 223

Notes and Hints for a Paper on Catching Cold, ii., 412

O

Observations Relative to the Intentions of the Original Founders of the Academy in Philadelphia, i., 136, 138

Onslow, Col., ii., 339 (note)

Osborne, Charles, i., 323

Oswald, Richard, i., 110, 156; ii., 7, 322

P

Paine, Thomas, i., 259, 530

Parable of Brotherly Love, i., 64; ii., 425, 456

Parable against Persecution, i., 64; ii., 15, 456

Paradise, Mr., i., 496

Paris, Ferdinand John, ii., 119

Parker, James, i., 148 (note), 291, 293; ii., 73

Parsons, William, i., 326, 327

Parton, James, i., 73, 74, 227, 275, 303; ii., 85, 153

Paschal, Mrs., i., 542 (note)

Passy, Mlle., de, i., 483

Pellion, Louis Givanetti, ii., 307

Penn, Gov. John, i., 193, 196, 197; ii., 126, 153

Penn, Thomas, i., 124, 170, 189; ii., 102, 102 (note), 131, 141

Penn, Lady Thomas, ii., 21, 139

Penn, William, i., 158, 191; ii., 101, 102, 125, 131, 138

Pennsylvania Gazette, ii., 20, 21, 27, 62, 69, 75, 78, 85

Percival, Thomas, ii., 12

Perkins, John, ii., 380

Peters, Rev. Mr., i., 127

Peters, Richard, ii., 141, 155

Petition of the Left Hand, ii., 490

Petition of the Letter Z, ii., 471

Philadelphia, i., 8, 151

Philadelphische Zeitung, ii., 74

Pitt, Miss, i., 380

Plain Truth, i., 163

Plan for Improving the Condition of the Free Blacks, ii., 454

Plan for Settling two Western Colonies in North America, i., 103, (note)

Poetry of Franklin, i., 113, 230, 275, 380, 499; ii., 427, 498

Poor, Essay on the Laboring, ii., 345

Poor Richard's Almanac, i., 16, 27; ii., 503

Potts, Stephen, i., 326, 327; ii., 53

Pownall, Thomas, i., 343, 542 (note); ii., 159, 340 (note)

Preface to the Speech of Joseph Galloway, ii., 104, 129

Price, Dr. Richard, i., 58, 93, 96, 416, 425, 531; ii., 385, 529

Price of Corn, ii., 347

Priestley, Joseph, i., 27, 67, 92, 106, 109, 110, 224 (note), 373, 416, 426, 427, 429; ii., 171, 221, 223, 224, 230, 375, 405

Prince, Rev. Thomas, ii., 358 (note)

Pringle, Sir John, i., 93, 320, 391, 402, 415, 416, 417, 417 (note), 421, 425; ii., 408, 421

Proposals Relating to Education, i., 129; ii., 23

Proposition Relative to Privateering, i., 110, 156

Prussia, i., 156

Public Advertiser, Letters to, ii., 192, 220, 228, 449

Q

Queries and Remarks in Relation to the Pennsylvania Constitution, ii., 331 (note)

Quincy, Edmund, i., 149

Quincy, Josiah, i., 52, 352, 353, 476; ii., 25, 247, 261

Quincy, Josiah, Jr., i., 21 (note), 352

R

Ralph, James, i., 87, 90, 202, 224 (note), 323; ii., 21, 43, 45

Ray, Catherine (or Mrs. William Greene), i., 207, 231, 266, 312, 356, 364, 385, 533

Raynal, Abbe, i., 318, 485

Read, James, i., 301

Read, Joseph, i., 301; ii., 83

Read, Mrs. (Franklin's mother-in-law), i., 24, 37, 206, 241, 243, 301; ii., 93

Reed, Joseph, ii., 226, 268

Remarks and Facts Concerning American Paper Money, ii., 336, 340

Remarks on the Late Protest, i., 67; ii., 136

Retort Courteous, The, ii., 454

Rhoads, Samuel, i., 246, 330, 542 (note); ii., 137

Rise and Progress of the Differences between Great Britain and her American Colonies, ii., 175

Rittenhouse, David, i., 350

Robert, Messrs., ii., 386, 387

Roberts, Hugh, i., 246, 311, 327, 328, 330, 331, 359

Robespierre, ii., 277

Robinson, Crabbe, i., 39

Roche, Abbe de la, i., 488, 489, 496, 499, 501, 513, 518

Rochefoucauld, Duc de la, i., 477, 486, 530, 531; ii., 321, 342

Romilly, Sir Samuel, i., 20; ii., 7 (note), 248, 347

Rozier, M. Pilatre de, ii., 385, 389

Rules by Which a Great Empire May be Reduced to a Small One, ii., 446

Rush, Dr. Benjamin, i., 321, 332, 333, 420; ii., 410

Russell, Lord John, ii., 227

Ruston, Thomas, ii., 341

S

Sainte-Beuve, i., 11

Sale of the Hessians, ii., 472

Sargent, John, i., 42 (note), 104, 438

Sayre, Stephen, i., 21 (note); ii., 340

Schuyler, Gen. Philip, ii., 238, 240

Schweighauser, M., i., 285 (note)

Scott, Lydia, i., 282, 301

Sharp, Granville, i., 76, 77

Shavers and Trimmers, ii., 464, 467

Shelburne, Lord, i., 430; ii., 161, 162, 195, 221, 223, 261, 320, 321, 394

Shipley, Anna Maria, i., 408, 411, 412; ii., 313

Shipley, Catherine, i., 330, 407, 409, 410, 412, 416, 417, 417 (note)

Shipley, Emily, i., 408, 414, 417

Shipley, Georgiana, i., 405, 407, 410, 412, 413, 417, 417 (note); ii., 231 (note)

Shipley, Jonathan (Bishop of St. Asaph's), i., 5, 20, 56, 405, 537; ii., 346

Shipley, Mrs. Jonathan, i., 406, 407, 412, 417 (note)

Shirley, Gen. William, ii., 112, 146

Silence Dogood, i., 83, 84; ii., 31

Small, Alexander, i., 77, 265, 439; ii., 383, 405

Smeathman, Henry, ii., 362

Smith, Sydney, i., 465, 466; ii., 527

Smith, Dr. William, i., 128, 131, 311, 340; ii., 129

Smyth, Albert Henry, i., 43, 248 (note), 484

Some Good Whig Principles, ii., 100, 454

Soulavie, Abbe, ii., 420

Sparks, Jared, i., 248 (note); ii., 200 (note), 211 (note)

Speech of Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim against the Erika, i., 7; ii., 489

St. John, Hector, ii., 7 (note)

Stanley, John, i., 57, 284, 380, 437

Stevenson, Mrs. Margaret, i., 44, 134, 236, 242, 247, 250, 306, 307, 372, 373, 386, 388, 391, 454, 479; ii., 4 (note), 468, 469, 470, 470 (note)

Stiles, Ezra, i., 91, 114, 356, 362

Stories, i., 27, 44, 67, 110, 289, 297, 318, 319, 320, 321 (note), 338, 341, 349, 354, 361, 377, 402, 430, 434, 437, 445, 469, 510; ii., 9, 10, 11, 12, 241, 247

Stormont, Lord, ii., 13, 14 (note)

Strachey, Henry, ii., 244

Strahan, William, i., 14, 39, 41, 55, 58, 131, 134, 201, 224 (note), 225, 227, 229, 230, 302, 311, 313, 385, 392, 438, 467; ii., 21, 79, 91, 117, 164, 165, 425

Sumner, Charles, i., 71

Supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle, ii., 472, 474

Syng, Philip, i., 328, 330, 331; ii., 367, 379

T

Tasker, Col. Benjamin, i., 178, 314

Temple, John, ii., 220, 220 (note)

Tennent, Rev. Gilbert, i., 142

Thayer, John, i., 64

Thomas, Sir George, i., 175; ii., 105, 109

Thompson, Mrs., i., 442, 443

Thomson, Charles, i., 246, 350; ii., 84, 168, 187, 201, 208, 209, 390

Tissington, Anthony, i., 442, 445

Toleration in Old England and New England, ii., 446

Torris, J. i., 155

Transatlantic Voyages of Franklin, i., 224 (note)

Tucker, Dean, ii., 162

Turgot, Marquis de, i., 9, 486, 488, 542 (note); ii., 18, 274, 404

Tyler, Moses Coit, ii., 6 (note)

V

Vanetta, Capt., i., 188; ii., 513

Vaughan, Benjamin, i., 18, 67, 109, 156, 432, 531, 537; ii., 24, 162, 343, 347, 409, 440, 444

Vergennes, Comte de, i., 487; ii., 252, 253, 255, 280, 285, 287, 293, 312, 317 (note), 318, 319, 320, 321, 324, 325, 326, 327, 328, 342

Vernon, Mr., i., 200

Vindication and Offer from Congress to Parliament, ii., 452

Viny, Thomas, i., 391, 442, 445; ii., 397 (note)

Virginia, i., 315

Voltaire, i., 48; ii., 278, 358

W

Walker, Hannah, i., 277

Walpole, Horace, ii., 227, 476

Walpole, Thomas, ii., 209

Washington, George, i., 6, 18, 21, 182, 261, 262, 302, 316, 403, 529; ii., 96, 111, 247, 287, 312, 329

Watson, Joseph, i., 323

Way to Wealth, i., 12; ii., 517

Webb, Benjamin, i., 150

Webb, George, i., 326; ii., 54, 62

Webster, Noah, ii., 400, 436

Wedderburn, Alexander, ii., 221, 227 (note)

Weems, Mason, i., 65, 88

Weissenstein, Charles de, ii., 311

Welfare, Michael, i., 58

West, Benjamin, i., 470, 471

West Wycombe, i., 75, 452

Wharton, Dr. Francis, i., 542 (note); ii., 6 (note)

Wharton, Samuel, i., 311, 343, 344, 541; ii., 268

Wharton, Thomas, i., 245, 246, 253, 311, 343, 344

Whatley, George, i., 6, 55, 57, 104, 447, 463; ii., 251, 396

Whateley, Thomas, ii., 220

Whateley, William, ii., 220

Whistle, The, i., 501; ii., 472, 478

Whitefield, George, i., 54, 59, 61, 132, 142, 338, 447. 449

Whitefoord, Caleb, i., 133, 442, 447, 447 (note)

Whitehead, Paul, i., 75; ii., 448

Whitehead, Wm. A., i., 39 (note)

Whitehurst, John, i., 442, 445

Wickes, Capt., ii., 249, 295, 297

Wilkes, John, i., 75; ii., 99, 165

Williams, Jonathan, i., 281, 283, 288, 295, 297

Williams, Jonathan, Jr., i., 283, 289, 469, 481; ii., 4 (note), 11, 263, 269, 296

Williams, Josiah, i., 283

Williams, Mariamne (Miss Alexander), i., 211, 469, 542 (note)

Winthrop, John, i., 352, 426, 430; ii., 218

Witch Trial at Mt. Holly, ii., 464

Wren, Thomas, ii., 304

Wright, Dr., ii., 355

Wright, James, i., 346

Wright, Susannah, i., 192, 346

Wygate, ii., 49