Chapter 11

Our good friends, Mr. Galloway, Mr. Wharton, and Mr. James, came with me in the ship from Chester to New Castle and went ashore there [he said]. It was kind to favour me with their good company as far as they could. The affectionateleave taken of me by so many friends at Chester was very endearing. God bless them and all Pennsylvania.

Then, after observing that the natural prudence and goodness of heart, with which God had blessed Sally, made it less necessary for him to be particular in giving her advice, Franklin tells her that the more attentively dutiful and tender she was towards her good mama the more she would recommend herself to him, adding, "But why should I mentionme, when you have so much higher a promise in the commandments, that such conduct will recommend you to the favour of God." After this, he warns her that her conduct should be all the more circumspect, that no advantage might be given to the malevolence of his political enemies, directs her to go constantly to church and advises her in his absence to acquire those useful accomplishments, arithmetic and book-keeping.

In his next letter to Sally, he tells her that he has met her husband at Preston, where he had been kindly entertained for two or three days by her husband's mother and sisters, whom he liked much. The comfort that this assurance gave to a wife, who had never met her husband's relatives, can be readily appreciated. He had advised Bache, he said, to settle down to business in Philadelphia, where he would always be with her; almost any profession a man has been educated in being preferable, in his opinion, to an office held at pleasure, as rendering him more independent, more a freeman, and less subject to the caprices of superiors. This means, of course, that the Baches, too, were looking for a seat in the Post-Office carryall, in which room was found for so many of Franklin's relations andprotégés.

By Industry & Frugality [Franklin further said], you may get forward in the World, being both of you yet young. And then what we may leave you at our Death may be a prettyAddition, tho' of itself far from sufficient to maintain & bring up a Family. It is of the more Importance for you to think seriously of this, as you may have a Number of Children to educate. 'Till my Return you need be at no Expence for Rent, etc, as you are all welcome to continue with your Mother, and indeed it seems to be your Duty to attend her, as she grows infirm, and takes much Delight in your Company and the Child's. This Saving will be a Help in your Progress: And for your Encouragement I can assure you that there is scarce a Merchant of Opulence in your Town, whom I do not remember a young Beginner with as little to go on with, & no better Prospects than Mr. Bache.

Ben of course is not overlooked. "I am much pleas'd with the Acc' I receive from all Hands of your dear little Boy. I hope he will be continu'd a Blessing to us all." It must have been a great gratification to him to learn that Betsey, William Franklin's wife, as well as Deborah, had stood as godmother for the child. In his next letter to Sally, acknowledging the receipt of a pleasing letter from her, he states that he is glad that she has undertaken the care of the housekeeping, as it would be an ease to her mother, especially if she could manage to her approbation. "That," he commented significantly, "may perhaps be at first a Difficulty."[23]It would be of use to her, he continued, if she would get a habit of keeping exact accounts, and it would be some satisfaction to him to see them, for she should remember, for her encouragement in good economy, that, whatever a child saves of its parents' money, will be its own another day. "Study," the letter concludes, "Poor Richard a little, and you mayfind some Benefit from his Instructions." These letters were all written from London. The rest of Franklin's letters to Sally alone were written from Passy. In the first he says that, if she knew how happy her letters made him, and considered how many of them miscarried, she would, he thought, write oftener. A daughter had then been added to the members of the Bache household, and that he had a word to pen about her goes almost without saying. He expresses the hope that Sally would again be out of the city during the hot months for the sake of this child's health, "for I begin to love the dear little creature from your description of her," he said. This was the letter in which Sally was so pointedly scored for not living more simply and frugally.

I was charmed [he declared] with the account you gave me of your industry, the table cloths of your own spinning, &c.; but the latter part of the paragraph, that you had sent for linen from France, because weaving and flax were grown dear, alas, that dissolved the charm; and your sending for long black pins, and lace, andfeathers!disgusted me as much as if you had put salt into my strawberries. The spinning, I see, is laid aside, and you are to be dressed for the ball! You seem not to know, my dear daughter, that, of all the dear things in this world, idleness is the dearest, except mischief.

Then Ben as usual comes in for notice. As he intended him for a Presbyterian as well as a Republican, he had sent him to finish his education at Geneva, Franklin stated.

He is much grown [he continues] in very good health, draws a little, as you will see by the enclosed, learns Latin, writing, arithmetic, and dancing, and speaks French better than English. He made a translation of your last letter to him, so that some of your works may now appear in a foreign language.

A few sentences more, with regard to her second son, Will, and another topic and there is a regurgitation of his disgust over Sally's extravagance.

When I began [he said] to read your account of the high prices of goods, "a pair of gloves, $7; a yard of common gauze, $24, and that it now required a fortune to maintain a family in a very plain way," I expected you would conclude with telling me, that everybody as well as yourself was grown frugal and industrious; and I could scarce believe my eyes in reading forward, that "there never was so much pleasure and dressing going on," and that you yourself wanted black pins and feathers from France to appear, I suppose, in the mode! This leads me to imagine, that it is perhaps not so much that the goods are grown dear, as that the money is grown cheap, as everything else will do when excessively plenty; and that people are still as easy nearly in their circumstances, as when a pair of gloves might be had for half a crown. The war indeed may in some degree raise the prices of goods, and the high taxes which are necessary to support the war may make our frugality necessary; and, as I am always preaching that doctrine, I cannot in conscience or in decency encourage the contrary, by my example, in furnishing my children with foolish modes and luxuries. I therefore send all the articles you desire, that are useful and necessary, and omit the rest; for, as you say you should "have great pride in wearing anything I send, and showing it as your father's taste," I must avoid giving you an opportunity of doing that with either lace or feathers. If you wear your cambric ruffles as I do, and take care not to mend the holes, they will come in time to be lace, and feathers, my dear girl, may be had in America from every cock's tail.

Franklin's last letter to Sally was written from Passy, and contains the inimitable strictures on the Order of the Cincinnati, to which we shall hereafter return, but nothing of any personal or domestic interest.

Two of the letters of Franklin are written to Sally and her husband together. "Dear Son and Daughter," isthe way he begins, and one ends, "I am ever my dear Children, your affectionate Father."

Both of these letters were written from Passy. One of them, in addition to letting the parents know that Ben promised to be a stout, as well as a good, man, presents with no little pathos the situation of the writer on the eve of his departure from France for Philadelphia in 1785. After mentioning his efforts to engage some good vessel bound directly for Philadelphia, which would agree to take him on board at Havre with his grandsons, servants and baggage, he sketches this lugubrious picture of himself.

Infirm as I am, I have need of comfortable Room and Accommodations. I was miserably lodg'd in coming over hither, which almost demolish'd me. I must be better stow'd now, or I shall not be able to hold out the Voyage. Indeed my Friends here are so apprehensive for me, that they press me much to remain in France, and three of them have offer'd me an Asylum in their Habitations. They tell me I am here among a People who universally esteem and love me; that my Friends at home are diminish'd by Death in my Absence; that I may there meet with Envy and its consequent Enmity which here I am perfectly free from; this supposing I live to compleat the Voyage, but of that they doubt. The Desire however of spending the little Remainder of Life with my Family, is so strong, as to determine me to try, at least, whether I can bear the Motion of a Ship. If not, I must get them to set me on shore somewhere in the Channel, and content myself to die in Europe.

This is melancholy enough, but the wonderful old man weathered out the voyage, and contrived on the way to write three elaborate treatises on practical subjects which, good as they are of their kind, the general reader would gladly exchange for the addition of a few dozen pages to theAutobiography. In his last years, he was like the mimosa tree, dying, to all appearances, one year, andthe next throwing out fresh verdurous branches from his decaying trunk.

Among the writings of Franklin are also letters to Richard Bache alone. The first is dated October 7, 1772, and begins, "Loving Son." But loving son as Bache was, Franklin was too indisposed to encourage pecuniary laxity in a son-in-law, who had to make his way in the world, not to remind him that there remained five guineas unpaid, which he had had of him just on going away. "Send it in a Venture for Ben to Jamaica," he said. The next letter to Bache relates to the hospitable Post-office. Bache, he says, will have heard, before it got to hand, that the writer had been displaced, and consequently would have it no longer in his power to assist him in his views relating to the Post-office; "As things are," he remarked, "I would not wish to see you concern'd in it. For I conceive that the Dismissing me merely for not being corrupted by the Office to betray the Interests of my Country, will make it some Disgrace among us to hold such an Office."

The remainder of Franklin's letters to Bache, with the exception of a letter introducing to him Thomas Paine, the author ofCommon Sense, were written from Passy. One of them had something pungent but just enough to say about Lee and Izard and the cabal for removing Temple. Sally declared on one occasion that she hated all South Carolinians from B (Bee, a member of Congress from South Carolina) to Izard. This letter discloses the fact that Ben had been placed at school at Geneva in "the old thirteen United States of Switzerland," as the writer calls them. It is signed "I am your affectionate father." Another letter indicates that Franklin had sent a profile of the growing boy to his parents, so that they could see the changes which he had undergone in the preceding four years. This letter also expresses the willingness of the grandfather to give at his expense toWilliam, Bache's second son, the best education that America could afford. In his next and last letter to Bache, Franklin makes these comments upon Ben which not only show how much he loved him but how quietly his temperament could accept even such a disappointment as his failure to secure the merited office for Temple.

Benny continues well, and grows amazingly. He is a very sensible and a very good Lad, and I love him much. I had Thoughts of bringing him up under his Cousin, and fitting him for Public Business, thinking he might be of Service hereafter to his Country; but being now convinc'd thatService is no Inheritance, as the Proverb says, I have determin'd to give him a Trade that he may have something to depend on, and not be oblig'd to ask Favours or Offices of anybody. And I flatter myself he will make his way good in the World with God's Blessing. He has already begun to learn the business from Masters [a printer and a letter founder] who come to my House, and is very diligent in working and quick in learning.

Two letters to the boy himself are among Franklin's published writings. The first is couched in sweet, simple terms, suited to the age of his youthful correspondent, and the second is interesting only as evidencing how closely the grandfather scanned the drawings and handwriting of his grandson, and as emphasizing the importance that he always attached to arithmetic and accounts as elements of an useful education.

Sally's reply to her father's rebuke, on account of the modish vanities, that she asked of him, was quite spirited.

How could my dear papa [she said] give me so severe a reprimand for wishing a little finery. He would not, I am sure, if he knew how much I have felt it. Last winter (in consequence of the surrender of General Burgoyne) was a season of triumph to the Whigs, and they spent it gayly; you would not have had me, I am sure, stay away from the Embassadors'or Gerard's entertainments, nor when I was invited to spend a day with General Washington and his lady; and you would have been the last person, I am sure, to have wished to see me dressed with singularity: Though I never loved dress so much as to wish to be particularly fine, yet I never will go out when I cannot appear so as to do credit to my family and husband.

Apparently, Sally was not always so unsuccessful as she was on this occasion in her efforts to secure something to wear, suitable to her situation as the daughter of a very distinguished citizen of Philadelphia in easy circumstances. Nothing, she once wrote to her father, was ever more admired than her new gown. It is obvious, however, that Franklin was resolved that his daughter at least should heed and profit by what Father Abraham had to say in his discourse about the effect of silks, satins, scarlet and velvets in putting out the kitchen fire. In his will, he bequeathed to her the picture of Louis XV., given to him by the King, which was set with four hundred and eight diamonds, "requesting, however, that she would not form any of those diamonds into ornaments either for herself or daughters, and thereby introduce or countenance the expensive, vain, and useless fashion of wearing jewels in this country." The outer circle of the diamonds was sold by Sally, and on the proceeds she and her husband made the tour of Europe.

When Franklin returned from his second mission, it was to reside with his daughter and son-in-law in the new house with the kitchen, dining-room and blue chamber mentioned in his letters to Deborah. Cohabitation with the Baches proved so agreeable that he wrote Polly Hewson that he was delighted with his little family. "Will," he told Temple, "has got a little Gun, marches with it, and whistles at the same time by way of Fife." There are also some amusing observations in a later letter of his to Temple on a letter written by Ben to Temple, whenTemple was at the house of his Tory father in New Jersey, but which was never sent.

It was thought [said Franklin] to be too full of Pot hooks & Hangers, and so unintelligible by the dividing Words in the Middle and joining Ends of some to Beginnings of others, that if it had fallen into the Hands of some Committee it might have given them too much Trouble to decypher it, on a Suspicion of its containing Treason, especially as directed to a Tory House.

An earlier letter from Franklin to Polly Hewson about Ben is marked by the same playful spirit. "Ben," the grandfather said, "when I delivered him your Blessing, inquired the Age of Elizabeth [Mrs. Hewson's daughter] and thought her yet too young for him; but, as he made no other Objection, and that will lessen every day, I have only to wish being alive to dance with your Mother at the Wedding."

After his arrival in America, Franklin was appointed Postmaster-General of the Colonies by Congress, and this appointment gave Richard Bache another opportunity to solicit an office from his father-in-law. With his usual unfaltering nepotism, Franklin appointed him Deputy Postmaster-General, but subsequently Congress removed him, and there was nothing for him to do but to court fortune in business again, with such aid as Franklin could give him in mercantile circles in France. In the latter years of Franklin's life, there was a very general feeling that he had made public office too much of a family perquisite, and this feeling weakened Richard Bache's tenure on the Post Office, and helped to frustrate all Franklin's plans for the public preferment of Temple and Benjamin Franklin Bache. Much as Washington admired Franklin the latter was unable to obtain even by the most assiduous efforts an office under his administration for either of them.

When Franklin's ship approached Philadelphia on his return from Paris, it was his son-in-law who put off in a boat to bring him and his grandsons ashore, and, when he landed at Market Street wharf, he was received by a crowd of people with huzzas and accompanied with acclamations quite to his door.

After his return he again took up his residence with the Baches in the same house as before, and there is but little more to say about the members of the Bache family. There are, however, some complimentary things worth recalling that were said of Sally by some of her French contemporaries.

She [Marbois wrote to Franklin in 1781] passed a part of last year in exertions to rouse the zeal of the Pennsylvania ladies; and she made on this occasion such a happy use of the eloquence which you know she possesses, that a large part of the American army was provided with shirts, bought with their money or made by their hands. If there are in Europe [he also said] any women who need a model of attachment to domestic duties and love for their country, Mrs. Bache may be pointed out to them as such.

The Marquis de Chastellux tells us that she was "simple in her manners," and "like her respectable father, she possesses his benevolence."

Of course, from the letters of Franklin himself we obtain some insight into the domestic conditions by which he was surrounded in his home during the last stages of his existence. To John Jay and Mrs. Jay he wrote, shortly after his arrival in America, that he was then in the bosom of his family, and found four new little prattlers, who clung about the knees of their grandpapa, and afforded him great pleasure. It is a peaceful slope, though near the foot of the hill, which is presented to our eyes in these words written by him to Jan Ingenhousz:

Except that I am too much encumber'd with Business, I find myself happily situated here, among my numerous Friends, plac'd at the Head of my Country by its unanimous Voice, in the Bosom of my Family, my Offspring to wait on me and nurse me, in a House I built 23 Years since to my Mind.

A still later letter, in which he speaks of Sally, tends to support the idea that it was not his but William Franklin's fault that the reconciliation, which was supposed to have taken place between father and son abroad, was not sufficiently complete to repress the acrid reference made by Franklin in his will to the fact that his son had been a Loyalist.

I too [he wrote to his friend, Mather Byles] have a Daughter, who lives with me and is the Comfort of my declining Years, while my Son is estrang'd from me by the Part he took in the late War, and keeps aloof, residing in England, whose Cause heespous'd; whereby the old Proverb is exemplified;"My Son is my Son till he take him a Wife;But my Daughter's my Daughter all Days of her Life."

"My Son is my Son till he take him a Wife;But my Daughter's my Daughter all Days of her Life."

We are the quicker to place the blame for the recrudescence of the former bitterness upon William Franklin because the life of Franklin is full of proofs that he had a truly forgiving disposition.[24]It is a fact, however, that hisunrelenting antipathy to Loyalists is the one thing in his career unworthy of a sense of justice and breadth of intellectual charity, otherwise well-nigh perfect. We cannot but regret that anything should have shaken the poise of a character which Lecky has truthfully termed "one of the calmest and best balanced of human characters." But it is not given even to a Franklin to see things in their ordinary colors through a blood-red mist, and quite as true as any saying that Poor Richard ever conceived or borrowed isAcerrima proximorum odia.

In still another letter, one to Madame Brillon, he says, "A dutiful and affectionate Daughter, with her Husband and Six Children compose my Family. The Children are all promising, and even the youngest, who is but four Years old, contributes to my Amusement"; and, about a year and a half before his death, he records in a letter to Elizabeth Partridge, the "Addition of a little good-natured Girl, whom I begin to love as well as the rest." In yet another letter, this time to his friend, Alexander Small, after the birth of this little girl, there is a revelation of the domestic quietude in which his long life closed. "I have," he said, "seven promising grandchildren by my daughter, who play with and amuse me, and she is a kind attentive nurse to me when I am at any time indisposed; so that Ipass my time as agreeably as at my age a man may well expect, and have little to wish for, except a more easy exit than my malady seems to threaten." By this time, Benjamin Franklin Bache was old enough to be turning to the practical purposes of self-support the knowledge of printing which he had acquired in France. "I am too old to follow printing again myself," wrote Franklin to Mrs. Catherine Greene, "but, loving the business, I have brought up my grandson Benjamin to it, and have built and furnished a printing-house for him, which he now manages under my eye." The type used by Benjamin in his business were those which his grandfather had cast with the aid of his servants in Paris, and had employed in printing the brilliant little productions penned by his friends and himself, which created so much merriment in thesalonof Madame Helvétius.

The seven children of Sarah Bache were Benjamin Franklin Bache, who married Margaret Marcoe, William Hartman Bache, who married Catharine Wistar, Eliza Franklin Bache, who married John Edward Harwood, Louis Bache, who married first Mary Ann Swift, and then Esther Egee, Deborah Bache, who married William J. Duane, Richard Bache, who married Sophia B. Dallas, a daughter of Alexander J. Dallas, and Sarah Bache, who married Thomas Sargeant.

Besides being a good husband, father and grandfather, Franklin was also a good son. His father, Josiah, had seven children by his first wife, Anne, and ten by his second, Abiah Folger, Franklin's mother. Of this swarm, we are told by theAutobiographythat Franklin could remember thirteen children sitting at one time at his father's table, who all grew up to be men and women, and married. Franklin himself was the youngest son, and the youngest child but two. In few subjects was his adult interest keener than in that of population, and the circumstances of his early life were certainly calculated to stimulate itinto a high degree of precocious activity. It is a pleasing portrait that he paints of his father for us in theAutobiography. After describing his physique in the terms already quoted by us, Franklin says:

He was ingenious, could draw prettily, was skilled a little in music, and had a clear pleasing voice, so that when he played psalm tunes on his violin and sung withal, as he sometimes did in an evening after the business of the day was over, it was extremely agreeable to hear. He had a mechanical genius too, and, on occasion, was very handy in the use of other tradesman's tools; but his great excellence lay in a sound understanding and solid judgment in prudential matters, both in private and publick affairs. In the latter, indeed, he was never employed, the numerous family he had to educate and the straitness of his circumstances keeping him close to his trade; but I remember well his being frequently visited by leading people, who consulted him for his opinion in affairs of the town or of the church he belonged to, and showed a good deal of respect for his judgment and advice: he was also much consulted by private persons about their affairs when any difficulty occurred, and frequently chosen an arbitrator between contending parties. At his table he liked to have, as often as he could, some sensible friend or neighbour to converse with, and always took care to start some ingenious or useful topic for discourse, which might tend to improve the minds of his children. By this means he turned our attention to what was good, just, and prudent in the conduct of life; and little or no notice was ever taken of what related to the victuals on the table, whether it was well or ill-dressed, in or out of season, of good or bad flavour, preferable or inferior to this or that other thing of the kind, so that I was bro't up in such a perfect inattention to those matters as to be quite indifferent what kind of food was set before me, and so unobservant of it, that to this day if I am asked I can scarce tell a few hours after dinner what I dined upon. This has been a convenience to me in travelling, where my companions have been sometimes very unhappy for want of a suitable gratification of their more delicate, because better instructed, tastes and appetites.

A story is credited to Josiah by Franklin which is quite in the manner of the son. When Charles the First ordered his proclamation authorizing sports on Sunday to be read in all churches, many clergymen complied, some refused and others hurried it through as indistinctly as possible. But a certain clergyman to the surprise of his congregation read it distinctly. He followed the reading, however, with the Fourth Commandment,Remember to keep holy the Sabbath Day, and then said, "Brethren, I have laid before you the Command of your King, and the Commandment of your God. I leave it to yourselves to judge which of the two ought rather to be observed."

It is to be wished that Franklin could have given us in theAutobiographya companion portrait of his mother also; but this he has not done. He tells us little more than that she was the daughter of Peter Folger, a resident of Nantucket, had, like her husband, an excellent constitution, and suckled all her ten children—a point of capital importance with her son. Franklin further tells us that he never knew either his father or his mother to have any sickness but that of which they died, he at eighty-nine and she at eighty-five. They were both buried in Boston, and rested for many years under a monument, erected over their graves by Franklin, with a happy inscription from his pen, until this monument, having fallen into a state of dilapidation, was replaced in 1827 by a more durable one, erected by a number of citizens of Boston, who were desirous, as their supplementary inscription states, of reminding succeeding generations that he was born in Boston. In his inscription, Franklin, true to his ideals, states with pride that Josiah and Abiah lived lovingly together in wedlock fifty-five years, and, without an estate, or any gainful employment, by constant labor and industry, with God's blessing, maintained a large family comfortably, and brought up thirteen children and seven grandchildren reputably. In the light of thealtered domestic standards of the present time, it requires some little effort, after reading these words, to accept the subsequent statement in the inscription that Josiah was not only a pious but a "prudent" man.

Peter Folger was evidently regarded by Franklin with distinct favor because of his tolerant characteristics. The flower of tolerance did not often lift up its head in the frigid air of what some one has wittily styled the "ice age" of New England history. In theAutobiography, Franklin speaks of Folger as one of the first settlers of New England, of whom honourable mention is made by Cotton Mather, in his church history of that country, entitledMagnolia Christi Americana, as "a godly, learned Englishman," if he remembers the words rightly.

I have heard [theAutobiographygoes on] that he wrote sundry small occasional pieces, but only one of them was printed, which I saw now many years since. It was written in 1675, in the home-spun verse of that time and people, and addressed to those then concerned in the government there. It was in favour of liberty of conscience, and in behalf of the Baptists, Quakers, and other sectaries that had been under persecution, ascribing the Indian Wars, and other distresses that had befallen the country, to that persecution, as so many judgments of God to punish so heinous an offense, and exhorting a repeal of those uncharitable laws. The whole appeared to me as written with a good deal of decent plainness and manly freedom. The six concluding lines I remember, though I have forgotten the two first of the stanza; but the purport of them was, that his censures proceeded from good-will, and, therefore, he would be known to be the author,

"Because to be a libeller (says he)I hate it with my heart;From Sherburne town, where now I dwell,My name I do put here;Without offense your real friend,It is Peter Folgier."

Verses like these, it is to be feared, call for somewhat the same spirit of toleration as that which Folger himself exhibited towards the Baptists and Quakers, but they were well worthy of remembrance, at any rate, for the brave and enlightened spirit by which they were informed.[25]

Peter Folger's plainness of speech seems to have been a family characteristic. In a letter to his sister Jane, written in his last years, Franklin told her frankly that, if there had been a misunderstanding between her and one of her relations, he should have concluded that it was her fault, "for I think our Family," he said, "were always subject to being a little Miffy." Then, as was his habit, when he had discharged the disagreeable duty of saying something slightly censorious, he brings the stress of his good nature to bear upon his pen just a little harder than usual.

By the way [he asked] is our Relationship in Nantucket worn-out? I have met with none from thence of late years, who were disposed to be acquainted with me, except Captain Timothy Foulger. They are wonderfully shy. But I admire their honest plainness of Speech. About a year ago I invited two of them to dine with me. Their answer was, that they would, if they could not do better. I suppose they did better; for I never saw them afterwards, and so had no Opportunity of showing my Miff, if I had one.

The letters from Franklin to his father and mother are few in number but not lacking in interest. To the one to Josiah, in which he made the heinous confession that his mind was not very clear as to the difference between Arianism and Arminianism, we have already adverted. In this letter, besides the burden of defending his religiousorthodoxy before a very stern tribunal, he had to assume the burden of satisfying his good mother that there was nothing odious in the principles and practices of the Freemasons; and this in the face of the fact that one of their rules was not to admit women into their lodges. Another letter, which begins "Honoured Father and Mother," and ends, "Your affectionate and dutiful son," discourses in quite a learned fashion upon various remedies that might take the place of the ebbingvis medicatrix naturæwhich had served the aged pair so well for such a long span of years; but the son is careful to say that he hopes that his parents will consider his advice upon such subjects only as marks of his good will and put no more of it in practice than should happen to agree with their doctor's directions. Another letter, beginning "Honoured Mother," deals with topics of a very different nature from either religious dogmas or thesapo philosophorumof his medicinal communication. Cousin Josiah Davenport and his spouse had arrived at Philadelphia hearty and well. He had met them the evening before at Trenton, thirty miles off, and had accompanied them to town. How gracious, we may remark, was the old Pennsylvania hospitality which sometimes greeted the coming guest thirty miles away, and, instead of speeding the parting guest, sometimes followed him for as great a distance when he was going!

They [Franklin continued] went into their own house on Monday, and I believe will do very well, for he seems bent on industry, and she appears a discreet, notable young woman. My wife has been to see them every day, calling in as she passes by; and I suspect has fallen in love with our new cousin; for she entertains me a deal, when she comes home, with what Cousin Sally does, and what Cousin Sally says, what a good contriver she is, and the like.

In his next letter to Abiah, Franklin sends her one of his far-famed almanacs, and then adds, "I send you also amoidore enclosed, which please to accept towards chaise hire, that you may ride warm to meetings this winter." From the moidore he passes to infantile complaints which it must have pained the heart of the mother of ten children to hear had carried off many children in Philadelphia that summer, and then, after just a word about Cousin Coleman and two of the outspoken Folgers, he has this to say about Sally: "Your granddaughter is the greatest lover of her book and school, of any child I ever knew, and is very dutiful to her mistress as well as to us."

In one of her letters to her son Abiah tells him that she is very weak and short-breathed, so that she can't sit up to write much, although she sleeps well at night, and her cough is better, and she has a pretty good stomach to her victuals. In the same letter, she also says: "Pray excuse my bad writing and inditing, for all tell me I am too old to write letters." No courtier could have framed a more graceful response to this appeal, let alone the sincerity of filial respect and love.

We received your kind Letter of the 2d Instant [wrote Franklin] and we are glad to hear you still enjoy such a Measure of Health, notwithstanding your great Age. We read your Writing very easily. I never met with a Word in your Letters but what I could readily understand; for, tho' the Hand is not always the best, the Sense makes everything plain.

The numerous family details in this letter render it the most interesting of Franklin's letters to his mother. They had concluded, he said, to sell at the first good opportunity a negro slave and his wife, who appear to have been guilty of some thievery, "for we do not like Negro Servants," he declared. For the sake of human consistency, it is to be hoped that the pair were sold long before he became the President of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, and assailed theAfrican slave trade with such telling raillery. But, to sell all one's own negroes, and then to enter upon a perfervid course of agitation for the enfranchisement of one's neighbor's negroes, without compensation, was a thing of not uncommon occurrence in American history, so long as the institution of slavery lasted. Will (William Franklin), he tells Abiah, had acquired a habit of idleness on the expedition against Canada, but had begun of late to apply himself to business, and he hoped would become an industrious man. "He imagin'd his Father," said Franklin, "had got enough for him, but I have assured him that I intend to spend what little I have myself, if it please God that I live long enough; and, as he by no means wants Sense, he can see by my going on, that I am like to be as good as my Word."

Sally [he says] grows a fine Girl, and is extremely industrious with her Needle, and delights in her Book. She is of a most affectionate Temper, and perfectly dutiful and obliging to her Parents, and to all. Perhaps I flatter myself too much, but I have Hopes that she will prove an ingenious, sensible, notable, and worthy Woman, like her Aunt Jenny. She goes now to the Dancing-School.

After Franklin decamped from Boston as a boy, he rarely again saw his parents, but, down to the days of their respective deaths, he kept in touch with them immediately, through his own correspondence with them, and also mediately through his correspondence with his sister Jane. "You have mentioned nothing in your letter of our dear parents," he observes in one of his letters to her. "Dear Sister, I love you tenderly for your care of our father in his sickness," he writes to her on another occasion. And, finally, when Abiah, "home had gone and ta'en her wages," he sent these feeling words to this same sister and her husband:

Dear Brother and Sister, I received yours with the affecting news of our dear good mother's death. I thank you for your long continued care of her in her old age and sickness. Our distance made it impracticable for us to attend her, but you have supplied all. She has lived a good life, as well as a long one, and is happy.

Josiah left an estate valued at twenty-four hundred dollars. Some years after his death, when Franklin happened to be in Boston, an old man produced a bond, executed by the father for about fifteen or seventeen pounds, and asked the son to pay it. This Franklin declined to do, taking the position that, as he had never received any share of his father's estate, he did not think himself obliged to pay any of the debts due by it. Another reason, as he afterwards stated in a letter to his sister Jane, in which the incident was mentioned, was that he considered the matter one rather for the attention of his brother John, the administrator of his father, than himself. But, in this same letter, nevertheless, he sent these instructions to Jane: "If you know that Person, I wish you would now, out of Hall's Money (a sum that was to be collected for him and to be given to her) pay that Debt; for I remember his Mildness on the Occasion with some Regard." A soft answer, we know, tends to turn away wrath, but it is not often, we imagine, that mildness proves such an effective policy for the collection of a stale debt.

"Dear kindred blood! How I do love you all!" the exclamation of Daniel Webster, might as well have issued from the great, loving heart of Franklin. Like the brethren of Joseph, the son of Jacob, pretty much all of his contemporary relations came to share in one way or another in the good fortune of the only prosperous member of the family. Franklin was too young to have ever met the two brothers of his father, who lived and died in England—John, the Banbury dyer, with whom Franklin'spaternal grandfather, Thomas resided in his old age, and with whom Franklin's father served an apprenticeship, and Thomas, the Ecton forerunner of Franklin himself, whom we have already mentioned. But his paternal uncle, Benjamin, who followed Franklin's father to New England, and lived in the same house with him for some years, Franklin did know, and brings before us quite clearly in theAutobiography. He was bred a silk dyer in England, was an ingenious and very pious man, we are assured by his nephew, and died at a great age. It was to the warm affection that existed between this uncle, whose grandson, Samuel Franklin, was one of Franklin's correspondents, and Franklin's father that Franklin owed his Christian name. Besides being a dyer, a great attender of sermons of the best preachers, "which he took down in his shorthand," he was, theAutobiographystates, a poet, and "also much of a politician; too much, perhaps, for his station."

In his agreeable life of Franklin, Parton has this to say of the uncle's poetry books.

The poetry books of Uncle Benjamin, which are still in perfect preservation, though it is a hundred and eighty years since he bought the first of them, are neatly written and carefully indexed. Many of the pieces are acrostics, and several are curiously shaped on the page-dwindling or expanding in various forms, according to the quaint fancy of the poet.

No true poet, of course, ever had the patience to index his poems, and the best that can be said of the uncle as a poet is that, though he did not reach even the lowest slopes of Parnassus, he attained a point distinctly nearer to its base than the nephew ever did. Every family event seems to have been a peg for him to hang a verse upon, and among his lines are these sent across the Atlantic in return for something from the pen of hisnephew who was at that time about seven years of age:

"'Tis time for me to throw aside my pen,When hanging sleeves read, write, and rhyme like men,This forward spring foretells a plenteous crop;For, if the bud bear grain, what will the top!If plenty in the verdant blade appear,What may we not soon hope for in the ear!When flowers are beautiful before they're blown,What rarities will afterward be shown."

The uncle was living in New England when Josiah, Franklin's brother, who had run away to sea, and who had not been heard from for nine years, turned up again in Boston. That was a domestic event of entirely too much importance to be unsung by an uncle at once pious and poetical. So, after some vigorous references to the Deity, who

"Stills the storm and does AsswageProud Dreadfull seas Death-Threatning Rage,"

the honest poet breaks out into this invocation in which he had every right to believe that the long-lost Josiah would heartily join:

"O Let men praise this mighty Lord,And all his Wondrous Works Record;Let all the Sons of men, beforeWhose Eyes those Works are Done, Adore."

But his rhymes appear to have fallen upon an ear deaf to the appeals of both piety and poetry, for one of the poet's poetry books contains this resentful entry:

"The Third part of the 107 psalm, Which Follows Next, I composed to sing at First meeting with my Nephew Josiah Franklin, But being unaffected with Gods GreatGoodns: In his many preservations and Deliverances, It was coldly Entertain'd."

The extent to which his uncle Benjamin had been a politician in England was brought home to Franklin by a curious incident when he was in London. A second-hand book dealer, who knew nothing of the relationship between the two, offered to sell him a collection of pamphlets, bound in eight volumes folio, and twenty-four volumes, quarto and octavo, and containing all the principal pamphlets and papers on political topics, printed in England from the Restoration down to the year 1715. On examining them, Franklin was satisfied from the handwriting of the tables of contents, memoranda of prices and marginal notes in them, as well as from other circumstances, that his Uncle Benjamin was the collector, and he bought them. In all probability, they had been sold by the uncle, when he emigrated from England to New England more than fifty years before.

TheAutobiographydoes not mention the fact that Franklin had at least one aunt on the paternal side, but he had. In a letter in the year 1767 to Samuel Franklin, the grandson of his Uncle Benjamin, after stating that there were at that time but two of their relations bearing the name of Franklin living in England, namely, Thomas Franklin, of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, a dyer, and his daughter, Sally, Franklin asserts that there were besides still living in England Eleanor Morris, an old maiden lady, the daughter of Hannah, the sister of Franklin's father, and Hannah Walker, the granddaughter of John, the brother of Franklin's father, and her three sons. No Arab was ever made happier by the reception of a guest than was Franklin by the discovery of a new Franklin. In 1781, when a lady at Königsberg, who was the granddaughter of a John Franklin, communicated to him certain facts about her family history, he replied in terms that left her no footing for a claim of relationship,but added affably, "It would be a Pleasure to me to Discover a Relation in Europe, possessing the amiable Sentiments express'd in your Letter. I assure you I should not disown the meanest." One of the statements of this letter was that he had exact accounts of every person of his family since the year 1555, when it was established in England. Such a thing as sensitiveness to his humble origin or the social obscurity of his kinsfolk could find no lodgment in a mind so capacious, a heart so kind, or a nature so full of manly self-respect as his. To say nothing more, he was too much of a philosopher not to realize how close even the high-born nobleman, when detached from privilege and social superstition, is to the forked radish, to which elemental man has been likened. It is true that he once wrote to his sister Jane that he would not have her son Peter put the Franklin arms on soap of his making, and this has been cited as evidence that even Franklin had his petty modicum of social pride. The imputation overlooks the reason that he gave, namely, that to use the Franklin coat of arms for such a purpose would look too much like an attempt to counterfeit the soap formerly made by Peter's uncle John. It was Franklin's true pride of character that disarmed the social arrogance which might otherwise have rendered him less triumphantly successful than he was in winning his way into the favor of the most accomplished men, and the most beautiful and elegant women, in France.

With regard to his generous conduct to his brother James we have already spoken. Of Jemmy, James' son, who became Franklin's apprentice at James' request, we have a view in a letter from Franklin to his sister Jane in which he uses Jemmy as an illustration of how unreasonably her son Benny, when Mr. Parker's apprentice, might have complained of the clothes furnished to him by his master.

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