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 the

_Autobiography_. In his last years, he was like the mimosa tree, dying, to

all appearances, one year, and the 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 of _Common 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

to William, 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 that _Service 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, when Temple 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 he _espous'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."

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 his unrelenting 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 is _Acerrima 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 I pass 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 the _salon_ of Madame Helvetius.

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 the _Autobiography_ that 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 it into a high degree of precocious

activity. It is a pleasing portrait that he paints of his father for us in

the _Autobiography_. 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 the _Autobiography_

a 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 the altered 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 the _Autobiography_, 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,

entitled _Magnolia Christi Americana_, as "_a godly, learned Englishman_,"

if he remembers the words rightly.

I have heard [the _Autobiography_ goes 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 religious orthodoxy 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

ebbing _vis medicatrix naturae_ which 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 the _sapo philosophorum_ of 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 a moidore 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 the African 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's paternal

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 the _Autobiography_. 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, the _Autobiography_ states, 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 his

nephew 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 Asswage

Proud 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, before

Whose 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 Great Goodn's: 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.

The _Autobiography_ does 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 Koenigsberg, 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.

I never knew an apprentice [he said] contented with the

clothes allowed him by his master, let them be what

they would. Jemmy Franklin, when with me, was always

dissatisfied and grumbling. When I was last in Boston,

his aunt bid him go to a shop and please himself, which

the gentleman did, and bought a suit of clothes on my

account dearer by one half than any I ever afforded

myself, one suit excepted; which I don't mention by way

of complaint of Jemmy, for he and I are good friends,

but only to show you the nature of boys.

What a good friend he proved to Jemmy, when the latter became his own

master, we have seen. The _erratum_ of which Franklin was guilty in his

relations to his brother James was fully corrected long before he left a

will behind him conferring upon James' descendants the same measure of his

remembrance as that conferred by him upon the descendants of his brother

Samuel and his sisters.

Four of Franklin's brothers died young, and Josiah, his sea faring brother,

perished at sea not long after he excited the dudgeon of his uncle Benjamin

by his indifference to his uncle's line of thanksgiving.

As long as Franklin's brothers John and Peter were engaged, as their father

had been, in the business of making soap and candles, Franklin assisted

them by obtaining consignments of their wares from them, and advertising

these wares in his newspaper, and selling them in his shop. Later, when he

became Deputy Postmaster-General of the Colonies, he made John postmaster

at Boston and Peter postmaster at Philadelphia. Referring to a visit that

he paid to John at Newport, Franklin says in the _Autobiography_, "He

received me very affectionately, for he always lov'd me." When John died in

1756 at the age of sixty-five, some years after his brother Benjamin had

thoughtfully devised a special catheter for his use, the latter wrote to

his sister Jane, "I condole with you on the loss of our dear brother. As

our number grows less, let us love one another proportionably more."

John's widow he made postmistress at Boston in her husband's place.

Peter Franklin died in 1766 in the seventy-fourth year of his age. As soon

as the news of Peter's death reached Franklin in London, he wrote a most

feeling letter to Peter's widow, Mary.

It has pleased God at length [he said] to take from us

my only remaining Brother, and your affectionate

Husband, with whom you have lived in uninterrupted

Harmony and Love near half a Century.

Considering the many Dangers & Hardships his Way of

Life led him into, and the Weakness of his

Constitution, it is wonderful that he lasted so long.

It was God's Goodness that spared him to us. Let us,

instead of repining at what we have lost, be thankful

for what we have enjoyed.

He then proceeds, in order to allay the widow's fears as to her future, to

tell her that he proposes to set up a printing house for her adopted son to

be carried on in partnership with her, and to further encourage this son if

he managed well.[26]

Of Franklin's brother Samuel, we know but little.

Franklin's oldest sister, Elizabeth Dowse, the wife of Captain Dowse, lived

to a very great age, and fell into a state of extreme poverty. When he was

consulted by her relations in New England as to whether it was not best for

her to give up the house in which she was living, and to sell her personal

effects, he sent a reply full of wise kindness.

As _having their own way_ is one of the greatest

comforts of life to old people [he said], I think their

friends should endeavour to accommodate them in that,

as well as in anything else. When they have long lived

in a house, it becomes natural to them; they are almost

as closely connected with it, as the tortoise with his

shell; they die, if you tear them out of it; old folks

and old trees, if you remove them, it is ten to one

that you kill them; so let our good old sister be no

more importuned on that head. We are growing old fast

ourselves, and shall expect the same kind of

indulgences; if we give them, we shall have a right to

receive them in our turn.

And as to her few fine things, I think she is in the

right not to sell them, and for the reason she gives,

that they will fetch but little; and when that little

is spent, they would be of no further use to her; but

perhaps the expectation of possessing them at her death

may make that person tender and careful of her, and

helpful to her to the amount of ten times their value.

If so, they are put to the best use they possibly can

be.

I hope you visit sister as often as your affairs will

permit, and afford her what assistance and comfort you

can in her present situation. _Old age_, _infirmities_,

and _poverty_, joined, are afflictions enough. The

_neglect_ and _slights_ of friends and near relations

should never be added. People in her circumstances are

apt to suspect this sometimes without cause;

_appearances_ should therefore be attended to, in our

conduct towards them, as well as _realities_.

And then follows the sentence which indicates that, apart from the value,

which belonged to his advice on any practical point, there was good reason

why his views about sister Dowse's house and finery should be entitled to

peculiar respect. "I write by this post to cousin Williams," he said, "to

continue his care, which I doubt not he will do."

This letter was addressed to his sister Jane. In another to her, written a

few weeks later, he said, "I am glad you have resolved to visit sister

Dowse oftener; it will be a great comfort to her to find she is not

neglected by you, and your example may, perhaps, be followed by some

others of her relations." In the succeeding year, when he was settled in

England, he writes to his sister Jane, "My wife will let you see my letter,

containing an account of our travels, which I would have you read to sister

Dowse, and give my love to her."

Another sister of Franklin, Mary, married Captain Robert Holmes. He was the

master of a sloop that plied between Boston and the Delaware, and, when he

heard at New Castle that his run-a-way brother-in-law was living in

Philadelphia, he wrote to him begging him to return to Boston, and received

from him a reply, composed with so much literary skill that Governor Keith

of Pennsylvania, when the letter was shown to him by Holmes, declared that

the writer appeared to be a young man of promising parts, and should be

encouraged. Mrs. Holmes died of cancer of the breast, which is responsible

for the only occasion perhaps on which Franklin was ever known to incline

his ear to the virtues of a nostrum.

We have here in town [he wrote to his sister Jane] a

kind of shell made of some wood, cut at a proper time,

by some man of great skill (as they say), which has

done wonders in that disease among us, being worn for

some time on the breast. I am not apt to be

superstitiously fond of believing such things, but the

instances are so well attested, as sufficiently to

convince the most incredulous.

Another sister of Franklin, Lydia, married Robert Scott, but our

information about her is very meagre.

This is also true of Anne Harris, still another sister of his. We do know,

however, that some of her family wandered away to London before Franklin

left America on his mission to France, and that one of them took pains to

apprise him of her urgent wants after he arrived there. She was, she said,

"Obliged to Worke very hard and Can But just git the common necessarys of

life," and therefore had "thoughts of going into a family as housekeeper

... having lived in that station for several years and gave grate

satisfaction." With a curious disregard to existing conditions, quite

unworthy of her connection with her illustrious relative, she even asked

him to aid her in securing the promotion of her son in the British Navy.

A daughter of this sister, Grace Harris, married Jonathan Williams, a

Boston merchant engaged in the West India trade, who enjoyed the honor of

acting as the moderator of the meetings held at Faneuil Hall in 1773 for

the purpose of preventing the landing of the odious tea. She must have been

an elated mother when she received from her uncle in 1771 a letter in which

he spoke of her two sons in these terms:

They are, I assure you, exceeding welcome to me; and

they behave with so much Prudence, that no two young

Men could possibly less need the Advice you would have

me give them. Josiah is very happily employ'd in his

Musical Pursuits. And as you hinted to me, that it

would be agreeable to you, if I employ'd Johnathan in

Writing, I requested him to put my Accounts in Order,

which had been much neglected. He undertook it with the

utmost chearfulness and Readiness, and executed it with

the greatest Diligence, making me a compleat new Set of

Books, fairly written out and settled in a Mercantile

Manner, which is a great Satisfaction to me, and a very

considerable service. I mention this, that you may not

be in the least Uneasy from an Apprehension of their

Visit being burthensome to me; it being, I assure you,

quite the contrary.

It has been wonderful to me to see a young Man from

America, in a Place so full of various Amusements as

London is, as attentive to Business, as diligent in it,

and keeping as close at home till it was finished, as

if it had been for his own Profit; and as if he had

been at the Public Diversions so often, as to be tired

of them.

I pray God to keep and preserve you and yours, and give

you again, in due time, a happy Sight of these valuable

Sons.

The same favorable opinion of these two grandnephews found expression in a

letter from Franklin to his sister Jane. Josiah, he said, had attained his

heart's desire in being under the tuition of Mr. Stanley (the musical

composer), who, though he had long left off teaching, kindly undertook, at

Franklin's request, to instruct him, and was much pleased with his

quickness of apprehension, and the progress he was making, and Jonathan

appeared a very valuable young man, sober, regular and inclined to industry

and frugality, which were promising signs of success in business. "I am

very happy in their Company," the letter further stated.

With the help of Franklin, Jonathan, one of these two young men, became the

naval agent of the United States at Nantes, when Franklin was in France.

Later, he was charged by Arthur Lee with improperly retaining in his hands

in this capacity upwards of one hundred thousand livres due to the United

States, and Franklin insisted that Arthur Lee should make good his charge.

I have no desire to screen Mr. Williams on acct of

his being my Nephew [he said] if he is guilty of what

you charge him with. I care not how soon he is

deservedly punish'd and the family purg'd of him; for I

take it that a Rogue living in (a) Family is a greater

Disgrace to it than one _hang'd out_ of it.

But, when steps were taken by Franklin to have the accounts passed upon by

a body of disinterested referees, Lee haughtily refused to reduce his vague

accusation to a form sufficiently specific to be laid before them. After

John Adams succeeded Silas Deane, Franklin and himself united in executing

an order for the payment to Williams of the balance claimed by him, but

Adams had been brought over to the suspicions of Lee to such an extent that

the order provided that it was not to be understood as an approval of the

accounts, but that Williams was to be responsible to Congress for their

correctness. With such impetuosity did Adams adopt these suspicions that,

in a few days after his arrival at Paris, when he had really had no

opportunity to investigate the matter, he concurred with Lee in ordering

Williams to close his existing accounts and to make no new ones. This, of

course, was equivalent to dismissal from the employment. Franklin, probably

realizing not only the hopelessness of a contest of one against two, but

the unwisdom from a public point of view of feeding the flame of such a

controversy, united with his colleagues in signing the order.[27]

A bequest of books that he made to Williams is one among many other still

more positive proofs that his confidence in his grandnephew was never

impaired, and it is only fair to the memory of Adams to suppose that, if he

ever had any substantial doubts about Williams' integrity, they were

subsequently dispelled, for when President he appointed Williams a major

of artillery in the federal army; an appointment which ultimately resulted

in his being made the first Superintendent of the Military Academy at West

Point. The quarrel, however, did neither Franklin nor the American cause

any good. It gave additional color to the accusation that he was too quick

to billet his relatives upon the public, and had the effect also of

intensifying the dissensions between our representatives in France which

constitute such a painful chapter in the history of the American

Revolution. To make things worse, Jonathan failed in business, before he

left France, and had to obtain a _surseance_ against his creditors through

the application of his granduncle to the Count de Vergennes.

Franklin's sister, Sarah, did not long survive her marriage to Joseph

Davenport. Her death, Franklin wrote to his sister Jane, "was a loss

without doubt regretted by all that knew her, for she was a good woman." It

was at his instance that Davenport removed to Philadelphia, and opened a

bakery where he sold "choice middling bisket," and occasionally "Boston

loaf sugar" and "choice pickled and spiced oisters in cags."

There is a letter from Franklin to Josiah Davenport, the son of Sarah

Davenport, written just after the failure of the latter in business which

shows that, open as the door of the Post Office usually was to members of

the Franklin family, it was sometimes slammed with a bang in the face of a

_mauvais sujet_ of that blood. Franklin advises Josiah not to think of any

place in the Post Office.

The money you receive [he said] will slip thro' your

Fingers, and you will run behind hand imperceptibly,

when your Securities must suffer, or your Employers. I

grow too old to run such Risques, and therefore wish

you to propose nothing more of the kind to me. I have

been hurt too much by endeavouring to help Cousin Ben

Mecom. I have no Opinion of the Punctuality of Cousins.

They are apt to take Liberties with Relations they

would not take with others, from a Confidence that a

Relation will not sue them. And tho' I believe you now

resolve and intend well in case of such an Appointment,

I can have no Dependence that some unexpected

Misfortune or Difficulty will not embarras your Affairs

and render you again insolvent. Don't take this unkind.

It is better to be thus free with you than to give you

Expectations that cannot be answered.

So Josiah, who was keeping a little shop at the time, like the famous

office-seeker, who is said to have begun by asking Lincoln for an office

and to have ended by asking him for a pair of trousers, had to content

himself with a gift of four dozen of Evans' maps, "which," said Franklin in

his letter, "if you can sell you are welcome to apply the Money towards

Clothing your Boys, or to any other Purpose."

But, of all Franklin's collateral relatives, the one that he loved best was

his sister Jane, the wife of Edward Mecom. She survived her brother four

years, dying at the age of eighty-two, and, from her childhood until his

death, they cherished for each other the most devoted affection. Her

letters show that she was a woman of uncommon force of character and mind,

and the possessor of a heart so overflowing with tenderness that, when she

heard of the birth of Mrs. Bache's seventh child, she even stated to her

brother in her delight that she was so fond of children that she longed to

kiss and play with every clean, healthy one that she saw on the street.

Mrs. Bache, she thought, might yet be the mother of twelve children like

herself, though she did not begin so young.

In a letter written to her by Franklin from Philadelphia just after he

reached his majority, and when she was a fresh girl of fourteen, he reminds

her that she was ever his peculiar favorite. He had heard, he said, that

she was grown a celebrated beauty, and he had almost determined to give her

a tea table, but when he considered that the character of a good housewife

was far preferable to that of being only a pretty gentlewoman he had

concluded to send her a spinning wheel, as a small token of his sincere

love and affection. Then followed this priggish advice:

Sister, farewell, and remember that modesty, as it

makes the most homely virgin amiable and charming, so

the want of it infallibly renders the most perfect

beauty disagreeable and odious. But, when that

brightest of female virtues shines among other

perfections of body and mind in the same person, it

makes the woman more lovely than an angel.

The spinning wheel was a fit symbol of the narrow, struggling life, which

was to be Jane Mecom's portion, and which would have imposed upon her a

load heavier than she could have borne if her good Philadelphia genius had

not always been by her side, either in person or by his watchful proxy,

Jonathan Williams, the father of his grandnephew of that name, to sustain

her fainting footsteps. Children she had, and to spare, but they were all

striking illustrations of the truth, uttered by the Virginia planter, who

affirmed that it is easier for one parent to take care of thirteen children

than it is for thirteen children to take care of one parent. Nothing could

be more beautiful than the relations between brother and sister; on the one

side a vigilant sympathy and generosity which never lost sight for a moment

of the object of their affectionate and helpful offices; on the other a

grateful idolatry, slightly tinged with the reserve of reverence. Clothes,

flour, firewood, money were among the more direct and material forms

assumed by Franklin's assistance, given not begrudgingly and frugally, but

always with the anxious fear, to no little extent justified by Jane's own

unselfish and self-respecting reticence, that she was not as frank as she

might be in laying before him the real measure of her necessities. "Let me

know if you want any assistance," he was quick to ask her after his return

from England in 1775, signing the letter in which he made the request,

"Your very loving brother." "Your bill is honoured," he writes to her on

another occasion after his return from France to Philadelphia. "It is

impossible for me always to guess what you may want, and I hope, therefore,

that you will never be shy in letting me know wherein I can help to make

your life more comfortable."

How has my poor old Sister gone thro' the Winter? [he

inquired of Jonathan Williams, the younger]. Tell me

frankly whether she lives comfortably, or is pinched?

For I am afraid she is too cautious of acquainting me

with all her Difficulties, tho' I am always ready and

willing to relieve her when I am acquainted with them.

It is manifest that at times he experienced a serious sense of difficulty

in doing for her as much as he was disposed to do, and once, when she had

thanked him with even more than her usual emphasis for a recent

benefaction, he parried her gratitude with one of the humorous stories that

served him for so many different purposes. Her letter of extravagant

thanks, he said, put him in mind of the story of the member of Parliament

who began one of his speeches with saying he thanked God that he was born

and bred a Presbyterian; on which another took leave to observe that the

gentleman must needs be of a most grateful disposition, since he was

thankful for such very small matters. The truth is that her pecuniary

condition was such that gifts, which might have seemed small enough to

others, loomed large to her. Many doubtless were the shifts to which she

had to resort to keep her large family going. When her brother was in

London on his second mission, he received a letter from her asking him for

some fine old linen or cambric dyed with bright colors, such as with all

her own art and the aid of good old Uncle Benjamin's memoranda she had

been unable, she said, to mix herself. With this material, she hoped that

she and her daughter Jenny, who, with a little of her assistance, had taken

to making flowers for the ladies' heads and bosoms with pretty good

acceptance, might get something by it worth their pains, if they lived till

next spring. Her language was manifestly that of a person whose life had

been too pinched to permit her to deal with the future except at very close

range. Of course, her request was complied with. The contrast between her

situation in life and that of her prosperous and distinguished brother is

brought out as clearly as the colors that she vainly sought to emulate in a

letter written by her to Deborah, when she hears the rumor that Franklin

had been made a Baronet and Governor of Pennsylvania. Signing herself,

"Your ladyship's affectionate sister, and obedient humble servant," she

wrote:

Dear Sister: For so I must call you, come what will,

and if I do not express myself proper, you must excuse

it, seeing I have not been accustomed to pay my

compliments to Governor and Baronet's ladies. I am in

the midst of a great wash, and Sarah still sick, and

would gladly be excused writing this post, but my

husband says I must write, and give you joy, which we

heartily join in.

This was in 1758 when Franklin and other good Americans rarely alluded to

England except as "home"; but sixteen years later the feelings of Jane

Mecom about baronetcies and colonial governorships had undergone such a

change--for she was a staunch patriot--that, when it was stated in a Boston

newspaper that it was generally believed that Franklin had been promoted by

the English Government to an office of superior importance, he felt that it

was necessary to write to her as follows:

But as I am anxious to preserve your good opinion, and

as I know your sentiments, and that you must be much

afflicted yourself, and even despise me, if you thought

me capable of accepting any office from this

government, while it is acting with so much hostility

towards my native country, I cannot miss this first

opportunity of assuring you, that there is not the

least foundation for such a report.

You need not [he said on one occasion to Jane] be

concern'd, in writing to me, about your bad Spelling;

for, in my Opinion, as our Alphabet now Stands, the bad

Spelling, or what is call'd so, is generally the best,

as conforming to the Sound of the Letters and of the

Words. To give you an Instance: A Gentleman receiving a

Letter, in which were these Words,--_Not finding Brown

at hom, I delivard your meseg to his yf_. The Gentleman

finding it bad Spelling, and therefore not very

intelligible, called his Lady to help him read it.

Between them they pick'd out the meaning of all but the

_yf_, which they could not understand. The lady

propos'd calling her Chambermaid: for Betty, says she,

has the best knack at reading bad Spelling of anyone I

know. Betty came, and was surprised, that neither Sir

nor Madam could tell what _yf_ was. "Why," says she,

"_yf_ spells _Wife_; what else can it spell?" And,

indeed, it is a much better, as well as shorter method

of spelling _Wife_, than by _doubleyou_, _i_, _ef_,

_e_, which in reality spells _doubleyifey_.

The affectionate interest felt by Franklin in his sister extended to her

husband and children. Some of his letters were written to Jane and Edward

Mecom jointly, and he evidently entertained a truly fraternal regard for

the latter. The fortunes of the children he endeavored to promote by every

means in his power. Benny Mecom was placed by him as an apprentice with his

partner in the printing business in New York, Mr. Parker, and one of his

most admirable letters is a letter to his sister Jane, already mentioned by

us, in which he comments upon a complaint of ill-treatment at the hands of

Mr. Parker which Benny had made to her. The wise, kindly and yet firm

language in which he answers one by one the heads of Benny's complaint,

which was obviously nothing more than the grumbling of a disaffected boy,

lacks nothing but a subject of graver importance to be among the most

notable of his letters. On the whole, it was too affectionate and indulgent

in tone to have keenly offended even such parental fondness as that which

led Poor Richard to ask, in the words of Gay,

"Where yet was ever found the mother

Who'd change her booby for another?"

But occasionally there is a sentence or so in it which makes it quite plain

that Franklin was entirely too wise not to know that the rod has a function

to perform in the management of a boy. Referring to Benny's habit of

staying out at night, sometimes all night, and refusing to give an account

of where he had spent his time or in what company, he said,

This I had not heard of before though I perceive you

have. I do not wonder at his correcting him for that.

If he was my own son I should think his master did not

do his duty by him if he omitted it, for to be sure it

is the high road to destruction. And I think the

correction very light, and not likely to be very

effectual, if the strokes left no marks.

In the same letter, there is a sly passage which takes us back to the part

of Jacques' homily which speaks of

"The whining schoolboy with his satchel,

And shining morning face creeping like snail,

Unwillingly to school."

I did not think it anything extraordinary [Franklin

said] that he should be sometimes willing to evade

going to meeting, for I believe it is the case with all

boys, or almost all. I have brought up four or five

myself, and have frequently observed that if their

shoes were bad they would say nothing of a new pair

till Sunday morning, just as the bell rung, when, if

you asked them why they did not get ready, the answer

was prepared, "I have no shoes," and so of other

things, hats and the like; or, if they knew of anything

that wanted mending, it was a secret till Sunday

morning, and sometimes I believe they would rather tear

a little than be without the excuse.

Franklin had dipped deeply into the hearts of boys as well as men.

When Benny became old enough to enter upon business for himself, his uncle

put him in possession of a printing outfit of his own at Antigua with the

understanding that Benny was to pay him one third of the profits of the

business; the proportion which he usually received in such cases.

Apparently there was every promise of success: an established newspaper, no

competing printer, high prices and a printer who, whatever his faults, had

come to be regarded by Mr. Parker as one of his "best hands." But the curse

of Reuben--instability--rested upon Benny. Taking offence at a proposal of

his uncle respecting the distribution of the profits of the business,

really intended to pave the way, when Benny had conquered his "flighty

unsteadiness of temper," to a gift of the whole printing outfit to him, the

nephew insisted that his uncle should name some certain price for the

outfit, and allow him to pay it off in instalments; for, though he had, he

said, a high esteem for his uncle, yet he loved freedom, and his spirit

could not bear dependence on any man, though he were the best man living.

Provoked by a delay in answering this letter, for which one of Franklin's

long journeys was responsible, Benny again wrote to his uncle, stating that

he had formed a fixed resolution to leave Antigua, and that nothing that

could be said to him would move or shake it. Leave Antigua he did, and,

when we next hear of him, it is through a letter from Franklin to Jane in

which he tells her that Benjamin had settled his accounts with him, and

paid the balance due him honorably, and had also made himself the owner of

the printing outfit which had been shipped back from Antigua to

Philadelphia.

From this time on until Benny slid down into the gulf of insolvency; owing

his uncle some two hundred pounds, and leaving assets that the latter

reckoned would scarce amount to four shillings in the pound, he seems to

have had no success of any sort except that of winning the hand of a girl

for whom Franklin and Deborah had a peculiar partiality. This was after

Benny had returned to Boston and, as a bookseller as well as a printer, had

begun life anew with a loan from his uncle, and with good credit.

When he was "near being married" his uncle wrote to Jane:

I know nothing of that affair, but what you write me,

except that I think Miss Betsey a very agreeable,

sweet-tempered, good girl, who has had a housewifely

education, and will make, to a good husband, a very

good wife. Your sister and I have a great esteem for

her; and, if she will be kind enough to accept of our

nephew, we think it will be his own fault, if he is not

as happy as the married state can make him. The family

is a respectable one, but whether there be any fortune

I know not; and, as you do not inquire about this

particular, I suppose you think with me, that where

everything else desirable is to be met with, that is

not very material.

What Deborah thought of Miss Betsey may be inferred from a postscript that

she hastily annexed to this letter: "If Benny will promise to be one of the

tenderest husbands in the world, I give my consent. He knows already what I

think of Miss Betsey. I am his loving aunt." In a subsequent letter,

Franklin wrote to Deborah from London that he was glad that "Ben has got

that good girl." Miss Betsey did not prove to be a fortune to her husband,

though she did prove to be such a fruitful wife to him that, when the crash

of bankruptcy came, there were a number of small children to be included in

his schedule of liabilities. Nor is it easy to see how she or any other

woman could prove a fortune to any man of whom such a picture could be

sketched as that which Thomas, the author of the _History of Printing_,

sketches of Benny as he was shortly after his return from Antigua.

Benjamin Mecom [writes Thomas] was in Boston several

months before the arrival of his press and types from

Antigua, and had much leisure. During this interval he

frequently came to the house where I was an apprentice.

He was handsomely dressed, wore a powdered bob-wig,

ruffles, and gloves: gentleman-like appendages, which

the printers of that day did not assume--and thus

appareled, he would often assist for an hour at the

press.... I viewed him at the press with admiration. He

indeed put on a apron to save his clothes from

blacking, and guarded his ruffles.... He got the

nickname of "Queer Notions" among the printers.

The result of it all was that the patience of the uncle was at last

completely worn out. "I can not comprehend," he wrote to Deborah from

London, "how so very sluggish a Creature as Ben. Mecom is grown, can

maintain in Philadelphia so large a Family. I hope they do not hang upon

you: for really as we grow old and must grow more helpless, we shall find

we have nothing to spare."

In a subsequent letter to Williams he spoke of his sister's children as if

they were all thriftless. If such was the case, it was not because of any

lack of interest on his part in them. In a letter, recommending his son

William to Jane's motherly care and advice, he says, "My compliments to my

new niece, Miss Abiah, and pray her to accept the enclosed piece of gold,

to cut her teeth; it may afterwards buy nuts for them to crack." In another

letter to his sister, he expresses pleasure at hearing that her son Peter

is at a place where he has full employ. If Peter should get a habit of

industry at his new place, the exchange, he said pointedly, would be a

happy one. In a later letter to Jane, he declares that he is glad that

Peter is acquainted with the crown-soap business and that he hopes that he

will always take care to make the soap faithfully and never slight the

manufacture, or attempt to deceive by appearances. Then he may boldly put

his name and mark, and, in a little time, it will acquire as good a

character as that made by his uncle (John) or any other person whatever. He

also tells Jane that if Peter will send to Deborah a box of his soap (but

not unless it be right good) she would immediately return the ready money

to him for it. Many years later his letters to his sister show that he was

then aiding her in different ways, and among others by buying soap of her

manufacture from her, and that some cakes of this soap were sent by him as

gifts to friends of his in France. Indeed, he told Jane that she would do

well to instruct her grandson in the art of making that soap. In the same

letter that he wrote to her about Peter and the crown-soap he sent his love

to her son Neddy, and Neddy's wife, and the rest of Jane's children. Neddy,

born like Benny under an unlucky star, had at the time not only a wife but

a disorder which his uncle hoped that he would wear out gradually, as he

was yet a young man. If Eben, another of Jane's sons, would be industrious

and frugal, it was ten to one, his uncle said, that he would get rich; for

he seemed to have spirit and activity. As to Johnny, still another of

Jane's sons, if he ever set up as a goldsmith, he should remember that

there was one accomplishment, without which he could not possibly thrive in

that trade; that was perfect honesty. In the latter part of his life, after

he had been badly hurt by Benny, and had seen so much of his sound counsel

come to nothing, he was slower to give advice to the Mecoms.

Your Grandson [he wrote to Jane, referring to one of

her grandsons, who was for a time in his employment at

Philadelphia] behaves very well, and is constantly

employ'd in writing for me, and will be so some time

longer. As to my Reproving and Advising him, which you

desire, he has not hitherto appeared to need it, which

is lucky, as I am not fond of giving Advice, having

seldom seen it taken. An Italian Poet in his Account of

a Voyage to the Moon, tells us that

_All things lost on Earth are treasur'd there_.

on which somebody observ'd, There must then be in the

Moon a great deal of _Good Advice_.

Among the letters from Franklin to Jonathan Williams, the elder, is one

asking him to lay out for his account the sum of fifty pounds in the

purchase of a marriage present for one of Jane's daughters, who thanks him

for it in terms that fall little short of ecstacy.

But attached as Franklin was to his sister he did not hesitate to reprove

her when reproof was in his judgment necessary. There is such a thing as

not caring enough for a person to reprove him. "It was not kind in you," he

wrote to her on one occasion, "when your sister commended good works, to

suppose she intended it a reproach to you. It was very far from her

thoughts." His language was still more outspoken on another occasion when

Jane wished him to oust a member of the Franklin connection, with whom she

was at odds, from the Post Office to make a place for Benny.

And now [he said] as to what you propose for Benny, I

believe he may be, as you say, well enough qualified

for it; and, when he appears to be settled, if a

vacancy should happen, it is very probable he may be

thought of to supply it; but it is a rule with me not

to remove any officer, that behaves well, keeps regular

accounts, and pays duly; and I think the rule is

founded on reason and justice. I have not shown any

backwardness to assist Benny, where it could be done

without injuring another. But if my friends require of

me to gratify not only their inclinations, but their

resentments, they expect too much of me. Above all

things I dislike family quarrels, and, when they happen

among my relations, nothing gives me more pain. If I

were to set myself up as a judge of those subsisting

between you and brother's widow and children, how

unqualified must I be, at this distance, to determine

rightly, especially having heard but one side. They

always treated me with friendly and affectionate

regard; you have done the same. What can I say between

you, but that I wish you were reconciled, and that I

will love that side best, that is most ready to forgive

and oblige the other? You will be angry with me here,

for putting you and them too much upon a footing; but I

shall nevertheless be, dear sister, your truly

affectionate brother.

Nor did he attempt to disguise his real feelings in a letter which he wrote

to Jane near the end of his life in which he told her that her son-in-law,

Collas, who kept a store in Carolina, had wished to buy some goods on

credit at Philadelphia, but could not do it without his recommendation,

which he could not give without making himself pecuniarily liable; and

_that_ he was not inclined to do, having no opinion either of the honesty

and punctuality of the people, with whom Collas proposed to traffic, or of

his skill and acuteness in merchandizing. This he wrote, he declared,

merely to apologize for any seeming unkindness. The unkindness was but

seeming indeed; for the letter also contained these solicitous words:

You always tell me that you live comfortably; but I

sometimes suspect that you may be too unwilling to

acquaint me with any of your Difficulties from an

Apprehension of giving me Pain. I wish you would let me

know precisely your Situation, that I may better

proportion my Assistance to your Wants. Have you any

Money at Interest, and what does it produce? Or do you

do some kind of Business for a Living?

Jane seems to have maintained her good humor in the face of every timely

reproof of her brother, and other than timely reproofs, we may be sure,

there were none. Indeed, she worshipped him so devoutly--devotedly is too

feeble an adverb--that there was no need for her at any time in her

relations with him to fall back upon her good nature. A few extracts from

her letters to Franklin will show how deeply the love and gratitude excited

by her brother's ceaseless beneficence sank into her heart.

I am amazed beyond measure [she wrote to Deborah, when

she heard of the threatened attack on Franklin's house]

that your house was threatened in the tumult. I thought

there had been none among you would proceed to such a

length to persecute a man merely for being the best of

characters, and really deserving good from the hand and

tongue of all his fellow creatures.... What a wretched

world would this be if the vile of mankind had no laws

to restrain them.

Additional edge to the indignation, expressed in this letter, was doubtless

given by the fact that the writer had just received from her brother, who

was then in London, a box containing, among other things, "a printed cotton

gown, a quilted coat, a bonnet, a cap, and some ribbons" for herself and

each of her daughters.

It is made manifest by other letters than this that her brother's

benevolence towards her and her family were quite as active when he was

abroad as when he was at home. In 1779, she tells him that, in a letter

from him to her, he, like himself, does all for her that the most

affectionate brother can be desired or expected to do.

And though [she further said] I feel myself full of

gratitude for your generosity, the conclusion of your

letter affects me more, where you say you wish we may

spend our last days together. O my dear brother, if

this could be accomplished, it would give me more joy

than anything on this side Heaven could possibly do. I

feel the want of a suitable conversation--I have but

little here. I think I could assume more freedom with

you now, and convince you of my affection for you. I

have had time to reflect and see my error in that

respect. I suffered my diffidence and the awe of your

superiority to prevent the familiarity I might have

taken with you, and ought, and (which) your kindness to

me might have convinced me would be acceptable.

A little later she wrote:

Your very affectionate and tender care of me all along

in life excites my warmest gratitude, which I cannot

even think on without tears. What manifold blessings I

enjoy beyond many of my worthy acquaintance, who have

been driven from their home, lost their interest, and

some have the addition of lost health, and one the

grievous torment of a cancer, and no kind brother to

support her, while I am kindly treated by all about me,

and ample provision made for me when I have occasion.

As heartfelt was another letter written by her while he was still in

France:

Believe me, my dear brother, your writing to me gives

me so much pleasure that the great, the very great

presents you have sent me are but a secondary joy. I

have been very sick this winter at my daughter's; kept

my chamber six weeks, but had a sufficiency for my

supply of everything that could be a comfort to me of

my own, before I received any intimation of the great

bounty from your hand, which your letter has conveyed

to me, for I have not been lavish of what I before

possessed, knowing sickness and misfortunes might

happen, and certainly old age; but I shall now be so

rich that I may indulge in a small degree a propensity

to help some poor creatures who have not the blessing I

enjoy. My good fortune came to me altogether to comfort

me in my weak state; for as I had been so unlucky as

not to receive the letter you sent me through your son

Bache's hands, though he informs me he forwarded it

immediately. His letter with a draft for twenty five

guineas came to my hand just before yours, which I

have received, and cannot find expression suitable to

acknowledge my gratitude how I am by my dear brother

enabled to live at ease in my old age (after a life of

care, labor, and anxiety) without which I must have

been miserable.

Most touching of all are the words which she addressed to her brother

shortly before his death, "Who that know and love you can bear the thought

of surviving you in this gloomy world?" Even after his death, his goodness

continued to shield her from want, for by his will he devised to her

absolutely the house in Unity Street, Boston, in which she lived, and

bequeathed to her an annuity of sixty pounds. By his will, he also

bequeathed to her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, living

at the time of his decease, in equal shares, fifty pounds sterling; the

same amount that he bequeathed to the descendants living at that time of

his brother Samuel, his sister Anne Harris, his brother James, his sister

Sarah and his sister Lydia, respectively.

As we have seen, Franklin's feelings about Deborah's relatives were hardly

less cordial than his feelings about his own. In addition to his

mother-in-law, Mrs. Read, and Brother John Read and Sister Read, and Cousin

Debbey, and young cousin Johnny Read, two other kinsmen of Deborah, Joseph

Read and James Read are mentioned in his letters. Indeed, at one time he

even contrived to ward off the Franklins, Mecoms and Davenports from the

Post Office long enough to appoint Joseph to the Postmastership at

Philadelphia; but James was so unfortunate as to rub against one of the

most highly sensitive surfaces of his disposition. In a letter to him,

Franklin says, "Your visits never had but one thing disagreeable in them,

that is, they were always too short"; but, in a later letter, he assails

Read fiercely for surreptitiously obtaining a judgment against Robert

Grace, one of the original members of the Junto, and produces a power of

attorney to himself from William Strahan, authorizing him to recover a

large sum of money that Read owed Strahan. "Fortune's wheel is often

turning," he grimly reminds Read. The whole letter is written with a degree

of asperity that Franklin rarely exhibited except when his sense of

injustice was highly inflamed, and the circumstances, under which Read

secured the judgment, the "little charges," that he had cunningly

accumulated on it, and the cordial affection of Franklin for Grace would

appear to have fully justified Franklin's stern rebuke and exultant

production of Strahan's power of attorney. But everything, it must be

confessed, becomes just a little clearer when we learn from a subsequent

letter of Franklin to Strahan that, before he received Strahan's power of

attorney and account, there had been a misunderstanding between Read and

himself,

occasion'd by his endeavouring to get a small Office

from me (Clerk to the Assembly) which I took the more

amiss, as we had always been good Friends, and the

Office could not have been of much Service to him, the

Salary being small; but valuable to me, as a means of

securing the Public Business to our Printing House.

The reader will remember that Franklin reserved the right to make full

reprisals when anyone undertook to dislodge him from a public office.

Nor, as has been apparent enough, was the interest of Franklin limited to

contemporary Franklins. If he had been a descendant of one of the high-bred

Washingtons of Northamptonshire--the shire to which the lineage of George

Washington, as well as his own, ran back--he could not have been more

curious about his descent than he was. "I have ever had pleasure," the

opening sentence of the _Autobiography_ declares, "in obtaining any little

anecdotes of my ancestors." From notes, placed in his hands by his uncle

Benjamin, he learned some interesting particulars about his English

forbears. They had resided in the village of Ecton, in Northamptonshire, on

the great northern turnpike, sixty-six miles from London, for certainly

three hundred years, on a freehold of about thirty acres, and the eldest

son of the family had always been bred to the trade of a blacksmith.[28]

Perhaps as Parton conjectures, some swart Franklin at the ancestral forge

on the little freehold may have tightened a rivet in the armor, or replaced

a shoe upon the horse, of a Washington, or doffed his cap to a Washington

riding past. From the registers, examined by Franklin, when he visited

Ecton, which ended with the year 1755, he discovered that he was the

youngest son of the youngest son for five generations back.

One of his letters to Deborah contained much agreeable information about

his and her English relations, which he collected at this time. After

leaving Cambridge, where his vanity, he said, had been not a little

gratified by the particular regard shown him by the chancellor and the

vice-chancellor of the university and the heads of colleges, he found on

inquiry at Wellingborough that Mary Fisher, the daughter and only child of

Thomas Franklin, his father's eldest brother, was still living. He knew

that she had lived at Wellingborough, and had been married there about

fifty years before to one Richard Fisher, a grazier and tanner, but,

supposing that she and her husband were both dead, he had inquired for

their posterity.

I was directed [he says] to their house, and we found

them both alive, but weak with age, very glad however

to see us. She seems to have been a very smart,

sensible woman. They are wealthy, have left off

business, and live comfortably. They have had only one

child, a daughter, who died, when about thirty years of

age, unmarried. She gave me several of my uncle

Benjamin's letters to her, and acquainted me where the

other remains of the family lived, of which I have,

since my return to London, found out a daughter of my

father's only sister, very old, and never married. She

is a good, clever woman, but poor, though vastly

contented with her situation, and very cheerful. The

others are in different parts of the country. I intend

to visit them, but they were too much out of our tour

in that journey.

This was in 1758. Mary Fisher had good reason to be weak with age; for this

letter states that she was five years older than Franklin's sister Dowse,

and remembered her going away with Franklin's father and his first wife and

two other children to New England about the year 1685, or some

seventy-three years before Franklin's visit to Wellingborough.

"Where are the old men?

I who have seen much,

Such have I never seen."

Only the truly gray earth, humming, as it revolves on its axis, the

derisive song, heard by the fine ear of Emerson, could ask this question,

unrebuked by such a stretch of human memory as that. The letter then goes

on to say that from Wellingborough the writer passed to Ecton, about three

or four miles away, where Franklin's father was born, and where his father,

grandfather, and great-grandfather had lived, and how many of the family

before them they knew not.

We went first [Franklin tells us] to see the old house

and grounds; they came to Mr. Fisher with his wife,

and, after letting them for some years, finding his

rent something ill paid, he sold them. The land is now

added to another farm, and a school kept in the house.

It is a decayed old stone building, but still known by

the name of the Franklin House. Thence we went to visit

the rector of the parish, who lives close by the

church, a very ancient building. He entertained us very

kindly, and showed us the old church register, in which

were the births, marriages, and burials of our

ancestors for two hundred years, as early as his book

began. His wife, a good-natured, chatty old lady

(granddaughter of the famous Archdeacon Palmer, who

formerly had that parish, and lived there) remembered a

great deal about the family; carried us out into the

churchyard, and showed us several of their gravestones,

which were so covered with moss, that we could not read

the letters, till she ordered a hard brush and basin of

water, with which Peter (Franklin's negro servant)

scoured them clean, and then Billy (William Franklin)

copied them. She entertained and diverted us highly

with stories of Thomas Franklin, Mrs. Fisher's father,

who was a conveyancer, something of a lawyer, clerk of

the county courts and clerk to the Archdeacon in his

visitations; a very leading man in all county affairs,

and much employed in public business. He set on foot a

subscription for erecting chimes in their steeple, and

completed it, and we heard them play. He found out an

easy method of saving their village meadows from being

drowned, as they used to be sometimes by the river,

which method is still in being; but, when first

proposed, nobody could conceive how it could be; "but

however," they said, "if Franklin says he knows how to

do it, it will be done." His advice and opinion were

sought for on all occasions, by all sorts of people,

and he was looked upon, she said, by some, as something

of a conjuror. He died just four years before I was

born, on the same day of the same month.

The likeness between Thomas and his nephew may have been insufficient under

any circumstances to justly suggest the thought of a metempsychosis to

William Franklin, but Thomas does seem to have been a kind of tentative

effort upon the part of Nature to create a Benjamin Franklin.

The letter then states that, after leaving Ecton, the party finally arrived

at Birmingham where they were soon successful in looking up Deborah's and

cousin Wilkinson's and cousin Cash's relations. First, they found one of

the Cashes, and he went with them to Rebecca Flint's where they saw her and

her husband. She was a turner, and he a button-maker; they were childless

and glad to see any person that knew their sister Wilkinson. They told

their visitors what letters they had received from America, and even

assured them--such are the short and simple annals of the poor--that they

had out of respect preserved a keg in which a gift of sturgeon from America

had reached them. Then follow certain details about other members of this

family connection, commonplace enough, however, to reconcile us to the fact

that they have been cut short by the mordant tooth of time which has not

spared the remainder of the letter.

On his second mission to England, Franklin paid another visit to these

Birmingham relations of his wife, and was in that city for several days.

The severest test of a good husband is to ask whether he loves his wife's

relations as much as his own. To even this test Franklin appears to have

been equal.

Sally Franklin, the daughter of Thomas Franklin, of Lutterworth, a second

cousin of Franklin, also flits through the correspondence between Deborah

and her husband. When she was about thirteen years of age, her father

brought her to London to see Franklin, and Mrs. Stevenson persuaded him to

leave the child under her care for a little schooling and improvement,

while Franklin was off on one of his periodical tours.

When I return'd [the latter wrote to Deborah] I found

her indeed much improv'd, and grown a fine Girl. She is

sensible, and of a sweet, obliging Temper, but is now

ill of a violent Fever, and I doubt we shall lose her,

which particularly afflicts Mrs. Stevenson, not only as

she has contracted a great Affection for the Child, but

as it was she that persuaded her Father to leave her

there.

Sally, however, settled all doubts by getting well and furnishing future

material for Franklin's letters to Deborah. One letter tells Deborah that

Sally's father was very desirous that Franklin should take her to America

with him; another pays the compliment to Sally, who was at the time in the

country with her father, of saying that she is a very good girl; another

thanks Deborah for her kind attitude toward her husband's partially-formed

resolution of bringing Sally over to America with him; another announces

that Sally is again with Mrs. Stevenson; and still another doubtless

relieved Deborah of no little uncertainty of mind by informing her that

Sally was about to be married to a farmer's son. "I shall miss her,"

comments Franklin, "as she is nimble-footed and willing to run of Errands

and wait upon me, and has been very serviceable to me for some Years, so

that I have not kept a Man."

Among Franklin's papers, too, was found at his death a letter from his

father to him, beginning "Loving Son," which also makes some valuable

contributions to our knowledge of Franklin's forefathers.

As to the original of our name, there is various

opinions [says Josiah]; some say that it came from a

sort of title, of which a book that you bought when

here gives a lively account, some think we are of a

French extract, which was formerly called Franks; some

of a free line, a line free from that vassalage which

was common to subjects in days of old; some from a bird

of long red legs. Your uncle Benjamin made inquiry of

one skilled in heraldry, who told him there is two

coats of armor, one belonging to the Franklins of the

North, and one to the Franklins of the west. However,

our circumstances have been such as that it hath hardly

been worth while to concern ourselves much about these

things any farther than to tickle the fancy a little.

Josiah then has a word to say about his great-grandfather, the Franklin who

kept his Bible under a joint stool during the reign of Bloody Mary, and his

grandfather. The former, he says, in his travels

went upon liking to a taylor; but he kept such a stingy

house, that he left him and travelled farther, and came

to a smith's house, and coming on a fasting day, being

in popish times, he did not like there the first day;

the next morning the servant was called up at five in

the morning, but after a little time came a good toast

and good beer, and he found good housekeeping there; he

served and learned the trade of a smith.

Josiah's grandfather, the letter tells us, was a smith also, and settled in

Ecton, and "was imprisoned a year and a day on suspicion of his being the

author of some poetry that touched the character of some great man." An

ancestry that could boast one sturdy Tubal Cain, ready, though the fires of

Smithfield were brightly burning, to hazard his life for his religious

convictions, and another, with letters and courage enough to lampoon a

great man in England in the sixteenth or the seventeenth century, is an

ancestry that was quite worthy of investigation. It at least tickles the

fancy a little, to use Josiah's phrase, to imagine that the flame of the

Ecton forge lit up, generation after generation, the face of some brawny,

honest toiler, not unlike the village blacksmith, whose rugged figure and

manly, simple-hearted, God-fearing nature are portrayed with so much

dignity and beauty in the well-known verses of Longfellow. Be this as it

may, the humble lot of neither ancestral nor contemporary Franklins was a

source of mortification to Poor Richard even after the popularity of his

_Almanac_ had brought in a pair of shoes, two new shifts, and a new warm

petticoat to his wife, and to him a second-hand coat, so good that he was

no longer ashamed to go to town or be seen there.

"He that has neither fools nor beggars among his kindred, is the son of a

thunder gust," said Poor Richard.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] This lady, whose father was Lewis Evans, of Philadelphia, a surveyor

and map-maker, was a god-daughter of Deborah, and, according to a letter

from Franklin to Deborah, dated July 22, 1774, fell little short of being

ubiquitous. He wrote: "She is now again at Tunis, where you will see she

has lately lain in of her third Child. Her Father, you know, was a

geographer, and his daughter has some connection, I think, with the whole

Globe; being born herself in America, and having her first Child in Asia,

her second in Europe, and now her third in Africa."

[17] A readable essay might be written upon the sea-voyages of Franklin.

The sloop, in which he absconded from Boston, in 1723, was favored with a

fair wind, and reached New York in three days. His voyage from Philadelphia

to Boston in 1724 lasted for about a fortnight. The "little vessel," in

which he sailed, he tells us in the _Autobiography_, "struck on a shoal in

going down the bay, and sprung a leak." "We had," Franklin says, "a

blustering time at sea, and were oblig'd to pump almost continually, at

which I took my turn." The cabin accommodations and abundant sea stores

that fell to the lot of Ralph and himself, under circumstances already

mentioned by us, on their voyage from Philadelphia to England in 1724, in

the _London-Hope_, Captain Annis, were rare windfalls; but the voyage was

marked by a great deal of bad weather. The return voyage of Franklin from

London to Philadelphia in 1726, in the _Berkshire_, Captain Clark,

including _obiter_ delays on the south coast of England, consumed the whole

interval between July 21 and Oct. 12. All the incidents of this long voyage

were entered in the Journal kept by him while it was under way, and there

are few writings in which the ordinary features of an ocean passage at that

time are so clearly brought before the reader: the baffling winds, the

paralyzing calms; the meagre fare; the deadly _ennui_; and the moody

sullenness bred by confinement and monotony. The word "helm-a-lee,"

Franklin states, became as disagreeable to their ears as the sentence of a

judge to a convicted malefactor. Once he leapt overboard and swam around

the ship to "wash" himself, and another time he was deterred from "washing"

himself by the appearance of a shark, "that mortal enemy to swimmers." For

a space his ship was in close enough companionship for several days with

another ship for the masters of the two vessels, accompanied by a passenger

in each instance, to exchange visits. On his second voyage, of about thirty

days, to England, in 1757, the packet, in which he was a passenger, easily

outstripped the hostile cruisers by which she was several times chased, but

wore about with straining masts just in time to escape shipwreck on the

Scilly rocks. Of his return to America in 1762, he wrote to Strahan from

Philadelphia: "We had a long Passage near ten Weeks from Portsmouth to this

Place, but it was a pleasant one; for we had ten sail in Company and a Man

of War to protect us; we had pleasant Weather and fair Winds, and

frequently visited and dined from ship to ship." At the end of his third

voyage to England in 1764, Franklin wrote to Deborah from the Isle of Wight

that no father could have been tenderer to a child than Captain Robinson

had been to him. "But we have had terrible Weather, and I have often been

thankful that our dear Sally was not with me. Tell our Friends that din'd

with us on the Turtle that the kind Prayer they then put up for thirty Days

fair Wind for me was favourably heard and answered, we being just 30 Days

from Land to Land." Of his return voyage to America in 1775, he wrote to

Priestley: "I had a passage of six weeks, the weather constantly so

moderate that a London wherry might have accompanied us all the way." His

thirty-day voyage to France in 1776 proved a rough and debilitating one to

him at his advanced age, but Captain Wickes was not only able to keep his

illustrious passenger out of the Tower, but to snatch up two English prizes

on his way over. We need say no more than we have already incidentally said

in our text of the seven weeks that Franklin gave up to his pen and

thermometer on his return voyage to America in 1785. After the passage, he

wrote to Mrs. Hewson that it had been a pleasant and not a long one in

which there was but one day, a day of violent storm, on which he was glad

that she was not with them.

[18] A copious note on the leading portraits of Franklin will be found in

the _Narrative and Critical History of America_, edited by Justin Winsor,

vol. vii., p. 37. The best of them resemble each other closely enough to

make us feel satisfied that we should recognize him at once, were it

possible for us to meet him in life on the street.

[19] Franklin was frequently the recipient of one of the most delightful of

all forms of social attention, an invitation to a country house in the

British Islands. On Oct. 5, 1768, he writes to Deborah that he has lately

been in the country to spend a few days at friends' houses, and to breathe

a little fresh air. On Jan. 28, 1772, after spending some seven weeks in

Ireland and some four weeks in Scotland, he tells the same correspondent

that he has received abundance of civilities from the gentry of both these

kingdoms.

[20] Speaking of a portrait of Sally in a letter to Deborah from London in

1758, Franklin says: "I fancy I see more Likeness in her Picture than I did

at first, and I look at it often with Pleasure, as at least it reminds me

of her."

[21] The only blot upon the useful labors of Jared Sparks, as the editor of

Franklin's productions, is the liberties that he took with their wording.

Sometimes his alterations were the offspring of good feeling, sometimes of

ordinary puristic scruples, and occasionally of the sickly prudery which

led our American grandfathers and grandmothers to speak of the leg of a

turkey as its "drum-stick." The word "belly" appears to have been

especially trying to his nice sense of propriety. One result was these

scornful strictures by Albert Henry Smyth in the Introduction to his

edition of Franklin's writings: "He is nice in his use of moral epithets;

he will not offend one stomach with his choice of words. Franklin speaks of

the Scots 'who entered England and _trampled on its belly_ as far as

Derby,'--'marched on,' says Sparks. Franklin is sending some household

articles from London to Philadelphia. In the large packing case is 'a jug

for beer.' It has, he says, 'the coffee cups in its belly.' Sparks performs

the same abdominal operation here."

[22] The maladies to which Franklin was subject, and the spells of illness

that he experienced, like everything else relating to him, have been

described in detail by at least one of his enthusiastic latter-day

biographers. We are content, however, to be classed among those biographers

in whose eyes no amount of genius can hallow an ague or glorify a cutaneous

affection.

[23] "I must mention to you," Sally said in a letter to her father, dated

Oct. 30, 1773, "that I am no longer housekeeper; it gave my dear mama so

much uneasiness, and the money was given to me in a manner which made it

impossible to save anything by laying in things beforehand, so that my

housekeeping answered no good purpose, and I have the more readily given it

up, though I think it my duty, and would willingly take the care and

trouble off of her, could I possibly please and make her happy."

[24] The entire conduct of Franklin towards his son after the dismissal of

the father from office by the British Government seems to have been

thoroughly considerate and decorous. His wish that William Franklin would

resign his office as Governor of New Jersey, which he could not hold

without pecuniary loss to his father, and without apparent insensibility to

the indignity to which his father had been subjected, was delicately

intimated only. Even after William Franklin became a prisoner in

Connecticut in consequence of his disloyalty to the American cause,

Franklin, while giving Temple some very good practical reasons why he could

not consent that he should be the bearer of a letter from Mrs. William

Franklin to her husband, takes care to tell Temple that he does not blame

his desire of seeing a father that he had so much reason to love. At this

time he also relieved with a gift of money the immediate necessities of

Mrs. William Franklin. The temper of his letters to Temple, when Temple

went over to England from France, at his instance, to pay his duty to

William Franklin, was that of settled reconciliation with his son. "Give my

Love to your Father," is a message in one of these letters. When he touched

at Southampton on his return from his French mission, William Franklin,

among others, was there to greet him. In the succeeding year we find

Franklin asking Andrew Strahan to send him a volume and to present his

account for it to his son. But on one occasion during the last twelve

months of his life, he speaks of William no longer as "my son" but as

"William Franklin." On the whole, it would appear that it was not so much

the original defection of the son from the American cause as the fact that

he kept aloof from the father, after the return of the father from France,

which was responsible for the asperity with which the latter refers in his

will to the political course of William Franklin during the Revolution.

[25] Altogether Peter Folger must have been a man of sterling sense and

character. He was one of the five Commissioners appointed to survey and

measure the land on the Island of Nantucket, and in the order of

appointment the following provision was inserted: "Whatsoever shall be done

by them, or any three of them, _Peter Folger being one_, shall be accounted

legal and valid."

[26] That Peter Franklin had some of the ability of his famous brother we

may infer from a long letter written to him by Franklin in which the

latter, after acknowledging the receipt of a ballad by Peter, descants upon

the superiority of the old, simple ditties over modern songs in lively and

searching terms which he would hardly have wasted on a man of ordinary

intelligence.

[27] The first letter from the Commissioners to Jonathan Williams, dated

Apr. 13, 1778, simply asked him to abstain from any further purchases as

naval agent, and to close his accounts for the present. It was not until

May 25, 1778, that a letter was addressed to him by the Commissioners

expressly revoking his authority as naval agent on the ground that Congress

had authorized William Lee to superintend the commercial affairs of America

in general, and he had appointed M. Schweighauser, a German merchant, as

the person to look after all the maritime and commercial interests of

America in the Nantes district. In signing the letter, Franklin took care

to see that this clause was inserted: "It is not from any prejudice to you,

Mr. Williams, for whom we have a great respect and esteem, but merely from

a desire to save the public money, to prevent the clashing of claims and

interests, and to avoid confusion and delays, that we have taken this

step." The result was that, instead of the uniform commission of two per

cent., charged by Williams for transacting the business of the naval

agency, Schweighauser, whose clerk was Ludlow Lee, a nephew of Arthur Lee,

charged as much as five per cent. on the simple delivery of tobacco to the

farmers-general. Later Williams, who was an expert accountant, was restored

to the position which he had really filled with blameless integrity and

efficiency. After his return to America, his career was an eminent one. He

is termed by General George W. Cullum in his work on the campaigns and

engineers of the War of 1812-15 the father of the Engineer Service of the

United States. In the same work, General Cullum also speaks of his "noble

character."

[28] In sending a MS. to Edward Everett, which he placed in the library of

the Massachusetts Historical Society, Thomas Carlyle said: "The poor

manuscript is an old Tithes-Book of the parish of Ecton, in

Northamptonshire, from about 1640 to 1700, and contains, I perceive,

various scattered faint indications of the civil war time, which are not

without interest; but the thing which should raise it above all tithe-books

yet heard of is, that it contains actual notices, in that fashion, of the

ancestors of Benjamin Franklin--blacksmiths in that parish! Here they

are--their forge-hammers yet going--renting so many 'yard lands' of

Northamptonshire Church-soil--keeping so many sheep, etc., etc.,--little

conscious that one of the demi-gods was about to proceed out of them."