ammcan Mtn of ttttm* EDITED BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Aet-S4'. -" Frcrn t^f^^ /)/7yfrnyZ.l pazn.fyM<^ uz tA-c- p/?sscssiOii> 'y/ the- J/isA-ncal Sea'i^!^ ofFin-T? \ 5llmeritan ^tn of Setter^* V . \^ BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AS A MAN OF LETTERS. ^y JOHN BACH McMASTER, WHARTON SCHOOL, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. " MOV 21 iB8/ 5 BOSTON: HOUGHTON", MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street. 1887. Copyright, 1887, By JOHN BACH McMASTER. All rights reserved. The Riverside Press, Cambridge •• Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co. PREFATORY NOTE. My thanks are due to Dr. Samuel Green, of the Massachusetts Historical Society ; to Mr. Theodore Dwight, of the Library of the De- partment of State at Washington ; to Mr, Hildeburn, of the Philadelphia Athenseum ; and especially to Mr. Lindsay Swift, of the Boston Public Library, and Mr. F. D. Stone, of the Pennsylvania Historical Society, for the help so kindly given me when gathering the material for this Life of Franklin. JOHN BACH McMASTER. Philadelphia, October, 1887. TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. 1706-1723. Birth and early training. The newspapers and literature of New England. The Dogood Papers. The departure of Pranklin from Boston 1-35 CHAPTER II. 1723-1729. Franklin reaches Philadelphia ; is employed by Keimer ; goes to London ; writes a pamphlet, " Liberty and Necessity " ; comes back to Philadelphia ; opens a printing office; writes "The Busybody," and a pam- phlet on " Paper Money " 36-64 CHAPTER III. 1729-1748. Buys Keimer's " Universal Instructor in all the Arts and Sciences," and establishes the " Pennsylvania Gazette " ; notable contributions ; his " Parables " and " Biblical Paraphrases " 65-95 CHAPTER IV. 1732-1748. Publishes " Poor Richard '* ; Father Abraham's Speech ; quarrels with Bradford ; publishes the General Maga- zine 96-135 VUl CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. 1743-1756. Franklin becomes interested in politics; his pamphlet " Plain Truth " ; his " Proposals relating to the Educa- tion of Youth in Pennsylvania" ; founds the University of Pennsylvania; sells the printing house and the newspaper ; begins to study electricity ; his scientific papers ; the Albany Plan of Union ; "Dialogue between X, Y, Z ; " is sent to London by the Assembly of Pennsylvania 136-167 CHAPTER VI. 1756-1764. Political writings while in London ; the pretended chap- ter " On the Meanes of disposing the Enemie to Peace " ; returns to Pennsylvania ; massacre of the Indians ; Franklin's " Narrative of the Massacre " ; the Paxton raid ; Franklin lampooned ; his " Cool Thoughts " ; his " Preface to a Speech " ; is lampooned by the Proprie- tary Party ; is defeated at the election for Assembly- men ; is sent to England with the Address to the King ; the Proprietary Party protest ; Franklin writes " Remarks on a Protest " 168-188 CHAPTER VIL 1764-1776. Reaches London ; conduct regarding the Stamp Act ; haa Hughes made stamp collector ; is lampooned for this ; his writings for the London newspapers ; " Rules for reducing a Great Empire to a Small One." " An Edict of the King of Prussia." Visits France. First Eng- lish edition of his works ; Dubourg translates it into French. The Hutchinson Letters. Abused before the Privy Council. Delivers the Declaration of Rights, and returns to Philadelphia ; is elected to Congress . 189^217 CONTENTS. IX CHAPTER VIII. 1776-1790. Is sent to France. Eeception at Nantes ; at Paris ; by the French people. His popularity. "Writes "A Com- parison of Great Britain and America" ; '* A Catechism relative to the English National Debt " ; " A Dialogue between Britain, France, Spain, Holland, Saxony, and America." His way of life at Passy. The privateers. Madame Helvetius. Madame Brillon. " The Baga- telles." His mission ended. Returns to Philadelphia. "Writes " The Retort Courteous " ; " Remarks on Send- ing Felons to America '' ; " Likeness of the Anti-Feder- alists to the Jews." His anti-slavery writings. " Mar- tin's Account of his Consulship." His death. . 218-250 CHAPTER IX. The Autobiography. Loss of the manuscript of the first part. The manuscript recovered and continued. Copies sent to England and France. Publication of the first part at Paris. Translation of this into English. Temple Franklin begins to edit the papers. Dr. Price's edition with Steuben's "Life." Temple Frank- lin accused of selling the papers. He finally publishes a part. Loss of the unpublished papers. Their singu- lar recovery. Bought by Mr. Stevens, and then by the Government of the United States. Mr. Bigelow re- covers the original manuscript of the Autobiography. Changes made by Temple Franklin in the text. Its popularity. The collected works. Franklin's place in literature. Characteristics of his style ; his versatility ; his philosophy. His letters. His greatness . . 251-282 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AS A MAN OF LETTERS. CHAPTER I. 1706-1723. The story of the life of Benjamin Franklin begins at a time when Queen Anne still ruled the colonies ; when the colonies were but ten in number, and when the population of the ten did not sum up to four hundred thousand souls ; at a time when witches were plentiful in New England ; when foxes troubled the farmers of Lynn ; when wolves and panthers abounded in Connecticut ; when pirates infested the Atlan- tic coast ; when there was no such thing as a stage-coach in the land ; when there were but three colleges and one newspaper in the whole of British North America ; when no printing- press existed south of Philadelphia ; when New York was still defended by a high stockade; and when Ann Pollard, the first white woman 2 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. that ever set foot on the soil of Boston, was still enjoying a bale old age. On the January morning, 1706, when Frank- lin received his name in the Old South Church at Boston, the French bad not founded the city of Mobile nor the city of New Orleans, nor begun the construction of that great chain of forts which stretched across our country from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf. Philip Jones had not marked out the streets of Baltimore ; the proprietors of Carolina had not surrendered their charter, and the colony was still governed on the absurd plan of Locke; Delaware was still the property of William Penn ; the founder of Georgia was a lad of eighteen. Of the few places that deserved to be called towns, the largest was Boston. Yet the area of Boston was less than one square mile, and the popula- tion did not equal ten thousand souls. The chief features of the place were three hills, since greatly cut down ; three coves, long since filled up ; the patch of common, where the cows fed at large ; and the famous Neck. Across the Neck was a barrier, the gate of which was closed each night at nine, and never opened on the Sabbath. Behind the barrier was a maze of narrow streets, lined with buildings most of which have long since disappeared. On the site of the Old South Church stood a wooden PARENTS OF BENJAMIN. 3 meeting-house, pulled down in 1729. Near by- were the pillory and the stocks, and just over the way on Milk Street was the humble dwell- ing of Josiah Franklin and Abiah Folger his wife. Josiah was an Englishman, a dissenter, and a dyer ; came to Boston in 1685, and, finding no use for his trade, abandoned it and became a tallow-chandler instead. Abiah Folger was his second wife. The first wife brought him seven children. Abiah brought him ten, and of her ten children Benjamin was the youngest son. This name was given him in honor of an uncle on the day of his birth, which, by the records of the Old South Church, must have been the sixth of January (Old Style), 1706. Those were the days of compulsory education and compulsory thrift, the days when it was the duty of the selectmen to see that every Boston boy could read and write the English tongue, had some knowledge of the capital laws, knew by heart some orthodox catechism, and was brought up to do some honest work. Benjamin began his education at home ; was sent when he was eight to the Latin School, and soon after to that of George Brownell, a pedagogue famed for his skill in arithmetic and the use of the quill. To this school he went regularly till the master ceased to teach 4 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, boys to make pot-hooks and loops, and began to teach women to make new-fashioned purses and to paint on glass, to do feather-work and fili- gree and embroider a new way, to put Turkey work on handkerchiefs, flowers on muslin, and cover their short aprons with rich brocade ; till he turned dressmaker and barber, made gowns and furbelowed scarfs, and cut gentlewomen's hair in the newest fashion. When this change took place Benjamin was ten. His schooling then ended, and for two years he cut wicks, molded candles, tended shop, ran on errands, and talked much of going to sea. The parents had intended to breed him to the church, and an uncle graciously promised to leave him a bundle of sermons taken down from time to time in short-hand.^ But even this could not move him. Benjamin remained steadfast; and Josiah, alarmed at this fondness for ships and sailors, determined to bind him to some trade that should keep him on shore. Like a man of sense, the father tried to find the lad's bent, took him on long walks about town, went among the bricklayers and the 1 One of the sermons taken down in this way is yet extant. The title is, " A Discourse on Forgiveness. In Three Sermons from Matt. vi. 15. By Nathaniel Vincent. Taken down in short-hand by one of his hearers. Boston, J. Franklin, 1722." The remarks " To the Reader " are signed B. F., and this B. F. was undoubtedly Benjamin Franklin the elder. LIBRARY OF JOSIAH. 5 joiners, the tanners and the cutlers, watched him closely, and decided that he should become a maker of knives. Benjamin was now sent to a cousin who had learned the trade in London. But a fee was asked. Josiah was vexed, and the boy was soon home and in the shop. There he fell to reading. As to the charac- ter of the books that made the library of Josiah Franklin, neither his wijl, inventory, nor account afford much information. From the inventory it appears that he died possessed of two large bibles, a concordance, " Willard's Body of Di- vinity," and " a parcel of small books." But we gather from the autobiography of Benjamin that the collection of books that lay upon the shelves was, with a few exceptions, such as no boy of our time thinks of reading ; such as can- not be found even in the libraries of students uncovered with dust; such as are rarely seen in the catalogues of book auctions, and never come into the hands of bookbinders to be reclothed. There were, Mather's "Essay to do Good," and Defoe's "Essay on Projects," Platarch's ''Lives," the only readable book in the collec- tion, and a pile of thumbed and dog-eared pam- phlets on polemical theology such as any true son of the dissenting church might read ; such as those in which Increase Mather and Solomon Stoddart discussed the grave questions, Can bap- 6 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. tized persons destitute of religion come to the table of the Lord ? Is it lawful to wear long hair ? At what time of evening does the Sabbath begin ? Is it lawful for men to set their dwelling- houses at such a distance from the place of pub- lic worship that they and their families cannot well attend it? Uninviting as this literature may seem, Franklin read it with pleasure, for he was by nature a debater and a disputatious man. Indeed, there is much reason to believe that he was himself the author of an eight-page tract ridiculing some of Stoddart's remarks, and called " Hooped Petticoats Arraigned and Con- demned by the Light of Nature and the Law of God." These books finished, he determined to get more. Borrow he could not. He knew no bookseller, and a circulating library did not exist anywhere in America. In a room in the Town Hall at Boston were gathered a few vol- umes which, in old wills, old letters, and the diaries of prominent men, is called the " Public Library." But there is not any reason to sup- pose that one of the books could have been carried home by a tallow-chandler's son, or treated of any subject less serious than religion. In the whole town there was not, in all likeli- hood, a solitary copy of any of the works of one of that glorious band of writers who made the LITERATURE OF THE TIME. 7 literature of the reign of Queen Anne so fa- mous. The first catalogue of Harvard Library- was printed in 1723, yet there is not in it the title of any of the works of Addison, of any of the satires of Swift, of any of the poems of Pope, of any of the writings of Bolingbroke or Dry- den, Steele, Prior, or Young. The earliest copy of Shakespeare brought to America was of the edition of 1709. No copy was ever advertised for sale till 1722. Even such books as Harvard did own, it was seriously urged, should, after the manner of the Bodleian Library, be chained to the desk. Nor did the boy fare much better when, with the few halfpence he had saved, he went among the booksellers to buy. The steam printing-press has, in our time, placed within reach of the poorest ofiice-boy the most delight- ful works of poetry and travel, of history and biography, of essay and fiction, the languages of ten civilized nations can afford. When Frank- lin began to read, a printing-press was a " raree show." Neither in New Hampshire, nor Rhode Island, nor New Jersey, nor Delaware had such a thing been seen. He was three years old be- fore a type was set in Connecticut. He was twenty when the first press reached Maryland. He was twenty-three before one was perma- nently set up in Virginia, and another year 8 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. passed by before a printer appeared in the Car- olinas. In the four colonies where there were printers, the press was busy in the cause of the church. Between the j&rst of January, 1706, and the first of January, 1718, all the publica- tions known to have been printed in America number at least five hundred and fifty. Of these but eighty-four are not on religious topics, and of the eighty-four, forty-nine are almanacs. "The Origin of the Whalebone Petticoat;" " The Simple Cobbler of Agawam in America ; " John Williams's " Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion," an Indian story, which for a time was more sought after than Mather's " Treacle fetched out of a Viper ; " Mary Rowlandson's " Captivity among the Indians," and " Enter- taining Passages relating to Philip's War," were the only approaches made in all these years to what would now be called light literature. Among the four hundred and sixty-six books of a religious tone, by far the best was " Pil- grim's Progress," printed at Boston in 1681 and reprinted in 1706. A copy of this was Benja- min's first purchase; was read, reread, and sold, and, with the money and a few more pence he had saved, forty volumes of Bur- ton's "Historical Collections" were secured. The bent of his mind was now unmistakable. He stood in no danger of going to sea ; he did COTTON MATHER, 9 not need his uncle's sermons ; lie would never be content to mold candles nor grind knives. For the lad who could deny himself the few treats afforded by a Puritan town, save his cop- pers and lay them out on such books as were then to be had at Boston, there seemed to be but one career, the career of a man of letters. No such man had then appeared in the colonies. The greatest American then living was unquestionably Cotton Mather. Yet he is in no sense deserving to be called a man of letters. His pen, indeed, was never idle. Four hundred and twenty- three of his productions are still extant, yet our literature would have suffered no loss if every one of them had perished. Everything that he left is of value, but the value is of that kind which belongs to a bit of the Charter Oak ; to a sword worn by Miles Standish ; to an uncomfortable chair in which Governor Bradford sat; or to a broken plate used by the Pilgrims on their voyage to Ply- mouth. To hurry through a volume and write a sermon was, with Mather, a morning's work. To preach seventy sermons in public, forty more in private, publish fourteen pamphlets, keep thirty vigils and sixty fasts, and still have time for persecuting witches, was nothing un- usual for him to do in a year. The habit of starving the body to purify the soul he adopted 10 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. when a lad of fourteen, and in the fifty-two years that remained to him his fasts were more than four hundred and fifty. Sometimes they numbered ten a week. Often they lasted three days. On all such occasions he would lie face downward on his study-floor, fasting, weeping, praying, calling on the name of God. By the time he was forty, even such mortification was not enough for him, and he began to keep vigils ; then he would leave his bed at the dead of night, fall prostrate on the floor of his library, and spend the hours of darkness " wrestling with God " and getting " unutterable commu- nications from Heaven." The simplest act of life was to Mather an occasion for religious meditation. When he mended his fire he remembered that godliness should flame up within him. When he washed his hands he recalled that a pure heart was also required of the citizen of Zion. When he pared his nails he reflected on the duty of putting away all superfluity of naughtiness. If a tall man passed him on the street he would exclaim, ''Lord, give that man high attainments in Christianity." When he saw a lame man he would say, " Lord, help him to walk uprightly." In early life Mather stuttered and stammered, and spoke with difliculty. Thinking himself unfit to serve the Lord, he began to fit himself THE FIRST NEWSPAPER. 11 to serve man, and studied medicine. But an old schoolmaster cured him of stuttering; he began to preach, and is now remembered for the support he gave to inoculation, to the witch- craft delusion of 1692, and to the censorship of the press James Franklin and his apprentice Benjamin did so much to destroy. It was in 1718, when he had just turned twelve, that Benjamin was bound to his brother, who a year later began to print the second newspaper in America. Not many years ago the historian of the town of Salem, while rummaging among the records of the Colonial State Paper Office at London, brought to light a small four-page sheet entitled " Publick Oc- currences, Both Foreign and Domestick." The date was Thursday, September 25, 1690 ; the size of each page was seven inches by eleven, and one of the four was blank. The purpose of "Publick Occurrences" was praiseworthy. He wished, the printer declared, to do " some- thing towards the curing, or at least the charming, of the spirit of lying;" and he should, he promised, put forth an issue once each month, unless a "glut of occurrences" required it oftener. Four days later the Gen- eral Court decided that " Publick Occurrences " was a pamphlet, that it contained reflections of a high nature, that it was printed contrary to 12 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. law, and that henceforth nothing should come from the press till a license had first been obtained. None was ever issued for the offend- ing pamphlet, and, save that at London, no copy of it has since been seen. "Publick Occurrences" is commonly believed to have been the first newspaper in our country. It might more truly be called the first maga- zine, for it was, as the General Court declared, a pamphlet. The true newspaper did not appear for fourteen years, and was then begun by the Boston postmaster. The duties of his place were far from exacting. If he opened his office on Monday of each week from seven to twelve for the distribution of letters the riders brought in, and again from two to seven for the reception of letters the riders were to take out, colfected postage once a quarter, made a list of letters not called for, and higgled with ship-captains for distributing letters they ought to have lodged with him, he did all he was required to do. To John Campbell, however, these duties were not enough, and to them he added those of a gatherer of news. He visited every stranger that came to town, boarded every ship that entered the bay, collected what scraps of news he could, and wrote them out in a fair hand for the public good. Copies of his " News Letter '* ''BOSTON NEWS LETTER.'' 13 passed from hand to hand at the Coffee House, found their way to the neighboring towns, and went out in the mail to the goyernors of the New England colonies. As time passed, the glut of occurrences steadily increased ; his work grew daily more in favor ; and he was at last compelled to lay down the pen, betake himself to type, and become the founder of the Ameri- can newspaper. Monday, the seventeenth of April, 1704, was a white day in the annals of Boston, and as the printer struck off the first copy of the first number of the " Boston News Letter," Chief Justice Sewell, who stood by, seized the paper and bore it, damp from the press, to the President of Harvard College. Some extracts from the " Flying Post " concern- ing the Pretender, the text of a sermon licensed to be printed, notices of a couple of arrivals, of a couple of deaths, of the appointment of an admiralty judge and deputy, and a call for business, is all it contains. During fifteen years the " News Letter " had no rival. But in 1719 Campbell lost the post-office, refused in revenge to have his news- papers carried by the riders, and the new post- master at once established the " Boston Ga- zette," and gave the matter to James Franklin to print. While engaged in setting type and mixing ink in his brother's office, Benjamin 14 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. began to write. His first attempts were two ballads in doggerel verse, treating of subjects which at that time filled the popular mind. The keeper of the Boston light had been drowned in a storm. A pirate renowned along the whole coast had been killed. There is not now living a man who has ever beheld such a rover out of the China seas. Early in the eighteenth century the black flag had been seen by scores of captains who went in and out of the colonial ports. From the West Indies, from New Providence, from the sounds and inlets of the Virginia coast, from Cape Fear River, from Pamlico Sound, from the very shores of Massachusetts, freebooter after freebooter sallied forth to plunder and destroy. When Captain Kidd died in 1700, Quelch succeeded him, and long found shelter in the bays and harbors of New England. In one of them, on a return from a prosperous coasting trip, the people surprised him, and hanged him with six companions on the banks of Charles River, June 80, 1704. The event is memorable as it became the occasion of the first piece of newspaper reporting in America. In the crowd that stood about the gallows-tree that day in June was John Campbell, who, in the next number of the " News Letter," de- scribed the scene, " the exhortation to the mal- TREATMENT OF PIRATES. 15 efactors," and the prayer put up for the cul- prits' repose, " as nearly," says he, " as it could be taken down in writing in a great crowd." From the moment such a character fell into the clutches of the law he became the victim of the most terrible religious enginery the col- ony could produce. His trial was speedy. His conviction was sure. His sentence w^as imposed by the judge in a long sermon after a long prayer, and he was, on the Sunday or the Thurs- day before execution, brought to the meeting- house loaded with chains, and placed in the front seats, to be reprobated and held up by name to the whole congregation behind him. The day of his death was a gala day. The entire town marched in procession behind his coffin to the foot of the Common, to Boston Neck, or to Broughton's Hill on the Charles River, where stood the gallows, from one end of which floated a huge black flag adorned with a figure of Death holding a dart in one hand and an hour-glass in the other. There, after just such prayers and exhortations as Campbell has described, the pirate would be left swinging in his chains. Next in turn came Bellamy, the terror of every New England sailor till in 1717 he was wrecked on Cape Cod, where such of his crew as did not perish in the sea were hanged. 16 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN When George I. came to the throne New Prov- idence was a nest of pirates, and thither a ship of war was sent to drive them out. Two sought refuge in Cape Fear River, a third took up his abode among the people of Pamlico Sound. There, protected by the governor, dreaded by the people, he squandered in riot and debauch- ery his ill-gotten wealth. When all was gone, Theach went back to his roving life, gathered a crew, procured a ship, cleared her as a mer- chantman, and was again a pirate chief. In a few weeks he was home with a rich cargo in a fine French ship. He swore the vessel had been picked up at sea. But the people knew better, sent Governor Spottiswoode word, and a man-of-war soon appeared in Pamlico Sound. Theach descried her one evening in November, 1718, and the next morning a running fight took place through the sounds and inlets of that singular coast. Discipline prevailed ; the pirate was boarded, and as Theach, covered with wounds and surrounded by the dead, stepped back match in hand to fire a pistol, he fainted and fell upon the deck. The Christian name of Theach was John ; but among the wretches who manned his guns and furled his sails, and the captains who fled in terror from his flag, he passed by the name of Blackbeard. He was a boy's ideal of a pirate " blackbeard:' 17 chief. His brow was low ; his eyes were small ; his huge, shaggy beard, black as a coal, hung far down upon his breast. Over his shoulders were three braces of pistols ; in battle, lighted matches stuck out from under his hat and pro- truded from behind his ears. In his fits of rage he became a demon. But his hours of good-nature were more to be feared than his moments of fury. Sometimes he would amuse the boon-companions of his crew by shooting out the light of his cabin ; sometimes he would send balls whizzing past the ears or through the hair of those who sat with him at table. To mimic the Devil was a favorite sport, and on one occasion, to give greater reality to his imper- sonation, the hatches were battened down and the crew half stifled with the fumes of sulphur. The death of such a character in a hand-to- hand conflict on the deck of his own ship was as fine a subject for song as a writer of ballads could desire. The street ballad was then and long remained the chief source of popular infor- mation. If a great victory were won on land or sea ; if a murder were committed ; if a noted criminal were hanged ; if a highwayman were caught ; if a ship were wrecked ; if a good man died ; if a sailor came back from the Spanish main with some strange tale of adventure, a ballad-monger was sure to put the details into 18 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. doggerel rhyme, and the event became fixed in the mind of the people. The influence of such verses was great and lasting, the demand for them was incessant, and the printer who could furnish a steady supply was sure of a rich re- turn. Thomas Fleet is said to have made no small part of his fortune by the sale of ballads his press struck off. James Franklin, with a like purpose in view, bade his apprentice turn his knack of rhyming to some use, suggested the themes, and when the ballads were printed sent Benjamin forth to hawk them in the street. That upon the drowning of the light- keeper and his family sold prodigiously, for the event was recent and the man well known ; yet not a line of it remains. From the manufacture of ballad poetry Ben- jamin was saved by his father, who told him plainly that all poets were beggars, and that he would do well to turn his time and talents to better use. The advice was taken, and Benja- min went on with his reading. An intense longing for books possessed him. When he had secured one, he read and reread it till he ob- tained another, and to get others he shrewdly gained the friendship of some booksellers' ap- prentices and persuaded them, in his behalf, to commit temporary theft. Urged on by him, night after night they purloined from their READS THE SPECTATOR. 19 masters' shelves such books as he wanted, and left them with him to read. Some were pe- rused at leisure ; some that could not long be spared were taken after the shutters were up in the evening and returned in the morning be- fore the shutters were down. Then he would sit up till the dawn was soon to break, reading by the light of a farthing candle made in his father's shop. Everything that he read at this time of life influenced him strongly. A wretched book on vegetable diet came into his hands, and he at once began to live on rice, potatoes, and hasty- pudding. He read Xenophon's " Memorabilia," and ever after used the Socratic method of dis- pute ; he read Shaftesbury and Collins, and be- came a skeptic ; he read a volume of Addison, and gained a delightful style. As first published, the " Spectator " appeared in seven volumes, and of these, after many vicissitudes, the third crossed the Atlantic and fell in the way of Franklin. No one knew the contents of the Boston bookshops better than he. Yet the volume was, he tells us, the first of the series he had seen. It is not un- likely that another copy could not then be found in the province of Massachusetts Bay. However this may be, Franklin had now read the book which affected him far more deeply 20 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. than anything else he read to his dying day. Lad though he was, the rare wit, the rich hu- mor, the grace of style, the worldly wisdom of the " Spectator," amazed and delighted him. After nightfall, on Sundays, in the early morn- ing, whenever he had a moment to spare, the book was before him. Again and again he read the essays and determined to make them his model. He would take some number that par- ticularly pleased him, jot down the substance of each sentence, put by the notes, and, after a day or two, reproduce the essay in language of his own. This practice convinced him that his great want was a stock of words, and he at once began to turn the tales into verse. The search after words that would not change the sense, yet were of length to suit the meter and of sound to suit the rhyme, was, he felt sure, the best way to supply the deficiency. When his vocabulary had been enlarged, Franklin began to study arrangement of thought. Then he would put down his notes in any order, and after a while seek to rearrange the sentences in the order of the essay. Next he fell to reading books on navigation and arith- metic, rhetoric and grammar, Locke "On the Human Understanding," and " The Art of Thinking," by the members of Port Royal. Some of these he bought. The money to buy "NEW ENGLAND COURANT.'' 21 with was obtained by persuading the brother to give him half the shillings paid out in board and let him board himself, by putting in prac- tice a theory of vegetable diet, by refusing meat and fish, eating bread and biscuit, and so sav- ing a little even of the pittance. Thus equipped, Benjamin began his literary career at the age of fifteen. After holding office seven months, the successor of John Campbell was turned out, the " Boston Gazette " passed to other hands, James Franklin ceased to print it, and amazed the town by starting a news- paper of his own. The name of this weekly was the "New England Courant." In point of time it came fourth in the colonies, for, the day before the first number was seen at Boston, Brad- ford's " American Mercury '■ appeared at Phila- delphia. In quality the " Courant " was the most readable, the most entertaining, the most aggres- sive newspaper of the four. Precisely what the early numbers contained cannot now be known, for not an impression of a number earlier than the eighteenth is extant. It is certain, how- ever, that they were filled with sprightly con- tributions from a set of young men who, weary of the dullness of the " News Letter " and the " Gazette," came to the office of James Franklin and supplied the " Courant " with what passed for wit. They were, we are told, young doc- 22 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. tors, and had picked up some knowledge of medicine by watching the barbers cup and let blood, and by pounding drugs and serving as apprentices in the offices of physicians of the town. Though their knowledge of physic was small, their impudence was great, and the " Cou- rant," before the fourth number was reached, had plunged into a warm dispute over the greatest medical discovery of the age. What Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had done for Europe, Cotton Mather was doing for America. He had read in the " Transactions of the Royal Society " of the wonders of inoculation, believed in it, and was urging and begging his townsmen to submit to a trial. Indeed, he was demon- strating the efficacy of the preventive before their very eyes. But for his pains they rewarded him as every man has been rewarded who ever yet bestowed any blessing on the human race. He was called a fool. He was pronounced mad. He was told that the smallpox, which that very year was carrying off one in every thir- teen of the inhabitants of Boston, was a scourge sent from God, and that to seek to check it was impious. One wretch flung a lighted hand- grenade, with some vile language attached, through a window of Mather's house. The " Courant " declared that inoculation was from DISPUTE WITH MATHER. 23 the devil. Were not the ministers for it, and did not the devil often use good men to spread his delusions on the world? Increase Mather called this " a horrid thing to be related ; " said, with truth, that he had seen the time when the civil government would have speedily put down such "a cursed libel;" withdrew his subscrip- tion, and sent his grandson each week to the office to buy a copy of the sheet. Cotton Mather applied to the " Courant " such epithets as he might have used in speaking of a book by Calef. The newspaper was, he said, "full freighted with nonsense, unmanliness, raillery, profane- ness, immorality, arrogance, calumnies, lies, con- tradictions, and whatnot." The whole town was divided. Some remonstrated with James Franklin on the street. Some attacked him in the "News Letter" and the "Gazette." So many hastened to support him that forty new subscribers were secured in a month. Such an increase was great, for no newspaper then pretended to have a circulation of three hun- dred copies. It was at this time, while the dispute with the Mathers was warmest, that some manuscript was found one morning on the printing-house floor. Beujamin wrote it, and modestly thrust it under the door during the night. The " Au- tobiography " makes no mention of what these 24 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. sheets contained, but there is much reason to believe that the manuscript was the first of those brief letters with which for six months Silence Dogood amused the readers of the " Courant." The Dogood papers find no place in any of Franklin's collected writings. They were not even ascribed to him till Mr. Parton wrote his biography. But, in the notes and memo- randa jotted down by Franklin when about to write the " Autobiography," he claims the Do- good papers as his own. They are clearly Franklin's work ; and so well did the lad catch the spirit, the peculiar diction, the humor of his model, the '' Spectator," that he seems to have written with a copy of Addison open before him. " I have observed," says the short-faced gentleman in the opening paragraph of the first number of the " Spectator," " that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or a choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with other peculiarities of a like nature that conduce very much to a right understanding of an author." "As the generality of people," says Mrs. Dogood in the opening paragraph of the first of her epistles, " now-a-days are unwilling either to commend or dispraise what they read till they are in DOGOOD PAPERS. 25 some manner informed who or what the author of it is, whether he be rich or poor, old or young, a scholar or a leather-apron man, it will not come amiss to give some account of my past life." She thereupon proceeds to inform her readers that she was in youth an orphan bound out apprentice to a country parson ; that he had carefully educated her, and, after many vain attempts to get a wife from among the topping sort of people, had married her. She was now his widow, but might be persuaded to change her state if she could only be sure of getting a good-humored, sober, agreeable man. Till then, she should content herself with the company of her neighbor Rusticus and the town minister Clericus, who lodged with her, and who would from time to time beautify her writings with passages from the learned tongues. Such selections would be both ornamental and fashionable, and to those igno- rant of the classics, pleasing in the extreme. To please and amuse was her purpose. Her themes therefore would be as various as her letters, for whoever would please all must be now merry and diverting, now solemn and serious ; one while sharp and biting, then sober and religious ; ready to write now on poli- tics and now on love. Thus would each reader find something agreeable to his fancy, and in his turn be pleased. 26 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. True to this plan, essays, dreams, criticisms, humorous letters came forth at least once a fortnight, till the Dogood papers numbered fourteen. A talk with Clericus on academic education produces a dream, in which Frank- lin gives vent to the hatred he felt towards Harvard College. A wretched elegy on the death of Mehitabel Kitel suggests a receipt, for a New England funeral elegy, and some ridicule on that kind of poetry he calls Kitelic. Now his theme is " Pride and Hoop Petticoats," now " Nightwalkers," now " Drunkenness," now a plan for the relief of those unhappy women who, as a punishment for the pride and insolence of youth, are forced to remain old maids. One week Silence sent an abstract from the " Lon- don Journal." The subject was " Freedom of Thought," and, whether written by Benjamin or really borrowed from the " Journal," the article had a special meaning; for James Franklin was at that very time undergoing punishment for exercising freedom of thought. On the twenty-second of May, 1722, a pirat- ical brigantlne with fifty men and four swivel guns appeared off Block Island, took several ships and crews, and began depredations which extended along the New England coast. News of the pirate was quickly sent to Governor Shute of Massachusetts, and by him trans- ARREST OF JAMES FRANKLIN. 27 mitted to the Council on the seventh of June. The next day the House of Representatives resolved to dispatch Captain Peter Papillon in a vessel, strongly armed and manned, in pur- suit of the rover; offered a bounty of ten pounds for each pirate killed ; and decreed that the ship and cargo of the rovers should be the property of the captors. The number of the " Courant " containing the sixth of the Dogood papers announced under "Boston News" that the vessel fitted out by the government would sail on the elev- enth of June. But elsewhere, in a pretended letter from Newport, were these words : " The government of the Massachusetts are fitting out a ship to go after the Pirates, to be com- manded by Captain Peter Papillon, and 'tis thought he will sail some time this month if wind and weather permit." For this piece of harmless fun the Council summoned James Franklin before them, ques- tioned him sharply, and voted the paragraph " a high affront to this Government." The House of Representatives concurred, and bade the sheriff, under the speaker's warrant, seize James Franklin and lodge him in the stone jail. There for a month he languished, while Benjamin conducted the business of the print- ing-house and published the " Courant." 28 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. With each succeeding issue the newspaper grew more tantalizing, more exasperating, till in January, 1723, James Franklin a second time felt the strong hand of the law. The real cause of displeasure was some remarks on the behavior of Governor Shute, one of the many arrant fools a series of stupid English kings sent over to govern the colonies. He quarreled with the General Court because it ■would not suffer him to approve or disapprove the speaker ; because it ventured to appoint public fasts ; interrupted its sessions by long adjournments ; suspended military officers, and assumed the direction of Indian wars ; and when he could contain himself no longer, he suddenly set off for England. Of this the " Courant " had something to say. Could any one, it was asked, suppose that the departure of the governor for England with so much privacy and displeasure was likely to promote the welfare of the province when he reached the British court? Would it not be well to send one or two persons of known ability, and born in the province, to the British court, there to vindicate the conduct of the House of Representatives since the late misunderstanding? Ought the ministers to pray for Samuel Shute, Esquire, as immediate governor, and at the same time for the lieu- BENJAMIN EDITS THE CO U RANT. 29 tenant-governor as commander-in-cliief ? Was not praying for the success of his voyage, if, as many supposed, he wished to hurt the province, praying in effect for the destruction of the prov- ince? The pretended cause of offense was an essay on religious hypocrisy. For publishing this, James Franklin was forbidden by the Gen- eral Court to " print or publish the New Eng- land Courant, or any other such pamphlet or paper of a like nature, except it be first super- vised by the Secretary of the Province." In this strait the printer called his friends about him for advice. Were the order to be obeyed ; were James Franklin to go once each week to the office of the secretar}^, show his manuscript, and ask leave to publish a column or two of extracts from London newspapers five months old, some fulsome praise of Gov- ernor Shute, two or three advertisements for the apprehension of runaway apprentices and as many more for runaway slaves, the " Cou- rant" would, they felt, fall at once to the level of the " News Letter " and the " Gazette," and die of dullness in a month. Change the pub- lisher and this would be avoided, and the " Cou- rant " could continue to be as impudent as ever, for the order applied to James Franklin and to him alone. His friends therefore urged him to make the change ; their advice was taken, and 80 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. the "Gazette" of February 4th-llth, 1723, contains this falsehood : " The late Printer of this paper, finding so many Inconveniences would arise by his carrying the Manuscript and Public news to be supervised by the Secretary as to render his carrying it on unprofitable, has entirely dropt the undertaking." Thenceforth the newspaper issued under Benjamin Frank- lin's name. The public were assured the late printer had abandoned the enterprise entirely. Lest anyone should inquire into the truth of this statement, the old indenture was cancelled and Benjamin declared free. But the elder brother had no intention of freeing his appren- tice, and the cancelled indenture was replaced by a new one which the brothers kept carefully concealed. It was now pretended that the " Courant " was conducted by a " Club for the Propagation of Sense and Good Manners among the docible part of Mankind in His Majestys Plantations in America." Of this club Dr. Janus was per- petual dictator, and of Dr. Janus an account was given in a humorous " Preface " which Benjamin wrote for the first number of the " Courant " printed in his own name. "The Society," he wrote, had " design'd to present the Public with the efl&gies of Dr. Janus ; but the Limner, to whom he was ''DR. J anus:' 31 presented for a draught of his Countenance discried (and this he is ready to offer upon Oath) nineteen features in his face more than ever he beheld in any Human Visage before ; which so raised the price of his Picture that our Master himself forbid the extravagance of coming up to it. And then besides, the Lim- ner objected to a Schism in his Face which splits it from his Forehead in a Straight line down to his chin in such wise that Mr. Painter protests 'tis a double face and will have four pounds for its portraiture. However tho' this double face has spoilt us a pretty Picture, yet we all rejoice to see old Janus in our company. . . . As for his morals he is a chearly Christian as the Country Phrase has it. A man of good temper, courteous Deportment, sound Judgement ; a mortal Hater of Nonsense, Foppery, Formality and endless ceremony." To him all letters must be addressed, and thenceforth not a number of the " Courant " issues without some pretended communication " To the Venerable Old Janus," "To Good Master Janus," "To the ancient and venerable Dr. Janus," " To Old Janus the Couranteer." "The gentle reader," "the in- genuous and courteous reader," is assured that the " design of the Club is to contribute to the diversion and Merryment of the town," that " pieces of pleasantry and Mirth have a secret 82 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. charm in them to allay the heats and Tumors of our Spirits and make us forget our restless resentments, and that no paper shall be suffered to pass without a latin motto if one can possi- bly be found. Such mottoes charm the Vulgar and give the learned the pleasure of constru- ing. Gladly would the Club add a scrap or two of Greek; but the printer, unhappily has no type. The candid reader therefore will not impute this defect to ignorance; for Docter Janus knows all the Greek letters by heart." Under the management of the club, the " Courant " grew daily in favor. Each week the list of subscribers became longer, the bor- rowers became more numerous, and the adver- tisements steadily increased. Flushed with suc- cess, Benjamin in a humorous notice informed his readers that the club had raised the price of the paper to twelve shillings a year. And well he might, for so sprightly and entertain- ing a newspaper did not exist anywhere else in the colonies. But for this prosperity James Franklin was soon to pay dearly. The very act by which he evaded the order of the Gen- eral Court placed him in the power of his ap- prentice, and set the lad an example of dishon- esty which Benjamin was quick to follow. From the few glimpses we obtain of James Franklin in the " Autobiography " of Benjamin, he seems LEAVES BOSTON. 33 to have been a man morose, ill-tempered, doomed not to succeed. The " Junto " knew, and he must have known, that no journeyman in his printing-house did such work, and that no contributor to the paper wrote such pieces as his young brother. Had he been a man of sense and judgment, he would undoubtedly have cancelled the indentures in all honesty, given the lad his freedom, and made him a partner. But he took precisely the opposite course. The more the apprentice displayed his ability, the more domineering became the master. From disputes the two proceeded to quarrels, and from quarrels to blows. Then Benjamin turned to the cancelled indentures and declared himself free. Unable to deny this, James went among the printers and persuaded them to re- fuse his brother work, and advertised in the " Courant " for " a likely lad for an appren- tice." Benjamin, after selling a few of his books for ready money, turned his back upon Boston and ran away. A packet sloop carried him to New York. There he sought out William Bradford, still / remembered as the man who put up the first press, set the first type, and printed the first pamphlet, in the middle colonies. Bradford could give the boy no work, and recommended him to go on to Philadelphia. He set out ac- 34 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. cordingly, was almost lost in a storm in New York Bay, landed at Perth Amboy, and went across New Jersey on foot. There were at that day but two roads across New Jersey between Philadelphia and New York. -One, long known as the Old Road, ran out from Elizabethtown Point to what is now New Brunswick, thence in an almost direct line to the Delaware above Trenton, and so on to Burlington, where the traveler once a week took boat to Philadelphia. But it was long after Franklin's boyhood before the road be- came anything better than a bridle-path, or be- fore a wagon of any kind rolled over it. So late as 1716, when the Assembly fixed the ferry rate at New Brunswick, two tolls only were established, one " for horse and man," and one for " single persons." Ten pounds, raised each year by tax on the innkeepers of Piscataway, Woodbridge, and Elizabethtown, were thought ample to keep the pathway in repair. The favored road across the province was that from Perth Town to Burlington, on the Delaware, and was, as early as 1707, wide enough for a wagon to pass without scraping the hubs on the trees. In that year the Assem- bly complained as a great evil that a patent had been given to several persons to carry goods by wagon over the Amboy road to the REACHES PHILADELPHIA. 35 exclusion of the Old Road. But the governor reminded the grumblers that by this means a trade had grown up between Philadelphia, Bur- lington, Perth Town, and New York such as had never before existed. Notwithstanding this travel, the road when Franklin used it ran for miles through an unin- habited country. The almanacs, which were the road-books of that day, make mention of but four places where a traveler could find rest and refreshment. One was at Cranberry Brook ; another was at Allentown, a place nine years old. A third was at Cross wick Bridge ; and the fourth at Dr. Brown's, eight miles from Burlington, and here Benjamin slept on the night of his second day from Amboy. Early the next morning he was at Burling- ton, where he once more took boat, slept that night in the fields, and early one Sunday morn- ing in October, 1723, entered Philadelphia. For a while he wandered about the streets, but falling in with a number of Quakers, followed them to meeting and there fell asleep. It was well that he did, for had the constable met him sauntering around the town, Benjamin would have been placed in the lockup. CHAPTER 11. 1723-1729. The prospect that lay before Benjamin, when, the fatigue of the journey slept off, he went forth in search of work, was poor indeed. All the printing done in Pennsylvania was done on the press of Andrew Bradford ; and all the printing Bradford did in a year could, in our time, be done in one hour. From his press came the " American Weekly Mercury," the contents of which would not fill a column and a half of such a daily newspaper as the " Bos- ton Traveller " or the " Philadelphia Press." Never in any one year did all the tracts, all the sermons, all the almanacs, all the appeals, catechisms, and proposals published in Penn- sylvania number thirty-nine. Nor did the largest book yet printed contain three hundred small octavo pages. Indeed, forty-seven years had not gone since William Bradford began the list of Middle Colony publications with Atkins's " Kalendarium Pennsilvaniense, being an Almanac for the year of Grace 1686." PRINTING IN PENNSYLVANIA. 37 William Bradford was then a lad of two-and- twenty, who had been brought up to set type and work a press in the shop of Andrew Sowle, a famous London printer of Friends' books. His relations with Sowle, first as apprentice and then as son-in-law, brought him often to the notice of William Penn. Anxious to secure a good printer for his province, Penn made an offer to Bradford to go to Pennsylvania and print the laws : the offer was accepted, and in the summer of 1685 the young printer landed at Philadelphia with types, a press, and three letters from George Fox. On the day he landed there were but two printing-presses in the whole of British North America. Evidence exists that there was, for a while, a third ; that in 1682 one John Buck- ner published the Virginia laws of 1680 ; that he was promptly summoned before the gov- ernor and council, censured, and forbidden to print again till the king's will was known ; and that for forty-seven years not another type was set in the Old Dominion. With the single exception of the Virginia laws of 1680, not a piece of printing had been done out of Cam- bridge, Massachusetts, when early in December, 1685, Bradford issued the " Kalendarium Penn- silvaniense," and introduced "the great art and mystery of printing" into the Middle Colonies. 38 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN " Some Irregularities," said lie in his address to the readers, " there be in this Diary, which I desire you to pass by this year ; for being lately come hither, my Materials were Misplaced and out of order." But the advance sheet had no sooner been seen by Secretary Markham than he detected one irregularity for which neither the recent arrival nor the disordered fonts could atone. "In the Chronology," Markham informed the council, " of the Al- manack sett forth by Samuel Atkins of Phila- delphia and by William Bradford of the same place, are the words 'the beginning of Gov- ernment by ye Lord Penn.' " Thereupon the council sent for Atkins and bade him "blott out ye words Lord Penn;" and to "Will Bradford, ye printer, gave Charge not to print anything but what shall have ly cense from ye Council." Atkins obeyed, and in the only copies of " Kalendarium " now extant the hated words are blotted out. With this the struggle for the liberty of the press began in Pennsylvania. Twice was Bradford called before the governor ; thrice was he censured by the meeting ; once was he put under heavy bonds, and once thrown into jail, before he gathered his type, and in 1693 fastened his notice of removal on the court- house door and set out for New York. Dur- PRINTING IN PENNSYLVANIA. 39 ing the six years that followed his departure not a type was set in Pennsylvania. Then the Friends brought out a press from London, put it under the censorship of a committee, and rented it to Reynier Jansen. Jansen died in 1705, and the press passed in turn to Tibe- rius Johnson, to Joseph Reyners, to Jacob Taylor, in whose hands it was when, in 1712, William Bradford established his son Andrew as a printer at Philadelphia. For ten years Andrew Bradford continued to print almanacs and laws, religious tracts and political pamphlets, without a rival. But on the October morning, 1723, when Franklin passed under the sign of the Bible, entered the shop of Bradford and asked for work, Samuel Keimer, a rival printer, had set up in the town. Bradford had nothing for the lad to do, but gave him a home and sent him to Keimer, by whom he was soon employed. During a few months all went well, and Franklin spent his time courting, printing, and making friends. Among these was William Keith, who governed Pennsyl- vania for the children of Penn. Keith affected great interest in the boy, and sent him to Boston with a letter urging Josiah to fit out the son as a master printer. Josiah refused, and Benjamin came back to Keith, who now dispatched him on a fool's errand to Lon- 40 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. don. He sailed with tlie belief that he was to have letters of introduction and letters of credit, that he was to buy types, paper, and a press, and return to America a master printer. He reached London to find Keith a knave and himself a dupe. Homeless, friendless, and with but fifteen pistoles in his pocket, he now walked the streets of London in search of work. This he found at a great printing-house in Bartholomew Close, and for a year toiled as compositor, earning good wages and squandering them on idle companions, lewd women, treats and shows. As he stood at the case it fell to his lot to set type for Wollaston's " Religion of Nature Delineated." No better specimen exists of the theological writings of that day. It was the forerunner of Butler's " Analogy " and Paley's " Natural Theology." It was an attempt to prove that, had the Bible never been written, there would still be found in the natural world around us manifest reasons for being regular at church, for believing the soul to be immortal, for not doing any of the innumerable things the ten commandments forbid. As he com- posed the book, Franklin despised it, and soon began to write a little pamphlet of his own in refutation. The pamphlet he called " A Dis- THE LONDON PAMPHLET. 41 sertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain." But when lie had printed a hun- dred copies and given a few away, he grew ashamed of his own work, and so thoroughly suppressed it that but two copies of the origi- nal edition are now known to be extant. Were none in existence the loss would be trivial, for the pamphlet adds nothing to his just fame. The pamphlet he divided in the true theolog- ical manner into two sections. One he called *' Liberty and Necessity," and the other " Pleas- ure and Pain." " There is," said he, " a first Mover called God, the maker of all things. God is said to be all- wise, all-powerful, all- good. If he is all- wise, then whatever he does must be wise. If he is all-good, then whatever he does must be good. If he is all-powerful, then nothing can exist against his will ; and as nothing can exist against his will, and, being all-good, he can will nothing but good, it fol- lows that nothing but good can exist. There- fore evil does not exist. Again, if a creature is made by God, it must depend on God, and get its powers from him, and act always accord- ing to his will, because he is all-powerful. But, being all-good, his will is always for good, and the creature, being forced to obey it, can do nothing but what is good; and therefore evil does not exist. The creature, once more, being 42 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. thus limited in its actions, being able to do only such things as God wills, can have no free will, liberty, or power to refrain from an action. But if there is no such thing as free will in creatures, there can be neither merit nor de- merit in their actions ; therefore every creature must be equally esteemed by God." This much settled, Franklin proceeds to the second part, on Pleasure and Pain. " Every creature," says he, " is capable of feeling un- easiness or pain. This pain produces desire to be freed from it in exact proportion to itself. The accomplishment of the desire produces an equal amount of pleasure. Pleasure therefore is equal to Pain. From all this it follows that Pleasure and Pain are inseparable and equal ; that, being inseparable, no state of life can be happier than the present ; that, being equal and contrary, they destroy each other, and that life therefore cannot be better than insensibility, for a creature that has ten degrees of pleasure taken from ten degrees of pain has nothing left, and is on an equality with a creature insensible to both." The gist of his pamphlet may be briefly stated to be this : There are no future rewards and punishments, because all things and crea- tures are equally good and equally esteemed by God. There is no reason to believe that a fu- THE LONDON PAMPHLET. 43 ture life can be happier than the present. There is no reason to believe in a future life. There is no reason to believe that man is any better than the brutes. There is no religion. Dr. Wollaston had declared, " The foundation of religion lies in that difference between the acts of men which distinguishes them into good, evil, indifferent." To prove that no such differ- ence existed was the purpose of Franklin's essay. Though the essay proved nothing, it brought him friends. Limited as the circulation was, a copy fell into the hands of the once famous au- thor of " The Infallibility of Human Judgment." He admired the pamphlet, sought out Franklin and brought him to a club of skeptics that gathered nightly at " The Horns." There he met Bernard de Mandeville, who wrote " The Fable of the Bees," and Henry Pemberton, who still has a place in biographical dictionaries. Pemberton promised to introduce the lad to Isaac Newton, but the opportunity never served. Irreligious, lewd, saving to very meanness, yet a spendthrift and a waste-all, the boy had now reached a crisis in his career. Ashamed of himself and of his life, a feeling of unrest took possession of him. In hopes of making better wages, he quit the printing-house in Bartholo- mew Close, and found employment at another 44 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. near Lincoln's Inn Fields. Yet even this did not satisfy, and for one while he thought of set- ting up a swimming-school, and for another, of wandering over Europe supporting himself by his trade. From both of these follies he was saved by one Denman. Denman had once been a Bristol merchant ; had failed, and emi- grated to America ; had retrieved his fortunes, and, to pay his debts, had gone back to Eng- land on the same ship with Franklin. It is cer- tain that on one occasion Benjamin went to Denman for advice, and it is not unlikely that he now went again. However this may be, Denman gave him a clerkship, took him back to Philadelphia, and placed him in a shop. There, at twenty, the lad began to keep books, sell goods, learn the secrets of mercantile af- fairs, and was fast becoming a merchant, when his employer died, and he was forced to earn his bread as foreman of Keimer's establishment. His duty at Keimer's was to reduce chaos to order, to mix ink, cast type, mend the presses, make cuts for the New Jersey paper-money bills, bind books, and watch the movements of the two redemptioners and three apprentices who served as compositors, pressmen, and devils. It was at this time that Benjamin founded the Junto, wrote his famous epitaph, grew reli- gious, composed a liturgy for his own use, and QUARRELS WITH KEIMER. 45 became the father of an illegitimate son. The / name of the mother most happily is not known ; but as the law of bastardy was then rigidly en- forced against the woman and not against the man, she was, in all likelihood, one of that throng who received their lashes in the market- place and filled the records of council with prayers for the remission of fines. With Keimer, Franklin stayed but a little while. The two quarreled, parted, made up, and again separated, this time amicably, Keimer to go to destruction, Franklin to found a new printing-house and begin his great career. One of the three apprentices who stitched pamphlets and inked type was Hugh Meredith. This lad was country-bred, idle, cursed, with an incura- ble longing for drink, and blessed with a father who for that day was more than well-to-do. Over the son, Franklin had great influence, had persuaded him to keep sober and be indus- trious, and the reward for these good deeds was now at hand. In one of the darkest hours of his life, when he had left Keimer in a passion, when Bradford could give him no work, when he thought seriously of wandering back to his father's house, Meredith visited him and pro- posed a partnership. The proposition was gladly accepted, the father of Meredith found the money, an order was sent to London for 46 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. types and a press, and in the spring of 1728 the firm of FrankHn & Meredith began busi- ness at " The New Printing-Office in High Street, near the Market." Their first job was a hand-bill for a country- man. Their next was forty sheets of "The History of the Rise, Increase, and Progress of the Christian People called Quakers ; Inter- mixed with Several Remarkable Occurrences. Written originally in Low Dutch and also translated into English, by William Sewel." A few copies having found their way to Amer- ica, the Philadelphia meeting asked Bradford to reprint the book. Bradford cunningly asked time to consider, arranged with his aunt Tacy Sowle, the English publisher, for seven hundred copies, and then declined the proposition. The Friends thereupon turned to Keimer, who began the printing in 1725. But so great was the undertaking, and so ill was he equipped, that 1728 came and the history was not published. Nor would it have been in that year had not the last forty sheets and the index been sent to Franklin. We are told in the "Autobiography " that Breintnal procured them from the Qua- kers, but this is a mistake. They were sent by Keimer at the very time Franklin was roundly abusing him in the " Weekly Mercury." Franklin next turned his attention to Brad- THE NEW PRINTING-OFFICE. 47 ford, to whom he had once been indebted for food and a home. Bradford was printer to the province, and in the gains of this post the new firm determined to share. When, therefore, the address of the governor issued, Franklin obtained a copy, printed it in much better form, laid a copy on the seat of each member of the Assembly, and thenceforth the public printing was his. Bradford was also printer of the " Weekly Mercury." The " Mercury " was the only newspaper then published out of New England ; was dull, but circulated from New York to Virginia, and paid well. As the new printing-office had little to do, Franklin determined to start a newspaper of his own, make it instructive and amusing, and share some of the profit Bradford alone enjoyed. In an evil moment, however, he told his plan to George Webb, a foolish youth who had lately been an indentured servant of Keimer. The wretch hurried with the news to his former master, who took the hint, forestalled Franklin, and on December 28, 1728, issued number one of " The Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences and Pennsylvania Gazette." To have made a duller journal than Bradford's would have been impossible. It is small praise, there- fore, to say that Keimer's " Universal In- 48 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. structor " was by far the better of the two. No one who reads the " Mercury " will ever accuse Bradford of attempting anything but money- making with the least possible exertion. Keimer undoubtedly was just as eager to make money ; but, to do him justice, he strove at the same time to amuse and instruct, and, clumsy as his efforts were, they were laudable. To afford instruction, he began the republication of Cham- bers's " Universal Dictionary of all the Arts and Sciences," and started boldly with the letter A. To afford amusement, a like use was made of " The Religious Courtship " of De Foe, and of some sketches of English life furnished by Webb. Did Keimer expect to finish this task, he must have looked forward to a long life for the newspaper and himself. If so, he was doomed to disappointment, for, when the for- tieth number issued, the " Universal Instructor " had passed into Franklin's hands. The means taken to get the newspaper are characteristic of his patience and his cunning. Enraged at the duplicity of Keimer, he deter- mined that the town should give this new ven- ture no support. Having passed his apprentice- ship in the midst of one newspaper controversy, he knew that nothing lasting is ever gained by calling hard names and indulging in vile abuse ; that if men came to the tavern to read ''THE BUSYBODY.'' 49 the "Instructor," or cancelled their subscrip- tions at the sign of the Bible, it was because they liked the "Instructor" better than the " Mercury ; " and that the way to bring back both readers and subscribers to the " Mercury " was not to abuse what they liked, but to give them something they were sure to like better. Reasoning thus, Franklin began in the " Mer- cury " a long series of essays subscribed " The Busybody." The first paper is taken up with some ac- count of " The Busybody" and his purpose. He is simply Mrs. Dogood in man's clothes. He has seen with concern the growing vices and follies of his countryfolk. Reformation of these evils ought to be the concern of every- body ; but what is everybody's business is no- body's business, and the business is done accord- ingly. The Busybody has therefore seen fit to take this nobody's business wholly into his own hands, and become a kind of censl^or morum. Sometimes he will deliver lectures on morality or philosophy ; sometimes talk on politics ; sometimes, when he has nothing of his own of consequence to say, he will make use of a well- known extract from a good book, for it is the lack of good books that has made good conver- sation so scarce. The second paper is against the tribe of 50 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. laughers, — gentlemen who will give themselves an hour's diversion with the cock of a man's hat, or the heels of his shoes, or some word dropped unguardedly in talk ; who write satires to carry about in their pockets, and read in all company they happen to be in ; who think a pun is wit, and judge of the strength of argu- ments by the strength of the lungs. In the third was a portrait of Cretico, which Keimer mistook for himself, and sought revenge in ridi- culing the Busybody, and printing a small tract called " A Touch of the Times. Phila. : printed at the New Printing-Office." Gibes Franklin could stand, but that such a piece of typography should be thought to come from his press was too much for him, and in the " Mercury " of April 24, 1729, denied the imprint. " This," said he, " may inform those that have been induc'd to think otherwise, that the silly paper call'd ' A Touch of the Times,' &c., was wrote, printed and published by Mr. Keimer ; and that his putting the words ' New Printing-Office ' at the bottom, and instructing the hawkers to say it was done there, is an abuse." The new printing-office, however, did put forth a pamphlet entitled " A Short Dis- course, Proving that the Jewish or Seventh- Day Sabbath Is Abrogated and Repealed." And this pamphlet, there is reason to believe, *'THE BUSYBODY." 51 was prepared by Franklin in ridicule of Kei- mer, who wore the long beard, and kept the Jewish Sabbath with great strictness. In the fourth Busybody he pretends to have had a letter begging him to pass some stric- tures on making long and frequent visits. The fifth he designed to be a terror to evil-doers. He has made a league with a person having the power of second sight, and is ready to show up those little crimes and vices for which the law has neither remedy nor regard, as well as those great pieces of sacred villainy so craftily done and circumspectly guarded that the law cannot take hold. This in turn brings a letter from Titan Pleia- des, astrologer. Titan has read Michael Scott, Albertus Magnus, and Cornelius Agrippa above three hundred times, in search of that wisdom which will lay before him the chests of gold and sacks of money the pirates have hidden underground. He has searched in vain, but doubts not that if the " Busybody," the second- sighted correspondent, and himself were joined, they would soon be three of the richest men in the province. Titan was no imaginary character. One hundred and sixty years ago the belief in the existence of hidden treasure was common, and the belief unquestionably was well founded. 62 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. Some had been buried by misers, some by thieves, and not a little by men who, having neither stocks in which to invest nor banks in which to deposit, hid their savings in the earth, and dying, their secret died with them. Even now, pots of such treasure are at times turned up by the plow. But in Franklin's time men were confident they could be detected by the divining-rod and the stars. In every colony were sharpers who for a few shillings v^ould furnish charms to lay the guardian spirit and name the auspicious night, and dupes ever ready to give the shillings and make the at- tempt. Day after day they would wander through the woods watching the flight of birds, scrutinizing the tracks of animals, turning over bowlders, and examining the roots of trees. The spot discovered, they would, when the proper planets were in conjunction and the moon was dark, hurry away with spade and pick, toads and black-cats' fur, and, muttering charms, panting with fatigue and trembling with fear, dig for hours. If the east grew light before a chest crammed with pistoles or a pot heavy with pieces-of -eight lay before them, they would creep home dejected but not cured. The circle perhaps had not been truly drawn, the charm had not been correctly said, a cloud maybe had cut off the light of some auspicious ''THE busybody:* 53 star. " This odd humor of digging for money, through a belief that much has been hid by- pirates," the Busybody himself declared, was " mighty prevalent, insomuch that you can hardly walk half a mile out of town on any side without observing several pits dug with that design, and perhaps some lately opened." After this essay Franklin contributed no more to the series. Of the thirty-two papers comprising " The Busybody," six are commonly ascribed to him, and the majority of the twenty- six to Joseph Breintnal. When the latter stopped writing, the purpose for which they were begun had been accomplished. Keimer, overwhelmed by disaster, was on his way to the Barbadoes. His printing-house was in the hands of David Harry ; his newspaper was the property of Franklin. The whole town was reading the " Mercury," and forgetting that the " Instructor " existed. Much the same fate has overtaken " The Busybody." Franklin's six contributions are reprinted, and occasionally read. Breintnal's essays have never been col- lected, nor is there now living more than one man who has ever read them through. To liken the essays of Franklin at this period of his life to those of Addison would be absurd ; yet it cannot be denied that they possess merits of a rare and high order. He makes no dis- 54 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. play of ornamentation ; he indulges in no silly flights of imagination ; he assumes no air of learning ; he uses no figures of speech save those the most ignorant of mankind are constantly using unconsciously; he is free from everything that commonly defaces the writings of young men. Dealing with nothing but the most homely matters, he says what he has to say easily, simply, and in a pure English idiom. No man ever read a sentence of Franklin's essays and doubted what it meant. It is this simplic- ity and homeliness, joined to hard common sense and wit, that gave his later writings a popular- ity and influence beyond those of any American author since his day. If he has a bad habit or a silly custom or a small vice to condemn, he begins by presenting us with a picture of it which we recognize at once. Then, with the picture full before us, he' draws just the moral or passes the very censure we would do if left to ourselves. Not a tavern-keeper but had seen Ridentius and his followers round the fire- place many a time. Not a merchant but knew a Cato and a Cretico. Not a shopkeeper but had suffered just such annoyances as Patience. With " Busybody " number eight, Franklin abandoned essay -writing to his friend, and all his time and ability were given to persuading the people on a serious question in which they and PAPER MONEY. 55 he were deeply concerned. It was, indeed, the question of the hour, and on its decision hung the financial and commercial prosperity of the province. Six years before, the people of Pennsylvania had, with much trepidation, ventured on the issue of a small bank of paper money : the day for its redemption was drawing near, the Lords of Trade had forbidden the issue of any more, and it seemed not unlikely that, in a little while, men would again be bartering hats for potatoes and flour for shoes because of the lack of a medium of exchange. The earliest of the many issues of paper money in what is now the United States took place when the French and English were deeply engaged in their first struggle for the possession of Canada. James had just been driven from his throne. William and Mary had just suc- ceeded, and the colonies, with every manifesta- tion of delight, had taken up arms in defense of the authority of William, the Protestant reli- gion, and the right to catch cod off the Grand Banks. For a while the war was waged with varying success. The English devastated the island of Montreal, and the French retreated from Frontenac. Then the tide turned : the French rallied, took Pemaquid, drove the Eng- lish from every settlement east of Falmouth, 56 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. burned Salmon Falls, and laid Schenectady in ashes. Driven to extremity, the English ral- lied, and in a congress at New York in 1690 resolved on the conquest of Canada. New York and Connecticut were to send a land force against Montreal. Massachusetts and Ply- mouth sent a fleet against Quebec. Acadia fell, Port Royal surrendered, and New England ruled the coast to the eastern end of Nova Scotia. There success stopped. The command- ers of the English troops fell to quarreling, and the land expedition failed miserably. Fronte- nac, having no foe to oppose him, hurried to Quebec, and entered the city just as the New England fleet came sounding its way up the St. Lawrence. The summons to surrender the city was received with jeers. The fleet, unable to take Quebec without the aid of the army, sailed for Boston, to be scattered by storms along the coast. To commemorate this signal deliverance the French put up the Church of our Lady of Victory. To pay the cost of the expedition Massachusetts issued the first colo- nial paper money. In 1703 South Carolina fol- lowed her example. Scarcely had King William's war ended than Queen Anne's war broke out. Again the French and Indians came down from Canada, and, while Franklin was a child, laid waste the PAPER MONEY. 57 towns of Massachusetts with fire and sword. Again the colonies sent ships and troops against Canada. Again they failed, and, to pay the cost, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Is- land, New York, and New Jersey imitated Mas- sachusetts and put out bills of credit. These early issues of credit-bills are not to be confounded with the " banks of paper money " of a later time. The amounts were small. The purpose was the payment of some pressing debt. But after the close of Queen Anne's war the belief sprang up in the minds of men that it was the duty of a government to provide a circulating medium, and that just as fast as that medium disappeared, the duty of the government was to make more. The colo- nists were heavy traders ; the balance of trade was against them. Their specie went over to England, and, unable to practice that self-denial necessary to bring the specie back, they clam- ored for a currency. Then the colonies turned pawn-brokers and money-lenders, set up loan offices, and issued banks of paper money. Then whoever held a mortgage, or owned the deed of an acre of land, or was possessed of a silver tankard or a ring of gold, might, if he chose, carry it to the loan office, leave it there, and take away in exchange a number of paper bills. In this folly Massachusetts led the way, in 58 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 1714, with a bank of fifty thousand pounds; New York, Rhode Island, South Carolina, quickly followed, and before seven years were gone the loan office was established in Pennsyl- vania and New Jersey. This was inevitable. The trade of New Jer- sey was with New York. The people of New York had a paper currency, and paid in paper for every cord of wood and for every boat-load of potatoes that came over the bay. These paper bills of New York, passing current with the farmers of New Jersey, drove out of circula- tion every pistole, every carolin, every chequin, every piece-of-eight, the bounds of the colony contained ; for the ingenuity of man never has and never can devise a plan for the common circulation of specie and debased paper bills. Thus, when 1723 came, the people of the Jer- seys were paying their debts with the money of New York, and their taxes with bits of plate, ear-rings and finger-rings, watches, and jewelry of every sort. Nor were coins much more plen- tiful in Pennsylvania. A few light pistoles, a few pieces-of-eight, a few English shillings, passed from hand to hand. But so far were they from supplying the needs of trade that the men of Chester besought the Assembly to make pro- duce a legal tender, to prohibit the exportation of coin, and to add one more shilling to the PAPER MONEY. 59 Spanish dollar. The merchants of Philadelphia and the traders of Bucks sent up petitions for a paper currency. Most of these prayers were heard. Another shilling was added to the dol- lar ; produce was made a legal tender, and the best of all forms of colonial paper money was emitted. The bank was limited to fifteen thou- sand pounds ; four thousand to pay the debts of the province, and eleven thousand to be loaned to the people. As the law distinctly stated that the new money was to relieve the distress of the poor, no man was suffered to borrow more than one hundred pounds. Nor could he have even that unless he came to the loan office and deposited plate of three times the value, or mortgaged lands, houses, or ground-rents of twice the value of the sum he received, and agreed to pay into the treasury each year five per centum interest and one eighth the princi- pal. So quickly were the bills taken up, and so much were they liked, that another bank of thirty thousand pounds was issued before the year went out. When the Lords of Trade heard of these proceedings, they hastened to send back a dis- approval and a warning. The governor was bidden to recall the evils that had come upon other colonies from making bills of credit. The people were assured that nothing but tenderness 60 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. for the men in whose hands the new money- was prevented the acts being laid before the king for repeaL A warning was given that, should any more acts emitting paper money be passed, they would surely be disallowed. On the first of March, 1731, the bills were to be- come irredeemable, and as that day came nearer and nearer the merchants and traders grew more and more uneasy, and more and more doubtful what to do. The opponents of paper money dwelt much on the danger of such a currency and the threat of the Lords of Trade. The friends of paper money had much to say of the brisk times that followed the issues of 1723. But the arguments that prevailed most, the arguments that brought over the doubting, that persuaded the governor and the assembly, in open defiance of the orders from England, not only to reissue the old money, but to put out thirty thousand pounds of new, were con- tained in a little pajnphlet from the pen of Franklin, entitled '' A Modest Inquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency." " There is," he begins by saying, " a certain quantity of money needed to carry on trade. More than this sum can be productive of no real use. Less than this quantity is always productive of serious evils. Lack of money in PAMPHLET ON PAPER MONEY. 61 a country puts up the rate of interest, and puts down the price of that part of produce used in trade. It keeps skilled workmen from coming in ; it induces many already in to go out ; it causes, in a country like America, a far greater use of English goods than there otherwise would be. These facts being under- stood, it is easy [he asserts] to see what kind of men will, in the face of these facts, be for, and what kind of men will be against, a fur- ther issue of paper bills. On the side of the enemies to the bills will be the lawyers, the money-lenders, the speculators in land, and the men who, in any way, are dependent upon them. On the side of the friends to the issue of bills will be the lovers of trade, the supporters of manufactures, and the men who have the inter- est of the proprietors of the province truly at heart. " The enemies to paper money cry out, that, if any more be issued, the value of the whole of it will sink." This suggests an inquiry into the nature of money in general, and bills of credit in particular. Money, he declares, " is a medium of exchange ; and whatever men agree to make the medium is, to those who have it, the very things they want, because it will buy for them the very things they want. It is cloth to him who wants cloth. It is corn to him who wants 62 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. corn. Custom has made gold and silver the ma- terials for this medium of exchange. But the measure of value for this medium is not gold and silver, but labor. Labor is as much a meas- ure of the value of silver as of anything else. Suppose one man employed to raise corn, while another man is busy refining gold. At the end of a year the complete produce of corn and the complete produce of silver are the natural price of each other. If the one be twenty bushels and the other twenty ounces, then one ounce of silver is worth the labor of raising one bushel of corn. Money therefore, as bullion, is valua- ble by so much labor as it costs to produce that bullion. " But this bullion, when coined into money, is heavy, consumes time in the counting, cannot be easily hidden. Hence it is that at Ham- burgh, at Amsterdam, at London, at Venice, the centers of vast trade, men have resorted, for sake of convenience, to banks of deposit and bills of credit. Into the banks they put their gold and silver, and take out bills to the value of what they put in. Thus the money of the country is doubled, the banks loaning out the gold at interest, the people making their great payments in bills. '' As the men of Europe put in money for the security of the bills, so [says he] men in PAMPHLET ON PAPER MONEY. 63 Pennsylvania, not having money, pledge their land." These principles stated, Franklin proceeds to consider which kind of security is the bet- ter, — whether bills issued on money or bills issued on land are more likely to fall in value. His answer is, of course, bills issued on money. " Gold and silver may become so plentiful that a coin which at one time purchased the labor of a man for twenty days, will not at another time purchase that same man's labor for fifteen days. Every credit bill issued on that coin as security must therefore depreciate." And this he claims is precisely what has taken place in Europe ever since the discovery of gold in America. "But in Pennsylvania the people are rapidly increasing, land is always in demand, its value is always rising, and bills of credit issued on it as security must of necessity grow more and more valuable every day." That Franklin was deceived by such shallow arguments, that he really meant what he said, is difiicult to believe. He has come down to us as the great teacher of thrift, of frugality, of fair and honest dealing. Yet man cannot devise anything more at variance with these virtues than paper money. It promotes spec- ulation ; it encourages extravagance ; every piece of it is a symbol of fraud. The value 64 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. stamped upon its face is one thing; the real value is another thing. But Franklin was now a partisan, and was soon rewarded for his partisanship. Had he meddled in theology, had he written a pamphlet on the Keithian schism, the presses of Andrew Bradford and David Harry would have teemed, with replies. But he wrote on a question of political economy. Not a man among the supporters of specie money could reply, and his remarks were hailed as unanswerable. When, therefore, his friends carried the day, and thirty thousand pounds in paper money was ordered to be printed, Ben- jamin Franklin was made the printer. " A very profitable job," says he in the Autobio- graphy, " and a great help to me." Bad as were his notions of political economy, his pamphlet contained one great truth, — the truth that labor is a measure of value. Whether he discovered, or, as is not unlikely, borrowed it, he was the first to openly assert it ; and his it remained till, forty-seven years later, Adam Smith adopted and reaffirmed it in " The Wealth of Nations." CHAPTER III. 1729-1748. The pamphlet on paper money finished, Franklin wrote nothing for six months. By that time Keimer had fallen deeply in debt, had been dragged to jail for the ninth time, had compounded with his creditors, had been liber- ated, had failed again, and had sold his news- paper to Franklin & Meredith for a trifle. Ninety subscribers then took the " Instructor " each week, and thirty-nine weekly numbers had been issued. With the fortieth, which bears date October 2, 1729, a new era opened. The silly name was cut down to " The Pennsyl- vania Gazette." The Quaker nomenclature was dropped, " The Religious Courtship " ceased to be published. Except at long intervals, no extracts from Chambers's Dictionary appeared ; and, for the first time in the history of our country, a newspaper was issued twice a week. In this Franklin was far, indeed too far, in advance of the age, and, when the bad weather came and the postrider made his trips northward 6Q BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. but once a fortnight, the " Gazette " once more became a weekly paper, and remained so for years. Thus stripped of nonsense, the " Gazette " began to be conducted on strictly business principles. Franklin knew that to make it profitable he must have advertisements, that to secure advertisements he must have circulation, and that to get circulation he must have buyers out of town. But to get out-of-town subscrib- ers was no easy matter. Newspapers were not mailable. The postriders, therefore, could not be forced to take the " Gazette," and Bradford, who was postmaster, would not allow them to take it voluntarily. They were accordingly bribed in secret to smuggle the " Gazettes " into their postbags, and do their best to secure subscriptions. To get a circulation in Philadelphia Frank- lin resorted to clever expedients. He strove to make the " Gazette " amuse its readers, and to persuade the readers to write for the " Ga- zette ; " for he well knew that every contrib- utor would buy a dozen copies of the paper containing his piece from sheer love of seeing himself in print. In the first number published under his name this invitation is very modestly given. He knew it was a common belief that the author THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE. 67 of a newspaper should be a man well versed in languages, in geography, in history; be able to speak of wars, both by land and sea ; be famil- iar with the interests of princes and states, the secrets of courts, the manners and customs of all nations ; have a ready pen, and be able to narrate events clearly, intelligently, and in a few words. But such men were scarce in these remote parts, of the world, and the printer therefore must hope to make up among his friends what was wanting in himself. And this invitation is repeated again and again. As- surances are given that a series of papers on " Speculation " and " Amusement " are shortly to be published, and gentlemen " disposed to try their hands in some little performance " are urged to make use of this chance. No gentle- men were disposed to try their hands, and the papers never appeared. Some essays on " Prim- itive Christianity" did appear, and, having of- fended the orthodox, they are urged to inform the public what is the truth. There is no reason to suppose that such appeals produced a single essay. But the pre- tense that they did is well kept up, and for many years the editor carried on a lively corre- spondence with himself. He starts a question of casuistry in one number, and answers it in the next. He suggests and discusses reforms 68 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. and improvements in long communications be- ginning, " Mr. Printer," and, when the town is dull, has a letter from Alice Addertongue, or a note from Bob Brief, or a piece of pleasantry- just coarse enough to excite a laugh. Now he pretends that he is besought to — " Pray let the prettiest creature in this place know (by publishing this) that if it was not for her affectation she would be absolutely irre- sistible ; " and, of course, in the next issue of the " Gazette " has six denials from the six prettiest creatures in the place. He hears that in Bucks County a flash of lightning melted the pewter button off the waistband of a farmer's breeches, and observes, " 'T is well nothing else thereabouts was made of pewter." An- other week the casuist offers an " honorary re- ward to any cabalist " who shall demonstrate that Z contains more occult virtue than X. Then there is " a pecuniary gratification " for anybody who shall prove " that a man's having a Property in a tract of land, more or less, is thereby entitled to any advantage, irrespective of understanding, over another Fellow, who has no other Estate than the air to breathe in, the Earth to walk upon, and all the rivers of the world to drink of." When nothing else will serve, his own mishaps are described for the amusement of the town. " Thursday last, a cer- THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE. 69 tain P r ('t is not customary to give names at length on these occasions) walking carefully in clean Clothes over some Barrels of Tar on Carpenter's Wharff, the head of one of them unluckily gave way, and let a Leg of him in above the Knee. Whether he was upon the Catch at that time, we cannot say, but 't is certain he caught a Tar-tar, 'T was observed he sprang out again right briskly, verifying the common saying, As nimble as a Bee in a Tarbarrel. You must know there are several sorts of Bees : 'tis true he was no Honey Bee, nor yet a Humble Bee ; but a Boo-Bee he may be allowed to be, namely B. F." His more serious contributions to the " Ga- zette " may be classed as dialogues, as bad as those of any writer ; pieces of domestic and political economy after the manner of " Poor Richard ; " moral essays and pieces of pleas- antry and mirth, which he has himself de- clared " have a secret charm in them to allay the heats and tumours of our spirits, and to make a man forget his restless resentments." Writings of this description would usually appear when storms delayed the London packets and the " Craftsman " and the " British Jour- nal " failed to come to hand ; when winter in- terrupted travel, and the postman made his trips northward but once a fortnight ; when the 70 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. freezing of the rivers shut out the coasters, and news grew scarce and trade grew dull ; when the town, no longer absorbed in business, was more than ever ready to be amused. Anything to break the dullness was acceptable, and some- thing was sure to come. One week he affects to be one of the tribe of pedants whose business it is to expurgate, annotate, and deface the text of ancient authors with silly comments and with useless notes ; takes a nursery rhyme for his text ; has much to say of readings, manuscripts, and versions ; and treats his readers to a good satire, which has, in our day, found an uncon- scious imitator in the author of the sermon on " Old Mother Hubbard." Another week he is a purchaser laughing at the tradesmen for al- ways protesting that they sell wares for less than cost ; and in the next number is a tradesman laughing at buyers who assert in every shop they enter that the goods they are examining can be had for less elsewhere. But better than any of these are " The Meditations on a Quart Mug," the account of the witch trial at Mount Holly, and the " Speech of Miss Polly Baker before a Court of Judicatory in New England, where she was presented for the fifth time for having a Bastard Child." To a generation that frowns on Tom Jones and Peregrine Pickle, the speech of Miss Polly THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE. 71 is coarse in the extreme. But it enjoyed in its own time an immense popularity, was printed and reprinted for fifty years, was cited by Abbe Raynal in his " Histoire Philosopliique des Deux Indes " as a veritable fact, and is assur- edly a rare piece of wit. The account of the witch - ducking is nearly as witty, cannot be accused of being coarse, is not to be found among Franklin's collected writings, and may therefore be given in full. " Saturday last, at Mount Holly, about eight miles from this place [Burlington], near three hundred people were gathered together to see an experiment or two tried on some persons ac- cused of witchcraft. It seems the accused had been charged with making the neighbours' sheep dance in an uncommon manner, and with caus- ing hogs to speak and sing Psalms, etc., to the great terror and amazement of the king's good and peaceful subjects in the province ; and the accusers, being very positive that if the accused were weighed against a Bible, the Bible would prove too heavy for them ; or that, if they were bound and put into the River they would swim ; the said accused, desirous to make innocence appear, voluntarily offered to undergo the said trials if two of the most violent of their accus- ers would be tried with them. Accordingly the time and place was agreed on and advertised 72 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. about the country. The accused were one man and one woman : and the accusers the same. The parties being met and the people got to- gether, a grand consultation was held before they proceeded to trial, in which it was agreed to use the scales first ; and a committee of men were appointed to search the man, and a com- mittee of women to search the woman, to see if they had anything of weight about them, par- ticularly pins. After the scrutiny was over a huge great Bible belonging to the Justice of the Peace was produced, and a lane through the populace was made from the Justice's house to the scales, which were fixed on a gallows erected for that purpose opposite to the house, that the Justice's wife and the rest of the ladies might see the trial without coming among the mob, and after the manner of Moorefield a large ring was also made. Then came out of the house a grave, tall man carrying the Holy Writ before the wizard as solemnly as the sword-bearer of London before the Lord Mayor. The wizard was first placed in the scale, and over him was read a chapter out of the Book of Moses, and then the Bible was put in the other scale, which, being kept down before, was immediately let go ; but, to the great surprise of the spectators, flesh and blood came down plump and out- weighed that great good Book by abundance. THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE. 73 After the same manner the others were served, and the lumps of mortality severally were too heavy for Moses and all the Prophets and Apos- tles. This being over, the accusers and the rest of the mob, not being satisfied with the ex- periment, would have trial by water. Accord- ingly a most solemn procession was made to the mill-pond, where the accused and accusers, be- ing stripped (saving only to the women their shifts) were bound hand and foot and severally placed in the water, lengthways, from the side of a barge or Flat, having for security only a rope about the middle of each, which was held by some one in the Flat. The accuser man being thin and spare with some difficulty began to sink at last ; but the rest, every one of them, swam very light upon the water. A sailor in the Flat jumped out upon the back of the man accuser thinking to drive him down to the bot- tom ; but the person bound, without any help, came up some time before the other. The wo- man accuser being told that she did not sink, would be ducked a second time ; when she swam again as light as before. Upon which she de- clared that the accused had bewitched her to make her so light, and that she would be ducked again a hundred times but that she would duck the Devil out of her. The accused man, being surprised at his own swimming, was not so con- 74 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. fident of his own innocence as before, but said, 'If I am a witch, it is more than I know.' The more thinking part of the spectators were of opinion that any person so bound and placed in the water (unless they were mere skin and bones) would swim till their breath was gone, and their lungs filled with water. But it being the general belief of the populace that the wo- men's shifts and the garters with which they were bound helped to support them, it is said they are to be tried again the next warm weather, naked." This readiness of Franklin to provoke laugh- ter sometimes cost him dear. Thus it happened on one occasion that he was called on to print a notice setting forth that a certain ship would, on a certain day, sail for a certain port in the Bar- badoes, and that freighters and passengers might make terms with the captain on the wharf. He made of the notice just such a hand bill as it was then the custom to fasten on the walls of the coffee-houses and the taverns, and, to insure the bill being read, added these words of his own : " N. B. No Sea Hens, nor Black Gowns, will be admitted on any terms." The end was at once attained. No one who read the notice but went straightway and brought some one else to read it, and in a few days the whole town was laughing at the Black Gowns, and asking what a Sea Hen could be. THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE. 75 But the Black Gowns saw nothing to laugh at ; took offense, and sent Franklin notice that as a punishment for his maliciousness they not only would cease buying his " Gazette," but would use their best endeavors to prevent others from buying. Franklin kept his temper and replied. He was, he said, so often censured by people for printing things they thought ought not to be printed, that he was strongly tempted to write a standing apology and publish it once a year. These faultfinders forgot the difference between the printing trade and any other trade. A table constructed by a Jew, a pair of shoes made by au infidel, a piece of ironmongery beaten out by a heretic, give no offense to the most or- thodox. But a printer had to do with men's opinions. Opinions were as various as faces, and it was therefore impossible to get a living by printing without offending some one, or per- haps many. It was unreasonable for any man, or any set of men, to expect to be pleased with everything put in type. It was unreasonable to suppose that printers approved of everything they put in type, or to insist that they should print only what they did approve. If they sometimes put forth vicious and silly things not worth reading, they did so, not because they liked such things themselves, but because the 76 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. people were so viciously educated that good things were not encouraged. A small impres- sion of The Psalms of David had been upon his shelves for above two years : yet he had known a large impression of Robin Hood's Songs to go off in a twelvemonth. As for the hand bill that caused so much offense, he printed it, not because he hated the clergy, nor because he despised religion, but because he got five shil- lings by printing it, whicb was just five shil- lings more than anybody would have given him to let it alone. When he considered the variety of humors among men, he despaired of pleas- ing everybody. Yet he should not on that ac- count leave off printing. He should go on with the business ; he should not burn his press nor melt his type. When he again offended and was called to an account, the reply was very different. A barber, hair-dresser, and peruke-maker who had long been advertising in the " Gazette" sud- denly informed the public that he would no longer shave and cut hair. News being scarce and the taverns dull, Franklin took the notice for a text, printed it at the head of an essay on shavers and trimmers in business, in politics, and in the church, and heard from every adver- tiser in his newspaper. If this thing went on, he was given to understand, there would soon be THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE. 77 an end to all advertising. What guaranty had they that the next merchant who advertised Jamaica rum or very good sack would not see his notice at the head of a long disquisition on Drunkards and the Evils of Drink ? To these protests Franklin replied : — " My paper on ' Shavers and Trimmers ' in the last ' Gazette ' being generally condemned, I at first imputed it to the want of Taste and Relish for pieces of that Force and Beauty which none but thoroughly-bred Gentlemen can produce. But upon advice of Friends, whose judgement I could depend on, I examined my- self, and to my shame must confess that I found myself to be an uncircumcised Jew, whose Ex- crescences of Hair, Nails, Flesh, &c., did burthen and disgrace my Natural Endowments ; but hav- ing my Hair and Nails since lopp'd off and shorn, and my fleshy Excrescences circumcised, I now appear in my wonted Lustre and expect speedy admission among the Levites, which I have already the honor of among the Poets and Natural Philosophers. I have one thing more to say, which is, that I had no real animosity against the person whose advertisement I made the matter of my paper." Among the papers on domestic economy, the complaint of Anthony Afterwit, who has been hurried from one piece of extravagance to 78 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. another by a foolish wife ; the reply of Patience Teacroft defending the wife; the letter of Celia Single on the idleness and extravagance of men, are decidedly the best productions. Franklin was a born moralist. When a lad of twenty he wrote a letter to his sister, a girl of fifteen, j on the duties of a housewife, which in its kind is inimitable. It was quite in his natural vein. But the moment he quitted this natural vein and undertook compositions of another sort, he began to utter the stale sayings of the school- boy and the preacher. His remarks on the " Usefulness of Mathematics," on *' Govern- ment," on " How to Please in Conversation ; " his dialogues between Philocles and Horatius, between Socrates and Critico, between Socrates and Glaucon, between two Presbyterians on staying away from church, in which the beha- vior of Mr. Hemphill is warmly defended, — are not worth reading. The pieces called " The Family of the Boxes " and " The Drinkers' Dic- tionary," are positively foolish. On the other Ihand, " The Meditations on a Quart Mug," and the " Thoughts of the Ephemera on Human / Vanity," which he afterwards rewrote for Madame Brillon, could not have been done bet- ter by Addison himself. Below these, and much below, are the essays against swearing, " On Lying Tradesmen," *' On THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE. 79 Scandal," " On the Waste of Life," <•'• On True Happiness," " On the Rules and Maxims for Promoting Matrimonial Happiness." Mingled with these are pieces of a very different kind, — pieces whose purpose is either to bring about some needed reform, or strongly affect public opinion. One of his earliest attempts at this sort of writing was in 1735, when he became for a time embroiled in a dispute with the Presbyterian ministers. The cause of the trouble was Samuel Hemphill, a young Presby- terian preacher, who came from the north of Ireland. Hemphill had been licensed by the Presbytery of Strabane, had been tried for heresy, had been acquitted, had come over to America, and had been followed by a letter from one of his old foes. The letter set forth that Mr. Hemphill was a Deist, a New-Light man, or a heretic of some sort, and ought not to be suffered to have a place in the true fold. The busybody to whom it was sent carried it to the minister, read it to all who would listen, and Mr. Hemphill was soon before the presbytery of New Castle. He was again acquitted, and came to Philadelphia, where Jedidiah Andrews, who preached in the old Buttonwood Church, gave up the pulpit to him once each Sunday. Young, eloquent, with a good delivery and an easy flow of words, he drew crowds to hear, 80 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. and of those who listened none liked him bet- ter than Franklin. Andrews meanwhile grew jealous, and went among the congregation calling Hemphill a Deist, a Socinian, a missionary sent from Ire- land to corrupt the faith once delivered to the saints, and soon had him before a commission of the synod. There Andrews accused him of saying and doing dreadful things. So depraved was Hemphill that, when he prayed, he prayed not for any church, nor for any minister, but for all mankind. In summing up the distempers of the soul, he said nothing of the distemper by original sin. He had been heard to say that reason is our rule, and was given for a rule. He had spoken against the need of spiritual pangs in order to conversion. The commission, to their great grief, found him guilty and sus- pended him. Thereupon Franklin took up his cause, and wrote in his defence two pamphlets and two pieces in the " Gazette." One of the pieces was called " A Dialogue between two Presbyterians on Staying Away from Church." The other, which soon appeared as a pamphlet, was called " A Letter to a Friend in the Country Containing the Substance of a Sermon preach'd at Philadelphia, in the Congregation of the Rev. Mr. Hemphill." A third, and the stron- gest of them all, is " Some Observations on the THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE. 81 Proceedings against the Rev. Mr. Hemphill ; with a Vindication of his Sermons." It was eagerly read, passed rapidly through two edi- tions, and quickly led to a violent pamphlet war. One writer answered the " Letter to a Friend" in a pamphlet of thirty-two pages. Another, or perhaps the same, attacked the " Observations " in a yet longer pamphlet en- titled " A Vindication of the Reverend Com- mission of the Synod," and was in turn promptly answered by Franklin. He called his pam- phlet " A Defense of the Rev. Mr. Hemphill's Observations," gave a sketch of Mr. HemphilFs history, took up the charges preferred by Mr. Andrews, examined them carefully, went over the finding of the reverend commission, accused it of acting after the manner and with the spirit of the Spanish Inquisition, and provoked a reply most ruinous to his cause. The title was, " Re- marks upon the Defense," and the author de- clared Mr. Hemphill to be a reverend plagiary, and made good the charge. One of his sermons he had taken from Dr. Clarke, an open Arian. Three more were the work of Dr. Ibbots, who assisted Dr. Clarke. Yet another was taken from a published sermon of Dr. Forster. Hemp- hill afterwards owned to Franklin that each of his sermons was the work of some one else. But even then his defender flinched not, and 82 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. stoutly declared that he would far rather hear a good though borrowed sermon, than a sermon that was original and bad. When Franklin wrote his Autobiography, he did not believe a copy of one of his pamphlets to be extant. Sparks, when editing the doctor's works, asserted that none of them had ever been found. Both were mistaken. Copies of each of the pamphlets are in existence, and have, within quite recent years, been sold at the auction block. Franklin next took up the matter of reform. Whenever he had such work to do, it was his custom to write a paper with great care on the abuse to be corrected, and read it some evening to the Junto. If the Junto thought well of it, he would put "Mr. Franklin," or "To the Printer," at the top, and " Philadelphus," or " Old Tradesman," at the bottom, and publish it in the " Gazette." An answer or two, like- wise written by Franklin, would follow, and in a few weeks the city council, or the grand jury, or the assembly, would have the matter in charge. It was by such means that he reformed the city watch ; that he established the fire compa- nies ; that he persuaded the people to light the streets, to sweep the pavements around the market, and to organize the first militia. On THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE. 8d the 1st of July, 1700, when the city was still a little place, the governor and council estab- lished the watch. The watch consisted of one good and trusty man, who each night went the rounds of the city, rang a small bell, cried the hours, described the weather, and roused the constable if he spied a chimney burning, or met a drunken Indian on the streets. Five years later, when the city was thought a great one and ten wards were established, the constable of each in turn was commanded to summon every day nine citizens, who, with himself, should constitute the watch for his ward. The duty of these ten men has been clearly laid down in a charge which, for absurdity, is surpassed by that of Dogberry alone. But nothing in the charge made the watch as worthless as the conduct of the citizens them- selves. Six shillings paid to the constable would secure exemption from his warning for a year ; and that man was poor indeed who could not get together six shillings to be free of such ser- vice. The band, therefore, that went with the constable on his nightly rounds, came in time to be made up of the very scum of the town. They passed whole nights in the tippling houses ; they often ceased to walk their rounds, and, when they did, to meet them was more to be dreaded than meeting a thief. To end this 84 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. abuse, Franklin proposed a permanent, well- paid watch ; addressed himself first to the Junto, and then to the people, who addressed and petitioned the assembly for eight years before the reform was made. His suggestions for the better extinguishing of fires were more speedily adopted. For the prevention of fires the law prescribed in what kind of ovens bakers should bake bread, in what kind of shops coopers should make casks ; fined any man who smoked on the streets of the built part of the city, or suffered his sooty chimney to burst into flame ; and compelled captains of ships moored at the wharf to put out all fires when the clock struck eight, unless the mayor gave a license to keep them burning. For ex- tinguishing fires, each householder kept in his shop or his pantry a bucket and a fourteen-foot swab ; while the city provided hooks, ladders, and three rude engines of English make. At the first cry of fire the whole town was in excite- ment ; the laborer quit his work, the apprentice dropped his tools, buyers and sellers swarmed from the market ; and the shopkeeper, calling his wife to watch his goods, seized his bucket and hurried away. About the burning building all was confusion and disorder. No man was in authority. Each man did as he pleased. Some fell into line and helped to pass the full buckets THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE. 85 from the pump to the engine, or the empty- buckets from the engine to the pump; some caught up the hooks and pulled down blazing boards and shingles ; some rushed into the build- ing with their ozenbrig bags, and came out la- den with household stuff. All this energy, excellent as it was, seemed to Franklin misused. If so much could be done in a way so bad, a hundred-fold more, he thought, could be done if a little order were introduced. Thinking so, he wrote two papers on the subject of fires, read them to the Junto, and published them in the " Gazette." The matter is in no wise remarkable ; but the style is a good specimen of persuasive argument. That they had this effect on people in general is doubtful ; but they did on the Junto, who quickly formed the Union Fire Company, the first of its kind in the proyince. Others fol- lowed their example, and to the " Union," "The Hand-in-hand" and "The Heart-in- hand " were soon added. Yet another of his pieces in the " Gazette " must not be passed over in silence. It is in verse, and is a paraphrase of the sublime lamen- tation of David over the death of Jonathan and Saul. He begins by stating his belief that the art of poetry was made known to the Hebrews by Moses ; gives reasons for thinking so ; takes 86 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. up the lamentation, and observes that it has many times been paraphrased in English, that none of the paraphrases are quite to his mind, and that he will therefore give the reader one of his own make, as bad perhaps as any of them. The poem is long ; but a few stanzas will serve as a specimen of all : — Unhappy Day ! distressing sight, Israel, the Land of Heaven's delight, How is thy strength, thy beauty fled ! On the high places of the fight. Behold thy Princes f all'n, thy Sons of Victory dead. Ne'er be it told in Gath, nor known Among the streets of Askelon ; How will Philista's youth rejoice And triumph in thy shame, And girls with weak unhallow'd voice Chant the dishonors of the Hebrew name ! Mountains of Gilboa, let no dew Nor fruitful shower descend on you ; Curse on your fields thro' all the year ! No flow'ry blessing there appear. Nor golden ranks of harvest stand To grace the altar, nor to seed the land. 'T was on those inauspicious fields Judean heroes lost their shields. 'T was there (ah, base reproach and scandal of the day !) Thy shield, O Saul ! was cast away, As tho' the Prophet's horn had never shed Its sacred odors on thy head. THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE. 87 Many years later, when age and experience should have taught him better, he again made a paraphrase of a chapter of Job. In no book, it is safe to say, is the force and beauty of the English tongue so finely shown as in King James's Bible. But on Franklin that force and beauty were wholly lost. The language he pronounced obsolete. The style he thought not agreeable, and he was for a new rendering in which the turn of phrase and manner of expression should be modern. That there might be no mistake as to his meaning, he gave a sample of how the work should be done ; took some verses from the first chapter of Job, stripped them of every particle of grace, beauty, imagery, terseness, and strength, and wrote a paraphrase which, of all paraphrases of the Bible, is surely th.e worst. JOB. FRANKLIN. Verse 6. Now there was Verse 6. And it being a day when the sons of levee day in Heaven, all God came to present them- God's nobility came to court selves before the Lord, and to present themselves be- Satan came also amongst fore him ; and Satan also them. appeared in the circle, as one of the ministry. 7. And the Lord said unto 7. And God said unto Satan,Whence comest thou? Satan, You have been some Then Satan answered the time absent ; where were Lord and said, From going you? And Satan answered, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.. 8. And the Lord said un- to Satan, Hast thou con- sidered my servant Job, that there is none Kke him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil? 9. And Satan answered the Lord and said. Doth Job fear God for naught? I have been at my country- seat, and in different places visiting my friends. 8. And God said, Well, what think you of Lord Job? You see he is my best friend, a perfectly honest man, full of respect for me, and avoiding every thing that might offend me. 9. And Satan answered. Does your majesty imagine that his good conduct is the effect of personal attach- ment and affection? IL But put forth thine 11. Try him — onlywith- hand now, and touch all draw your favor, turn him that he hath, and he will out of his places, and with- curse thee to thy face. hold his pensions, and you will soon find him in the opposition. The plan is beneath criticism. Were such a piece of folly ever begun, there would remain but one other depth of folly to which it would be possible to go down. Franklin proposed to fit out the Kingdom of Heaven with lords, nobles, a ministry, and levee days. It would on the same principle be proper to make another version suitable for republics ; a version from which every term and expression peculiar to THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE. 89 ^ a monarchy should be carefully kept out, and only such as are applicable to a republic put in. Nor would he have hesitated to make such a version. The Bible was to him in no sense a book foT spiritual guidance. It showed a most amazing knowledge of the heart of man, of the actions of men, of the passions and temptations of men, and of the way in which during moments of passion and temptation men would surely act. It abounded in exam- ples as often to be shunned as followed. It taught just such lessons as he was teaching, — lessons of honesty, thrift, diligence, worldly wisdom, and sometimes of politics. But it dis- played this knowledge, held up these examples, and taught these lessons, that men might be happier, not in another world, but in this. Hence it was that the first chapter of Job taught him nothing but a lesson in politics. In a piece called " The Levee," and still placed among the bagatelles, Franklin set forth his understanding of the strange scene, and asks what instruction is to be gathered from it. His answer is ready : " Trust not a single per- son with the government of your state. For if the Deity himself, being the monarch, may for a time give way to calumny, and suffer it to operate the destruction of the best of subjects, what mischief may you not expect from such 90 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. power in a mere man, though the best of men, from whom the truth is often industriously hidden, and to whom falsehood is often pre- sented in its place by artful, interested, and malicious courtiers? " Distasteful as the language of Scripture was to Franklin, he nevertheless wrote two pieces in close imitation. The first he called " A Par- able Against Persecution," printed it in the same way Bibles are printed, and fastened it in his own copy at the end of Genesis as the fifty- first chapter of that book. His custom then was, on some evening when a host of friends were seated about him, to lead the talk to the subject of parables, bring out his Bible, read the pretended chapter of Genesis, and listen with delight while his guests one by one de- clared they had never heard the parable before, nor knew such a chapter of Genesis existed. In this way Lord Kames saw it, and in 1774 reprinted the parable in his " Sketches of the History of Man." Thence it passed to Vaughan's edition of Franklin's work,s, and so to volume 50 of the Gentleman's Magazine, where a lively dispute soon took place over the question who wrote it. An admirer of Jeremy Taylor informed Mr. Urban that Franklin had taken the parable bodily from Taylor's " Polem- TEE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE. 91 ical Discourses," where it could be found at the end of the twenty-second section of " The Lib- erty of Prophesying." This was true, and the curious began at once to ask where Taylor got it ; for he headed the parable with the words, " I end with a story which I find in the Jews' Books." At last a writer in the Repository for May, 1788, announced that he had found the " Jews' Book," that it had been published at Amsterdam in 1651, had been translated by George Gentius, and that in the dedication was the parable, ascribed to the Persian poet Saadi. Lord Teignmouth now translated the version of Saadi, and sent it to Bishop Heber, who put it among the notes to his " Life of Jeremy Taylor." Franklin meanwhile was warmly defended in the Repository for June, 1788, and declared, in a letter to Mr. Vaughan, that the Scripture language and the two verses at the end were all he could claim as his own. But the discussion as to where he got it was still going on in the Gentleman's Magazine as late as 1791. In 1794 the Parable was printed at London in the form of a tract, and sold for a halfpenny. The second parable is on brotherly love. Some Midian merchants passing by with camels bearing spices, myrrh, and iron- ware, Reuben buys an axe. There is none other in his father's 92 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. house, and Simeon, Levi, and Judah come in turn to borrow it. But Reaben will not lend, and the brothers are forced to send after the Ishmaelite merchants and buy each of them an axe for himself. Now it happens, as Reuben hews timber on the river-bank, his axe falls into the water. Unable to find it, he goes in turn to Lis brothers to borrow. Simeon refuses. Levi consents, but consents so grudgingly that Reuben will not borrow ; whereupon Judah seeing bis distress, hastens to him and offers the axe unasked. Each of these pieces was much admired, and the fame of them involved Franklin in a work that signally failed. Sir Francis Dash wood was then busy abridging the Book of Com- mon Prayer. Lord Le Despencer asked Frank- lin to help. He did so, wrote the preface, cut down the catechism, and paraphrased the Psalms. This new catechism consisted of two questions : What is your duty to God ? and What is your duty to your neighbor? The new Psalms were what was left of the old ones when repetitions and imprecations had been taken out. Poetry had no charms for him. He seldom read any. He never wrote any. The most that can be said of his verses is, that for so matter-of-fact a man some of them are very good. THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE. 93 Of doggerel he has left plenty. The lines that stand at the heads of the monthly calen- dars in " Poor Richard " are his. There is more of the same kind in the Gazette. But of good verse, not six pieces are extant. The Lines on Paper; the Drinking Song for the Junto, beginning '' Fair Venus calls ; " " My Plain Country Joan ; " " David's Lamenta- tion," and a humorous poem never published, make up the list. The unpublished piece is among his papers in the State Department at Washington. After 1740, Franklin almost ceased to con- tribute essays to the Gazette. In 1748 he sold it, with his printing-house, to his partner David Hall. As a newspaper there is little to be said in its behalf. The printing is well done, for, as a printer, the colonies did not produce his equal. But as an editor, he was outdone, and much outdone, by William Bradford of the Journal. It seemed impossible for him to rise above the job-printer. The years during which the printing-house and the Gazette were under his control were years of great literary activ- ity. During these years the press of Pennsyl- vania showed a boldness and fertility to which the press of no other colony approached. The classics were translated, magazines were begun, newspapers in foreign languages established. 94 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. German type introduced, and the largest work printed before the Revolution issued. From the Pennsylvania press came, before 1748, " Epictetus his Morals," the first translation of a classic issued in America ; " Philadelphische Zeitung," the first German newspaper; and " Zionitischer Weyrauch-Hiigel," the first book printed from German type ; the first and second monthly magazine, and the first book published in a European tongue. Nor did enterprise end here. In 1764 came forth the first religious periodical, and in 1785 the first daily newspaper in North America. Yet for all this activity we owe nothing or next to nothing to Franklin. The encouragement he gave to letters was not by printing good books, but by putting it in the power of his poorer townsmen to read them. To bring this about he founded the Philadel- phia Library. The idea was not a sudden one. When a lad of one -and -twenty, in Keimer's employ, he formed his boon companions into the famous Junto. The number was limited to twelve, and no one could be a member till he had, with his hand upon his heart, declared that he loved mankind; that he thought no man ought to be harmed in body, name, or goods because of the opinions he held or the creed he followed ; that he loved truth for the THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE. 95 sake of truth, should seek diligently for it, and when found make it known to others. On Fri- day evenings, when the Junto met, it was usual to read through a list of questions, which each one present must answer if he could, and to bring up some matter for general debate. The debates and the questions often made it neces- sary to bring a book, and noticing this, Franklin proposed that each should bring all the books he owned and leave them in the room of the Junto for the good of all. This was done. But when a year was gone, some of the members finding their books had been badly treated, took them away. Even for this Franklin had an expedient ready, and suggested that fifty sub- scribers be found who were willing to pay forty shillings down, and ten shillings a year there- after for maintaining a library. The sugges- tion seemed a good one, and the members of the Junto were soon carrying round papers to which subscribers set their names but slowly. Five months were spent in filling the list, four more went by before the shillings were col- lected. But at last, in March, 1732, forty-five pounds were sent to London to be laid out in the purchase of books. In October the first invoice arrived, and the Library was opened in the room where the Junto met. CHAPTER IV. 1732-1748. When the year 1732 opened, Franklin's career of prosperity may be said to have be- gun. He had ended his partnership with Meredith, had paid his debts, had married a wife, set up a newspaper, and opened a shop, which defies description, hard by the market- place in High Street. There were to be had imported books, legal blanks, paper and parch- ment, Dutch quills and Aleppo ink, perfumed soap, Rhode Island cheese, chapbooks such as the peddlers hawked, pamphlets such as the Quakers read, live-geese feathers, bohea tea, coffee, very good sack, and cash for old rags. Everything connected with this miscellaneous business was carried on in strict accordance with the maxims of Poor Richard. No idle servant fattened in his house. His wife, in such moments as could be snatched from the kitchen and the tub, folded newspapers, stitched pamphlets, and sold inkhorns and pocket-books, which, as paper-money drove out the coin, came more and more into use. ''POOR RICHARD.'* 9T Franklin meanwhile managed the printing- house, made lampblack, cast type, made rude cuts for the paper-money bills, and might be seen at times trundling home a wheelbarrow loaded with paper bought at some neighboring merchant's shop. Industrious, thrifty, saving, full of hard com- mon sense and worldly wisdom, he suffered no chance to pass unused, and rose rapidly to the place of chief printer in the province. The business of the place in a year would not now sufl&ce to keep a journeyman printer occupied three months. 'Never since the press had been set up in Pennsylvania had all the issues in any one year numbered thirty. In 1732 they were but nineteen ; but of the nineteen, three, bear- ing the imprint of Franklin, are noteworthy. One was " Philadelphische Zeitung," the first German newspaper printed in America. An- other was " The Honour of the Gout," a book that long afterwards suggested the famous Dia- logue between Franklin and the Gout. The third was the greatest of all almanacs — " Poor Richard." The publication of " Poor Richard " he was tempted to undertake by the quick and great returns such pamphlets were sure to bring in. For the mere copy of popular almanacs, printers were then compelled to pay down in advance 98 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. from twenty to thirty pounds each year; no mean sum at a time when the chief justice was given but one hundred pounds a year, when the associate justice got but fifty pounds, and when the attorney-general was forced to be content with sixty. Such prices could well afford to be paid, for the almanac was the one piece of literature of which the sale was sure. Not a household for a hundred miles around the printer but, if there was sixpence to spare, would have a copy. In remote towns, where money was not to be had, a dozen copies would be bought with potatoes or wheat, and disposed of one by one, — at the blacksmith's for a few nails ; at the tavern for rum ; at some neighbor's in payment of a trifling debt. Chapmen carried them in their packs to exchange with copper kettles and china bowls, for worsted stockings and knit gloves. They were the diaries, the jour- nals, the account books of the poor. Strung upon a stick and hung beside the chimney- place, they formed an unbroken record of domestic affairs, in many instances for thirty years. On the margins of one since picked up at a paper mill are recorded the interesting cases of a physician's practice, and the names of those who suffered with the smallpox and the flux. Another has become a complete ALMANA C-MAKERS. 99 journal of farm life. A third is filled with verses written in imitation of Pope and Young. It is not by mere chance that the second piece of printing done in the colonies, and the first piece done in the middle states, were almanacs. Samuel Atkins told no more than plain truth when, in the preface to " Kalenda- rium Pennsilvaniense," he declared that wher- ever he went in his travels he found the peo- ple so clamorous for an almanac that he was " really troubled," and did design according to his knowledge to " pleasure his countrymen " with what they wanted. But one attempt at almanac-making was enough for Atkins, and the next year Daniel Leeds took his place. Leeds describes himself as a " Student in Agriculture ; " but jack-of- all-trades would have been more just. Un- questionably a man of parts, he was by turns a cooper, a surveyor-general, a member of the assembly, a member of the New Jersey pro- vincial council, a book-maker, an almanac- maker, and, save one, the most prolific of all writers on the great schism stirred up by Keith. Even now his " News of a Trumpet," his " Trumpet Sounded," his " Hue and Cry," and his " Great Mystery of Fox-craft Discov- ered," are said to be far from tedious. But even Leeds, shrewd as he was, had not learned 100 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. the art of almanac-making, put in what he in- tended for wit and fun, and brought down upon himself the anger of the Friends. The Burling- ton meeting condemned his almanac and bade him print nothing he had not first shown to them. The Philadelphia meeting brought up the edition, suppressed it, and not one copj^^ is extant. Leeds in alarm humbled himself in the dust, admitted that he had sinned, promised to write more soberly in the future, soon became an Episcopalian, and thenceforth reviled and was reviled by the Friends. When Bradford left Philadelphia, Leeds's almanac went with him to New York, and for six years no such work was printed in Pennsyl- vania. But with the revival of printing in 1699 a new crop of philomaths, students in agriculture, and philodespots sprang up and flourished exceedingly. In 1732 there were, in Philadelphia alone, the almanacs of Evans, of Birkett, of Godfrey, of Taylor, of Jerman, Der Teutsche Pilgrim, and of Titan Leeds so exquisitely ridiculed in the early issues of " Poor Richard." The ingredients of all these books were the same. The title-page commonly did duty for a table of contents. The preface was devoted to describing the merits of what came after, to sneers at the critics of the last year's number, ''POOR ROBINS 101 and to the abuse of the works of rival philo- maths. Following the preface was the naked man bestriding the globe, the calendars of the months, the days for holding courts and fairs, a chronology that always went back to Adam, a list of British rulers in which Cromwell never had a place, verses destitute of feet and sense, and a serious prognostication of events as fore- told by eclipses and the planets. In writing their almanacs, American " philo- maths " without exception borrowed most freely from English contemporaries, and from this time-honored usage Franklin did not depart. Richard Saunders, who long edited the " Apollo Angelicanus," furnished the name under which he wrote. Poor Robin supplied the hint for the title, and many ideas for the general plan. " Poor Robin " was an English comic alma- nac defaced with the indecency and licentious- ness it was then the fashion to associate with wit, with humor, and with broad fun. One number is declared to be " calculated to the meridian of all honest merry hearts ; and writ in their language ; and fitted to all latitudes in the temperate zone, where people are neither hot with passion nor cold with envy, and where the Pole is elevated ninety degrees above scan- dal and detraction." Another is suited " to all latitudes and capacities whatsoever, but more 102 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. especially those that have got sixpence to spare to buy an almanac." A third bears the title, " Poor Robin. A prognostication for the year of our Lord God 1725, wherein you have a scheme (not for a Lottery, nor the South Sea) but for the use of Astrologers, with an account of the eclipses, and a great many more than any other almanac mentions, with predictions about courtings, weddings, &c., the like not extant." The account of the eclipses which no other almanac mentions might have been written by Poor Richard himself. Indeed it is closely paralleled in his prognostication for 1739. With a few hints borrowed from these two sources, Franklin began the publication of " Poor Richard " in October, 1732. The suc- cess was immense. Before the month ended the first impression was exhausted. When the year closed, the third edition was offered for sale. Not a little of this popularity is, we be- lieve, to be ascribed to the air of reality that pervades the whole book. To those who read " Poor Robin " then, as to those who read him now, he was a mere name, a mask to hide another name. Poor Richard was a person, almost as real to those who read him as King George or Governor Penn, or any of the famous men of whom they were constantly hearing but MR. SAUNDERS. 103 never meeting face to face. It is high praise, but not too high praise, to say, that Mr. Rich- ard Saunders and Bridget his wife are quite as real as any characters in the whole domain of fiction. Indeed the prefaces to the almanacs in which they appear form, collectively, a piece of prose fiction which for humor, for sprightliness, for the knowledge of human nature displayed, is well worthy of perusal. In the first of the prefaces Mr. Saunders set forth the reasons for adding one more to the long list of almanac- makers. He might, he declares, assert the sole aim he had in view was the public good. But men are not to be deceived by such pretenses, and the plain truth is, he is excessive poor, while his wife, poor woman, is excessive proud. She could no longer bear to sit spinning in her shift of tow, while he did nothing but gaze at the stars. More than once had she threatened to burn his books and rattling- traps if he did not make some use of them for the good of his family. At last he had complied with his dame's desire and given to the world an alma- nac, a thing he would have done long before had he not been fearful of doing harm to his old friend and fellow-student Titan Leeds. But this fear troubled him no longer, for Titan was soon to be numbered with the immortals. 104 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. Death, never known to respect merit, had al- ready prepared the mortal dart ; the fatal sister had already extended her destroying shears, and that ingenious man must surely perish on October 17, 1733, at the very moment of the 6 of O and $. Since, therefore, the provinces were to see no more of Leeds's performances, he felt free to take up the task. Twenty-seven years before, Jacob Taylor, a rival philomath, described the father of Titan as " that unparalleled Plagiary and unreason- able transcriber, D. Leeds, who hath, with a very large stock of impudence, filched matter out of another man's works to furnish his spurious al- manacs." The description is applicable to the whole race of philomaths, but applies with es- pecial force to the Leeds, father and sons. But Titan was the fool positive, and as fair a butt for wit as the province produced. What a jest was he never knew. So he took the pleasantry of Poor Richard for sober earnest, and replied. He denounced Poor Richard as an ignorant and presumptuous predicter, called him a liar, a fool, a conceited scribbler, and declared that, by God's blessing. Titan Leeds should live and write long after Poor Richard Saunders and his almanac were dead and forgotten. This reply was precisely what Franklin expected, and in the preface to Poor Richard PREFACES TO POOR RICHARD. 105 for 1734 tlie public is assured that, thanks to its bounty, '' Poor Dick " is far from dying. Now Bridget not only had a pot of her own, with something to put in it, but two new shifts, a pair of shoes and a new warm petticoat, while Richard, dressed in a good second-hand coat, was no longer ashamed to show himself iu town. As for Titan Leeds, he did die at the very hour and minute predicted. This was evident because of the harsh language of his pretended preface, for Mr. Leeds was too civil a man to use an old friend so shamefully : because the stars had predicted his death and they were not to be disappointed ; because it was necessary that he should die punctually at the hour named for the honor of astrology, an art professed by him and by his father before him ; and because the almanacs were too bad to be the work of Titan Leeds if living. The wit was low and flat. The little hints were dull. There was nothing smart in the almanac but Hudibras verses against astrology, which no astrologer but a dead one would ever have inserted. As for the rest, no man living could or would have written such stuff. Again Leeds took the fun in earnest and replied. " Poor Richard " had used him with such good man- ners that he hardly knew what to say. But this he would say of Mr. Saunders's boasted 106 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, prosperity : " If Falsehood and Ingenuity be so rewarded, wliat may he expect if he be in a capacity to publish what is either just or ac- cording to Art." Thus dismissed, Leeds disappears from the almanacs for five years, and the prefaces are taken up with other matters. One is given to insisting that "Poor Richard" does exist, for the public have begun to suspect that he is none other than Franklin. Another is a de- fense of almanac-makers. That some of their predictions failed was not amazing. Without any defect in the art itself, it was easy to see that a small error, a single wrong figure over- seen in a long calculation, might cause great mistakes. But, however almanac-makers might miss it in other things, it must be allowed they always hit the day of the month, and that after all was one of the most useful things in an almanac. As to the weather, he never followed the method of his brother John Jerman. Jer- man would say, " Snow here or in New Eng- land," " Rain here or in South Carolina," "Cold to the Northward," "Warm to the Southward." This enabled him to hide his errors. For if it did not rain here, who could say it did not rain in New England. Poor Richard always put down just what the weather will be where the reader is, only asking for an PREFACES TO POOR RICHARD. 107 allowance of a day or two before and a day or two after. If the prediction failed then, why like enough the printer had transferred or mis- placed it to make room for his holidays. As the public would give Mr. Printer credit for making the almanacs, let him also take some of the blame. A third explains how astrologers determine what the weather will be, and is just witty enough and coarse enough to have been thought good reading. A fourth was from the hand of Bridget Saunders. Her good man had set out for the Potomac to meet an old Stargazer. Before going he left a copy of his almanac sealed up and bade her send it to the printer. Suspect- ing something was wrong, she opened it to see if he had not been flinging some of his old skits at her. So it was. Peascods ! could she not have a little fault but the world must be told of it ? They had already been told that she was proud ; that she was poor ; that she had a new petticoat, and abundance more of the like stuff. Now they must know she had taken a fancy to drink a little tea. She had cut this nonsense out. Looking over the months, she found a great quantity of foul weather. She had cut this out also, and put in fine weather for housewives to dry their clothes in. 108 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Yet another preface is written by the ghost of his old friend Titan Leeds. Leeds by this time was really dead, and that the world might know the letter to be the work of his ghost, the ghost made three predictions for the coming year. A certain well-known character would remain sober for nine consecu- tive hours, to the great astonishment of his friends ; William and Andrew Bradford would put out another "Leeds' Almanac" just as if Leeds were still alive ; and that John Jerman on the 17th of September would become recon- ciled to the Church of Rome. On the fulfil- ment of these predictions rested the truth of the ghost. Jerman for twenty years past had been the author of a Quaker almanac, and had for about the same time been engaged in a fierce almanac warfare with Jacob Taylor, a philomath and a printer of Friends' books. Jerman seems to have been as thick-headed as Leeds, took the same course as Leeds, repelled the charge, and the next year boasted that he had not gone over to Rome, and denounced Poor Richard as one of the false prophets of Baal. He could have done nothing more to Poor Richard's mind ; and in the preface to " Poor Richard " for 1742 the whole town read with delight the evidence of Jerman's conversion, which, despite PREFACES TO POOR RICHARD, 109 his declaring and protesting, " is, I fear," said Mr. Saunders, " too true." Two things in the elegiac verses confirmed this suspicion. The 1st of November was called All-Hallows Day. Did not this smell of Popery ? Did it in the least savor of the plain language of Friends? But the plainest evidence of all was the adora- tion of saints which Jerman confessed to be his practice in the lines — " When any trouble did me befall To my dear Mary then I would call." " Did he think the whole world was so stupid as not to notice this ? So ignorant as not to know that all Catholics paid the highest regard to the Virgin Mary ? Ah, friend John, we must allow you to be a poet, but you certainly are no Protestant. I could heartily wish your reli- gion were as good as your verses." With this the humorous prefaces cease, and their place is taken by short pieces, which, as Poor Kichard said, were likely to do more good than three hundred and seventy-five prefaces written by himself. These pieces were com- monly borrowed from standard works, and con- tain hints for growing timber, for fencing, and accounts of how people live on the shores of Hudson Bay and under the Tropic of Cancer. The humor of the almanacs is by no means confined to the prefaces. The books abound 110 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. in wit and in wit noticeable for its modern character. Now it appears in some doggerel verses at tlie heads of the pages ; now in the turn given to a maxim, as, " Never take a wife till you have a house (and a fire) to put her in ; " now in some pretended prognostication, as that for August, 1739, " Ships sailing down the Delaware Bay this month shall hear at ten leagues' distance a confused rattling noise like a swarm of hail on a cake of ice. Don't be frightened, good passengers, the sailors can in- form you that 'tis nothing but Lower County teeth in the ague. In a southerly wind you may hear it at Philadelphia." In 1748 the size of the almanac was much enlarged, and the name changed to " Poor Richa,rd Improved." After 1748 it is quite likely " Poor Richard '' was no longer written by Franklin. While still in his hands, Frank- lin contributed to its pages some of the brief pieces by which he is best known. Scattered among profitable observations, eclipses, and monthly calendars are to be found his " Hints for those that would be Rich," his " Rules of Health," his " Plan for saving one hundred thousand pounds to New Jersey," and his mas- terpiece, " Father Abraham's Address." In the first number of "Poor Richard," Franklin adopted the custom, long common MAXIMS OF POOR EI CHARD. Ill among "philomaths," of filling the spaces be- tween the remarkable days in the monthly cal- endars with maxims of thrift, saws, and pithy sayings, the purpose of which has been stated by Franklin himself. " Observing that it [" Poor Richard "] was generally read, scarce any neighborhood in the province being with- out it, I considered it as a proper vehicle for conveying instruction among the common peo- ple who bought scarcely any other book. I therefore filled all the little spaces that oc- curred between the ren^arkable days in the cal- endar with proverbial sentences, chiefly such as inculcated industry and frugality, as the means of procuring wealth and thereby securing vir- tue ; it being more difficult for a man in want to act always honestly, as, to use here one of those proverbs, ' It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.' " But the difference between such sayings as set forth by Poor Richard, and such sayings as set forth by Jerman or Leeds, is often just the difference between sense and nonsense, meaning and jibberish. It is hardly possible to read a page of Leeds without being told that " There 's knavery in the wind ; " that " The cat ate the candle ; " that " Cully, Mully, Puff appears ; " and that " The World is bad with somebody." Of this sort of folly Mr. Saunders was never 112 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. guilty. And even when Leeds did drop into sense and meaning, what he says can always be found better said by Poor Richard. " Ne- cessity," says Leeds, "is a mighty weapon." "Necessity," says Poor Richard, "never made a good bargain." " Be careful of the main chance," says Leeds, " or it will never take care of you ; " " Keep thy shop," says Poor Dick, " and thy shop will keep thee." " 'T is best," says Leeds, " to make a good use of an- other's folly." " Fools," says Poor Richard, " make feasts, and wise men eat them." " Bad hours and ill company have ruined many fine young people," says Leeds. Put into the lan- guage of Poor Richard this becomes, " The rotten apple spoils his companion." For wisdom of this kind Franklin claimed neither reading nor invention. Much he took bodily from Poor Robin and Gadbury, who in turn took them from Ray.^ Much more he 1 Ray's book, called A Collection of English Proverbs, was printed at Cambridge, 1678. A few proverbs will serve as examples. EAY. POOR RICHARD. God healeth and the physi- God heals and the doctor cian hath the thanks. takes the fee. Marry your sons when you Marry your sons when you will ; your daughters when will ; but your daughters when you can. you can. God sends meat and the Bad commentation spoils devil cooks. the best of books : So God sends meat (they say) the devil cooks. MAXIMS OF POOR RICHARD. 113 borrowed from humbler writers and dressed in his own words. But wherever it came from, there can be no doubt that it had much to do with the immense popularity of the almanac. Mr. Saunders became a personage as well known in that age as Josh Billings and Mrs. Partington in ours. He became a type, and more than one piece of wisdom he never was guilty of writing owed its currency to the words " As Poor Richard says." His sayings passed into the daily speech of the people, were quoted in sermons, were printed on the title- pages of pamphlets and used as mottoes by the newspaper moralists of the day, and con- tinued down even to the Revolution to be read with avidity. Then, in an hour of great need, a copy of one of the almanacs fell into the hands of Paul Jones of glorious memory. The story is told, that, after his famous victory in " The Ranger," he went to Brest to await the coming of the new ship so often promised him ; that month after month he was tormented by excuses and delays ; that he wrote to Franklin, to the royal family, to the King, begging that a vessel might be given him ; that, wellnigh distracted, he happened to pick up a copy of " Poor Richard," and read, " If you would have See a note by Dr. S. A. Green, in Hist. Magazine, Jan'y, 1860, pp. 16, 17, 114 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. your business done, go ; if not, send ; " that lie took the hint, hurried to Versailles, and there got an order for the purchase of the ship which he renamed, in honor of his teacher, " Bon Homme Richard." Nothing, perhaps, shows the fondness of the people for the sayings of Mr. Saunders better than the history of that famous piece in which the best of them are brought together. It came out in a day of darkness and of gloom. The French and Indian war had been raging for four years ; and success was still with the French. Washington had been driven from Fort Necessity. Braddock had perished in the woods. The venture against Niagara had failed. That against Ticonderoga had done little. The sea swarmed with French and Spanish privateers. Trade was dull. Taxes were heavy. Grumbling was everywhere. Men of all sorts bemoaned the hard times. The war ought '^C^ 236 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN for songs, anecdotes, good stories, and pieces of wit, the company were never in want. Frank- lin's contribution was sometimes an apologue, and sometimes one of the " Bagatelles," which he would read or pass round for the amusement of the company. Thus were written, for the abbes and doctors that came to the drawing- room at Auteuil, the " Visit to the Elysian Fields," the drinking-song, and the little piece on the motto, " Truth is in wine." Each of these is good. But the choice bits of humor he reserved for the chess parties and supper parties at Moulin Joli. For Madame Brillon were composed "The Story of the Whistle," " The Ephemera," " The Petition of the Left Hand to those who have the superintendence of Education," " The Handsome and Deformed Leg," " The Morals of Chess," and the famous " Dialogue between Franklin and the Gout." They need no comment. Every schoolboy knows " The Story of the Whistle." Ninety years ago Noah Webster put it in his school- reader, and few school-readers have been with- out it since. Every chess-player has read " The Morals." Every teacher ought to be converted by the wisdom of " The Petition of the Left Hand." That children are still taught to use the right hand to the exclusion of the left, is a piece of folly of which every educator should ''THE BAGATELLES.'' 237 be ashamed. " The Ephemera " is an old piece in a new form, and is of interest for that very reason. In 1735 Franklin published in the Gazette a short essay on "Human Vanity." ^ The venerable Ephemera there gives utterance to almost the same lamentation as in the later piece. But the difference bet^Yeen the two in language, in arrangement, in wit, is precisely the difference between Franklin's manner of writing in his old age and in his youth. In all editions of Franklin's works in which the " Bagatelles " are contained, there appears among them a piece entitled " The Humble Petitions presented to Madame Helvetius by her Cats." But it has no business in the col- lection. Not a line is Franklin's work. Long after he was dead and gone, his grandson found among his papers a portfolio marked " Baga- telles." In the portfolio was the " Humble Peti- tion," and when the papers were published, the " Petition " took its place among them. The Memoires of Abbe Morellet, however, now make it certain that the Abbe was the author ; that he wrote it as late as 1787 ; and that he sent it in a letter to Franklin, after the Doctor had come home to America for the last time, " as a companion piece," says Morellet, " to the ' Thanks ' you returned for the flies in 1 Pennsylvania Gazette, December 4, 1735. 238 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. your rooms, after the destruction of tlie spiders ordered by Our Lady." What became of the " Thanks " is not known. No trace of the piece exists, even among the papers at Washington. No mention is made of it by any one save Mo- rellet. Such an utter disappearance is strange, for the most trifling of his productions were greatly admired by his French friends, were handed about for perusal, and copied over and over again. They were, moreover, as the manu- scripts at Washington show, produced with much pains and labor, and, when written, were looked after with fatherly care. Not a few, indeed, were put in type and struck off on a press set up for his amusement at Passy. The press he bought ; but the type were cast in his own house from matrices made by his grandson, Benjamin Bache. One of the " Bagatelles " so printed is still preserved, and passes by the name " Numb. 705. Supplement to the Boston Independent Chroni- cle, March, 1782." It is printed in the form in which newspaper supplements were then is- sued, and contains two fictitious letters. One is from John Paul Jones to Sir Joseph Yorke, defending himself against the charge of piracy. The other is called " Extract of a Letter from Captain Gerrish, of the New England Militia." The captain states that in an expedition to the THE '' SUPPLEMENT.'^' 239 OswegatcTiie, on the St. Lawrence, a quantity of peltry was taken, and among it eight pack- ages of scalps. With the scalps was a letter to the Canadian governor from James Crauford, a trader, explaining whence they came and from whom the Indians took them. Neither of the letters is remarkable for wit, and so scarce is the Supplement that it seems quite likely that not a dozen copies were printed. Yet, scarce as the Supplement is, the pretended letter of Crauford seems to be known to men who have never read so much as the table of contents of the editions of Franklin's works, and has in our own day been printed as con- taining historical facts. Indeed, not long since a Philadelphia newspaper ^ published the letter in full, with the assurance that it was " found in the baggage of General Burgoyne after his surrender to General Gates ; " that it " was probably sent by an Indian runner to Bur- goyne, to be forwarded to the governor," and that Crauford " was probably a resident Brit- ish agent with the Senecas." During the remainder of his stay in France Franklin wrote but little. For a year his time was taken up with the framing of the prelimi- nary articles of peace, and the drafting of the i " A gift to King George." Philadelphia Times, July 3, 1887. 240 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. definitive treaty. But in 1784 he gave to tlie world his " Remarks concerning the Savages of North America," and " Information to those vrho would remove to America." Fifty years ago it was customary to ascribe to him a piece on the American custom of " whitewashing." Indeed, some editions of his works contain it. But the piece was written by Francis Hopkin- son and may be found in Carey's " American Museum." Franklin had now entered his seventy-ninth year. Old age had laid upon him many in- firmities, and he longed more earnestly than ever to be again in America. He had twice asked to be recalled, once in 1781 and again in 1782. Congress answered the first request by making him a member of the peace commis- sion. But of the second, made after the pre- liminary articles had been signed, no notice was taken till March, '1785. It was then ac- cepted with great reluctance, and Thomas Jef- ferson appointed in his stead. As he was far too feeble to go to Versailles to take leave, he wrote a farewell letter to the minister of foreign affairs, and received in re- turn some gracious words and a portrait of the king set round with diamonds. He had in- tended to go by water to the sea ; but he was not able to set out till July, and the Seine was THE VOYAGE HOME. 241 then too low. The queen, therefore, loaned hira her litter, and in this he went by easy stages to Havre. From Havre he crossed to Southampton. Even there honors awaited him. The British government would collect no duty on his goods. His old friend the Bishop of St. Asaph hastened down to bid him Godspeed, and beg him to write more of the Autobiog- raphy while on the sea. But he gave the re- quest no heed, and spent the seven weeks on the ship in writing pamphlets. One treated of navigation, of sails and cables, of ships and their make, of the Gulf Stream, of the ways of giving motion to boats, and of the care to be taken by those about to go to sea. Another dealt with the causes and cure of smoky chim- neys. The third was an account of a stove for burning pit-coal. He was still busy with these when, on the 14th of September, the ship made fast to the Market Street wharf. A discharge of cannon announced his arrival. All the church-bells rang out a merry peal, while crowds of his fel- low-citizens hurried to the wharf to meet him, and escort him to his home. The next day the general assembly welcomed him and assured him that his deeds would be set down in history to his immortal honor. The faculty of the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania, the members of the 16 242 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. Constitutional Society, the American Philosoph- ical Society, the officers of the militia, the jus- tices of the city, followed suit. The people in- stantly chose him a member of the council, and the council and the assembly made him presi- dent of the commonwealth. In the crowd that saw him, on the day he took the oath of office, preceded by constables and sub-sheriffs, high sheriff and coroners with their wands, judges and marshals and wardens, and collectors of customs and officers of the tonnage, and all the great officers of state, was a young printer from Ireland. His name was Matthew Carey, and he had when a lad of nineteen offended the Eng- lish government by announcing for publication at Dublin a pamphlet on the immediate repeal of the penal code against Roman Catholics. The government offered a reward for his arrest. His father suppressed the pamphlet and sent his boy to Paris. There for a while he copied despatches for Franklin, came back to Dublin, started a newspaper, and was soon in jail for lampooning the prime minister. When he was out he came over to Philadelphia, where in 1785 Lafayette gave him the means to found " The Pennsylvania Evening Herald and American Monitor." In the columns of that newspaper he now gave an account of what he saw, and addressed Franklin in some fulsome verses less honorable to his head than to his heart. HIS POPULARITY. 243 Franklin was now at the very height of his fame. Every ship brought him letters from the most renowned men Europe could produce. Not a traveler came to America but turned aside to see him. Pamphleteers and book- makers did him reverence in fulsome dedica- tions. Towns were proud to bear his name. The State of Franklin took its appellation from him. No newspaper mentioned him without some grateful remark. He was "the venerable Dr. Franklin," "the revered patriot Dr. Frank- lin," " our illustrious countrj^man and friend of man," "the father of American independence." To his house came regularly the Philosophical Society, the Abolition Society, the Society for Political Education. The purpose of this society seems to have been to discuss theories of government, and to listen to long papers on the evils of banks, on the blessings of paper money, on the best way to restore the ruined commerce of America. More than one of these papers found its way into print, and it is not unlikely that Franklin himself entertained the members by reading to them from time to time the "Retort Courteous," his remarks on " Sending Felons to America," and his likeness of the Anti- federalists to the Jews. The paper on the Felons is in one of the 244 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. Pennsylvania Gazettes for 1786. He observed that the British public were growing clamorous on the subject of the debts due their mer- chants before the war. But there was a debt of long standing about which nothing was said, and which might now be paid. Everybody remembered the time when the mother country, as a mark of paternal tenderness, emptied her gaols into America for "the better peopling," as she termed it, of the colonies. America was therefore much in debt on that account; and as Great Britain was eager for a settlement of old accounts, this was a good one to begin with. Let every English ship that comes to our shores be forbidden to land her goods till the master gave bonds to carry back one felon for every fifty tons of burden. These remittances could easily be made,' for the felons she had planted had increased most amazingly. The " Retort Courteous " also treats of the debts. The clamor which had so long been going the rounds of the British press had now been taken up by the ministry, and the Ameri- cans made to understand that the posts along the frontier would not be given up till the debts due the British were paid. The justness of this conduct is coolly and honestly examined in the " Retort." The substance of the paper is, that, having brought America, by their own THE ''RETORT COURTEOUS:^ 245 wicked acts, to the yery brink of ruin, they now cry out that old scores are not settled. Gen- eral Gage takes possession of Boston, shuts the gates, cuts off communication with the coun- try, brings the people to the verge of starva- tion, and then tells them if they will deliver up their arms they may leave with their families and their goods. The arms are given up, and they are then told that " goods " mean chairs, tables, beds, but not merchandise. Merchant goods he seizes, and the cry at once goes up, " Those Boston people do not pay their debts." One act of Parliament shuts the port of Boston; another destroys the New England fishery ; a British army harries the country, burns Falmouth and Charlestown, Fairfield and New London ; and the whole world is told, " Those knavish Americans will not pay us." The humane Dr. Johnson, in his " Taxation no Tyranny," suggests that the slaves be ex- cited to rise, cut the throats of their masters, and come to the British army. The thing is done, and the planters of Virginia and the Carolinas lose thirty thousand of their laboring people, and are in turn denounced as men who do not pay their debts. War having put a stop to the shipment of tobacco, the crops of several years are piled up in the inspecting ware- houses, and in the private stores of the Virginia 246 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, planters. Then comes Arnold, Phillips, and Cornwallis, and the British troops. The tobacco is burned, and the British merchants, to whom it might have been sent in payment of debt, exclaim, " Those damned Virginians ! why don't they pay their debts?" The seventh article of the treaty sets forth that the king's troops in leaving America should take no negroes with them. Guy Carleton goes off with several hundred. The treaty is thus broken almost as soon as made. But why should England keep a treaty when the Americans do not pay their debts? During 1787 he wrote nothing. He was still president of the Commonwealth of Pennsyl- vania. He was a delegate to the convention that framed the Constitution, and the duties of the two posts left no time for literature. In 1788 he drew a comparison of the conduct of the ancient Jews and the An ti- federalists in the United States of America. In 1789 came a "Plea for improving the Condition of Free Blacks;" an "Address to the Public from the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting Abolition of Slavery ; " and " An Account of the Su- premest Court of Judicature in Pennsylvania, namely, the Court of the Press." The press for two years past had been grow- ing most abusive. Men who two years before LIBERTY OF THE PRESS. 247 had been held up as models of every repub- lican virtue had, since the Constitution was framed, been blackened, named rogue or villain, and fairly dragged in the mire. Washington had been called by the Anti-federalists a fool by nature. The same party had described Frank- lin a fool from old age. To this he replied good-naturedly in a letter proposing that to the liberty of the press should be added the more ancient liberty of the cudgel. In a hu- morous way he reviewed the power of the court, the practice of the court, the foundation of its authority, by whom it was commissioned, and the checks proper to be set up against the bad use of its powers. The authority came from the article in the State Constitution which established the liberty of the press, something every Pennsylvanian was ready to die for, but which very few understood. To him the liberty of the press seemed like the liberty of the press felons had in England ; that is, the liberty of being pressed to death or hanged. If, as many thought, liberty of the press meant the liberty of abusing each other, he would gladly give up his share of the liberty of abusing others for the privilege of not being abused himself. A great deal had been said of late about the needs, of checks on the powers of the Constitution. For like reasons it might be well to put a check on 248 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. the powers of the court of the press, and his proposition was, leave the liberty of the press untouched, but let the liberty of the cudgel go with it pari passu. Then if a writer attacked you, and put his name to the charge, you could go to him just as openly and break his head. Should he take refuge behind the printer, and you knew who he was, you could waylay him some dark night, come up behind and soundly drub him. This might cause breaches of the peace. Then let the legislators take up both liberties, that of the cudgel and that of the press, and by law fix their exact limits. The Doctor had now become a great sufferer. The gout had long tormented him sorely. For a year past the stone had kept him much in bed, racked with pain, which he took large doses of laudanum to allay. It was during a brief respite from these attacks that he wrote and sent off to the "Federal Gazette" his last piece. Both the style and the matter make it worthy to close so long and so splendid a career. The house of representatives had, off and on, for a month past, been considering some pe- titions on slavery. Two came from the yearly meetings of the Quakers, and prayed that the slave trade might be suppressed. One written and signed by Franklin came from the Penn- sylvania Abolition Society, and prayed that EI8 DEATH. 249 slavery might be suppressed. The house sent them all to a committee; the committee made a report, and on that report James Jackson, of Georgia, made a violent pro-slavery speech. Franklin read it with just contempt, and turned it into ridicule. He pretended to have read in an old book called " Martin's Account of his [ Consulship" a very similar speech on a very sim- ilar petition. The speaker was Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim, a member of the Divan of Algiers, and the occasion a petition of the sect of Erika or Purists, praying that the practice of enslav- ing Christians might be stopped. The speech of Ibrahim against granting the prayer is a fine parody of that of Jackson, and worthy of Franklin in his best days. But his best days were gone. The stone be- came more painful than ever. Early in April, pleurisy attacked him ; an abscess of the lungs followed, and on the night of April 17, 1790, he passed quietly away. His body, followed by a great crowd of citizens, was laid by that of his wife in the yard of Christ Church. For a time the mourning was general. The news- papers appeared with inverted column rules. Congress wore a black badge for thirty days. But in France the demonstration was greater still. The National Assembly put on mourn- 250 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. ing. The city of Passy gave his name to a street. He was lauded by Fauchet before the Commune of Paris; by Condorcet before the Academie des Sciences ; by Rochefoucauld Liancourt before the Society of '89. CHAPTER IX. THE AIJTOBIOGKAPHY. No sooner was the great man dead than his life and works fell a prey to biographers and editors. For this he was himself to blame. Long before he died, he saw many of his letters and pieces published and republished, in maga- zines and newspapers, both at home and abroad. He well knew that, do what he might, they would live. Yet he would not arrange and publish them himself, nor gather them with a view to being published by his executors. The great discoveries with which his name was joined, the events in which he had borne so striking a part, made his life of no common in- terest to his countrymen. Yet it was only by pestering that he was led to go on with an Autobiography begun with difl&dence, and never brought to a close. So much as now makes the five opening chapters was written during a visit to the Bishop of St. Asaph, at Twyford, in 1771. The visit over, the writing stopped, and the 252 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, manuscript was left to begin a career more strange than any in the history of literature. When Franklin set out for Paris in 1776, he left his papers in the care of his friend Jo- seph Galloway. Galloway carried the trunk containing thein to his home in Bucks County, and placed it in an outhouse that served as an office, turned loyalist, and hurried to the army of Clinton at New York. Abandoned thus to the care of his wife, his property fell a prey to the vicissitudes of war. Pennsylvania confis- cated the estate. The British raided the house, smashed the trunk, and scattered the papers of Franklin over the floor, where they lay for months. A few were picked up by Benjamin Bache, and in time a bundle of them fell into the hands of Abel James, a Quaker, and an ardent admirer and warm friend of Franklin. James found the packet to consist of a quantity of notes, and twenty sheets of closely written manuscript. It was that part of the Autobi- ography which had been written at Twyford in 1771. Delighted that such a treasure should have come in his way, James made a careful copy and sent it in 1782 to Franklin at Passy. With it went an urgent letter begging him to go on with so profitable and pleasing a work. The warmth of the appeal, the sight of the fragment long thought lost, were not without THE MANUSCRIPT. 253 effect upon him. His labor had not been wast- ed. A purpose once abandoned might yet be accomplished. He hesitated, sent both letter and manuscript to his friend B. Vaughan, and from Vaughan, in 1783, came back a still more urgent entreaty to go on. Franklin was then deep in affairs of state. Peace negotiations were on foot. The treaty was being framed. He was too busy making the history of his country to find time to write the history of his life. But in 1784 he under- took the task, and worked with diligence till he went home in 1785, when he once more put the work aside. But his friends would not suffer him to abandon it. Again and again Benjamin Vaughan and M. le Veillard besought him to go on. Again and again he promised and excused himself. His papers were in disorder. His office left him no time. He would go on with the work when the Constitutional Convention rose. But when it rose he was suffering too much from the stone. At last, in 1788, the promise was kept. The Autobiography was brought down to 1757, and a fair copy sent to Dr. Price and Benjamin Vaughan. The original went to M. le Veillard and Rochefoucauld-Liancourt at Paris. Thus a second time the manuscript left the author, and a second time was doomed to a series of strange adventures. 254 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. Hardly were the copies safe in Europe wlien Franklin died. His books and papers passed by will to his grandson, and the work of editing began. With a promptness he never showed again in the whole course of his career, Temple Franklin wrote at once to M. le Veillard, told him of the disposition made of the papers, claimed the manuscript of the Autobiography, asked him to show it to no one unless some eulogist appointed by the Academie, and bade him hold it, sealed in an envelope, addressed to the owner. The letter bears date May 22, 1790. But long before it was read at Passy, the Eighty-nine Society of Paris had listened with delight to a fulsome eulogy of Franklin pronounced by Rochefoucauld. The speaker assured the hearers that Franklin had written his memoirs ; that the manuscript was then in France, and that it should be published the moment any additions that might have been made to it came over from America. He has been accused of keeping his word ; for in March, 1791, " Memoirs de la vie privee de Benjamin Franklin, Merits par lui-m^me, et adresses a son fils. Suivis d'un precis histo- riques de sa Vie politique, et de plusieurs Pieces relatives a ce Pere de la Liberte," came out at Paris. Buisson was the publisher. But who the translator was, how he got the manuscript, TEE FRENCH EDITION OF 1791. 255 and who owned it, can never be known. He would not, the editor said in the preface, give any account of the way the original manuscript came into his possession. He had it. It was in English. If any critic chose to disbelieve it, let him leave his name with Buisson, book- seller. Rue Hautefeuille No. 20, and when four hundred subscribers were secured the memoirs should be published in English. The manu- script in his possession, it was true, came down no further than 1731. Doubtless the family of Franklin would soon give his memoirs to the world in a more completed form. But the edi- tor was sure the heirs of the great man could never be persuaded to give the history of his early years. Their vanity would not permit it. Should they, as he feared, suppress this first part of the memoirs in their edition, the world at least would be obliged to him for having preserved it. Scarcely was the book out when M. le Veil- lard hastened to disavow it. On March 21, 1791, he wrote a long note to the " Journal de Paris." He did not know, he declared, how the translator got his copy. He had no part in the act. What had appeared was not a third of what he had, which came down to 1757. That Veillard told the truth is not to be doubted. It is to his efforts more than to any 256 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. one else that we owe the existence of the Auto- biography. He gave Franklin no peace till it was written, and, having obtained the manu- script, nothing could have induced him to pub- lish it in so bad a form. The Buisson trans- lation is shamefully done. We have " misse Eead" and "mistriss Godfrey," but "M. Den- ham, M. Grace," and '' Rev. M. George White- Field." Cooper's Creek becomes " Sooper's Creek," Edinburgh is " Edinbourg," " in the Grub-street ballad style " is rendered " des chansons d'avengles." When compared with the original manuscript as given in Mr. John Bigelow's edition, dates are found to be want- ing, names suppressed, names of cities inserted, and whole paragraphs wanting. While these things were taking place at Paris, Temple Franklin was gathering his grandfather's papers at Philadelphia. That none might escape him, he thrice inserted this advertisement in his cousin's newspaper : "DE. FRANKLIN'S PAPERS. " Towards the end of the year 1776, the late Dr. Franklin, on his departure for Europe, for greater security deposited a large chest, containing his pa- pers and manuscripts, with Mr. Joseph Galloway, at his place in Bucks County, in Pennsylvania. The same was left there by Mr. Galloway when he THE CALL FOR THE PAPERS. 257 quitted his habitation, and was, it is said, broke open by persons unknown, and many of the papers taken away and dispersed in the neighborhood. " Several of the most valuable of these papers have since been recovered ; but there are still some miss- ing, among which are a few of the Doctor's Letter Books and a manuscript in four or five volumes folio, on Finance, Commerce, and Manufactures. The sub- scriber, to whom Dr. Franklin bequeathed all his pa- pers and manuscripts, and who is preparing to give his works to the public, takes this method of inform- ing those who may have knowledge of any of the above mentioned papers, and will communicate the same to him so that he may thereby be enabled to re- cover any of them, or who may themselves procure any of them and deliver them to him, shall be thankfully and generously rewarded and no questions asked. He likewise requests those persons who may have any letters or other writings of Dr. Franklin that may be deemed worthy the public eye, to be so kind as to forward them as early as possible, that they may be inserted in the Doctor's Works. " Those, also, who may have any books or maps belonging to the library of the late Dr. Franklin, are desired to return them without delay, to the sub- scriber, who is about to embark for Europe. "W. T. Franklin." What response was made to his call is not known. That some of the letter -books and papers were sent back is quite likely, and with 258 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. these, towards the close of 1790, Temple Franklm hurried over to London. He was just in time. For no sooner did the Buisson edition come out at Paris than two separate transla- tions were begun at London. By positive as- surances that he was about to publish tbe Au- tobiography complete, the translations were put off for two years. In 1793 both were placed on the market. One bears the imprint of J. Parsons, is a lit- eral translation of Buisson 's edition, and was done by a man as ignorant of French as the French translator was of English. Franklin called one of his early ballads " The Light- house Tragedy." The Frenchman rendered this "La Tragedie du Phare;" and this, in the English copy, is given as " The Tragedy of Pharaoh." What Franklin called a swimming- school becomes a " school of natation." His ex- pression '' Grub-street ballad style " is softened into "blind men's ditties." There are the same blanks, the same errors, the same putting-in and leaving-out of words, and the same shorten- ing of paragraphs, as in the French edition. The book most happily was never reprinted. The reason for this was the issue, at the same time, of a far better translation by Frank- lin's old friend Richard Price. This was made in 1791. But Price soon followed Franklin to THE PRICE EDITION OF 1793. 259 the grave, and to please the grandson the trans- lation was held back. The preface declares that the basis of the work was the Paris edi- tion of 1791. A letter from Price asserts that he has read the Autobiography as far as com- plete, and the character of the book shows that he had. Now, for the first time, the missing dates are given, the errors corrected, and the English made to resemble the English used by Franklin. But the Autobiography ends at 1731. It is safe, therefore, to believe that Temple Franklin had recalled the copy sent to Mr. Vaughan, and that he would not let Dr. Price see it. Certain it is that the Doctor found him- self forced to patch out the life with such frag- ments of biography as he could get, and that he used for this purpose a sketch by Henry Stuber, of Philadelphia. S tuber was a young man of great promise. Before he was sixteen he was graduated at the University of Pennsylvania, began the study of medicine, took his degree, and was deep in the study of law when death cut short his career. Nor were his friends the only ones who watched him with interest. The public also expected much from him, for he had is- sued proposals for publishing a translation of Shoepp's " Travels in America," a work that never has been, but richly deserves to be, trans- 260 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. lated, and had become a writer for the " Co- lumbian Magazine." His contribution to the Magazine consisted of a Life of Franklin, in the numbers for June, July, September, October, November, 1790, and February, March, May, and June, 1791. The performance is in no wise remarkable, but bears strong evidence that Stuber was suffered to at least read over the copy of the Autobiography in Temple Frank- lin's keeping. Many of the statements in the Life can be accounted for in no other way. Up to this time only so much of the Auto- biography had been made public as Franklin wrote at Twyford in 1771. But in 1798 a new edition was issued at Paris, with much of the second part composed in 1784 at Passy. Even this encroachment on his literary prop- erty could not make Temple Franklin bestir himself. Indeed, twenty years were yet to go by before he would make good his promise. Meantime book-makers, reviewers, and news- paper critics, weary of delay, began to abuse him. To these men his conduct was perfectly clear. He had sold himself to the British gov- ernment. These charges first take shape in the early part of the present century, in the ''National Intelligencer," a Jeffersonian newspaper pub- lished in the city of Washington. The editor TEMPLE FRANKLIN ACCUSED OF FRAUD. 261 declared that the public were tired with waiting for the appearance of Dr. Franklin's works ; that something was wrong ; that a rumor was current that the papers of the great man would never be published ; and called on his descend- ants to explain. No explanation was made, and in 1804 the " Nation^il Intelligencer " re- peated the charge. Silence, he declared, had given the subject increased weight. More than eight years before, Benjamin Franklin Bache had often declared that an edition was surely coming out at the same time in Europe and America. Why had it not come? Some said because Mr. Temple Franklin had sold his copyright to Dilby, a London bookseller, who in turn had sold it for a greater sum to the British government, in order that the papers might be suppressed. The effect of this was to bring out the Duane edition. Duane was owner of the "Aurora," and husband to the widow of Benjamin Frank- lin Bache, and had thus come into possession of a number of books and papers Temple Franklin had not secured. These he determined to pub- lish, and in 1805 announced in the " Aurora" that subscriptions would be received for a three- volume edition of Dr. Franklin's works. The publication began in 1808, and went on till 1818, when, instead of three, six volumes had been issued. 262 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. The charge of fraud, once started, crossed the Atlantic, and next appears in 1806 in the preface to a three-volume edition of Franklin's works, edited by Benjamin Vaughan at London. Vaughan declares, that when Temple Franklin thought his labor done, he offered the manu- script to the London printers, but that his terms were high, that the printers demurred, and that nothing more was heard of the offer. " The reason was plain. The proprietor, it seems, had found a bidder of a different description in some emissary of government, whose object was to withhold the manuscripts from the world, not to benefit it by their publication, and they either passed into other hands, or the person to whom they were bequeathed received a remuneration for suppressing them." The preface is dated April 7, 1806. The charge which it contains was sifted, denied, and pro- nounced foolish by the " Edinburg Review " for the July following. But it had meanwhile re- crossed the Atlantic, and in September, 1806, appeared in the "American Citizen," a news- paper published by James Cheetham at New York. " William Temple Franklin," says the writ- er, " without shame and without remorse, mean and mercenary, has sold the sacred deposit committed to his care by Dr. Franklin to the TEMPLE FRANKLIN ACCUSED OF FRAUD. 263 British govern ment. Franklin's works are lost to the world forever." And now the charge went over to France, and was taken up by "The Argus, or London Review," a journal published at Paris, March 28, 180T. To this, Temple Franklin had the folly to reply. The editor had the courtesy to declare the reply a full and satisfactory answer to the slander, and the matter stood just where it did in the beginning. Men went on asserting and believ- ing it, and it was as late as 1829 printed, with a vast deal more of similar nonsense, in Jeffer- son's "Anas." The truth seems to be this: Temple Frank- lin did the best he could, and the best he could do was worthless. He was fussy, he was slow, he was cursed with the dreadful curse of put- ting off. What the duty of an editor was, he never knew. His time was squandered in sort- ing, arranging and rearranging, reducing here, adding on there, cutting a piece from one place to paste it on at another, till the manuscript ' was a mixture of paper, paste, and pins; till the work was neither his own nor his grand- father's. When he could stand it no longer, Colburn, the publisher, persuaded Temple Franklin to have a clerk, and sent him as such a man who knew something of editing. Then the labor 264 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. went on more rapidly till a new trouble arose. Colburn would risk but six volumes. There was manuscript enough to make ten, and Franklin insisted that all should be printed. It was finally settled that six should be issued, should be looked on as the first installment, and if all went well the rest should follow. Thus in 1817, twenty-seven years after Temple be- gan his labors, the first genuine edition of his grandfather's writings came forth from the press. The six octavo volumes were issued from 1817 to 1819. But a three-volume quarto edition appeared in 1818. And now the used and the unused papers were cast into an old chest, and left in the vaults of the banking house of Herries, Farquhar & Co., St. James Street, London, while Franklin went over to Paris. There he lived, married, and died. His wife, as executrix, administered on his estate, and on September 23, 1823, took the trunk from the vaults of the banker, and for seventeen years the Franklin manuscripts again were lost to history. Colburn seemed to care nothing about them. Sparks was unable to find them. Nor were they found till 1840, when they were discovered done up in loose bundles on the top shelf of a tailor-shop in St. James. The shop was in the building where Temple Franklin had lodged. The finder was once a THE FRANKLIN PAPERS AT WASHINGTON. 265 fellow-lodger, and by right of discovery now claimed them as his own. Too lazy to read them, he supposed them merely the originals of what was already in print, and offered them, as such, to the British Museum j to Lord Pal- merston, to a long succession of American minis- ters to England. But nobody wanted them till Abbott Lawrence sent him to Mr. Henry Ste- vens, who bought them in 185L Their true character then came out. Many indeed had been printed. But among them were the letter-books and manuscripts once be- lieved to be lost. By Mr. Stevens they were sorted, repaired, arranged ; the pins were taken out ; the pasted pieces were soaked apart, the manuscripts restored to the state in which Ben- jamin Franklin left them, and, bound in Bed- ford's best manner, they were in 1882 sold to the United States government for $35,000. To describe the collection is impossible. In it are the Craven Street letter-book ; the Hart- ley correspondence ; the letters concerning the Hutchinson Papers ; the records of the Ameri- can legation at Paris; the correspondence of the commissioners to negotiate for peace ; and the original manuscripts of the essays, squibs, and bagatelles. There, too, in the original, is the famous letter to Strahan ; the petition of tlie Congress of 1774 to the King; Franklin's 266 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. " Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion ;" and two bagatelles on "Perfumes," and "Choice of a Mistress," which are unhappily too indecent to print. The manuscript of the Autobiogra- phy is not there. The tradition runs that when M. le Veillard lost his head during the Reign of Terror, the copy given to him by Doctor Franklin passed to his widow; that Temple Franklin asked it from her, that she demurred, and that he gave her in exchange the original sheets in his pos- session. Madame le Veillard gave them in turn to her daughter, who bequeathed them to her cousin, who left them to her grandson, who made them over in 1867 to Mr. John Bigelow, then minister from the United States to France. Mr. Bigelow at once put out a new edition of the Autobiography, and the world knew for the first time that what it had for fifty years been reading as the Life of Franklin was garbled and incomplete. Temple Franklin traded manu- scripts with Madame le Veillard that he might get a clean copy for the printer. But when the clean copy which he published is compared with the unclean copy which he gave away, they are found to be very different. More than twelve hundred separate and distinct changes, says Mr. Bigelow, have been made in the text. The last eight pages of the manuscript were not printed. CHANGES IN THE MANUSCRIPT. 267 As to the nature of these changes little need be said. They are usually Temple Franklin's Latin words for Benjamin Franklin's Anglo- Saxon. They remind us of the language of those finished writers for the press who can never call a fire anything but a conflagration, nor a crowd anything but a vast concourse, and who dare not use the same word twice on the same page. Thus it is that in the Temple Franklin edition "notion" has become "pre- tence," that "night coming on" has become "night approaching," that "a very large one" has become " a considerable one," that " treated me" has become " received me"; that "got a naughty girl with child " has become " had an intrigue with a girl of bad character " ; that " very oddly " has been turned into " a very ex- traordinary manner." But the changes did not stop here. The coarseness of the grandfather was very shocking to the grandson, and " guz- zlers of beer" is made "drinkers of beer," "footed it to London" becomes "walked to London," " Keimer stared like a pig poisoned " is made to give way to " Keimer stared with astonishment." Such changes are perhaps of small account, yet they cannot be read without a feeling of contempt for the man who made them, and a feeling of thankfulness to the man who pointed 268 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. them out. That an editor should use judgment in the choice of what he publishes, is true ; but that he should have the face to change one word of the text made public, is something that can- not be too strongly denounced. Mr. Stevens maintains that Franklin wrote every one of them with his own hand. It is out of the question. It is impossible to believe that Franklin, who formed his style by a study of the Spectator, ever hesitated to use plain English. Nor would Mr. Stevens have believed it had he been owner of the Le Veillard manuscript. Whoever, therefore, would read the Autobi- ography as it was written must go to the Bige- low edition. There, too, is kept the original spelling. The work richly deserves a reading. Since the day whereon it was first made public, innumerable books written by our countrymen have come into fashion and gone out of fashion and all but disappeared. Hardly a man whose name adorns the American literature of the first half of the century but saw his books pass through a period of neglect. Irving did, and Cooper, and Halleck, and Willis, and Haw- thorne, and many more. But the Autobiogra- phy of Franklin has suffered no neglect. With the great mass of our people it has always been popular, and has in the United States alone been republished fifty-one times. What is bet- THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 269 ter, the people read it. Such records as can be had from public libraries all over the country reveal the fact that the book is read at each of them on an average of once a month. At some, v^here the humblest and least educated come, its popularity is amaz- ing. Indeed, at the Cooper Union Library in New York, the Autobiography, during 1885, vras called for more than four hundred times, and the Life by Mr. Parton upwards of one thousand. If it be put with books of j its kind, and judged as an autobiography, it is beyond doubt the very best. If it be treated as a piece of writing and judged as literature, it must be pronounced the equal of Robinson Crusoe, one of the few everlasting books in the English language. In the Philadelphia high school, a part of it is used as a text-book. Save " Poor Richard," no other piece of Franklin's is so widely ad- mired, and on these tv70 most unquestionably rest his literary fame. Of the pieces which make his collected Works, there is little to be said. The range of sub- jects is wonderfully wide. They abound in hard common sense and wit. The style is de- lightful, and the language good plain English. But they were not collected and arranged by himself, and his fame has suffered accordingly. 270 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. No man, unless it be Thomas Carlyle, has ever been so harshly treated by editors and biographers. Acting under the belief that every scrap and line of Franklin's writing ought to be kept, they have been most dili- gent collectors. Buisson, Doctor Price, and the compiler of Robinson's edition, published whatever came to hand. Temple Franklin published everything his publisher could be induced to take. Sparks labored hard to let nothing escape him. Edi- tors since Sparks have, in their eagerness, had the face to ascribe to Franklin pieces Francis Hopkinson is well known to have written. The result is a collection of " Essays," " Notions," " Remarks," " Thoughts," *' Observations," " Letters," no human being will now read un- less forced to, which he will then consider a sore trial, and which cannot be called by any other name than tiresome. Franklin reads a pamphlet on impressing seamen, and jots down along the margin a few remarks in pencil. They were never intended to be put in print. They were never intended to be seen by any one save himself. They were perhaps the crude thoughts of the moment, and may, for all the reader knows, have never recurred to him again. But his editor spies them, and thrusts them into his collected writings. Yet not one of THE COLLECTED WRITINGS. 271 them is more apt, or more profound, or more sagacious, than could be made by any well- educated lad of twenty. Some notions on trade and merchants, some thoughts on the Sugar Islands, some reflections on coin, are found among his papers, or are communi- cated in a letter to a friend. Not one of them is more remarkable than may be heard any day in a street-car, or read any morning on the editorial page of a newspaper. Yet these too are given a place in the collected writings. With all this diligence, however, the editors have suffered some of his best pieces to escape them. No one has gathered the Dogood Papers, nor the sketches written for the Courant, nor the essays in the Pennsylvania Gazette, nor the Prefaces and Prognostications of Poor Richard. Mr. Parton and Mr. Bigelow alone have re- printed Polly Baker's Speech. It is to be hoped that some day, not far in the future, this will be corrected, and that to the fif^y editions of his works in English will be added one more con- taining such of his writings as give him a place in the goodly company of American men of letters. Out of such a collection will be left the notes which he jotted down on the margins of his pamphlets; the books and pamphlets he distinctly declares he did not write; all 272 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. his pieces on political economy ; everything written to affect public opinion, and which, to be understood, must now be annotated and ex- plained. In that collection will surely be found the Speech of Miss Poll}^ Baker before a Court of Judicature in New England ; The Witch Trial at Mount Holly ; Advice to a Young Tradesman ; Father Abraham's Speech ; Remarks concerning the Savages of North America ; the Dialogue with the Gout ; The Ephemera ; the Petition of the Left Hand ; the pretended chapter from Martin's Account of his Consulship; a few of the best essays from the Gazette ; the prefaces from the Almanac; the Parables; the Whistle, and the A utobiogr aphy . And yet, when this is done, the place to be allotted Franklin among American men of letters is hard to determine. He founded no school of literature. He gave no impetus to letters. He put his name to no great work of history, of poetry, of fiction. Till after his day, no such thing as American literature ex- isted. To place him, with respect to Irving, Bryant, Cooper, Prescott, and the host of great men that came after him, is impossible. There is no common ground of comparison. Unlike them, he never wrote for literary fame. Had he cared for such fame, he would not have HIS PLACE IN LITERATURE. 273 permitted friends and strangers to gather and edit his writings during his lifetime ; he wouhl not have suffered death to overtake him when the Autobiography was but half done ; he would not have made it an invariable rule to never send anything to the press over his own name. His place is among that giant race of pamphleteers and essayists most of whom went before, but a few of whom came immediately after, the war for independence. And among them he is easily first. Their merit lies in what* they said: the merit of Franklin lies not only in what he said, but in the way in which he said it. In his youth he was an imitator of Addison, and of all the countless host of imitators he is nearest the masterT His wit is as keen, his humor is as gentle, his fancy is as light and playful, his style is sometimes better. Addison has drawn no characters more lifelike than Alice Addertongue, and Anthony Afterwit, and Celia Single, and Patience Teacroft. Richard Saunders and his wife Bridget, and the " clean old man," Father Abraham, are as well done as the " Spectator." To compare any of these, save " Poor Richard," with the short-faced gentleman and his friend. Sir Roger and Will Wimble, would be unjust to Franklin. But when they are compared with Will Serene and Ralph 274 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. Simple, and Mary Tuesday and Will Fashion, or any sketched and dismissed in a single paper, it must be allowed that in Franklin the illus- trious Englishman has his match. It should seem, therefore, that the essays of Franklin should be as well known. That they are not is due to the fact that they are so few in number, and that they were never collected till the reading public had begun to outgrow the taste for such writings, and when it would have been hard even for Addison to have made much of a reputation by the " Spectator." That they are so few is to be ascribed to his versa- tility and his sloth. He could do so many things that to do one thing long was impossi- ble. A pamphlet that could be written in the heat of the moment ; a little essay or a baga- telle that could be finished at one sitting, and trimmed and polished at a couple more, was about all he had the patience and the industry to accomplish. He finished nothing. Neither vanity nor persuasion could make him complete the Autobiography. The Dogood Papers he dropped as suddenly as they began. The *' Busybody" he abandoned to his friend Breint- nal. Then he set up a printing-house, a news- paper, and an almanac, and created Mr. Rich- ard Saunders. But he soon grew weary of *' Poor Richard," and dropped him ; grew tired 1 HIS VERSATILITY. 275 of business, and though the printing-house was immensely profitable, sold it that time might be had for the study of electricity. From elec- tricity he was drawn off to politics, and from politics went back to electricity, made discov- eries and wrote essays so important that he became world-famous; that the Royal Society elected him to membership ; that the University of St. Andrews bestowed on him the title of Doctor, by which he has ever since been known. Success so marked, it should seem, would have kept him faithful to his studies of science. But lie was soon again deep in politics, was held there for years by circumstances he could not control, and made for himself so great a name as a diplomatist and politician, that as such he is now chiefly remembered. During these years he still continued to write, and produced a mass of political literature, effective in its day but now forgotten. These writings have none of the cool reason- ing of the " Farmer's Letters " ; none of the stirring appeals of " Common Sense " and the " Crisis." Their characteristics are brevity and humor. Grave as the quarrel was, he looked upon it as he looked upon the small bickerings and petty acts of tyranny of neighbors and townsmen, and, as a humorist, held up the folly and injustice of England's 276 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. behavior to laughter and to scorn. Nothing, perhaps, so finely illustrates this tendency to be at all times the laughing philosopher, as his draught of an address to be put forth by Wash- ington on taking command of the army. The alliance made and the treaty signed, he once more went back to general essay writing, and to the end of his life continued to produce pieces with the old traits of brevity and wit. If the writings of his youth were Addisonian, those of his old age were thoroughly French. When his mind was racked with the " Specta- tor," he wrote " Silence Dogood," and the " Busybody," and " Patience Teacroft." When he had lived some years at Passy, he wrote the " Bagatelles." Even among them there is a choice ; yet they all have the brightness, the spirit and vivacity, of the best French writing of that day. His last piece, the speech in the " Divesee of Algiers," is not surpassed by any of the pleasantries of Arbuthnot or Swift. Except the Bagatelles, which he wrote in ^is old age for the amusement of his friends, he produced little which did not serve an imme- diate and practical purpose, and which was not expressed in the plainest and clearest English. A metaphor, a simile, a figure of speech of any kind, is rarely to be met with. The character- istics of his writings are, short sentences made HIS PHILOSOPHY. 277 up of short words, great brevity, great clear- ness, great force, good-humor, apt stories, pointed allusions, hard common sense, and a wonderful show of knowledge of the practical art of living. Knowledge of life he had in the highest degree. He knew the world ; he knew men and the ways of men as few have known them. His remarks on political economy, on general politics, on morality, are often rash and sometimes foolish. But whatever he has said on domestic economy, or thrift, is sound and striking. No other writer has left so many just and original observations on success in life. No other writer has pointed out so clearly the way to obtain the greatest amount of comfort out of life. What Solomon did for the spiritual man that did Franklin for the earthly man. The Book of Proverbs is a collection of receipts for laying up treasure in heaven. '' Poor Richard " is a collection of receipts for laying up trea- sure on earth. VHis philosophy was the philosophy of the useful, — the philosophy whose aim it is to in- crease the power, to ameliorate the condition, to supply the vulgar wants, of mankind. It was for them that he started libraries ; that he founded schools and hospitals ; that he invented stoves; that he discovered a cure for smoky chimneys; that he put up lightning-rods ; that 278 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. he improved the post-office ; that he introduced the basket-willow ; that he first made known the merits of plaster-of-paris as a manure ; that he wrote " Poor Richard " ; that he drew up the Albany Plan of Union. For this it is now the fashion to reproach him as the teacher of a candle-end-saving philosoph}^ in which morality has no place. The reproach, if it be one, is just. Morality he never taught, and he was not fit to teach it. Nothing in his whole career is more to be lamented than that a man of parts so great should, long after he had passed middle life, continue to writ6 pieces so filth}^ that no editor has ever had the hardihood to print them. The substance of all he ever wrote is. Be honest, be truthful, be diligent in your calling ; not because of the injunctions " Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor ; " but because honesty is the best policy ; because in the long run idle- ness, knavery, wastefulness, lying, and fraud do not pay. Get rich, make money, as a matter of policy, if nothing more, because, as Poor Richard says, it is hard for an empty sack to stand upright. Low as such a motive may seem from a moral standpoint, it is, from a worldly stand- point, sound and good. Every man whose life HIS ORTHOGRAPHY. 279 the world calls successful has been actuated by it, and Franklin is no exception. What he taught he practiced. His life is a splendid illustration of what may be done by a never- flagging adherence to the maxims of Poor Kichard. The language in which he put his thoughts was plain and vigorous English. This is all the more praiseworthy as most American writers of his day used a vicious Johnsonese. But he spelled English as if it were his, and not the king's. In all his manuscripts, "through" is " thro'," "surf" is " surff," "job" is "jobb," "extreme" is "extream." Sometimes such words as " public," " panic," " music," ^ end with a k and sometimes they do not. As might be expected of a man self- educated and so practical, he firmly believed in phonetic spelling, made a system of his own, and invented a quantity of hieroglyphics that look very much like bastard type, to represent his peculiar alphabet. In it he had neither ^, nor g, nor x^ nor y, nor w ; no letter which did not stand for a distinct sound, and no distinct sound which did not have a letter. To his reformed spelling he made but one convert, and she, by dint of much labor, learned to read it with some fluency and write it with some ease. Towards the end of his days he was himself converted to a like system of Noah Webster. 280 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. When we turn from Franklin's labored pieces to his letters, we find that they, too, are worthy of notice. They abound in worldly wisdom, in shrewd observations, in good-humor, good stories, good sense, all set forth in plain Eng- lish and in an easy, flowing style. In them is displayed to perfection the independence of thought, the sagacity, the direct and simple reasoning, the happy faculty of illustration by homely objects and parallel cases; that in- Yincible self-control which neither obstinacy, nor stupidity, nor duplicity, nor wearisome delay could ever break down; and, what is better than all, the fearless truthfulness so characteristic of the man. Where all are good, to choose is hard. But it is idle to ex- pect that the readers of our time will peruse the stout volumes into which Mr. Sparks has gathered a part of them. It may therefore be well to name a few which may be taken as samples of all, and these few are : the letter on the habits and treatment of the aged ; that on early marriages ; the account of his journey to Paris ; the three on the Wilkes mob in Lon- don ; the moral algebra ; that containing the apologue on the conduct of men toward each other ; that on the art of producing pleasant dreams ; that on the Cincinnati ; that to Mr. Percival on dueling; to his daughter on ex- HIS EMINENCE. 281 travagance; to Mason Weems on the ordina- tion of American Protestant Episcopal clergy- men ; and that to Samuel Mather. To these should be added the two letters on how to do the most good with a little money, because of the sound advice they contain and the excel- lent practice they recommend. To say that his life is the most interesting, the most uniformly successful, yet lived by any American, is bold. But it is nevertheless strictly true. Not the least of the many glories of our country is the long list of men who, friendless, half-educated, poor, have, by the sheer force of their own abilities, raised themselves from the humblest beginnings to places of eminence and command. Many of these have surpassed him. Some have specu- lated more deeply on finance, have been more successful as philanthropists, have made greater discoveries in physics, have written books more commonly read than his. Yet not one of them has attained to greatness in so many ways, or has made so lasting an impression on his coun- trymen. His face is as well known as the face of Washington, and, save that of Washington, is the only one of his time that is now instantly recognized by the great mass of his country- men. His maxims are in every man's mouth. His name is, all over the country, bestowed on 282 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN counties and towns, on streets, on societies, on corporations. Tiie stove, the lightning-rod, and the kite, the papers on the gulf stream, and on electricity, give him no mean claims to be considered a man of science. In diplomacy his name is bound up with many of the most famous documents in our history. He drew the Albany Plan of Union. He sent over the Hutchinson Letters. He is the only man who wrote his name alike at the foot of the Declara- tion of Independence, at the foot of the Treaty of Alliance, at the foot of the Treaty of Peace, and at the foot of the Constitution under which we live. Nor is he less entitled to dis- tinction in the domain of letters, for he has pro- duced two works which of their kind have not yet been surpassed. One is " Father Abra- ham's Speech to the People at the Auction." The other is " The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin." INDEX. Abraham's Address, Father, 114- 126. Popularity of, 127-129. In French, 128, 221, 224. Academy and Charitable School, 135, 149-152. Becomes University of Pa., 152. " Account of the Supremest Court, etc., in Pa.," 246, 247. Adams, John, 210. Sketch of life at Passy, 227. Sent out in place of Deane, 281. Reception at Bor- deaux, 231, 232. Adams, Abigail : sketch of Mme. Helvetius, 234, 235. Addison, 19, 24. " Address to the Freeholders," 180. " Address to the Public," etc., 246. Advertiser, Tlie Public (London), Franklin's writings in, 203-206. Afterwit, Anthony, 77. Albany. Colonies bidden to send delegates to a conference at, 161. Franklin's Plan of Union at, 162. Failure of the Plan, 163. Alliance, The French, 231. Allouez, 160. Almanacs : Kalendarium Pennsilva- niense, 37, 38. Value of, 97, 98. Early almanacs in Phila., 99, 100. Character of, 100-101. "Poor Richard," 102-129. American cause, popularity of, in France, 223, 224, 230, 231. "American Citizen," 252-263. "American Magazine," 129-135. Andrews, Jedidiah, 79, 80. Anecdotes of Franklin: "Tar Bar- rel," "Other Grain," 140. The Fire Engine, 147. " Answer to Mr, Franklin's Re- marks," 187. " Argus." Charges against Temple Franklin, 263. "Art of Virtue," 172. Assembly of Pennsylvania : Gov- ernor asks it to arm the province, 137. Reply of the assembly, 138. Action after the capture of Louis- burg, 140. Action after outrages by the privateers, 141, 142. Sends Franklin to an Indian conference at Carlisle, 157. Sends him to Braddock, 163. Thanks Franklin, 164. Quarrels with the propi'ie- tary family, 165. Sends a remon- strance to the King, 167. Cen- sures the proprietary family, 180. Debate on reassembling, 181. Ad- dress voted, Norris will not sign, 181. Franklin chosen speaker, 182. Election for, 184,188. Frank- lin defeated, 185, 186. Chooses Franklin agent, 187. Association for defense of Philadel- phia, 144-148. Atkins, Samuel, 37, 38, 39. Autobiography, Franklin's : Begins to write it, 251, 252. Manuscript lost and found, 252, 253. Contin- ued, 253. Part of it published at Paris, 254-256. English editions, 258, 259. The Life by Stuber, 259, 260. Temple Franklin trades the original manuscript, 266. Recov- ered by Mr. Bigelow, 266, 267. Value of, 268. Popularity of, 269, 270. Bache, Richard : Deputy U. S. post- master - general, 158. Marries Sarah Franklin, 215. Bache, B. F., 215, 238. Bagatelles, 236-238. Ballads: Popularity of, 17, 18. Franklin's, 14, 18. Baker, Miss Polly, Speech, 272. "Banlcs " of paper money, 57-59. Battery, The Association, 146-148. 284 INDEX. Bath, Earl of, 171. Bellamy, the pirate, 15. Bethlehem, 164. Moravian Indians at, 173. Bible : Franklin's paraphrase of David's Lamentation, 85, 86. Of a chapter of Job, 87-89. The par- able against persecution, 90, 91. " Parable on Brotherly Love," 91, 92. Biddle, James, 195. Bigelovif, John : Edits the Autobiog- raphy, 266, 267. Biloxi, 160. «' Blackbeard," the pirate, 16, 17. Franklin's ballad on, 14. " Body of Divinity," Willard's, 5. "Bonhomme Richard," 221. Used in the schools, 224. Books : In library of Josiah Frank- lin, 5. In Boston Public Library, 6. In Harvard Library, 7. Number printed, 1706-1719, 8. Franklin's efforts to get, 18, 19. Books read by him, 19, 20. Book of Common Prayer : Sir F. Dashwcod's abridgment, 92. Franklin contributes to, 92. Bordeaux, reception of Adams at, 231, 232. Boston : Description of 1706, 2, 3. Benjamin Franklin born at, 3. Library at, 6, 7. Pilgrim's Prog- ress printed at, 8. "Publick Occurrences " published at, 11. "The News Letter," 12, 13. "Bos- ton Gazette " started, 13. " Nevi^ England Courant" begun, 21. Cotton Mather introduces inocu- lation, 22. Is abused, 22, 23. " Courant " persecuted, 27-29. James Franklin forbidden to print, 29. Benjamin Franklin leaves Bos- ton, 33. " Votes and Proceedings," etc, preface by Franklin, 205, 206. Braddock, Edmund, 163, 164. Bradford, William, Franklin applies to, for work, 33. First printer in the Middle Colonies, 36. Sketch of, 37. His struggle for liberty of the press, 37-39. Bradford, Andrew, 39. Asked to print Sewel's Hirtory of the Quakers, 46. His " Weekly Mer- cury," 47. Starts American Mag- azine, 129-135. Breboeuf, 160. Breintnal, Joseph, 53. "Brief State of the Province of Pa.." 180. Brillon, Madame, 233. Brownell, George, 3, 4. Buckner, John, sets up a press in Va., 37. Bucks County (Pa.), petition the assembly for paper currency, 59. Bulfon, Count de, 156. Buisson, publishes the Autobiog- raphy, 254, 255. Burke, William, 171. Burlington, 34, 35. Burton's "Historical Collections," 8. " Busybody " papers, 49-53. Ca Ira, 222. Campbell, John, 12. First news- paper reporter, 14. Canada : Early struggle for, 55, 56, 57. Capture of Louisburg, 140. Question of surrendering Canada, 168-171. Capefigue's estimate of Franldin, 223. " Captivity among the Indians," Mary Rowlandson's, 8. Carey, Matthew, 242. Caricatures of Franklin, 183, 184, 195. Carlisle, 173. Carmichael, William, 232. Catechism, Franklin's abridgment, 92. Cave, E., 155. Censorship of the Press in Massa- chusetts, 27-30. In Pennsylva- nia, 38, 39. Chester Covmty (Pa.), petition for more shillings on the dollar, etc., 58. " Choice of a Mistress," 266. Churches : The Old South, 2. " Our Lady of Victory," 56. "Old Button wood," 79. Clericus, 26. " Club for the Propagation of Sense and Good Manners," 30-32. Colonies: State of, in 1706, 1-3. Printing in, 7, 8. Literature, 8. Newspapers, 11-13. Pirates, 14- 18. Liberty of the Press, 26-29. Ahnanacs in, 37, 38, 97-100. Wars of, 55-57. Issue paper money, 56-60. " Collection of English Proverbs," Ray's, Franklin borrows from, 112, note. CoUison, Peter, 155. " Comparison of Great Britain and America," 225. INDEX. 285 Conestoga Indians : On the Manor, 173. Massacre of, 174, 175. Congress: Franklin delivers their Declaration of Rights, 214. Frank- lin a member of, 216, 217. Sand Franklin to France, 217, 218-220. Send Adams out and recall Deane, 231. Appoint Franlclin sole min- ister, 232. Accept his resigna- tion, 240. Connecticut, issues paper bills, 57. Constables in old times, 83. Constitutions of the States : Trans- lated by Dubourg, 224. Forbid- den to be published, 230. French estimate of, 224. Conyngham, Gustavus, 229-239. "Cool Thoughts," 180, 181. Copley medal given to Franklin, 156. Courant, The New England : Start- ed by James Franklin, 21. Char- acter of, 23. Articles contributed by Franklin, 23-26. Notice of pirates off Block Island, 26, 27. Editor of, in jail, 27, 28. Remarks on the conduct of Governor Shute, 28,29. Franklin forbid- den to print, 29. Benjamin Franklin becomes pr inter j 30. Dr. Janus, 30-32. Coxe, D. His plan of union for the colonies borrowed by Franklia, 162, 163. Crequi, Marquise de, 223. Credit bills in the colonies, 55, 57- 64. Crown Point, 161, 164. Cuba, call for volunteers to plun- der, 138, 139. Cushing, Thomas, 210. Dalibard, draws electricity from the clouds, 156. Dashwood, Sir Francis, abridges the Book of Common Piayer, 92. David, paraphrased by Franklin, 86. Deane, Silas, 219, 229, 230, 231. Declaration of Rights, 214. Denman, befriends Franklin, 44. D'Estaing, 231. Defense of Printers, 75, 76. De Foe : Keimer publishes his Re- ligious Courtship, 48. Delaware, outrages on the river, 140, 141, 142. De Lor, 156. Dialogues between Philocles and Horatius, 78. Between Socrates and Critico, 78. Socrates and Glaucon, 78. Dialogue between X, Y, and Z, 165. Dialogue between two Presbyte- rians, 78. Dialogue between Britain, France, etc., 225. Dialogue between Franklin and the Gout, 236. Dickinson, John, 181. His speech, 182. Called " The Maybe," 182. Tries to defeat Franklin, 186, 187. Dictionary : Publication of Cham- bers's, begun in Keimer's news- paper, 48. Ended, 65. Dogood, Silence, Essays of, 23-26. Dollar, Spanish, petition to increase number of shillings in, 58, 59. Donegal, 174. " Drinkers' Dictionary," 78. Duane, William, edits Franklin's works, 261. Dubourg, Barbeu, translates Frank- lin's electrical writings, 156. Meets Franklin, 207. Translates his writings, 207. Difficulty of, 207, 208. Letter to Franklin, 219. Translates the State Constitu- tions, 224. Forbidden to publish, 230. Duel, relative to Hutchinson Let- ters, 211. Easton, 164. Economists, The, 206. "Edict of the King of Prussia," 204, 205. Edinburg Review, charges against J. Franklin, 262. Education : Franklin's proposals re- garding, 135, 149. His scheme, 149-151. Founds the Philadel- phia Academy, 151. His " Idea of an English School," 151, 152. Education of Franklin, 3-9, 18-21. Election, An old time, 184-186. Electricity, " New Experiments and Observations in," 155, 156. Franklin's experiments repeated in France, 156. The kite, 156. " Ephemera, The," 236, 237. Epictetus : first translation in Amer- ica, 94. " Essay to do Good," Mather's, 5. " Essays on Projects," De Foe, 5. Essays of Franklin in the Courant, 23-25. In the Mercury, 49-53, 117. In the Pa. Gazette. In London journals. 286 INDEX. " Farmer's Letters," Franklin's preface to, 206. " Family of the Boxes," 78. Fires : Method of extinguishing, 84. Franklin's atteuipt at reform, 85. Fire companies, 85. Action for defense of Philadelphia, 146, 147. Fleet, Thomas, Boston publisher, 18. Folger, Abiah, 3. Forts, the French chain of, 161. Franklin, Abiah, 3. Franklin, Benjamin : Baptized in Old South Church, 2. Name of parents, 3. Date of birth, 3. Education, 3. Taste for the sea, 4. Early reading, 5, 6. Buys Pilgrim's Progress, 8. Appren- ticed to his brother, 11, Writes ballads, 14. Sent to hawk them, 18. Efforts to get books, 18, 19. Studies the " Spectator," 20-21. Writes Dogood Papers, 23, 24, 25. His indenture cancelled, 30. Edits the Courant, 30. His fiction of Dr. Janus, 30, 31. Quarrels with his brother, 32, 33. Leaves Bos- ton, 33. Seeks work of W. Brad- ford, 33. Walks across New Jer- sey, 34, 35. Reaches Philadel- phia, 35. Finds v^ork, 39. Re- turns home, 39. Sent to London by Keimer, 40. Becomes journey- man printer, 40. His Disserta- tion on Liberty and Necessity, 41-43. Meets Bernard de Mande- ville and Henry Pemberton, 43. His London life, 43, 44. Re- turns to Philadelphia, 44. Em- ployed by Keimer, 44. Founds the Junto, 44. Becomes father of a soq, 45. Forms partnership with Meredith, 45, 46. First job, 46. Prints part of Sewel's Hist, of the Quakers, 46. Plans a newspaper and is betrayed by Webb, 47. Writes "The Busy Body " for the " Mercury," 48, 49, 50. Denies that he printed "A Touch of the Times," 50. Ridicules Keimer, 50, 51. Prob- ably \yrote " A Short Discourse," etc., 5D, 51. Buys the " Universal Instructor," 53. Writes a pam- phlet on paper money, 60-64. Prints the Penna. paper money, 64. " The Pennsylvania Gazette." 65. Character of the Gazette, G6-88. Defends Mr. Hemphill, 79-82. Attempted reforms, 82-85. Forms a fire company, 85. Paraphrases of the Bible, 85-89. The " Levee," 89. The Parables, 90- 92. Abridgment of the Cate- chism, 92. Poems, 93. Dissolves partnership with Meredith, 96. Opens a shop, 96, Habits of work, 97. Begins "Poor Rich- ard," 97. Takes a hint from "Poor Robin," 101. The name of " Richard Saunders" from an English almanac, 101. Issues " Poor Richard," 102. The Pre- faces, 103-109. Humor of, 109, 110. Poor Richard's maxims, 111- 113. Father Abraham's Address, 114-226. Popularity of, 126- 129. Starts a magazine, 129. Quarrel with John Webbe, 129- 134. Failure of the magazine, 135. Plans for a school, 136. Issues " Proposals for Promot- ing Useful Knowledge," 136, 137. Letter to his brother, 140. Writes " Plain Truth," 142. Advertise- ment of, 142-144. Starts an as- sociation for defense, 145, 146. Popularity, 149. His proposals relative to the education of youth, 149-151. Founds Academy, 151. The Academy becomes University of Pennsylvania, 152. Sells the newspaper, 153. Prosperity of Franklin, 153, 154. Returns to scientific studies, 155. His scien- tific pamphlets, 155, 156. Re- printed in London, 156. The famous kite experiment, 156. "Translated into French," 156. Neglected by the Royal Society, 155. Elected a member, 156. Given the Copley Medal, 156. Made a postmaster - general for the colonies, 157. Sent to an Indian conference at Carlisle, 157. Character as a public man, 158. Appoints his relatives to of3ce, 158. Reforms the post- office, 158, 159. " Join or die," 1G2. Plan of Uijion at Albany, 162. Similarity to D. Coxe's plan, 162, 163. The assembly sends him to Braddock, 163. Furnishes Braddock with wagons, 164. Is thanked by the assem- bly, 164. Frames a militia bill, 165. Writes "A Dialogue be- tween X, Y, and Z," 165. Put in command of the troops and goes to Gnadenhiitten, 166. Sent INDEX. 2S1 to represent the province at Lon- don, 167. Writes "Meanes of disposing the Enemie to Peace," 1G3, 170. " Tiie Interest of Great Britain," attributed to him, 171, 172. Returns to Pliiladelphia, 172, Sent to remonstrate with " Paxton Boys," 177. Writes " A Narrative of the Late Massacre," 178. " Cool Thought?," 180, 181. Speaker of the assembly, 182. Signs the Address to the King, 182. Preface to Galloway's Speech, 182. Is lampooned, 183, 184. The election, 184-185. Is defeated, 185. Sent to London as agent of the province, 187. " Remarks on a Protest," 187. Starts for London, 187. His character defended by Hughes, 187, 188. Estimate of, by Pem- berton, 188. Reaches London, 189. Recommends Hughes as a stamp officer, 191. His opinion of the Stamp Act, 191, 192. Pop- ular rage against Franklin, 193- 195. Examined before Parlia- ment, 198. Lampooned, 198-200. Writings in the London news- papers, 200-202. " Rules for reducing a great empire to a small one," 203. "An Edict of the King of Prussia," 204, 205. Mis- cellaneous Pieces, 205, 206. Trip to Paris, 206-208. Meets the ♦ ' Economists, " 206. Fir st edition in English of his works, 207. First translation into French, 207. Difficulties of, 207, 208. Hutchin- son Letters, 208-212. Turned out of the post-office, 213. De- fends his action in the Hutchin- son affair, 213. Tory press attacks him, 213. Delivers the Declaration of Rights, 214. Re- turns to America, 214. Deborah Franklin and her family, 215. Franklin chosen to Congress, 216, 217. Sent to France, 217. History of the mission, 218-220. Reception at Nantes, 220. Mes- senger sent to forbid his coming to Paris, 220. Reception at Passy, 221. Great popularity of, 221- 223. Abused in French books, 223, Writes "A Comparison of Great Britain and America," 225. " A Dialogue," etc., 225. His life at Passy, 226,227. Trouble with the privateers, 229,230. Acknowl- edged by France, 231. Quarrels with American envoys, 232. Sole Minister to France, 232. His friends at Passy, 233. Madame Brillon, 233. Madame Helvetius, 234, 235. The Bagatelles, 236-240. Returns to United States, 240- 241. Popularity at home, 241- 243. Papers written on the voy- age home, 241. "Retort Cour- teous," 243, 244-246. "Sending Felons to America," 243, 244. " Likeness of the Antifederalists to the Jews," 243. Delegate to the Constitutional Convention, 246. "Plea for Promoting the Condition of the Free Blacks," 246. "Address to the Public," etc., 246. "Account of the Supremest Court," 246, 247. " Martin's Account of his Consul- ship," 249. Death, 249,250. His Autobiography, 251-269. His works, 270-272. His place among men of letters, 272, 273. His teaching, 274, 275. His style, 276. Letters, 276-278. His greatness, 278, 279. Franklin, Benjamin (uncle of Ben- jamin), 4 and note. Franklin, Deborah Reed : Aids her husband. Letter to her husband, 194. Life and family, 215. Franklin, Josiah : Father 'of Ben- jamin, 3. Seeks a trade for Ben- jamin, 4, 5. Books in his library, 5. Franklin, James : Benjamin appren- ticed to, 11. Prints Boston Ga- zette, 13. Starts New England Courant, 21. Character of Cou- rant, 23. In jail for libel, 27, 28. Forbidden to print Courant, 29. Cancels the indenture of Ben- jamin, 30. Franklin, William, 166. Franklin, William Temple : Inher- its his grandfather's papers, 254, Advertises for them, 256, 257, Goes to London, 258, Accused of selling the papers, 260-264. Pub- lishes part, 264. History of the rest, 264, 265. Bought by U. S., 265. Trades the manuscript of the Autobiography, 266. Friends, establish a press, 39. " Freedom of Thought," 26. French, jP'he: Wars with the English, 55-57.'t;xplorations and discoveries by, 159,160. Found Mobile and New 288 INDEX. Orleans, 180, Build Crown Point, Niagara, Presque Isle, 161. At- tempt to drive the English from Ohio Valley, 161, 162. Continued success, 164, 166. Defeats, 168. Galloway, Joseph, 181. Franklin's Preface to his speech, 182. Is defeated for assembly, 185. Let- ter to Fraiikhn, 193, 194. Frank- lin leaves his papers with, 252. "Gazette, The Pennsylvania:" Founded by Keimer, 47, 48. Bought by Franklin and Meredith, 65. Character of, 66-88. Ac- count of the witch trial, 71-74. Reply to the ministers. 74-76. Defense of Mr. Hemphill, 79-82. Account of the " Associators, " 142-144. Sold to D. Hall, 153. Effect of Stamp Act on, 196. Gazette, The Boston, 13. " General Magazine," 129-135. Genesis, Franklin's, 51st chapter, 90. " Gentleman's Magazine," 91, 205. German language : First newspaper in, 94. First book printed with German type, 94. Gnadenhiitten, 164, 166. Governor of Pa. : Sends Franklin to Boston, 39. To London, 40. Asks assembly to defend the province, 137. Reply of assembly, 138. Proclamation of, calling for troops, 138, 139. Quarrel with assembly over redemptioners, 139. Quarrels with assembly over tax- bills, 165, 167. Conduct toward the " Paxton Boys," 175, 176. Green, Dr. S. A., cited, 112, note. Grenville : His Stamp Act, 188-190. Gives the colonial agent an au- dience, 190. Falls from power, 193. Hall, D.: Franklin sells the Gazette, Almanac, and printing house to, 152. "Hand-in-hand," The, 85. "Handsome and Deformed Leg," 236. Hanging : Scenes at the hanging of pirates, 14, 15, Harvard College : Books not in library in 1723, 7. First copy of "News Letter" carried to pres- ident of, 13. "Heart-in-hand," 85. Helvetius, Madame, 233-235. Baga- teUes written for, 236, 237, 238. Hemphill, Samuel, 79. Persecuted by the presbytery, 79-80. De- fended by FrankUu, 80-82. " Hints for those that would be Rich," 110. "Historical Collections," Burton's, 8. " Hooped Petticoats Arraigned," 6. " Honour of the Gout," 97. Hopkinson, Francis, 240. Hodge, William, 229, 230. " How to Please in Conversation," 78. " Human Vanity," 237. Hunter, Wm. , a postmaster - gen- eral with Franklin, 157. Humble Petition, presented to Ma- dame Helvetius by her Cats, 237. Hughes, John : Defends Franklin, 187. Stamp distributer, 191. Letters to Franklin, 195. Hutchinson, Thomas, famous letters of, 208-212. "Idea of an English School," etc. 151. Indians : Franklin has a conference with, 157. Massacres by, in Penn- sylvania, 164. Conspiracy of Pontiac, 172, 173. Moravian In- dians, 173. Massacre by the "Paxton Boys," 174, 175. Rem- nant taken to Philadelphia, 175. Threatened by the Paxton Boys, 176,177. "Remarks concerning the Savages," 157, 240. ' ' Information to those who would remove to America," 240. Inocvilation: Mather attempts to in- troduce it at Boston, 22. Is abused by the Courant, 22, 23. "Interest of Great Britain Consid- ered," dispute as to authorship, 171, 172. Intelligencer, The National, charges against Temple Franklin regard- ing the Autobiography, 260-261. Izard, Ralph, 211, 232. James, Abel, finds MS. of Autobiog- raphy, 255. Jansen, Reynier, 39. "Janus, Dr.," the pretended dic- tator of the Courant, 30-32. Jackson, Richard, 171. Jackson, James, Franklin's reply to, 248, 249. Jay, John, 218. Jerman, John, ridiculed in " Poor Richard," 108-109. INDEX. 289 Jefferson, Thomas, 218, 219. Job, paraphrase of a chapter, 87-89. " The Levee," 89. " Join or die," 162. Johnson, Samuel, remarks on Franklin, 214, 245. Johnson, Tiberius, 39. ( JoUet, 160. \ Jones, John Paul, 113, 114, I Journal, The Pa.: Charges against Franklin, 199, 200. Effect of I Stamp Act on, 196. , Junto, The, 94, 95. Kalendarium Pennsilvaniense, 37, 38. Kames, Lord, reprints one of Frank- lin's Parables, 90. Keimer, Samuel : Opens a printing- oifice at Philadelphia, 39. Em- ploys Franklin, 44. Franklin leaves Keimer, 45. Prints part of Sewel's History of Quakers, 46. Is- sues " Universal Instructor," etc. 47, 48. "Writes " A Touch of the Times," etc., 150. Is ridiculed by Franklin, 50, 51. Is ruined in business, 53. Keith, William, Governor of Pa., 39. Sends Franklin to Boston, 39. Then to London, 40. "KiteUc,"26. Lafayette, 230. J Lancaster : Scotch-Irish in, 173, 174. 1 Massacre in, 174, 175. I La SaUe, 160. I Lampoons of Franklin, 183, 184, 186, ^ 195, 198-200. Law, John, his Mississippi Co., 160. Le Caron, 160. Le Despencer, Franklin helps in abridging Prayer Book. " Le Moyen de s'Enricher," 208. Lee, Arthur, 211, 219, 232. Lee, William, 232. Leeds, Daniel, Almanacs of, 96-100. Leeds, Titan : Ridiculed in prefaces to Poor Richard, 103-107, 108. Compared with "Poor Richard," , 111, 112. Letters, The Hutchinson, 208-212. "Letter to a Friend in the Coun- try," 80. "Levee, The," 89. Lewiston, excitement caused by pri- vateers, 142. "Liberty and Necessity," Disserta- tion on, by Franklin, 40-43. Liberty of the Press, 246-248. Library Company of Phila., 94-95. Library in Boston, 6. Harvard Library, 8. " Likeness of the Antifederalists to the Jews," 243. Literature read in the colonies, 6, 7. Produced in the colonies, 8. " Lords of Trade and Plantations," warn Pennsylvania not to issue more paper bills, 59, 60. Lottery, to aid Battery Association, 146. Louisburg, rejoicings over the cap- ture of, 140, 167. " Louse, History of a French," Franklin abused in, 223. " Lying Tradesmen," 78. Magazine, The Gentleman's, reprints the Parable against Persecution, 90, 91. FrankHn starts "The General Magazine," 129-134. Bradford starts " The American Magazine," 134. Each fails, 135. Manuscripts, the Franklin, history of, 251-270. " Martin's Account of his Consul- ship," 248, 249. Marquette, 160. Massachusetts : First newspaper in U. S. printed in, 11. Suppresses it, 12. Persecutes James Frank- lin, 27-29. Issues paper money, 56, 57, 58. A stamp act in, 190. Massacres by the Indians, 164. Ex- citement caused by, 165, 166. Mather, Cotton : Character of, 9, 10. Introduces inoculation, 22. De- nounced by the people, 22. By the Courant, 23. Replies to Cou- rant, 23. Maxims of "Poor Richard," 111- 114. Collected in " Father Abra- ham's Address," 114-126. " Maybe, The," 182. " Meanes of disposing the Enemie to Peace," 169. Mecom, Benjamin, 171. Medal, The Copley, given to Frank- lin, 156. "Meditations on a Quart Mug," 70. " Memorabilia," 19. "Mercury, The American," 21, 47. Franklin's essays in, 49-53. " The Detection," 130-134. Meredith, Hugh, 45, 46. Meseres, Baron, 171. Mesnard, 160. 290 INDEX, Mississippi River, discovered by Marquette, Joliet, La Salle, 160. Mission, the French : History of, 218-220. Franklin one of the commission, 219. His welcome, 220. Mobile, 160, " Modest Inqtiiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Cur- rency," 60-64. Money : Sketch of issues of paper money in the colonies, 55. In Massachusetts, 56. In South Caro- lina, 56. In New Hampshire, Con- necticut, Rhode Island, New York, and New Jersey, 57. "Banks of paper money," 57, 58. Paper money in Pennsylvania, 58, 59. " Warning of the Lords of Trade," 59. New issues wanted, 60. Franklin's pamphlet on paper money, 60-64. Monopoly, an ancient, 34, 35. " Morals of Chess," 236. Moravian missionaries, 173. Moravian Indians, 173. Massacre of, by the Paxton Boys, 174, 175. Protected at Philadelphia, 175, 177. Morellet, Abb6, 235, 237, 238. Mount Holly, witch ducking at, 71- 74. Nantes, reception of Franklin at, 220-221. " Narrative of the Late Massacre," 178-180. "Necessary Truth," an answer to " Plain Truth," 148. New Castle, houses near, plundered by privateers, 141. " New Experiments and Observa- tions in Electricity," 156. New Hampshire, issues paper bills, 57. New Jersey, No printing press in, 7. Early roads across, 34. Journey of Franklin across»34, 35. Issues paper bills, 57. New York, issues paper money, 57. A stamp act in, 190. News Letter, 12, 13, 14, 23. Newspapers, first, in the colonies, 11. Suppressed by government, 12. "The News Letter," 12, 13. "Boston Gazette" started, 13. First reporter, 14. " New England Courant " begun by James Frank- lin, 21. Bradford's "Weekly Mercury," 47. Keimer issues " Universal Instructor," etc., 47, 48. Franklin and Meredith begin the Pennsylvania Gazette, 65. Character of, 66-88. First Ger- man, 94. First daily, 94. Sale of the Pennsylvania Gazette. Pennsylvania Journal attacks Franklin, 199, 200. Effect of the Stamp Act on the newspapers, 196. Fraiiklin's writings in the London newspapers, 200-206. Niagara, 161. " Nightwalkers," 26. " No Stamped Paper to be had," 196. Nollet, Abb^, opposes Franklin's theories, 156. Non-importation agreement, 193. Norris, Isaac, 167. Refuses to sign, 181. Resigns speakership, 182. " Observations on the Proceedings against Rev. Mr. Hemphill," 80, 81. " Observations relative to the In- tentions of the Original Founders of the Academy in Philadelphia," 152. Ohio Company, Surveyors of, cap- tured by French, 162. Oliver, Andrew, Letters to Whately, 209-212. CEuvres de M. Franklin, 208. " Origin of the Whalebone Petti- coat," 8. Pamphlet regarding the Paxton Raid, 180, 181, 184. Papillon, Peter, 27. Parables ; Franklin's parable against persecution, 90, 91. Parable on brotherly love, 91, 92. Paraphrases : Of David's Lamenta- tion, 86. Of a chapter of Job, 87, 88. " The Levee," 89. Paris, Popularity, of the American cause, 221-223. Excitement over American successes, 230, 231. Parsons, J., publishes Autobiogra- phy, 258. Passy : Franklin reaches, 220. His life at, 226-229, 233. Sketch of Madame Brillon and Madame Helvetius, 233-235. Street in, called FrankUn, 250. Paxton : Massacre of the Indians by men from, 174, 175. " Paxton Boys " march to Philadelphia, 175, 176. Their grievances, 177. Ride back to Lancaster, 178. INDEX. 291 Pemberton, Israel : His estimate of Franklin, 188. Penn, William, 2, 37. Penn, John, 175, 176. Pennsylvania : Censorship of the press, 38. No press in, 39. Gov. Keith, 39. Issues paper money, 59. Warning of the Lords of Trade, 59, 60. More paper wanted, 60. Franklin defends the issue, 61-64. Franklin prints the bills, 64. Activity of the press, 93, 94. Governor asks assembly to put the province in a state of defense, 137. Reply of the assembly, 138. Proclamation of the governor, 138. 139. Governor and assembly quarrel about the redemptioners, 139. Outrages on the Delaware by privateers, 141. Action of the assembly regarding, 141. Excite- ment at Lewiston, 142. Associa- tion for defense of the prov- ince, 144-148. Indian conference at Carlisle, 157. Trouble with the French, 161. Delegates sent to Albany, 161, 162. Capture of Trent, 162. Braddock's expe- dition, 163, 164. Devastation of the province, 164, 165. Measures of the assembly, 165. Quarrel with the Penns, 165. Vote money, 166. Quarrel with the governor, 167. Sends Franklin to represent the province in London, 167. Con- spiracy of Pontiac, 172, 173. Mo- ravian Indians in Lancaster, 173. Massacre by Paxton Boys, 174, 175. Assembly censure the pro- prietary family, 180. Perth Amboy, 34. Peters, Rev. Richard, 136. " Petition of the Left Hand," 236. " Perfumes," 266. Philadelphia : Franklin reaches the city, 35. Andrew Bradford, 36. History of printing at, 36-39. The Pennsylvania Gazette started, 65, 66. Franklin attempts to reform the city watch, 83; forms the Union Fire Company, 85. Activity of the press, 93, 94. Library Company, 94, 95. Al- manac makers in, 99, 100. First magazines in the United States, 129-135. Rejoicings over capture of Louisburg, 140. Excitement over outrages on the Delaware, 141. Appearance of Plain Truth, 142-144. Association for Defense, 144, 145. Preparations for defense, 146. Lottery started, 146. Ac- tion of the fire companies, 146, 147. "Academy and Charitable School," 149-152. University of Pennsylvania, 152. Excitement over Indian outrages, 164. Bodies of the killed displayed in the streets, 164, 165. Moravian In- dians taken to, 175. City is threatened by "Paxton Boys," 175-177. Excitement over the " Raid," 178, 179. Pamphlets on, 180, 181. Old-time election at, 184-186. Franklin returns to, 240,241. Popularity at, 241-243. " Philadelphische Zeitung," 94. " Pilgrim's Progress," 8. Pirates : Abundance of, in the colo- nies, 14. Names of famous, 14. Treatment of, 15. " Blackbeard" or Theach, 16, 17. Franklin writes a ballad on, 18. Notice of, in the Courant, 26. "Plain Dealer," 180. " Plain Truth," 142. Advertise- ment of, 142, 143. Purpose of, 144. Influence of, 148. Answers to, 148. " Plea for Improving the Condition of Free Blacks," 246. Pleiades, Titan, 51, 52. Poems, written by Franklin, 92. Pollard, Ann, 1, 2. Pontiac, conspiracy of, 172, 173. " Poor Richard," Name taken from "Poor Robin," 101. "Richard Saunders," taken from an Eng- lish almanac, 101, 102. First num- ber issued, 102. Prefaces, 103- 109. Humor of, 109, 110. Saws and Maxims, 111, 112. Borrowed from Ray, 112,113. Effect on Paul Jones, 113, 114. Father Ab- raham's Address, 114-126. Popu- larity of, 127-129. " Poor Robin," gives a hint for " Poor Richard," 101, 102. Postmaster : Duties of, at Boston, 12. "News Letter " started by, 12, 13. " Boston Gazette " started by, 13. Postmaster-general for the colo- nies, Franklin appointed a, 157. Post-office, reforms of Franklin in the, 158, 159. " Preface to a Speech," 182. Press, Printing : few in the colonies, 7. First in Middle Colonies, 36. Struggle for Liberty of, in Penn- 292 INDEX. Bylvania, 37, 38. Early printers in Pennsylvania, 39. Activity of, in Pennsylvania, 94, 95. Liberty of, 246-248. Price, Dr., 253, 258, 259. "Pride and Hooped Petticoats," 26. Priestley, Dr., 171. Printers : Early printers in Philadel- phia, 39. Defence of, 75, 76. Privateers: Spanish privateers off the coast, 139. French and Span- ish, in the Delaware, 140, 141, 142. American, 229, 230. Proclamation of the Governor of Pennsylvania, 138, 139. "Public Occurrences," first news- paper in the colonies, 11, 12. Quakers, Sewel's History of, 46. Question of military service, 138, 140, 141, 164, 165, 176, 179. Quebec, 56. Quelch, the pirate, his death the occasion of the first newspaper reporting in America, 14, 15. Ray: Franklin borrows from his " Collection of English Proverbs," 112, note. "Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion," 8. Redemptioners, Quarrel of gover- nor and assembly regarding, 139. Reforms attempted by Franklin, 82--85. In the post-office, 158, 159. "Religion of Nature Delineated," WoUaston's, 40. Replied to by Franklin, 40-43. " Religious Courtship," of De Foe, 48. " Remarkable Occurrences," 196. "Remarks concerning the Savages of North America," 157, 240. " Remarks on a Protest," 187. Reporting : First newspaper report- ing in America, 14, 15. "Repository, The," discusses the authorship of one of Franklin's parables, 91. " Retort Courteous," 243, 244-246. Reyners, Joseph, 39. Rhode Island : No printing press in, 7. Issues paper bills, 57. Roads across New Jersey, 34, 35. Royal Society neglects Franklin's letter, 155. Elects him a mem- ber, 156. Gives him the Copley medal, 156. " Rules of Health," 110. " Rules for reducing a great empire to a small one," 203. Saunders, Bridget, 103, 105, 107. Saunders, Richard : Edits an Eng- lish almanac, 101. Franklin as- sumes the name, 101. " Sea Hens and Black Gowns," 74. "Scandal," 79. School : Franklin proposes to f oimd the "Academy and Charitable School," 136. Founds Philadel- phia Academy, 149-152. " Science du Bonhomme Richard," 128. Scotch-Irish, of Lancaster, 173, 174. Threaten the Indians, 174. Massacre the Indians, 174, 175. " Sending Felons to America," 243. Sewel, William, History of the Quakers reprinted in Philadel- phia, 46. Sewell, Chief Justice, 13. Shaftesbury, 19. Shakespeare : Earliest copy of works in America, 7. " Shavers and Trimmers," 77. " Short Discourse Proving that the Jewish or Seventh Day Sabbath is Repealed," probably written by Franklin, 50, 51. Shute, Samuel, Governor of Mas- sachusetts, 26, 28. Courant at- tacks him, 28, 29. " Simple Cobbler of Agawam," etc., 8. Single, Celia, 78. Smith, John : Writes " Necessary Truth," 147. Action in his fire company, 147. South Carolina : North Carolina not cut off from, 2. Issues paper bills, 56. Sowle, Andrew, 37. " Spectator, The : " Influence of, on Franklin, 19, 20. His imitation of, 24. Stamp Act, 189-191. Franklin's opinion of, 191, 192. Feeling in America, 193, 194-198. Repeal of, 198. Stevens, Henry, buys the Franklin MS., 256. Story, Thomas, 219. Stuber, Henry, his Life of Franklin, 259. " Supplement to the Boston Inde- pendent Chronicle," 238, 239. INDEX. 293 Tax : Quarrel regarding taxes on Penn estate, 165, 166, 167. Taylor, Jacob, 39. Taylor, Jeremy, 90-97. Teacroft, Patience, 78. Temple, John : Duel with Whately, 211. Theach, John, the pirate, 16, 17. Franklin's ballad on, 14, 18. " Thoughts of the Ephemera," etc., 78. Tolls on roads in New Jersey, 34. " Touch of the Times, A," Frank- lin denies having printed it, 50. " Treacle fetched out of a Viper," 8. Treasure, belief in hidden, 51-53. Treaty of 1783, story regarding the signing denied, 212. " True and Impartial State of Penn- sylvania," 180. " True Happiness," 79. Union : The Albany plan, 161, 162. Similarity to a plan of Daniel Coxe, 162, 163. Failure, 163. "Union, The," Fire Company, 85, 147. United States Government, buys the Franklin Manuscripts, 265. " Universal Instructor, The," issued by Keimer, 47, 48. Bought by Franklin, 53. University of Pennsylvania, founded 1749 by Franklin, 152. "Usefulness of Mathematics," 78. Vaughan, Benjamin, 253. Veillard, M. le, 253, 254, 255, 256. Vergennes : Sends messenger to for- bid Franklin coming to Paris, 220. Trouble with the privateer, 229, Forbids the discussion of Amer- ican affairs, 230. Virginia, First printing press in, 37. " Visit to the Elysian Fields," 236. Voltaire, 222. Votes and Proceedings, etc., of the people of Boston, 205, 206. "Waste of Life," 79. " Watch, The City," 82, 83. Frank- lin attempts to reform it, 83, 84. " Way to Wealth," 128, 129. French translation of, 208. Popularity in France, 221. Webb, George, betrays Franklin's plans to Keimer, 47, 48. Webbe, John, betrays Franklin's plan for a magazine, 129, 130. " The Detection," 130-144. Starts The American Magazine, 134, 135. Wedderburn, 212. Whately, William, Letters from Hutchinson and Oliver, 209-212. " Whistle, The Story of the," 236. Wickes,- Lambert, 229. Witch ducking at Mount HoUy, 72- 74. WoUaston : " Religion of Nature," 40. Franklin's reply to, 40, 41. Writings of Franklin : Ballads, 14r- 18. Dogood Papers, 25, 26. Con- tributions to the C our ant, 30-32. Discourse on Liberty and Neces- sity, 40-43. " Busybody," 49-53. " A Modest Inquiry into the Na- ture and Necessity of a Paper Currency, 60-64. Contributions to Pennsylvania Gazette, 65-88. Pamphlets in defense of Mr. Hemphill, 79-82. Paraphrases of the Bible, 86-90. Parables, 90-92. "The Levee," 90. Abridgment of the Catechism, 92. Xenophon, 19. Zionitischer Weyrauch-Hiigel, 94. ameritan JHen of %tttttQ. EDITED BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. A series of biographies of distinguished American authors, having all the special interest of biography, and the larger interest and value of illustrating the different phases of American literature, the social, political, and moral influences which have moulded these authors and the generations to which they be- longed. Washingion Irving. By Charles Dudley Warner.' Noah Webster, By Horace E. Scudder. Henry D. Thoreau, By Frank B. Sanborn. George Ripley. By Octavius Brooks Frothingham. ^ 7. Fenimore Cooper, By Thomas R. Lounsbury. Margaret Fuller Ossoli. By T. W. Higginson. Ralph Waldo Emerson. By Oliver Wendell Holmes. Edgar Allan Poe. By George E. Woodberry. / Nathaniel Parker Willis, By Henry A. Beers. IN PREPARA TION. Benjamin Franklin. By John Bach McMaster. Nathaniel Hawthorne. By James Russell Lowell, William CuUen Bryant. By John Bigelow. Bayard Taylor, By J. R. G. Hassard. William Gilmore Simms, By George W. Cable. Others to be announced hereafter. Each volume, with Portrait, i6mo, gilt top, $1.25; cloth, uncut edges, paper ?abel, $1.50; half morocco^ $2.50. "WASHINGTON IRVING." Mr. Warner has not only written with sympathy, mi- nute knowledge of his subject, fine literary taste, and that easy, fascinating style which always puts him on such good terms with his readers, but he has shown a tact, critical sagacity, and sense of proportion full of promise for the rest of the series which is to pass under his supervision. — New York Tribune. It is a very charming piece of literary work, and pre- sents the reader with an excellent picture of Irving as a man and of his methods as an author, together with an accurate and discriminating characterization of his works, "^Boston Journal. It would hardly be possible to produce a fairer or more candid book of its kind. — Literary World (London). "NOAH WEBSTER." Mr. Scudder's biography of Webster is alike honorable to himself and its subject. Finely discriminating in all that relates to personal and intellectual character, schol- arly and just in its literary criticisms, analyses, and Estimates, it is besides so kindly and manly in its tone, its narrative is so spirited and enthralhng, its descriptions are so quaintly graphic, so varied and cheerful in their coloring, and its pictures so teem with the bustle, the movement, and the activities of the real life of a by-gone but most interesting age, that the attention of the reader is never tempted to wander, and he lays down the book with a sigh of regret for its brevity. — Harper^ s Monthly Magazine. It fills completely its place in the purpose of this se- ries of volumes. — The Critic (New York). "HENRY D. THOREAU." Mr. Sanborn's book is thoroughly American and truly fascinating. Its literary skill is exceptionally good, and there is a racy flavor in its pages and an amount of exact knowledge of interesting people that one seldom meets with in current literature. Mr. Sanborn has done Tho- reau's genius an imperishable service. — American Church Review (New York). Mr. Sanborn has written a careful book about a curious man, whom he has studied as impartially as possible ; whom he admires warmly but with discretion ; and the story of whose life he has told with commendable frank* ness and simplicity. — New York Mail and Express. It is undoubtedly the best life of Thoreau extant.— Christian Advocate (New York^. "GEORGE RIPLEY." Mr. Frothingham's memoir is a calm and thoughtful and tender tribute. It is marked by rare discrimination, and good taste and simplicity. The biographer keeps himself in the background, and lets his subject speak. And the result is one of the best examples of personal portraiture that we have met with in a long time. — The Churchman (New York). He has fulfilled his responsible task with admirable fidelity, frank earnestness, justice, fine feeling, balanced moderation, delicate taste, and finished literary skill. It is a beautiful tribute to the high-bred scholar and gener- ous-hearted man, whose friend he has so worthily por- trayed. — Rev. William H. Channing {IuOxAovl). "JAMES FENIMORE COOPER." We have here a model biography. The book is charm- ingly written, with a fehcity and vigor of diction that are notable, and with a humor sparkhng, racy, and never obtrusive. The story of the life will have something of the fascination of one of the author's own romances. — New York Tribune. Prof. Lounsbury's book is an admirable specimen of literary biography. . . . We can recall no recent addition to American biography in any department which is supe- rior to it. It gives the reader not merely a full account of Cooper's Hterary career, but there is mingled with this a sufficient account of the man himself apart from his books, and of the period in which he lived, to keep alive the interest from the first word to the last. — New York Evening Post. "MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI." Here at last we have a biography of one of the noblest and the most intellectual of American women, which does full justice to its subject. The author has had ample material for his work, — all the material now available, perhaps, — and has shown the skill of a master in his use of it. . . . It is a fresh view of the subject, and adds important information to that already given to the public. — Rev. Dr. F. H. Hedge, in Boston Advertiser. He has filled a gap in our literary history with excel- lent taste, with sound judgment, and with that literary skill which is preeminently his own. — Christian Uition (New York). Mr. Higginson writes with both enthusiasm and sym- pathy, and makes a volume of surpassing interest. — Commercial Advertiser (New York), "RALPH WALDO ExMERSON." A biography of Emerson by Holmes is a real event in American literature. . . . He has brought Emerson him- self so near, and painted him for us with a pencil so loving and yet so just, that it will remain with many of us a question which shall be hereafter most dear to us, the man whom the artist thus reveals, or the artist him- self. — Standard (Chicago). Dr. Holmes has written one of the most deHghtful biographies that has ever appeared. Every page sparkles with genius. His ci-iticisms are trenchant, his analysis clear, his sense of proportion delicate, and his sympa- thies broad and deep. — Philadelphia Press. "EDGAR ALLAN POE." Mr. Woodberry has contrived with vast labor to con- struct what must hereafter be called the authoritative biography of Poe — a biography which corrects all others, supplements all others, and supersedes all others. — The Critic (New York). The best life of Poe that has yet been written, and no better one is likely to be written hereafter. This is high praise, but it is deserved. Mr. Woodberry has spared no pains in exploring sources of information ; he has shown rare judgment and discretion in the interpretation of what he has found ; he has set forth everything frankly and fairly ; and he has brought to bear upon the critical part of his work a keen instinct, a well-informed mind, a sound judgment, and the utmost catholicity of spirit. — Coinmer" cial Advertiser (New York). "NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS." Prof. Beers has done his work sympathetically yet can- didly and fairly and in a philosophic manner, indicating the status occupied by Willis in the republic of letters, and sketching graphically his literary environment and the main springs of his success. It is one of the best books of an excellent series. — B^'lffalo Times. The work is sober, frank, honest, trustworthy, and em- inently readable. — The Beacon (Boston). A delightful biographical study. — Brooklyn Union. *^* For sale by all Booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on receipt of price by the Publishers, HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, ^t iiUSTOiN AND NEW YORK, .-^' ^. ^'^^ .Oo ^^' ,0' O . -.^"^ o.^'^ '^^ "- ^^^^ -'^ x^^^. "^ ^ "^. -? -^ .o<