Sister, farewell, and remember that modesty as it makes the most homely virtue amiable and charming, so the want of it infallibly renders the most perfect beauty disagreeable and odious. But when that brightest of female virtues shines among other perfections of body and mind in the same person, it makes the woman more lovely than an angel. Excuse this freedom, and use the same with me. I am, dear Jenny, Your loving brother. A very large progeny resulted from this marriage, in all of whom Franklin took an interest. "My compliments to my new niece, Miss Abiah, and pray her to accept the enclosed piece of gold, to cut her teeth; it may afterwards buy nuts for them to crack," he wrote of one arrival; and gave material help to the children as they grew up, aiding one to sell the soap he made; taking a second as an apprentice in his printing-office, and afterward assisting in his establishment in that business; endeavoring to get a government position for a third; and, on the marriage of a fourth, sending a gift of "fifty pounds, lawful money," to be laid out in "furniture as my sister shall think proper."

DRAWN BY GEORGE F. ARATA, AFTER ORIGINAL PORTRAIT IN POSSESSION OF MRS. GILLESPIE, PHILADELPHIA, BORDER BY F. C. GORDON.

FRANCIS FOLGER FRANKLIN, YOUNGER SON OF

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

From this niece he received an exuberant acknowledgment, declaring that:

My Heart, has ever been suseptible of the warmest gratitude for your frequent Benefactions to the whole Family, but your last kind, unexpected, as well as undiserved, Noble presents in particular to me, calls for a particular acknowledgment from me. Except then dearest sir, my most sincere and hearty Thanks, with a promise, that your Kindness shall ever be gratefully remembered and your donation be made the best use of.

Jane herself carried this admiration even to the point of veneration; yet when absent from her brother she expressed her regret, having "had time to reflect and see my error, in that I suffered my diffidence or the awe of your superiority to prevent the familiarity I might have taken with you, and which your kindness to me might have convinced me would be acceptable." Her feeling was further shown by her often-repeated prayer that he "pardon my bad writing and confused composure," which led the brother to answer that "you need not be afraid in writing to me about your bad spelling; for, in my opinion, as our alphabet now stands, the bad spelling, or what is called so, is generally the best, as conforming to the sound. of the letters and of the words." With extreme reverence she wrote to Franklin that "it is not Profanity to compare you to our Blessed Saviour who Employed much of his time while on Earth in doing good to the body's as well as souls of men & I am shure I think the compareson just."

This adoration is the more excusable when Franklin's services to her are weighed. Her husband's death left her a large family to rear, and but for Benjamin's constant eking of her means it would have fared hard with the widow. She told her brother that her happiness was derived from "yr Bounty without wich I must have been distressed as much as many others," and assured him that she could not "find expression suitable to acknowledge my gratitude; how I am by my dear brother enabled to live at ease in my old age." "My self and children have always been a tax upon you," she wrote to him, "but your great and uncommon goodness has carried you cheerfully under it.' Nor was Franklin's charity an enforced one: You always tell me that you live comfortably [he chided], but I sometimes suspect that you may be too unwilling to acquaint me with any of your difficulties, from an apprehension of giving me pain. I wish you would let me know precisely your situation, that I may better proportion my assistance to your wants. Lest you should be straightened during the present winter I send you fifty dollars.

And not satisfied that she acknowledged all her needs, he questioned other relatives:

How has my poor old sister gone through the winter? Tell me frankly whether she lives comfortably or is pinched. I am afraid she is too cautious of acquainting me of her difficulties, though I am always ready and willing to relieve her, when I am acquainted with them.

Jane and Benjamin outlived all their brothers and sisters, and Franklin, upon the death of one of the last, said to her: "Of these thirteen there now remain but three. As our number diminishes, let our affection to each other rather increase." In one of her later letters the sister recurred to this, writing: "You once told me, my dear brother, that as our number of brethren and sisters lessened the affection of those of us that remained should increase to each other. You and I are now left; my affection for you has always been so great I see no room for increase, and you have manifested yours for me in such large measure that I have no reason to suspect its strength." Jane Mecom alone of Josiah Franklin's seventeen children survived the famous son, and in his will Franklin left to her "a house and lot I have in Unity Street, Boston," gave her" the yearly sum of fifty pounds sterling," and left a small sum of money to her descendants.

"He who takes a wife, takes care," runs an aphorism that Poor Richard thought fit

VOL. LVII.-6.

to embody in his Almanac; and Franklin, from his own experience, could have added, with the humorous quirk he so often used, "of his wife's relatives." When he took unto himself a helpmate, he brought to live with them her mother, who henceforth conducted her trade at his printing-shop, making known to her customers, through advertisements in her son-in-law's newspaper, that: "The Widow Read [had] removed from the upper end of High-street, to the New Printing Office near the Market," where she sold "ointments" for various ills that might have been avoided by a better patronage of the Franklin "crown soap."

A brother and sister of his wife also lived for a time with Franklin, and he aided the was some friction, however, with another of former to get a government office. There her relatives. At first Franklin told him that his "visits never had but one thing disagreeable in them; that is they are always too short"; but presently "Jemmy" Read endeavored to get a "small office from me, which I took . . amiss," and they ceased to be "on speaking terms," while the ill feeling was deepened by Franklin's becoming the agent to enforce a business contract in which Read proved to be delinquent, if not dishonest.

Franklin's eldest son, William, was born out of wedlock, but so far as lay within the father's power he repaired the wrong to which, separated from the influence of both father and mother, the fellow of twentyfour had let his "hard-to-be-governed passion of youth " lead him. The boy was reared in Franklin's home, being openly acknowledged and treated as a son. A friend who saw much of the family declared that "his father . . . is at the same time his friend, his brother, his intimate, and easy companion," a systematic kindness for which William Franklin thanked his father, saying: “I am extremely obliged to you for your Care in supplying me with Money, and shall ever have a grateful Sense of that with the other numberless Indulgences I have received from your paternal Affection."

As the lad grew up, the parent came to take positive pride in him, writing: "Will is now nineteen years of age, a tall, proper youth, and much of a beau." This opinion was echoed by William Strahan, who declared: "Your son I really think one of the prettiest young gentlemen I ever knew from America," proving that Franklin's praise was not wholly due to the parental fondness satirized in Poor Richard's lines:

Where yet was ever found the mother Who 'd change her booby for another? As soon as William was old enough, Franklin obtained for him a commission in the provincial forces, in which he served till "peace cut off his prospect of advancement in that way." Through the same influence he was then made postmaster of Philadelphia, and next clerk of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania, meantime having been entered as a student of law at the Inns of Court in London. When he accompanied his father to England, in 1757, to complete his title to practise as a barrister, Franklin sought to bring about a marriage between him and Miss Mary Stevenson, an English girl to whom he himself became much attached during this visit. The son, however, chose otherwise, and finally, with his father's "consent and approbation," he married, so Franklin states, "a very agreeable West Indian lady." Meantime, William Franklin had secured the appointment as governor of New Jersey, a selection much disrelished at first by the province, and which, it has been suggested, was given to the son in the hope of winning the father to the government side. This, it is needless to say, it did not effect; but it at least served to seduce the son, and as the rift between the mothercountry and the colonies widened, the father accused him of having become "a thorough government man." When the English government removed Franklin from his postmaster-generalship, in 1774, he appealed to the son to resign his office; and, on his refusal to resent the disgrace which his superiors had sought to inflict on the father, the latter wrote to him bitterly: "You who are a thorough courtier, see everything with government eyes." His loyalty to the English government resulted not only in a complete break with his father, and in his imprisonment by the Continental Congress as an active and dangerous Tory, but led him eventually to leave America and take up his residence in England. On the conclusion of peace, a feeble attempt at a renewal of the old-time relation was made. Franklin wrote his son: "I am glad to find you desire to revive the affectionate intercourse that formerly existed between us. It would be very agreeable to me; indeed, nothing has hurt me so much, and filled me with such keen sensations, as to find myself deserted in my old age by my only son; and not only deserted, but to find him taking up arms against me in a cause wherein my good fame, fortune, and life were all at stake." Yet, in express

ing his sorrow thus strongly, the father added: "I ought not to blame you for differing in sentiment with me in public affairs," and "I should be glad to see you when convenient." The two met for a brief moment at Southampton, in 1785, when Franklin was returning from France to America. But the endeavor to revive the old relation seems to have been unsuccessful; they never made further attempts to see each other, and in Franklin's will, drawn up three years after this meeting, though he left his son certain property in Nova Scotia, he stated: "The part he acted against me in the late war, which is of public notoriety, will account for my leaving him no more of an estate he endeavoured to deprive me of."

The affection which Franklin no longer gave to William he transferred to William's illegitimate child, assuming from the first the relation of father to him. Under his superintendence the boy was placed at school near London, and during the many years of Franklin's stay in that city he had the lad often to visit him, telling the father, on one occasion: "Temple has been at home with us during the Christmas Vacation from School. He improves continually, and more and more engages the regard of all that are acquainted with him by his pleasing, sensible, manly Behaviour." At another time, in making up an account with William Franklin, and noting that "the heaviest Part is the Maintenance & Education of Temple," the grandfatherly pride expressed itself in the assertion: "But that his friends will not grudge when they see him." On Franklin's return to America, in 1775, he brought the lad with him, and the boy went to live with his father, taking at the same time the family name, in place of that of William Temple-a change pleasing to at least one friend, who wrote Franklin: "I rejoice to hear he has the addition of Franklin, which I always knew he had some right to, and I hope will prove worthy the honorable Appellation."

Temple Franklin, as he was customarily called henceforth, returned soon to live with his grandfather, in order to attend college; but the plan was interfered with by Franklin's being sent to France in 1776, and his desire to have the boy go with him. Once in Paris, the young fellow became Franklin's private secretary, and there are frequent references to him in that capacity in Franklin's letters, as, for instance: "My grandson, whom you may remember when a saucy boy at school," is "my amanuensis in writing the within