monica, and to hear it to the end." Again, Mme. Brillon, seeking to tempt him to her home, promises that "Father Pagin will play the God of Love on the violin, I the march on the piano, you Little Birds on the harmonica"; and the same writer, in describing their future life in heaven, prophesies that " M. Mesmer will be contented with playing on the harmonica without boring us with electric fluid."

Franklin was a performer on more than the armonica, for, previous to his development of it, he could play on the harp, the guitar, and the violin. Referring to a present, he told the donor that he should "never touch the sweet strings of the British lyre, without remembering my British friends, and particularly the kind giver of the instrument." In France a friend wrote him that he had "searched for harps everywhere without being able to find any," and offers to procure him "a piano forté, if it will supply the place of the harp." This may not have been for his own use, however, for Franklin assured Mme. Brillon that, in the forty years he would probably have in heaven before her advent, he should have time enough "to practise on the armonica, and perhaps I shall play well enough to be worthy to accompany you on your pianoforte "; and in this case

we shall have every now and then some little concerts." He even seems to have turned his hand to composing, for the same lady acknowledged the receipt of "your music engraved in America"; but it has not been possible to identify the piece.

Franklin's taste in music tended to the simple forms. Mme. Brillon's usual bribes, musically, were promises

of "carols" and "Scotch airs," and that in this she was trying to please his taste is shown by something he wrote Lord Kames: "The pleasure artists feel in hearing much of [the music] composed in modern taste, is not the natural pleasure arising from melody or harmony of sounds, but of the same kind with the pleasure we feel on seeing the surprising feats of tumblers and rope-dancers, who execute difficult things. . . . I have sometimes, at a concert, attended by a common audience, placed myself so as to see all their faces, and observed no signs of pleasure in them during the performance of a great part that was admired by the performers themselves; while a plain old Scotch tune, which they disdained, and could scarcely be prevailed on to play, gave manifest and general delight."

"Give me leave, on this occasion," he said in another letter to Kames, to extend a little the sense of your position, that melody and harmony are separately agreeable, and in union delightful,' and to give it as my opinion, that the reason why the Scotch tunes have lived so long, and will probably live forever (if they escape being stifled in modern affected ornament), is merely this, that they are really compositions of melody and harmony united, or rather that their melody is harmony. I mean the simple tunes sung by a single voice. As this will appear paradoxical, I must explain my meaning. In common acceptation, indeed, only an agreeable succession of sounds is called melody, and only the coexistence of agreeable sounds, harmony. But, since the memory is capable of retaining for some moments a perfect idea of the pitch of a past sound, so as to compare with it the pitch of a succeeding sound, and judge truly of their agreement or disagreement, there may and does arise from thence a sense of harmony between the present and past sounds, equally pleasing with that between two present sounds. Now the construction of the old Scotch tunes is this, that almost every succeeding emphatical note is a third,

a fifth, an octave, or in short some note that is in concord with the preceding note. Thirds are chiefly used, which are very pleasing concords. I use the word emphatical to distinguish those notes which have a stress laid on them in singing the tune, from the lighter connecting notes, that serve merely, like grammar articles in common speech, to tack the whole together. . . . The connoisseurs in modern music will say, I have no taste; but I cannot help adding, that I believe our ancestors, in hearing a good song, distinctly articulated, sung to one of those tunes, and accompanied by the harp, felt more real pleasure than is communicated by the generality of modern operas, exclusive of that arising from the scenery and dancing. Most tunes of late composition, not having this natural harmony united with their melody, have recourse to the artificial harmony of a bass, and other accompanying parts. This support, in my opinion, the old tunes do not need, and are rather confused than aided by it. Whoever has heard James Oswald play them on his violoncello, will be less inclined to dispute this with me. I have more than once seen tears of pleasure in the eyes of his auditors; and yet, I think, even his playing those tunes would please more, if he gave them less modern ornament."

The inventing faculty is seldom to be found united with a business one; yet Franklin was not merely a good trader, but a good executive. In 1737 he was offered the position of postmaster of Philadelphia, “ accepted it readily, and found it of great advantage; for, tho' the salary was small, it facilitated the correspondence that improv'd my newspaper, increas'd the number demanded, as well as the advertisements to be inserted, so that it came to afford me a considerable income." His good management of the office led presently to the additional appointment of controller "in regulating several offices," and upon the death of the PostmasterGeneral, in 1753, he was appointed, jointly with Mr.

William Hunter, to succeed him. "We were to have six hundred pounds a year between us, if we could make that sum out of the profits of the office. To do this, a variety of improvements were necessary; some of these were inevitably at first expensive, so that in the first four years the office became above nine hundred pounds in debt to us. But it soon after began to repay us," and before the British government removed Franklin, for political reasons, in 1774, "we had brought it to yield three times as much clear revenue to the crown as the postoffice of Ireland." Concerning this loss of place, Franklin felt extremely bitter, writing:

"I received a written notice from the secretary of the general post-office, that his Majesty's postmaster-general found it necessary to dismiss me from my office of deputy postmaster-general in North America. The expression was well chosen, for in truth they were under a necessity of doing it; it was not their own inclination; they had no fault to find with my conduct in the office; they knew my merit in it, and that if it was now an office of value it had become such chiefly through my care and good management; that it was worth nothing when given to me; it would not then pay the salary allowed me, and unless it did I was not to expect it; and that it now produces near three thousand pounds a year clear to the treasury here. They had beside a personal regard for me. But as the post-offices in all the principal towns are growing daily more and more valuable by the increase of correspondence, the officers being paid commissions instead of salaries, the ministers seem to intend, by directing me to be displaced on this occasion, to hold out to them all an example, that if they are not corrupted by their office to promote the measures of administration, though against the interests and rights of the colonies, they must not expect to be continued."

To this position he was promptly reappointed by the Continental Congress when it came to organize its posts,