Benjamin Franklin: Self-Revealed, Volume 1 — Chapter 6, Franklin's British Friends, Part 2

When he next writes, it is from Paris on January 12, 1777. "My Dear, Dear Polly," he begins, "Figure to yourself an old Man, with grey Hair Appearing under a Martin Fur Cap, among the Powder'd Heads of Paris.

It is this odd Figure that salutes you, with handfuls of Blessings on you and your dear little ones."

He had failed to bring about a union between Polly and his son, but, inveterate matchmaker that he was, this letter shows that he still had, as a grandfather, the designs on Eliza, Polly's daughter, that he had disclosed in his previous letter to Polly, when he expressed the hope that he might be alive to dance with Mrs. Stevenson at the wedding of Ben and this child.

"I give him (Ben)," it said, with a French grimace between its lines, "a little French Language and Address, and then send him over to pay his Respects to Miss Hewson."

In another letter, he tells Polly that, if she would take Ben under her care, as she had offered to do, he would set no bad example to her _other_ children.

Two or three years later, he wrote to her from Philadelphia that Ben was finishing his studies at college, and would, he thought, make her a good son.

Indeed a few days later he referred to Ben in another letter as "your son Ben."

"Does my Godson," he asked in a letter from France to Mrs. Hewson, along with many affectionate inquiries about his "dear old Friend," Mrs. Stevenson, and other English friends of theirs, "remember anything of his Doctor Papa?

I suppose not.

Kiss the dear little Fellow for me; not forgetting the others.

I long to see them and you."

Then in a postscript he tells Mrs. Hewson that, at the ball in Nantes, Temple took notice that there were no heads less than five, and that there were a few seven lengths of the face above the forehead.

"You know," he observes with the old sportive humor, "that those who have practis'd Drawing, as he has, attend more to Proportions, than People in common do."

In another letter from Passy, he asks Mrs. Hewson whether Jacob Viny, who was in the wheel business, could not make up a coach with the latest useful improvements and bring them all over in it.

In the same letter, he inserts a word to relieve Mrs. Stevenson of her anxiety about her swelled ankles which she attributed to the dropsy; and the paragraph ends with the words, "My tender Love to her."

As Polly's children grew older, the references to them in Franklin's letters to the mother became more and more frequent and affectionate.

You cannot be more pleas'd [he wrote to her from Passy], in talking about your Children, your Methods of Instructing them, and the Progress they make, than I am in hearing it, and in finding, that, instead of following the idle Amusements, which both your Fortune and the Custom of the Age might have led you into, your Delight and your Duty go together, by employing your Time in the Education of your Offspring.

This is following Nature and Reason, instead of Fashion; than which nothing is more becoming the Character of a Woman of Sense and Virtue.

Repeatedly Franklin sends little books to Mrs. Hewson's children, and on one occasion he sends two different French grammars, one of which, after the French master of her children had taken his choice, was to be given to his godson, as his New Year's gift, together with the two volumes of _Synonymes Françaises_.

At one time before he left France, he thought of visiting Mrs. Hewson in England and asked her advice about doing so in the existing state of the British temper.

When she counselled him against the journey, he wrote to her, "Come, my dear Friend, live with me while I stay here, and go with me, if I do go, to America."

As the result of this invitation, Mrs. Hewson and her children spent the winter of 1784-85 with him at Passy, and his first letter to her, after she returned to England, bears indications in every line of the regret inspired by his loss of her society, after, to use his own words, he had passed a long winter in a manner that made it appear the shortest of any he ever spent.

One of his peculiarities was to make a point of telling a friend anything of a pleasant nature that he had heard about him.

Since her departure, M. LeVeillard in particular, he said, had told him at different times what indeed he knew long since, "_C'est une bien digne Femme, cette Madame Hewson, une très amable Femme.

_" The letter then terminates with the request that, when she prayed at church for all that travelled by land or sea, she would think of her ever affectionate friend, but starts up again in a postscript, in which he sends his love to William, Thomas and Eliza, Mrs. Hewson's children, and asks their mother to tell them that he missed their cheerful prattle.

Temple being sick, and Benjamin at Paris, he had found it very _triste_ breakfasting alone, and sitting alone, and without any tea in the evening.

"My love to every one of the Children," is his postscript to his next letter, in which, when he was on the eve of leaving France, he told Mrs. Hewson that he said nothing to persuade her to go with him or to follow him, because he knew that she did not usually act from persuasion, but judgment.

In nothing was he wiser than in his reserve about giving advice when the persons to be advised were themselves in possession of all the facts of the case essential to a proper decision.

When he touched at Southampton, Mrs. Hewson was not yet resolved to sever the ties that connected her with England, but subsequently she did come over with her children to Philadelphia, and made it her home for the rest of her life.

The last letter but one that Franklin wrote to her before she sailed is among the most readable letters in the correspondence.

Referring to three letters of hers, that had not reached him until nearly ten years after they were written, he said: This pacquet had been received by Mr. Bache, after my departure for France, lay dormant among his papers during all my absence, and has just now broke out upon me, _like words_, that had been, as somebody says, _congealed in northern air_.

Therein I find all the pleasing little family history of your children; how William had begun to spell, overcoming, by strength of memory, all the difficulty occasioned by the common wretched alphabet, while you were convinced of the utility of our new one; how Tom, genius-like, struck out new paths, and, relinquishing the old names of the letters, called U _bell_ and P _bottle_; how Eliza began to grow jolly, that is, fat and handsome, resembling Aunt Rooke, whom I used to call _my lovely_.

Together with all the _then_ news of Lady Blount's having produced at length a boy; of Dolly's being well, and of poor good Catherine's decease; of your affairs with Muir and Atkinson, and of their contract for feeding the fish in the channel; of the Vinys and their jaunt to Cambridge in the long carriage; of Dolly's journey to Wales with Mrs. Scott; of the Wilkeses, the Pearces, Elphinstones, &c. ;--concluding with a kind of promise, that, as soon as the ministry and Congress agreed to make peace, I should have you with me in America.

That peace has been some time made; but, alas!

the promise is not yet fulfilled.

Rarely, indeed, we imagine has one person, even though a father, or a husband, ever enveloped the life of another with such an atmosphere of pure, caressing, intimate sympathy and affection as surrounds these letters.

Perhaps, our review of them would be incomplete, if we did not also recall the comments made by Franklin to Polly upon the death of her mother, and Polly's own comments upon the close of his life.

The Departure of my dearest Friend [he wrote to Polly from Passy], which I learn from your last Letter, greatly affects me.

To meet with her once more in this Life was one of the principal Motives of my proposing to visit England again, before my Return to America.

The last Year carried off my Friends Dr. Pringle, and Dr. Fothergill, Lord Kaims, and Lord le Despencer.

This has begun to take away the rest, and strikes the hardest.

Thus the Ties I had to that Country, and indeed to the World in general, are loosened one by one, and I shall soon have no Attachment left to make me unwilling to follow.

This is the description given by Mrs. Hewson of his last years after stating that during the two years that preceded his death he did not experience so much as two months of exemption from pain, yet never uttered one repining or peevish word.

When the pain was not too violent to be amused, he employed himself with his books, his pen, or in conversation with his friends; and upon every occasion displayed the clearness of his intellect, and the cheerfulness of his temper.

Even when the intervals from pain were so short, that his words were frequently interrupted, I have known him to hold a discourse in a sublime strain of piety.

I never shall forget one day that I passed with our friend last summer (1789).

I

found him in bed in great agony; but, when that agony abated a little, I asked him if I should read to him.

He said, "Yes," and the first book I met with was "Johnson's Lives of the Poets."

I read the "Life of Watts," who was a favorite author with Dr. Franklin;

and instead of lulling him to sleep, it roused him to a display of the powers of his memory and his reason.

He repeated several of Watts's "Lyric Poems," and descanted upon their sublimity in a strain worthy of them and of their pious author.

Sublime or not, it cannot be denied that the poems of Dr. Watts have been a staff of comfort and support to many a pilgrim on his way to the "fields of endless light where the saints and angels walk."

Another very dear English friend of Franklin was William Strahan, King's Printer, the partner at one time of Thomas Cadell the Elder, and the publisher of Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_.

The frequent references in Franklin's letters to him to Madeira wine would seem to indicate that, if it had been possible for such a temperate man as Franklin to have what is known as a boon companion, Strahan would have been he.

On one occasion, Franklin writes to him that he has a great opinion of his wisdom (Madeira apart), on another, after twitting him good-humoredly with the restless condition of England, he observes: "You will say my _Advice_ 'smells of _Madeira_.'

You are right.

This foolish Letter is mere chitchat _between ourselves_ over the _second bottle_."

The friendship between the two began before they had even seen each other.

From writing to each other from time to time, in the course of business, about books and stationery, they finally came to feel as if they really knew each other, and to exchange familiar messages on that footing.

In his earliest letter to Strahan, Franklin signs himself, "Your humble servant unknown," but, before he has even carried into execution the floating intention of going over to England, which, again and again, manifests itself in his letters to Strahan, his spouse is corresponding with Mrs. Strahan, and he has arranged a match between Sally and Master Billy, one of Strahan's sons.

"My compliments to Mrs. Strahan, and to your promising son, perhaps one day mine," he wrote to Strahan several years before his first mission to England, "God send our children good and suitable matches, for I begin to feel a parents' cares in that respect, and fondly wish to see them well settled before I leave them."

A little later, he has arranged the match so entirely to his satisfaction, and, as the event proved, to that of Strahan too, that he writes glibly to Strahan of William Strahan as "our son Billy" and of Sally as "our daughter Sally."

The same letter foreshadows the mission to England that brought the two friends for the first time face to face.

"Our Assembly," it said, "talk of sending me to England speedily.

Then look out sharp, and if a fat old fellow should come to your printing-house and request a little smouting, depend upon it 'tis your affectionate friend and humble servant."

The earlier cis-Atlantic letters of Franklin to Strahan are mainly letters of business over which we need not linger here; but they contain some paragraphs of general interest besides those relating to Sally and Master Billy.

In one place, Franklin declares that he is glad that the Polybius, which he had ordered from Strahan, did not come; it was intended for his son, who was, when the order was given, in the army, and apparently bent on a military life, but that, as peace had cut off the prospect of advancement in that way, his son would apply himself to other business.

In any event, Polybius would appear to have been a rather pedantic authority for the military operations of the American backwoods.

The other business to which William Franklin had decided to apply himself was that of the profession, which, in the opinion of the general public, approximates most nearly to a state of warfare--the law, and, in the letters from Franklin to Strahan, William's altered plans are brought home to us in the form of orders for law books and the request that Strahan would have William entered as a student at the Inns of Court.

These earlier letters also contain some piquant comments on colonial conditions.

Such are the remarks prompted by Pope's sneer in the _Dunciad_ at the supposed popularity of the poetaster, Ward, in "ape-and-monkey climes."

That Poet has many Admirers here, and the Reflection he somewhere casts on the Plantations as if they had a Relish for such Writers as Ward only, is injurious.

Your Authors know but little of the Fame they have on this side of the Ocean.

We are a kind of Posterity in respect to them.

We read their Works with perfect impartiality, being at too great distance to be byassed by the Factions, Parties and Prejudices that prevail among you.

We know nothing of their Personal Failings;

the Blemishes in their Character never reaches (sic) us, and therefore the bright and amiable part strikes us with its full Force.

They have never offended us or any of our Friends, and we have no competitions with them, therefore we praise and admire them without Restraint.

Whatever Thomson writes send me a dozen copies of.

I had read no poetry for several years, and almost lost the Relish of it, till I met with his Seasons.

That charming Poet has brought more Tears of Pleasure into my Eyes than all I ever read before.

I

wish it were in my Power to return him any Part of the Joy he has given me.

Many years later, some appreciative observations of the same critic on the poetry of Cowper were to make even that unhappy poet little less proud than the girl in the Tatler with the new pair of garters.

The friendship, initiated by the early letters of Franklin to Strahan, ripened fast into the fullest and freest intimacy when Franklin went over to England in 1757. They were both printers, to begin with, and were both very social in their tastes.

Strahan was besides no mean political _quid nunc_, and Franklin was all his life an active politician.

So interesting were the reports that he made to Franklin at the latter's request on political conditions in England, after Franklin returned to America from his first mission to that country, that Franklin acknowledged his debt in these flattering terms: Your accounts are so clear, circumstantial, and complete, that tho' there is nothing too much, nothing is wanting to give us, as I imagine, a more perfect knowledge of your publick affairs than most people have that live among you.

The characters of your speakers and actors are so admirably sketch'd, and their views so plainly opened, that we see and know everybody; they all become of our acquaintance.

So excellent a manner of writing seems to me a superfluous gift to a mere printer.

If you do not commence author for the benefit of mankind, you will certainly be found guilty hereafter of burying your talent.

It is true that it will puzzle the Devil himself to find anything else to accuse you of, but remember he may make a great deal of that.

If I were king (which may God in mercy to us all prevent) I should certainly make you the historiographer of my reign.

There could be but one objection--I suspect you might be a little partial in my favor.

"Straney" was the affectionate nickname by which Franklin addressed Strahan after he came into personal contact with him, and, as usual, the friendship that he formed for the head of the family drew all the other members of the family within its folds.

His friendship was rarely, we believe, confined to one member of a family.

That was the reason why, in one of his last letters to Mrs. Hewson, he could picture his condition in Philadelphia in these terms: "The companions of my youth are indeed almost all departed, but I find an agreeable society among their children and grandchildren."

And so, in Franklin's relations with the Strahans, we find his affection taking in all the members of the household.

"My dear Love to Mrs. Strahan," he says in a letter to Strahan from Philadelphia in 1762, "and bid her be well for all our sakes.

Remember me affectionately to Rachey and my little Wife and to your promising Sons my young Friends Billy, George and Andrew."

A similar message in another letter to Strahan is followed by the statement, "I hope to live to see George a Bishop," and, a few days afterwards, Franklin recurs to the subject in these terms: "Tell me whether George is to be a Church or Presbyterian parson.

I know you are a Presbyterian yourself; but then I think you have more sense than to stick him into a priesthood that admits of no promotion.

If he was a dull lad it might not be amiss, but George has parts, and ought to aim at a mitre."

There are other repeated references in Franklin's letters to Strahan's daughter whom Franklin called his wife.

"I rejoice to hear," he says in one of them, "that Mrs. Strahan is recovering; that your family in general is well, and that my little woman in particular is so, and has not forgot our tender connection."

In a letter, which we have already quoted, after charging Strahan with not being as good-natured as he ought to be, he says, "I am glad, however that you have this fault; for a man without faults is a hateful creature.

He puts all his friends out of countenance; but I love you exceedingly."

As for Strahan, he loved Franklin so exceedingly that in his effort to bring Deborah over to England he did not stop short, as we have seen, of letting her know that, when she arrived, there would be a ready-made son-in-law to greet her.

Indeed the idea of fixing Franklin in England appears to have been the darling project of his heart if we are to judge by the frequency with which Franklin had to oppose Deborah's fear of the sea to his importunity.

More than once it must have appeared to him as if the eloquence on which he prided himself so greatly would bear down all difficulties.

After Franklin in 1762 had been for two nights on board of the ship at Portsmouth which was to take him to America, but was kept in port by adverse winds, he wrote to Strahan: The Attraction of Reason is at present for the other side of the Water, but that of Inclination will be for this side.

You know which usually prevails.

I shall probably make but this one Vibration, and settle here forever.

Nothing will prevent it, if I can, as I hope I can, prevail with Mrs. F.

to accompany me.

That, he said in a subsequent letter, would be the great difficulty.

The next year, he even wrote to Strahan from America, after his journey of eleven hundred and forty miles on the American continent that year, that no friend could wish him more in England than he did himself, though, before he went, everything, in which he was concerned, must be so settled in America as to make another return to it unnecessary.

But, in the course of his life, Franklin, with his sensibility to social attentions and freedom from provincial restrictions, professed his preference for so many parts of the world as a place of residence that statements of this kind should not be accepted too literally.

In one of his letters to Strahan, before his return to England, on his second mission, there is a sly stroke that gives us additional insight into the intimate relations which the two men had contracted with each other.

You tell me [Franklin said] that the value I set on your political letters is a strong proof that my judgment is on the decline.

People seldom have friends kind enough to tell them that disagreeable truth, however useful it might be to know it; and indeed I learn more from what you say than you intended I should; for it convinces me that you had observed the decline for some time past in other instances, as 'tis very unlikely you should see it first in my good opinion of your writings.

With Franklin's return to England on his second mission, the old friendly intercourse between Strahan and himself was resumed, but it came wholly to an end during the American Revolution; for Strahan was the King's Printer, an inveterate Tory, and one of the ministerial phalanx, which followed George III.

blindly.

When the dragon's teeth sown by the King began to spring up in serried ranks, Franklin wrote, but did not send, to Strahan the letter, which is so well known as to almost make transcription unnecessary.

MR.

STRAHAN,

You are a Member of Parliament, and one of that Majority which has doomed my Country to Destruction.

--You have begun to burn our Towns, and murder our People.

--Look upon your Hands!

They are stained with the Blood of your Relations!

--You and I were long Friends:--You are now my Enemy,--and I am Yours, B.

FRANKLIN.

In this instance, also, Franklin was but true to his practice of sometimes inserting a quip or a quirk into even the gravest contexts.

Not until December 4, 1781, does the silence between the two friends, produced by the Revolution, appear to have been really broken.

On that date, Franklin wrote to Strahan a formal letter, addressing him no longer as "Dear Straney," but as "Dear Sir," and concluding with none of the former affectionate terminations, but in the stiffest terms of obsequious eighteenth century courtesy.

The ostensible occasion for the letter was a package of letters which he asked Strahan to forward to Mrs. Strange, the wife of Robert Strange, the celebrated engraver, whose address he did not remember.

He also asked Strahan for a copy of the _Tully on Old Age_, which Franklin had printed in Philadelphia many years before, and had endeavored to sell in part in London through Strahan.

Well maintained as the reserve of this letter is, it is plainly enough that of a man, who is feeling his way a little cautiously, because he does not know just how his approaches will be received.

Between the lines, we can see that the real object of the requests about the package of letters and the Latin classic was to find out whether Franklin's treason had killed all desire on Straney's part to open a second bottle with him.

There is a by-reference to Didot le Jeune, who was bidding fair to carry the art of fine printing to a high pitch of perfection, and an expression of pleasure that Strahan had married his daughter happily, and that his prosperity continued.

"I hope," Franklin said, "it may never meet with any Interruption having still, tho' at present divided by public Circumstances, a Remembrance of our ancient private Friendship."

Nor did he fail to present his affectionate respects to Mrs. Strahan and his love to Strahan's children.

The olive branch was distinctly held out, but, just about the time that this letter reached Strahan, the ministry, of which he was such an unfaltering adherent, suffered a defeat on the American question, and the Tully was transmitted by Mrs. Strange's husband with the statement that he really believed that Strahan himself would have written to Franklin but for the smart of the Parliamentary disaster of that morning.

Several years later, there came to Franklin an acknowledgment by Strahan of the very friendly and effectual patronage which had been afforded to a distant kinswoman of his at Philadelphia by Franklin's family.

The letter also eagerly urged Franklin to come to England once more, and with Franklin's reply, signed "yours ever most affectionately," the old _entente_ was fully re-established.

In the high animal spirits, aroused by the renewal of the former relationship, he fell back upon the technical terms of the printing house, so familiar to the two friends, for the purpose of illustrating his pet proposition that England would never be at rest until all the enormous salaries, emoluments and patronage of her great offices were abolished, and these offices were made, instead of places of profit, places of expense and burthen.

Ambition and avarice [he said] are each of them strong Passions, and when they are united in the same Persons, and have the same Objects in view for their Gratification, they are too strong for Public Spirit and Love of Country, and are apt to produce the most violent Factions and Contentions.

They should therefore be separated, and made to act one against the other.

Those Places, to speak in our old stile (Brother Type) may be for the good of the _Chapel_, but they are bad for the Master, as they create constant Quarrels that hinder the Business.

For example, here are near two Months that your Government has been employed _in getting its form to press_; which is not yet fit to _work on_, every Page of it being _squabbled_, and the whole ready to fall into _pye_.

The Founts too must be very scanty, or strangely _out of sorts_, since your _Compositors_ cannot find either _upper_ or _lower case Letters_ sufficient to set the word ADMINISTRATION, but are forc'd to be continually _turning for them_.

However, to return to common (tho' perhaps too saucy) Language, don't despair; you have still one resource left, and that not a bad one, since it may reunite the Empire.

We have some Remains of Affection for you, and shall always be ready to receive and take care of you in Case of Distress.

So if you have not Sense and Virtue enough to govern yourselves, e'en dissolve your present old crazy Constitution, and _send members to Congress_.

This is the letter that Franklin said was mere chitchat between themselves over the second bottle.

Where America was concerned, Strahan was almost credulous enough to have even swallowed the statement in Franklin's humorous letter "To the Editor of a Newspaper," written about the time of the Stamp Act in ridicule of English ignorance respecting America, that the grand leap of the whale in his chase of the cod up the Fall of Niagara was esteemed by all who had seen it as one of the finest spectacles in Nature.

In 1783, Captain Nathaniel Falconer, another faithful friend of Franklin, wrote to him with the true disregard of an old sea-dog for spelling and syntax: "I have been over to your old friends Mr. Strawns and find him just the same man, believes every Ly he hears against the United States, the French Army and our Army have been killing each other, and that we shall be glad to come to this country again."

In reply, Franklin said: "I have still a regard for Mr. Strahan in remembrance of our ancient Friendship, tho' he has as a Member of Parliament dipt his Hands in our Blood.

He was always as credulous as you find him."

And, if what Franklin further says in this letter is true, Strahan was not only credulous himself but not above publishing mendacious letters about America as written from New York, which in point of fact were fabricated in London.

A little over a year later, when the broken bones of the ancient friendship had reknit, Franklin had his chance to remind Strahan of the extent to which he and those of the same mind with him had been deceived by their gross misconceptions of America.

His opportunity came in the form of a reply to a letter from Strahan withholding his assent from the idea of Franklin, so utterly repugnant to the working principles of Strahan's party associates, that public service should be rendered gratuitously.

"There are, I make no doubt," said Franklin "many wise and able Men, who would take as much Pleasure in governing for nothing, as they do in playing Chess for nothing.

It would be one of the noblest of Amusements."

Then, when he has fortified the proposition by some real or fancied illustrations, drawn from French usages, he proceeds to unburden his mind to Strahan with a degree of candor that must have made the latter wince a little at times.

I allow you [he said] all the Force of your Joke upon the Vagrancy of our Congress.

They have a right to sit _where_ they please, of which perhaps they have made too much Use by shifting too often.

But they have two other Rights; those of sitting _when_ they please, and as _long_ as they please, in which methinks they have the advantage of your Parliament; for they cannot be dissolved by the Breath of a Minister, or sent packing as you were the other day, when it was your earnest desire to have remained longer together.

You "fairly acknowledge, that the late War terminated quite contrary to your Expectation."

Your expectation was ill founded; for you would not believe your old Friend, who told you repeatedly, that by those Measures England would lose her Colonies, as Epictetus warned in vain his Master that he would break his Leg.

You believ'd rather the Tales you heard of our Poltroonery and Impotence of Body and Mind.

Do you not remember the Story you told me of the Scotch sergeant, who met with a Party of Forty American Soldiers, and, tho' alone, disarm'd them all, and brought them in Prisoners?

A

Story almost as Improbable as that of the Irishman, who pretended to have alone taken and brought in Five of the Enemy by _surrounding_ them.

And yet, my Friend, sensible and Judicious as you are, but partaking of the general Infatuation, you seemed to believe it.

The Word _general_ puts me in mind of a General, your General Clarke, who had the Folly to say in my hearing at Sir John Pringle's, that, with a Thousand British grenadiers, he would undertake to go from one end of America to the other, and geld all the Males, partly by force and partly by a little Coaxing.

It is plain he took us for a species of Animals, very little superior to Brutes.

The Parliament too believ'd the stories of another foolish General, I forget his Name, that the Yankeys never _felt bold_.

Yankey was understood to be a sort of Yahoo, and the Parliament did not think the Petitions of such Creatures were fit to be received and read in so wise an Assembly.

What was the consequence of this monstrous Pride and Insolence?

You first sent small Armies to subdue us, believing them more than sufficient, but soon found yourselves obliged to send greater; these, whenever they ventured to penetrate our Country beyond the Protection of their Ships, were either repulsed and obliged to scamper out, or were surrounded, beaten and taken Prisoners.

An America Planter, who had never seen Europe, was chosen by us to Command our Troops, and continued during the whole War.

This Man sent home to you, one after another, five of your best Generals baffled, their Heads bare of Laurels, disgraced even in the opinion of their Employers.

Your contempt of our Understandings, in Comparison with your own, appeared to be not much better founded than that of our Courage, if we may judge by this Circumstance, that, in whatever Court of Europe a Yankey negociator appeared, the wise British Minister was routed, put in a passion, pick'd a quarrel with your Friends, and was sent home with a Flea in his Ear.

But after all, my dear Friend, do not imagine that I am vain enough to ascribe our Success to any superiority in any of those Points.

I am too well acquainted with all the Springs and Levers of our Machine, not to see, that our human means were unequal to our undertaking, and that, if it had not been for the Justice of our Cause, and the consequent Interposition of Providence, in which we had Faith, we must have been ruined.

If I had ever before been an Atheist, I should now have been convinced of the Being and Government of a Deity!

It is he who abases the Proud and favours the Humble.

May we never forget his Goodness to us, and may our future Conduct manifest our Gratitude.

It was characteristic of Franklin to open his heart to a friend in this candid way even upon sensitive topics, and there can be no better proof of the instinctive confidence of his friends in the essential good feeling that underlay such candor than the fact that they never took offence at utterances of this sort.

They knew too well the constancy of affection and placability of temper which caused him to justly say of himself in a letter to Strahan, "I like immortal friendships, but not immortal enmities."

The retrospective letter from which we have just quoted had its genial afterglow as all Franklin's letters had, when he had reason to think that he had written something at which a relative or a friend might take umbrage.

But let us leave these serious Reflections [he went on], and converse with our usual Pleasantry.

I remember your observing once to me as we sat together in the House of Commons, that no two Journeymen Printers, within your Knowledge, had met with such Success in the World as ourselves.

You were then at the head of your Profession, and soon afterwards became a Member of Parliament.

I was an Agent for a few Provinces, and now act for them all.

But we have risen by different Modes.

I, as a Republican Printer, always liked a Form well _plain'd down_; being averse to those _overbearing_ Letters that hold their Heads so _high_, as to hinder their Neighbours from appearing.

You, as a Monarchist, chose to work upon _Crown_ Paper, and found it profitable; while I work'd upon _pro patria_ (often call'd _Fools Cap_) with no less advantage.

Both our _Heaps hold out_ very well, and we seem likely to make a pretty good day's Work of it.

With regard to Public Affairs (to continue in the same stile) it seems to me that the Compositors in your Chapel do not _cast off their Copy_ well, nor perfectly understand _Imposing_;

their _Forms_, too, are continually pester'd by the _Outs_ and _Doubles_, that are not easy to be corrected.

And I think they were wrong in laying aside some _Faces_, and particularly certain _Headpieces_, that would have been both useful and ornamental.

But, Courage!

The Business may still flourish with good Management; and the Master become as rich as any of the Company.