boat for us; we landed at Market Street wharf, where we were received by a crowd of people with huzzas, and accompanied with acclamations quite to my door. Found my family well. God be praised and thanked for all his mercies!" The next day, the Assembly of Pennsylvania voted him a congratulatory address, in which they said: "We are confident, Sir, that we speak the sentiments of the whole country, when we say, that your services, in the public councils and negotiations, have not only merited the thanks of the present generation, but will be recorded in the pages of history, to your immortal honor." The faculty of the University, the Philosophical Society, and many other public bodies also, addressed him; and to all these addresses he gave suitable replies. General Washington wrote to him: "Amid the public gratulations on your safe return to America, after a long absence and the many eminent services you have rendered it, for which as a benefited person I feel the obligation, permit an individual to join the public voice in expressing a sense of them; and to assure you, that, as no one entertains more respect for your character, so no one can salute you with more sincerity or with greater pleasure, than I do on the occasion." Among the many who were made happy by his arrival, no one was so deeply moved as his sister, Jane Mecom; for no one loved him as she loved him. She had felt all the anguish of his malady when the ocean rolled between them. Before he left France, she had written: "Oh! that after you have spent your whole life in the service of the public, and have attained so glorious a conclu sion, as I thought, as would now permit you to come home and spend (as you used to say) the evening with your friends in ease and quiet, that now such a dreadful malady should attack you! My heart is ready to burst with grief at the thought. How many hours have I lain awake on nights, thinking what excruciating pains you might then be encountering, while I, poor, useless, and worthless worm, was permitted to be at ease. O that it was in my power to mitigate or alleviate the anguish I know you must endure!" And when she heard of his arrival, she wrote: "I long so much to see you that I should immediately seek for some one that would accompany me, and take a little care of me, but my daughter is in a poor state of health, and gone into the country to try to get a little better, and I am in a strait between two; but the comfortable re flection that you are at home among all your dear children, and no more seas to cross, will be constantly pleasing to me till I am permitted to enjoy the happiness of seeing and conversing with you." She told him, too, that his old friend, Mrs. Catherine Greene, wife of the Governor of Rhode Island, was so overjoyed at the news of his arrival that her children thought she was seized with hysterics. His letters to his sister continued to be unspeakably considerate and tender. One of them has been particularly admired, not for its humor merely, but for the thoughtful, ingenious benevolence of it. "You need not," said he, "be concerned, 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. To give you an instance. A gentleman received a letter, in which were these words-Not finding Brown at hom, I delivered your meseg to his yf. The gentleman finding it bad spelling, and therefore not very intelligible, called his lady to help him read it. Between them they picked out the meaning of all but the yf, which they could not understand. The lady proposed calling her chambermaid, because Betty, says she, has the best knack at reading bad spelling of any one I know. Betty came, and was surprised, that neither Sir nor Madam could tell what yf wa.. Why,' says she 'yf spells wife; what else can it spell?' And, indeed, it is a much better, as well as shorter method of spelling wife, than doubleyou, i, ef, e, which in reality spell doubleyifey." "I think," replied she, in her simple way, "Sir and Madam were very deficient in sagacity that they could not find out yf as well as Betty, but sometimes the Betties have the brightest understandings." PART VII. CHAPTER I. PRESIDENT OF PENNSYLVANIA. THE long sea voyage gave Dr. Franklin a new hold upon life. He could walk the streets of "dear Philadelphia," and could endure the motion of an easy carriage. He told Mr. Jay that he hoped to visit him in New York ere long, as he thought he could bear riding along the sandy, level roads of New Jersey, from Burlington to Amboy, and "the rest was water." Nor did he despair of seeing once more his native Boston, well beloved. His checks were ruddy, his eye was bright, his voice was firm, his spirits were high, and his conversation was as merry and vigorous as ever. He said that he sometimes forgot that he was an old man. His townsmen, too, were not disposed to consider him past doing them. service. Pennsylvania was in a stress of politics in the summer of 1785. The election of a president and vice-president of the State was to occur in October; and between the two parties, the Constitutionalists and the Republicans, the struggle for triumph was waxing warm. The chief point in dispute was whether the legislature of the State should consist of one house, as the Constitution then ordained, or of two houses, as the Republicans desired. People then were not so accustomed to political strife as we are now, and, consequently, many timid individuals feared that the Commonwealth itself was in danger of being torn to pieces by the contending factions. In August came the announcement that Dr. Franklin was, in very truth, coming home; nay, had actually left Paris in one of the royal litters, and would, in all probability, reach Philadelphia before the election. Dr. Franklin, as we know, was a Constitutionalist-a one-house man-the great champion of that system. |