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 cheeks 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. But for ten years he had been absent from the State, and he was coming home covered with the glory of a vast success, and illustrious with the esteem of civilized man. If, on the one hand, the Constitutionalists saw their opportunity, the Republicans, on the other, willingly bowed to the necessity of the situation. "The expected arrival,” said one of the newspapers of Philadelphia, "of that great philosopher, that great politician, and, to add a wreath of glory of a more immortal texture, that truly benevolent citizen of the world, Dr. Franklin, in this State, cannot fail to produce a most sensible effect on the public weal. To doubt of his being chosen President on the vacation of that office, should he fortunately arrive prior thereto, would be to call in question not only the honor and gratitude, but even the common sense of Pennsylvania. With his profound penetration, which will instantaneously see through the complicated system of government, and develop the most minute incoherence or irregularity capable of impeding the progress of society toward perfection-with his benevolence, his magnanimity, and his unbounded patriotism, with his capacious understanding and enlarged views, which will teach him to despise equally those members of both parties, who, under the false mask of patriotism, have no other views than their own aggrandizement, and to select from both parties those whose only object is the safety and well-being of the state, and whose only difference is in the mode of promoting that object he will authoritatively command the effectual support of all the real friends of Pennsylvania. Confided in and obeyed by all persons of this description, he will, doubtless, induce our contending parties to bury the war-hatchet, to send the belt of peace, and to embrace each other as brethren. Party disputes to a certain degree are inevitable in, and perhaps essential to a free government. But when they arrive at such a hight, that the public welfare is esteemed but a secondary consideration, and is liable to be sacrificed to private piques and resentments (as is too much the case on both sides at present), they threaten a dissolution of government, and the introduction of disorder, anarchy, and all the horrors of civil commotion !" This article, which appeared two or three weeks before his arrival, evidently expressed the feeling of the State. As soon as he reached the city he was put in nomination for the office of Councilor for Philadelphia, to which he was elected early in October |