Franklin Bache became the standard-bearer of the journalists who abused Washington.

If Benjamin, from this long intimacy, was his favorite of the Bache children, Franklin was unquestionably fond

of them all, though the rest were too young to have been more than playthings to him. In writing of his home toward the end of his life, he described his pleasure in "a dutiful and affectionate daughter, who, together with her husband and six children, compose my family. The children are all promising, and even the youngest, who is but four years old, contributes to my amusement"; and only two years before his death he noted "the addition of a little good-natured girl, whom I begin to love as well as the rest."

Nor was the affection of the grandfather unreciprocated, one of Franklin's callers recording that Mrs. Bache" had three of her children about her, over whom she seemed to have no kind of command, but who appeared to be excessively fond of their Grandpapa.” Franklin himself tells a story of a child that is worth repeating as showing the grandsire's feeling. His wife had written of Mrs. Bache's over-severe punishment of one of the children, and the husband had replied:

"It was very prudently done of you not to interfere when his mother thought fit to correct him; which pleased me the more, as I feared, from your fondness of him, that he would be too much humored, and perhaps spoiled. There is a story of two little boys in the street; one was crying bitterly; the other came to him to ask what was the matter. 'I have been,' says he, for a pennyworth of vinegar, and I have broken the glass, and spilled the vinegar, and my mother will whip me.' No, she won't whip you,' says the other. Indeed she will,' says he. 'What,' says the other, 'ha'n't you then got ne'er a grandmother?""

At seventeen years of age the runaway apprentice had left his family; from that time he saw but little of

them. As agent for Pennsylvania, and as minister to France, Franklin was, save for two short home-comings, continuously in Europe from 1757 to 1785, and necessarily separated from his wife, and, except as already narrated, from his children and grandchildren. Yet of all his kith and kin he was undoubtedly truly fond, not merely as relatives, but as companions, and not to one does he seem to have been lacking in interest and kindness.

FULL-LENGTH PORTRAIT OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. From a copperplate, after a drawing by L. C. de Carmontelle. collection of Clarence S. Bement, Esq.

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N his autobiography Franklin relates that his father "had an excellent constitution of body, was of middle stature, but well set, and very strong," qualities all inherited by the son. From the maternal side the boy derived "likewise an excellent constitution"; and he asserts that "I never knew either my father or mother to have any sickness but that of which they dy'd, he at 89, and she at 85 years of age."

This heritage of soundness and strength was a large element in the success Franklin achieved. He himself took pride that in the printing-office where he worked during his first London sojourn, " on occasion, I carried up and down stairs a large form of types in each hand, when others carried but one in both hands." After he set up as a printer for himself, he often worked till far