MDLXXXIII

TO MRS. JANE MECOM

PHILADELPHIA, 24 March, 1790.

MY DEAR SISTER:-I received your kind letter by your good neighbor, Captain Rich. The information it contained, that you continue well, gave me, as usual, great pleasure. As to myself, I have been quite free from pain for near three weeks past; and therefore, not being obliged to take any laudanum, my appetite has returned, and I have recovered some part of my strength. Thus I continue to live on, while all the friends of my youth have left me, and gone to join the majority. I have, however, the pleasure of continued friendship and conversation with their children and grandchildren. I do not repine at my malady, though a severe one, when I consider how well I am provided with every convenience to palliate it, and to make me comfortable under it; and how many more horrible evils the human body is subject to; and what a long life of health I have been blessed with, free from them all.

You have done well not to send me any more fish at present. These continue good, and give me pleasure.

Do you know any thing of our sister Scott's daughter; whether she is still living, and where? This family join in love to you and yours, and to cousins Williams, with your affectionate brother, B. FRANKLIN.

P. S. It is early in the morning, and I write in bed. The awkward position has occasioned the crooked lines.

VOL. XII.-13.

MDLXXXIV

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON

PHILADELPHIA, 8 April, 1790.

I received your letter of the 31st of last past, relating to encroachments made on the eastern limits of the United States by settlers under the British Government, pretending that it is the western and not the eastern river of the Bay of Passamaquoddy which was designated by the name of St. Croix, in the treaty of peace with that nation; and requesting of me to communicate any facts which my memory or papers may enable me to recollect, and which may indicate the true river, which the Commissioners on both sides had in their view, to establish as the boundary between the two nations.

Your letter found me under a severe fit of my malady, which prevented my answering it sooner, or attending, indeed, to any kind of business. I now can assure you that I am perfectly clear in the remembrance that the map we used in tracing the boundary was brought to the treaty by the Commissioners from England, and that it was the same that was published by Mitchell above twenty years before. Having a copy of that map by me in loose sheets, I send you that sheet which contains the Bay of Passamaquoddy, where you will see that part of the boundary traced. I remember, too, that in that part of the boundary we relied much on the opinion of Mr. Adams, who had been concerned in some former disputes concerning those territories. I think, therefore, that you may obtain still further light from him.

That the map we used was Mitchell's map, Congress were acquainted at the time, by a letter to their Secretary for Foreign Affairs, which I suppose may be found upon their files."

This letter, which was such a satisfactory test of the unabated strength of Franklin's memory, was written during the illness which was destined to prove his last, and only nine days before his death. He died on the 17th of April, 1790, aged eighty-four years and three months.

During the greatest part of his life Dr. Franklin had enjoyed almost uninterrupted good health. In the year 1735, indeed, he had an attack of pleurisy, which ended in a suppuration of the left lobe of the lungs. But from this, as well as from another attack of the same kind, he recovered completely.

As he advanced in years, however, he became subject to fits of the gout, to which, in 1782, a nephritic colic was superadded. From this time, he was also affected with the stone, as well as the gout; and for the last twelve months of his life, these complaints confined him almost entirely to his bed.

"Notwithstanding his distressed situation," his grandson tells us, "neither his mental faculties nor his natural cheerfulness ever forsook him. His memory was tenacious to the very last; and he seemed to be an exception to the general rule,—that at a certain period of life the organs which are subservient to this faculty become callous. A remarkable instance of which is, that he learned to speak French with considerable facility after he had attained the age of seventy!"

In the beginning of April, 1790, he was attacked with a fever and pain in his breast, which terminated his existence. The following account of his last illness was written by his friend and physician, Dr. Jones:

"The stone, with which he had been afflicted for several years, had for the last twelve months confined him chiefly to his bed; and during the extremely painful paroxysms, he was obliged to take large doses of laudanum to mitigate his tortures-still, in the intervals of pain, he not only amused himself with reading and conversing cheerfully with his family, and a few friends who visited him, but was often employed in doing business of a public as well as private nature, with various persons who waited on him for that purpose; and in every instance displayed, not only that readiness and disposition of doing good, which was the distinguishing characteristic of his life, but the fullest and clearest possession of his uncommon mental abilities; and

MDLXXXV

FROM WILLIAM TEMPLE FRANKLIN TO M. VEILLARD

PHILADELPHIA, 22 May, 1790.

You have already learned, my dear friend, the loss which you and I, and the world, have experienced, in

not unfrequently indulged himself in those jeux d'esprit and entertaining anecdotes, which were the delight of all who heard him.

"About sixteen days before his death he was seized with a feverish indisposition, without any particular symptoms attending it, till the third or fourth day, when he complained of a pain in the left breast, which increased till it became extremely acute, attended with a cough and laborious breathing. During this state when the severity of his pains drew forth a groan of complaint, he would observe-that he was afraid he did not bear them as he ought-acknowledged his grateful sense of the many blessings he had received from that Supreme Being, who had raised him from small and low beginnings to such high rank and consideration among men-and made no doubt but his present afflictions were kindly intended to wean him from a world, in which he was no longer fit to act the part assigned him, In this frame of body and mind he continued till five days before his death, when his pain and difficulty of breathing entirely left him, and his family were flattering themselves with the hopes of his recovery, when an imposthumation, which had formed itself in his lungs, suddenly burst, and discharged a great quantity of matter, which he continued to throw up while he had sufficient strength to do it; but, as that failed, the organs of respiration became gradually oppressed -a calm lethargic state succeeded-and, on the 17th of April, 1790, about eleven o'clock at night, he quietly expired, closing a long and useful life of eighty-four years and three months."

In a letter from Dr. Rush to Dr. Price, dated at Philadelphia a week after Franklin's death, the writer says:

"The papers will inform you of the death of our late friend Dr. Franklin. The evening of his life was marked by the same activity of his moral and intellectual powers which distinguished its meridian. His conversation with his family upon the subject of his dissolution was free and cheerful. A few days before he died, he rose from his bed and begged that it might be made up for him so that he might die in a decent manner. His daughter told him that she hoped he would recover and live many years longer. He calmly replied, 'I hope not.'

the death of this good and amiable papa. Although we have long expected it, we were none the less shocked by it when it arrived. He loved you very tenderly, as he did all your family, and I do not

Upon being advised to change his position in bed, that he might breathe easy, he said, 'A dying man can do nothing easy.'

"All orders and bodies of people have vied with each other in paying tributes of respect to his memory."

Mrs. Hewson, writing to one of Dr. Franklin's oldest friends in England, thus spoke of her own and the nation's loss:

"We have lost that valued, that venerable, kind friend, whose knowledge enlightened our minds, and whose philanthropy warmed our hearts. But we have the consolation to think, that, if a life well spent in acts of universal benevolence to mankind, a grateful acknowedgment of Divine favor, a patient submission under severe chastisement, and an humble trust in Almighty mercy, can insure the happiness of a future state, our present loss is his gain. I was the faithful witness of the closing scene, which he sustained with that calm fortitude which characterized him through life. No repining, no peevish expression, ever escaped him during a confinement of two years, in which, I believe, if every moment of ease could be added together, would not amount to two whole months. 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 say this to you, because I know it will give you pleasure. "I never shall forget one day that I passed with our friend last summer. I found him in bed in great agony; but, when that agony abated a little, I asked 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' Lyric Poems, and descanted upon their sublimity in a strain worthy of them and of their pious author. It is natural for us to wish that an attention to some ceremonies had accompanied that religion of the heart, which I am convinced Dr. Franklin always possessed; but let us, who feel the benefit of them, continue to practise them, without thinking lightly of that piety, which could support pain without a murmur, and meet death without terror."