from 52 descending to 54, and from 43 ascending to 45, and every one of its parallel bent rows of eight numbers, makes 260. Also, the bent row from 45 to 43, descending to the left, and from 23 to 17, descending to the right, and every one of its parallel bent rows of eight numbers, makes 260. Also, the bent row from 52 to 54, descending to the right, and from 10 to 16, descending to the left, and every one of its parallel bent rows of eight numbers, makes 260. Also, the parallel bent rows next to the above-mentioned, which are shortened to three numbers ascending and three descending, &c., as from 53 to 4 ascending, and from 29 to 44 descending, make, with the two corner numbers, 260. Also, the two numbers, 14, 61, ascending, and 36, 19, descending, with the lower four numbers situated like them, viz. 50, 1, descending, and 32, 47, ascending, make 260. And, lastly, the four corner numbers, with the four middle numbers, make 260. But even these are not all the properties of this marvelous square. Its contriver declared that it has "five other curious ones," which he does not explain; but which the ingenious reader may discover if he can. Nor was this the most wonderful of Franklin's magical squares. He made one of 16 cells in each row, which besides possessing the properties of the square given above (the amount, however added, being always 2056), had also this most remarkable peculiarity: a square hole being cut in a piece of paper of such a size as to take in and show through it just sixteen of the little squares, when laid on the greater square, the sum of the sixteen numbers, so appearing through the hole, wherever it was placed on the greater square, should likewise make 2056. This square was executed in a single evening. It excited the boundless wonder of Mr. Logan, to whom Franklin sent it, and who styled it a "most stupendous piece." Franklin himself jocularly said it was the "most" magically magical of any magic square ever made by any magician." Mr. Logan alludes to these squares in one of his letters to Peter Collinson of London: "Our Benjamin Franklin is certainly an extraordinary man, one of a singular good judgment, but of equal modesty. He is clerk of our Assembly, and there, for want of other employment, while he sat idle, he took it into his head to think of magical squares, in which he outdid Frenicle himself, who published above eighty pages in folio on that subject alone." * *Sparks, vi., 100. Where other specimens of Franklin's magical squares may be found. 49 48 10 36 241 240 209 208 177 170 145 124 113 112 81 80 196 251 223 253 2 29 36 61 68 93 100 125 132 157 104 189 ཨ། 31 34 03 66 95 98 127 ། 130 159 102 191 230 225 224 193 192 131 160 129 128 97 90 પ CHAPTER VII. THE THRIVING AND PUBLIC-SPIRITED CITIZEN. It does a good man good to prosper in his business. It expands, ing a serviceable citizen. But the moderate, gradual, and safe prosperity which results from the skillful, thoughtful, and diligent prosecution of a legitimate business or trade, is a vast and lasting benefit, and bestows upon its possessor the means of noble gratifications. Franklin still prospered. His Gazette became the leading newspaper of all the region between New York and Charleston. Poor Richard continued to amuse the whole country, to the great profit of its printer, who was obliged to put it to press early in October, in order to get a supply of copies to the remote colonies by the beginning of the new year. All the best jobs of printing given out by the provinces of New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Deleware, fell to the office of Franklin; who, by means of his partnerships, had a share also in the good things of Virginia, New York, the Carolinas, and Georgia. His school-books, his hand-books of farriery, agriculture, and medicine, his numberless small pamphlets, his considerable importations from England, all contributed to swell his gains. The great number of German emigrants gave new importance every summer to his German printing office. His two places of postmaster and clerk to the Assembly brought in a little money and much profitable work. He had a small and inexpensive family, an industrious and saving wife; and his own habits were such as enable a man to get out of life the maximum of enjoyment with the minimum of expenditure. His luxuries were a book, a long bathe in the river, the Junto, music, conversation, minute observations of nature, and rural excursions. He lived, moreover, in a place which in the course of his business career became the chief town of the colonies. There was, Did he become a millionaire, theu? By no means. I believe, but one fortune of a million dollars made in the thirteen colonies. Franklin was in a way to acquire, in time, a modest competence: for, in the colonies, the gains of business were moderate, even when conducted with the tact, the energy, and the prudence of a Franklin. Probably his business, in the most prosperous years, did not yield a profit of more than two thousand pounds sterling. But there was not, probably, another printer in the colonies whose annual profits exceeded five hundred pounds. As he throve in business, he grew in the esteem of his townsmen, and began to take the lead in their affairs. He tried first to reform the city watch, which was conducted on the ancient British system, which Shakspeare burlesqued in the Dogberry scenes of "Much Ado about Nothing." Franklin's account of the old Philadelphia watch, is valuable for the light it throws upon those very scenes. "It was managed, "he says, "by the constables of the respective wards in turn; the constable summoned a number of housekeepers to attend him for the night. Those who chose never to attend, paid him six shillings a year to be excused, which was supposed to go to hiring substitutes, but was, in reality, more than was necessary for that purpose, and made the constableship a place of profit; and the constable, for a little drink, often got such ragamuffins about him as a watch that respectable housekeepers did not choose to mix with. Walking the rounds, too, was often neglected, and most of the nights were spent in tippling." To reform this absurd system, Franklin proceeded in his usual way; first reading an article on the subject to the Junto, then communicating the plan of reform to the clubs in correspondence with the Junto, and finally treating the subject in the Gazette. It required some years of agitation, however, to get Dogberry suppressed, and his band of ragamuffins dispersed. In the same way Franklin founded the flourishing fire system of Philadelphia. When he was a boy of eleven, cutting his father's candle-wicks, the first fire company of Boston was formed:* an event not likely to be overlooked by a young candle-maker of Franklin's metal. By the Junto's aid, he now formed the Union Fire Company, the first of the kind in Philadelphia, of which he was himself a member for fifty years. Their first articles of agreement bound each member to keep in good order a certain number of leathern buckets, and strong baskets and bags for transporting goods, which were to be brought to every fire. In accordance with the social habits of that age, they agreed to spend an evening together once a month, and "communicate such ideas as occurred to us upon the subject of fires." In course of years the fines exacted for non-attendance provided the Union Fire Company with a complete apparatus of engines, hooks and ladders. It was, indeed, a very social age. Any thing served as a pretext for the assembling together of men for conversation, jollity, and Drake's History of Boston, p. 557. good cheer. No man ever enjoyed these jovial gatherings more heartily than Franklin, and he was always ready to do his part with jest, anecdote, and song. Three songs that he used to sing are known to us. One was the "The Old Man's Wish," which he says he sang "a thousand times" in his singing days. In separate stanzas of this song, the Old Man wishes for a warm house in a country town, an easy horse, some good books, ingenious and cheerful companions, a pudding on Sundays, with stout ale, and a bottle of Burgundy; each stanza ending thus: 66 May I govern my passions with absolute sway, Grow wiser and better as my strength wears away, The old man concludes his song with these lines: "With a courage undaunted may I face the last day, In the morning when sober, in the evening when mellow, For he governed his passions," etc. Another of his songs was "My Plain Country Joan," a long ditty, written by himself in praise of his own wife. One evening, we are told, when a number of Franklin's convivial friends were assembled, and many songs had been sung, some one declared that married men ought not to be allowed to sing songs written to celebrate the sweethearts of the poets. The next morning, while one of the company, Dr. Bard (afterwards the physician of Washington), was seated at breakfast, he received from Franklin "My Plain Country Joan."* "Of their Chloes and Phyllises poets may prate, I sing my plain country Joan, These twelve years my wife, still the joy of my life, "Not a word of her face, of her shape, or her air, Life of Samuel Bard, by Rev. S. McVickar, p. 18. |