courage to tread in your early steps, I hope will preserve the same generous emulation through his life. Few professions are, in my eyes, more respectable than the character of a printer who excels in his art. Aldus and Stephens stand high as men of letters, and made their learning and criticism subservient to their business.

Let me hope that you will sometimes remember, amidst the applauses of your countrymen, that there is a family in England who love you as well as your own. Your ever affectionate

J. ST. ASAPH.

MCCCXCVII

TO JAMES BOWDOIN

PHILADELPHIA, I January, 1786.

MY DEAR FRIEND:-It gave me great pleasure to receive your kind letter of congratulation, as it proved that all my old friends in Boston were not estranged from me by the malevolent misrepresentations of my conduct that had been circulated there, but that one of the most esteemed still retained a regard for me. Indeed, you are now almost the only one left me by nature; death having, since we were last together, deprived me of my dear Cooper, Winthrop, and Quincy.

I have not received the letter you mention to have sent me with some Memoirs, under cover to Dr. Price. I must have left Europe before they got to his hands; but he will doubtless send them to me by

the first convenient opportunity. It was not necessary to make any apology for the liberty you say you have taken in those Memoirs, in making observations on my Queries upon Light, for I am sure they will help me to understand it better, and that must make them agreeable to me. I shall be glad to see the whole volume,' which you are so kind as to promise me; and I hope in the course of a few months to be able to make returns, in a second volume of our Memoirs,' now in the press.

I sent to you by Mr. Gerry, some weeks since, Dr. Jeffries' account of his aërial voyage from England to France, which I received from him just before I left that country. In his letter, that came with it, he requests I would not suffer it to be printed, because a copy of it had been put into the hands of Sir Joseph Banks for the Royal Society, and was to be read there in November. If they should not think fit to publish it, as I apprehend may be the case, they having hitherto avoided meddling with the subject of balloons, I shall be glad to have the minutes returned to me. In the meantime, I thought it might afford some amusement to you and to your Society. My acquaintance with Dr. Jeffries began by his bringing me a letter in France, the first through the air, from England.

With best wishes of many happy new years to you and good Madam Bowdoin, I have the honor to be, dear sir, etc., B. FRANKLIN.

First volume of the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

2 Transactions of the American Philosophical Society.

3 The paper was printed in London, entitled A Narrative of Two Aerial Voyages. 4to. 1786.

MCCCXCVIII

TO MRS. MECOM

PHILADELPHIA, 24 January, 1786.

MY DEAR SISTER:-I have received your letter of the 6th inst., with the recipe for making brown soap, which is very clearly written, and I thank you for it, as well as for the account of our relations in New England, who are more numerous than I imagined, though I think you have omitted some, unless they are all dead. I mean a family at Providence; their names I forget, but the mother was a daughter of our brother Samuel, or a granddaughter.

As to my health, which you enquire after, it is much the same as it has been for some years past. The pains caused sometimes by the stone do not augment, my appetite continues good, and my temper generally cheerful; my strength and activity diminishing, indeed, but by slow degrees. I don't know what the answer was which Chesterfield gave to his son's widow.

Your letter to Mr. Vernon seems to me very proper and well written, and I think he was wrong in detaining the five dollars. But when we consider that he was under no obligation to pay a debt contracted by his son, we may be glad that we have recovered so much of it, and that when it is so common to pay interest of an old debt in ill language he has paid you only in silence. It is a family I have formerly been in friendship with, and I would not have you trouble them with any further demands.

I have received a letter from the widow you

mention as having had a husband killed in Hopkin's Fleet, but she has sent me no vouchers on which I might found an application in her favor, and I am afraid she has no other proof of the fact but a strong persuasion, as she told me, "He was in the Fleet as sure as I am now alive, and lost his life in their cause." And afterwards says: "I have waited near eight years in hopes he was taken and would return, but now my hopes are all fled. That he fell a victim in their cause I have not the least doubt." It is strange that in eight years she had not been able to learn whether he had been killed or not; and as the Congress long since appointed Commissions to examine and settle the claims of persons or the representations of persons who had served in their ships or armies, which Commissioners are doubtless provided with muster-rolls of the several corps, I wonder at her not having applied directly to them. But there are people in the world-I have met with many such-who love to have a kind of pocket complaint always at hand, with which they endeavor to procure compassion by exhibiting it everywhere and to everybody but those whose proper business it would be to redress it. These they avoid, lest their darling complaint being examined should be found to have no foundation. I have written an answer to her letter, which I enclose. If you should have any future applications of this sort made to you to be handed to me, I think you may avoid giving yourself any trouble with them by acquainting the people that I was absent all the war, must be unacquainted with the facts, am now at a distance from Congress, have

at present no connection with that body, and that the application is more proper to be made to the delegates from their own State than to me.

My New Alphabet is in a printed book of my pieces, which I will send you the first opportunity I have by water. The petition of Z. is enclosed.

I do not wonder at your blaming me for accepting the government. We have all of us wisdom enough to judge what others ought to do or not to do in the management of their affairs, and 't is possible I might blame you as much if you were to accept the offer of a young husband. My example may teach you not to be too confident in your own prudence, as it teaches me not to be surprised at such an event should it really happen.

We all join in love, etc., and I am ever your affectionate brother,

B. FRANKLIN.

MCCCXCIX

TO JONATHAN WILLIAMS

PHILADELPHIA, 27 January, 1786.

DEAR JONATHAN:-Your bill for £47 10s. od. has been presented and is accepted.

In my last of January 19th, I promised to send you some philosophical papers, which I now enclose. The three pieces I wrote at sea will all be printed in our Transactions here; that on chimneys is already done, and perhaps I may send you the sheets with this. The others will be done soon; and printed copies will be better for you than written ones by Ben.