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sation with you concerning me, is pleasing. I respect very much the character of that monarch, and think, that if I were one of his subjects, he would find me a good one. I am glad that his difference with your country is likely to be accommodated without bloodshed. The Courier de l'Europe, and some other papers, printed a letter on that difference, which they ascribed to me. Be assured, my friend, that I never wrote it, nor was ever presumptuous enough to meddle with an affair so much out of my way. B. FRANKLIN

Yours, &e.

TO GEORGE WHEATLEY, ESQ.

On sending him his Medallion.

DEAR OLD FRIEND,

Passy, May 19, 1785. I received the very good letter you sent me by my grandson, together with your resemblance, which is placed in my chamber, and gives me great pleasure. There is no trade, they say, without returns, and therefore I am punctual in making those you have ordered.

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I intended this should have been a long epistle, but I am interrupted, and can only add, that I am ever yours most affectionately, B. FRANKLIN.

TO MR. JONATHAN WILLIAMS.

(EXTRACT.)

Passy, May 19, 1785.

"The conversations you mention respecting America are suitable. Those people speak what they wish; but she was certainly never in a more happy situation. They are angry with us, and speak all manner of evil of us; but we flourish notwithstanding. They put me in mind of a violent high church factor, resident in

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Boston, when I was a boy. He had bought upon speculation a Connecticut cargo of onions, which he flattered himself he might sell again to great profit, but the price fell, and they lay upon hand. He was heartily vexed with his bargain, especially when he observed they began to grow in the store he had filled with them. He showed them one day to a friend. Here they are, said he, and they are growing too! I damn them every day; but I think they are like the Presbyterians; the more I curse them, the more they grow." Yours, B. FRANKLIN,

TO GEORGE WHEATLEY, ESQ.

Moral and Philosophical Reflections Foundling Hospital at Paris-Office for Nurses-The Philadelphia Bank-The Cincinnati-Constitution of the United States-Anecdote of three Greenlanders Description of double Spectacles, &c.

DEAR OLD FRIEND,

Passy, May 23, 1785. I sent you a few lines the other day, with my medallion, when I should have written more, but was prevented by the coming in of a bavard, who worried me till evening. I bore with him, and now you are to bear with me: for I shall probably bavarder in answering your letter.

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I am not acquainted with the saying of Alphonsus, which you allude to as a sanctification of your rigidity in refusing to allow me the plea of old age, as an excuse for my want of exactness in correspondence. What was that saying? You do not, it seems, feel any occasion for such an excuse, though you are, as you say, rising 75. But I

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am rising (perhaps more properly falling) 80, and I leave the excuse with you 'till you arrive at that age; perhaps you may then be more sensible of its validity, and see fit to use it for yourself.

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I must agree with you that the gout is bad, and that the stone is worse, I am happy in not having them both to gether, and I join in your prayer, that you may live till you die without either. But I doubt the author of the epitaph you send me was a little mistaken, when he, speaking of the world, says, that

-he ne'er cared a pin

What they said or may say of the mortal within.

It is so natural to wish to be well spoken of, whether alive or dead, that I imagine he could not be quite exempt from that desire; and that at least he wished to be thought a wit, or he would not have given himself the trouble of writing so good an epitaph to leave behind him. Was it not as worthy of his care that the world should say he was an honest and a good man? I like better the concluding sentiment in the old song, called the Old Man's Wish, wherein, after wishing for a warm house in a country town, an easy horse, some good authors, ingenious and cheerful companions, a pudding on Sundays, with stout ale, and a bottle of Burgundy, &c. &c. in separate stanzas, each ending with this burthen,

May I govern my passions with absolute sway,

Grow wiser and better as my strength wears away,
Without gout or stone, by a gentle decay.

He adds,

With a courage undaunted may I face my last day;
And when I am gone, may the better sort say;

In the morning when sober, in the evening when mellow,
He's gone, and has not left behind him his fellow.

For he governed his passions, &c.

I may not

And I hope And when I

But what signifies our wishing? Things happen, after all, as they will happen. I have sung that wishing song a thousand times when I was young, and now find at fourscore that the three contraries have befallen me, being subject to the gout, and the stone, and not being yet master of all my passions. Like the proud girl in my country, who wished and resolved not to marry a parson, nor a Presbyterian, nor an Irishman; and at length found her, self married to an Irish Presbyterian parson. You see I have some reason to wish that in a future state, only be as well as 1 was, but a little better. it: for I too, with your poet, trust in God. observe that there is great frugality, as well as wisdom, in his works, since he has been evidently sparing both of labour and materials; for by the various wonderful inventions of propagation, he has provided for the continual peopling his world with plants and animals, without being at the trouble of repeated new creations; and by the natural reduction of compound substances to their original elements, capable of being employed in new compositions, he has prevented the necessity of creating new matter; so that the earth, water, air, and perhaps fire, which being compounded form wood, do when the wood is dissolved, return, and again become air, earth, fire, and water; I say, that when I see nothing annihilated, and not even a drop of water wasted, I cannot suspect the annihilation of souls, or believe that he will suffer the daily waste of millions of minds ready made that now exist, and put himself to the continual trouble of making new ones. Thus finding my→

self to exist in the world, I believe I shall, in some shape or other, always exist: and with all the inconveniencies human life is liable to, I shall not object to a new edition of mine; hoping however that the errata of the last may be corrected.

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- return your note of children received in the Foundling Hospital at Paris, from 1741 to 1755 inclusive; and I have added the years succeeding down to 1770. Those since that period, I have not been able to obtain. I have noted in the margin the gradual increase, viz. from every tenth child so thrown upon the public, 'till it comes to every third! Fifteen years have passed since the last account, and probably it may now amount to one half. Is it right to encourage this monstrous deficiency of natural affection? A surgeon I met with here excused the women of Paris, by saying seriously that they could not give suck;" Car, said he, elles n'ont point de tetons." He assured me it was a fact, and bade me look at them, and observe how flat they were on the breast; "they have nothing more there, said he, than I have upon the back of my hand." I have since thought that there might be some truth in his observation, and that possibly, nature, finding they made no use of bubbies, has left off giving them any. Yet, since Rousseau pleaded with admirable eloquence for the rights of children to their mother's milk, the mode has changed a little; and some ladies of quality now suckle their infants and find milk enough. May the mode descend to the lower ranks, 'till it becomes no longer the custom to pack their infants away as soon as born, to the enfans trouvés, with the careless observation, that the King is better able to maintain them. I am credibly informed that nine-tenths of them die there pretty soon,

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