Some faults have we all, and so has my Joan,
But then they're exceedingly small,

And, now I'm grown used to them, so like my own
I scarcely can see them at all.

Were the finest young princess, with millions in purse,
To be had in exchange for my Joan,

I could not get better wife, might get a worse,
So I'll stick to my dearest old Joan."

To a girl he wrote in the same vein: "Mrs. Franklin was very proud, that a young lady should have so much regard for her old husband, as to send him such a present. We talk of you every time it comes to table. She is sure you are a sensible girl, and a notable housewife, and talks of bequeathing me to you as a legacy; but I ought to wish you a better, and hope she will live these hundred years; for we are grown old together, and if she has any faults, I am so used to them that I don't perceive them."

After Franklin's departure from Philadelphia on his second agency to England, his wife had a paralytic stroke which "greatly affected her memory and understanding," so that William Franklin advised that "she have some clever body to take care of her," for she "becomes every day more and more unfit to be left alone"; and, as already noted, Franklin arranged that his daughter and her husband should live with her. In the letter announcing her death, his son gives a pathetic glimpse of her last months:

"She told me when I took leave of her on my removal to Amboy, that she never expected to see you unless you returned this winter, for that she was sure she should not live

till next summer.

I heartily wish you had happened to have come over in the fall, as I think her disappointment in that respect preyed a good deal on her spirits."

"There are three faithful friends; an old wife, an old dog, and ready money," said Poor Richard, and he declared that "A good wife lost is God's gift lost."

The young girl to whom Deborah Franklin bequeathed her husband was Catherine Ray, whose acquaintance he made in one of his visits to New England, and with whom a regular correspondence was henceforth maintained. Nor was this merely a compliment paid by the philosopher, for it gave him genuine pleasure. "Begone, business, for an hour, at least, and let me chat a little with my Katy," he began one of his letters, and then continued:

"Now it is near four months since I have been favored with a single line from you; but I will not be angry with you, because it is my fault. I ran in debt to you three or four letters, and, as I did not pay, you would not trust me any more, and you had some reason. But, believe me, I am honest, and, though I should never make equal returns, you shall see I will keep fair accounts. Equal returns I can never make, though I should write to you by every post; for the pleasure I receive from one of yours is more than you can have from two of mine. The small news, the domestic occurrences among our friends, the natural pictures you draw of persons, the sensible observations and reflections you make, and the easy, chatty manner in which you express every thing, all contribute to heighten the pleasure; and the more as they remind me of those hours and miles that we talked away so agreeably, even in a winter journey, a wrong road, and a soaking shower."

In time Miss Ray married William Greene of Rhode Island, who later was governor of the State, and in

Franklin's journey to New England, in 1763, he visited the couple at their home in Warwick. "You have spun a long thread, five thousand and twenty-two yards," he once told her. "It will reach almost from Rhode Island

hither. to me.

GEORGIANA SHIPLEY HARE-NAYLOR.
After the miniature in the possession of Augustus J. C. Hare.

I wish I had hold of one end of it, to pull you But you would break it rather than come." Even in the years in Paris, so full of work and diversion, he found time to think of her, writing on one occasion: "MY DEAR OLD FRIEND-Don't be offended at the

word old. I don't mean to call you an old woman; it relates only to the age of our friendship, which on my part has always been a sincerely affectionate one, and, I flatter myself, the same on yours."

Friendships of the same type were those of the daughters of Jonathan Shipley, the Bishop of St. Asaph, Georgiana being the favorite. On the outbreak of the Revolution the intercourse was for a time suspended, but as soon as Franklin was settled in Paris he found means to steal a letter to her, which met with the most eager of responses:

"After near two years had passed without my hearing any thing from you," she replied, “and while I looked upon the renewal of our correspondence as a very unlikely event, it is easier to conceive than express the joy I felt at receiving your last kind letter. . . . How good you were to send me your direction, but I fear I must not make use of it as often as I could wish, since my father says that it will be prudent not to write in the present situation of affairs. I am not of an age to be so very prudent, and the only thought that occurred to me was your suspecting that my silence proceeded from other motives. I could not support the idea of your believing that I love and esteem you less than I did some few years ago. I therefore write this once without my father's knowledge. You are the first man that ever received a private letter from me, and in this instance I feel that my intentions justify my conduct; but I must entreat that you will take no notice of my writing, when next I have the happiness of hearing from you.

I must once more repeat nobody knows of this scroll; a word to the wise,'-as Poor Richard says."

Franklin grieved that the war should prevent their seeing each other, and begged that, since he was denied the enjoyment of that "felicity," to "let me have at least that of hearing from you a little oftener," and he