silence him, and, of course, the community was immediately rent into factions, one for and the other against Mr. Hemphill. Franklin became his active partisan, wrote and published two pamphlets in his favor, and defended him in his Gazette. While the contest was raging, an event most unlucky for the young preacher occurred. One of his enemies heard him deliver a sermon, one day, which was greatly admired, but which this enemy thought he had read somewhere. On searching, he found the principal passage quoted in an English review from a late volume of sermons by Dr. James Foster, the most popular London preacher of that generation, who was praised by Pope, and quoted by Bolingbroke. "This detection," says Franklin, "gave many of our party disgust, who accordingly abandoned his cause, and occasioned our more speedy discomfiture in the synod. I stuck by him, however; I rather approved his giving us good sermons composed by others, than bad ones of his own manufacture; though the latter was the practice of our common teachers." The Philadelphians thought otherwise, and poor Hemphill had to go elsewhere in search of a congregation. He confessed to Franklin that all his sermons were stolen.

The home of Franklin in these years of activity was enlivened by the presence of children and apprentices. The flower of his little flock was his second son, Francis Folger Franklin, born a year after his marriage; one of the loveliest and most promising of children. Franklin's children were all of noble proportions, and gave great promise of intelligence and worth, which promise was fulfilled in only one of them. This little "Franky Franklin" was a most engaging child, of singular beauty and wonderful knowingness. Franklin perhaps never loved a living creature as he loved this only son of his marriage. In the Gazette of December, 1734, when William Franklin was four years old, and Francis more than two, the following advertisement appeared, which, probably, concerned the boys: "Any Person who has a Servant to dispose of that is a scholar and can teach Children Reading, Writing and Arithmetick, may hear of a Purchaser by enquiring of the Printer hereof."

So tenderly did Franklin love his boy that he could not bear the thought of exposing him even to the slight peril of inoculation, though he had long been one of the champions of the system. He had seen such fearful havoc made by the smallpox, both in Boston

and Philadelphia, that we can only wonder at this omission. A year before the boy was born, he had written to his sister Jane: "We have had the smallpox here lately, which raged violently while it lasted. There have been about fifty persons inoculated, who all recovered except a child of the doctor's, upon whom the smallpox appeared within a day or two after the operation, and who is there. fore thought to have been certainly infected before. In one family in my neighborhood there appeared a great mortality. Mr. George Claypoole (a descendant of Oliver Cromwell), had, by industry, acquired a great estate, and being in excellent business, a merchant, would probably have doubled it, had he lived according to the common course of years. He died first, suddenly; within a short time died his best negro; then one of his children; then a negro woman; then two children more, buried at the same time; then two more; so that I saw two double buryings come out of the house in one week. None were left in the family, but the mother and one child, and both their lives till lately despaired of."

And yet he did not have his darling inoculated. In November, 1736, the boy being then four years old, the smallpox was again raging in Philadelphia, and this beautiful child was one of its victims. "I long regretted him bitterly," his father wrote, "and still regret that I had not given him the disease by inoculation." Again, to his sister Jane: "My grandson often brings afresh to my mind the idea of my son Franky, though now dead thirty-six years, whom I have seldom since seen equaled in every respect, and whom to this day I cannot think of without a sigh.”

Those who have visited the grave of Franklin, in that well-known corner of Christ Church burying-ground, in Philadelphia, may have observed a very small, gray, defaced, and much broken head-stone, close to the principal tomb. It is not as high as the June grass, but when the grass is brushed aside, the little stone is found to bear these words:

"FRANCIS F.

Son of Benjamin and Deborah
FRANKLIN,

Deceased, Nov. 21, 1736,

Aged 4 years, 1 month, and 1 day.
The delight of all that knew him."

It was only within these few years that the little tomb-stone was discovered under a heap of rubbish, near the grave of his parents. When the tomb of Franklin was repaired a few years ago, and an aperture made in the wall of the burial ground, to render it visible to the passers-by, the tomb-stone of the boy was set up in its proper place. A portrait of the child, in oil, life size, has been preserved to this day, and hangs now (1861) in the house of one of Franklin's grand-daughters.

In 1739 George Whitefield arrived in Philadelphia, heralded by a prodigious celebrity, which his preaching soon justified. Whitefield, a man of ardent feeling, fluent tongue, thrilling voice, and very limited understanding, was the complete opposite of Franklin, who listened to his paroxysms of eloquence with curious placidity. Yet, between these two men a cordial friendship sprang up, which never ceased but with Whitefield's life. Indeed, we shall find, as we go on, that the greater number of the men whom Franklin loved were clergymen, which is another proof, that people who agree morally, agree, no matter what their differences in other respects. Now, this unreflecting, terror-inspiring Whitefield was a simple-hearted, honest gentleman, who wished the good of mankind, and really believed that the best service he could do his fellowmen was to "shake them over the pit of hell," and lay prostrate their souls in wild alarm. Franklin also was an honest man, that loved his brethren, and wished to do them good. It was only in the method that he and Whitefield differed.

Franklin relates some capital anecdotes of his intercourse with Whitefield. On the return of the orator from Georgia, with the project of founding an orphan house in that new colony, he consulted his friend Franklin on the subject. Franklin approved the scheme, but strongly advised that the asylum should be placed in Philadelphia, and the orphans brought to it, since Georgia was then destitute of workmen and supplies. His advice being rejected, he determined not to subscribe. "I happened soon after," says Franklin, "to attend one of his sermons, in the course of which I perceived he intended to finish with a collection, and I silently resolved he should get nothing from me; I had in my pocket a handful of copper-money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold; as he proceeded I began to soften, and concluded to give the copper. Another stroke of his oratory made me ashamed of that, and

determined me to give the silver; and he finished so admirably, that I emptied my pocket wholly into the collector's dish, gold and

all!"

Upon another occasion, when Whitefield was preaching in Market Street, close to Franklin's shop, Franklin behaved more like a philosopher. "I had the curiosity," he says, "to learn how far he could be heard, by retiring backward down the street towards the river, and I found his voice distinct till I came near Front Street, when some noise in that street obscured it. Imagining then a semicircle, of which my distance should be the radius, and that it was filled with auditors, to each of whom I allowed two square feet, I computed that he might well be heard by more than thirty thousand. This reconciled me to the newspaper accounts of his having preached to 25,000 people in the fields, and to the history of generals haranguing whole armies, of which I had sometimes doubted."

Upon his second arrival in America, Whitefield wrote from Boston to Franklin, asking him to secure lodgings for him in Philadelphia. Franklin replied: "You know my house; if you can make shift with its scanty accommodations, you will be most heartily welcome." Whitefield answered: "If you make that offer for Christ's sake, you will not miss of a reward." Franklin rejoined: "Don't let me be mistaken; it was not for Christ's sake, but for your sake."

Franklin mused upon the strange respect felt by the people for a man who, to their faces, called them "half beasts and half devils." "It was wonderful," he adds, "to see the change soon made in the manners of our inhabitants. From being thoughtless or indifferent about religion, it seemed as if all the world were growing religious, so that one could not walk through the town in an evening without hearing psalms sung in different families of every street. And it being found inconvenient to assemble in the open air, subject to its inclemencies, the building of a house to meet in was no sooner proposed, and persons appointed to receive contributions, than sufficient sums were received to procure the ground and erect the building, which was one hundred feet long and seventy broad; and the work was carried with such spirit as to be finished in a much shorter time than could have been expected. Both house and ground were vested in trustees, expressly for the use of any preacher