boy," yet, if his habits and personal condition had not rendered him, with all his rare gifts and attainments, unfit for any personal intercourse with people of cultivation and refinement, dignity of character and purity of manners, how still more remarkable would have been that interview, in the apartment of Governor Burnet's library, with two such representatives of the young generation then verging to maturity, pressing forward to a fame destined to be won in upholding the public liberties, or in serving and adorning their country by their literary accomplishments and performances, or by advancing the limits of human knowledge!

COLLINS BORROWS VERNON'S MONEY.

61

CHAPTER VII.

VERNON'S MONEY-COLLINS-SIR WILLIAM KEITH-MISS

READ.

On reaching Philadelphia, Collins endeavored to procure a clerkship in some counting-house; but his aspect, or manner, or dram-flavored breath, or all together, must have betrayed him; for although he had brought recommendations, and though, but for his fatal habit, these recommendations would probably have been superfluous, yet his applications for a place were unsuccessful; so that he continued living at the expense of his generous friend, and at the same house with him.

It was still further unlucky for the latter, that Collins was aware of his having collected Vernon's debt; inasmuch as he managed to borrow, from time to time, in petty sums, to be returned “ as soon as he should be in business," so much of that fund as to occasion, before long, no little distress to Benjamin, especially when it occurred to him that he might be suddenly required to pay it over to the owner.

His compliance, in this matter, with the importunities of Collins, was the weakest act Benjamin had yet done. Although that compliance proceeded, doubtless, from a warm feeling of kindness for an old friend, wholly unmingled with any conscious intent to do an act morally wrong, and though the language of Vernon,

when giving him authority to collect the debt, conveyed a plain implication that the money would not be wanted for a considerable time, yet the distress of mind, arising from the inborn sense of right and wrong, which Benjamin shortly began to suffer, was the sure token, that, however amiable had been his impulse, and however clear his motives from deliberate intent to injure, he had, nevertheless, weakly allowed himself to be led to do, what amounted, in point of fact, to a breach of

trust.

Such, in its naked truth, was the nature of the act in in question; and it is only one of the many evidences, presented in Franklin's life and writings, of that rigorous self-scrutiny and manly candor, which strongly marked his character, that he has, in his own account of his career, taken of this affair substantially, though briefly, the same view, which is here presented somewhat more at length and with more emphasis. And it is thus presented here, for the urgent reason that, in the ordinary and daily transactions of life, there is, it is believed, no one form of error in conduct, so common as the very one here considered; not one, into which persons, in every class of society and every condition of fortune, are so frequently drawn by the specious impulses of amiable feeling, honest intention, and the various plausible fallacies of self-delusion; not one, which has, first and last, made such havoc of personal honor and goodname, of private and public obligation, or of domestic peace and happiness, as this identical error-no, not one.

For the sake of the warning, furnished by the character and termination of the brief career of a youth of such brilliant early promise, as Collins, the remainder of all that is known of him, is here presented.

In spite of remonstrance, enforced by pecuniary destitution and dependence, Collins continued to indulge his