WAS DR. FRANKLIN MEAN?--JAMES PARTON'S ANSWER.
A man of no enviable notoriety is reported to have spoken of Dr. Franklin as "hard, calculating, angular, unable to comprehend any higher object than the accumulation of money." Not a few people who profess much admiration for Franklin in other respects seem to think that in money matters there was something about him akin to meanness. To correct this false impression and show "how Franklin got his money, how much he got, and what he did with it," one of his recent biographers is called up in his defense, and to the question, "Was Dr. Franklin mean?" here is