[102] That is, the government of Delaware.
[103] In secret.
[104] Men on horseback who carried the mail.
[105] Miss Read's first marriage.
[106] Mrs. Franklin died Dec. 19, 1774. Franklin celebrated his wife in a song, of which the following verses are a part:
"Of their Chloes and Phyllises poets may prate,
I sing my plain country Joan,
These twelve years my wife, still the joy of my life,
Blest day that I made her my own.
"Am I loaded with care, she takes off a large share,
That the burden ne'er makes me to reel;
Does good fortune arrive, the joy of my wife
Quite doubles the pleasure I feel.
"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.