"I long so much to see you that I should immediately seek for some one that would accompany me, but my daughter is in a poor state of health and gone into the country to try to get a little better, and I am in a strait between two; but the comfortable reflection that you are at home among all your dear children, and no more seas to cross, will be constantly pleasing to me till I am permitted to enjoy the happiness of seeing and conversing with you."
The tenderness and charity of Franklin for the many members of his own family still revealed his heart. "I tenderly love you," he wrote to Jane—Jenny—"for the care of our father in his sickness."
One of his sisters, Mrs. Dowse, whose family had died, insisted upon living alone, on account of her love for the place that had been her home. Many other men would have compelled her removal, but there is nothing more beautiful in all Franklin's letters than the way that he advised Jenny how to treat this matter. He had been told that this venerable woman would have her own way.
"As having their own way is one of the greatest comforts of life to old people, I think their friends should endeavor to accommodate them in that as well as anything else. When they have long lived in a house, it becomes natural to them; they are almost as closely connected with it as the tortoise with his shell; they die if you tear them out. Old folks and old trees, if you remove them, 'tis ten to one that you kill them, so let our good old sister be no more importuned on that head; we are growing old fast ourselves, and shall expect the same kind of indulgences; if we give them, we shall have a right to receive them in our turn."
Jane Mecom—the "Jenny" of Franklin's young life—had one great desire as the years went on: it was, to meet her brother once more and to review the past with him.
"I will one day go to Philadelphia and give him a great surprise," the woman used to say.
Let us picture such a day.
Benjamin Franklin sat down in his new library. His books had been placed and his pictures hung.
Among the pictures were two that were so choice that we may suppose them to be hung under coverings. One of them was the portrait of the King of France in its frame of four hundred brilliants, and the other was his own portrait with, perhaps, Turgot's famous inscription.
It was near evening when he sat down and asked to be left alone.