"I think they are known to every one in America that reads. We were indignant that these men born and raised among us should have said that a colony ought not to enjoy all the liberties of a parent state and that we should be subjected to coercive measures. They had expressed no such opinion save in these private letters. It looked like a base effort to curry favor with the English government."
"Yes, they were overworking the curry comb," said Franklin. "I had been protesting against an armed force in Boston. The government declared that our own best people were in favor of it. I, knowing better, denied the statement. To prove their claim a distinguished baronet put the letters in my hands. He gave me leave to send them to America on condition that they should not be published. Of course they proved nothing but the treachery of Hutchinson, Rogers and Oliver. Now I seem to be tarred by the same stick."
Jack delivered sundry letters from the family of the great man who read them carefully.
"It's good to hear from home," he said when he had finished. "You've heard of the three Greenlanders, off the rocks and ice where there was not dirt enough to raise a bushel of cabbages or light enough for half the year to make a shadow, who having seen the world and its splendors said it was interesting, but that they would prefer to live at home?"
"These days America is an unhappy land," said Jack. "We are like a wildcat in captivity--a growling, quarrelsome lot."
"Well, the British use the right to govern us like a baby rattle and they find us a poor toy. This petty island, compared with America, is but a stepping stone in a brook. There's scarcely enough of it out of water to keep one's feet dry. In two generations our population will exceed that of the British Isles. But with so many lying agents over there what chance have they to learn anything about us? They will expect to hear you tell of people being tomahawked in Philadelphia--a city as well governed as any in England. They can not understand that most of us would gladly spend nineteen shillings to the pound for the right to spend the other shilling as we please."
"Can they not be made to understand us?" Jack inquired.
"The power to learn is like your hand--you must use it or it will wither and die. There are brilliant intellects here which have lost the capacity to learn. I think that profound knowledge is not for high heads."
"I wonder just what you mean."
"Oh, the moment you lose humility, you stop learning," the Doctor went on. "There are two doors to every intellect. One lets knowledge in, the other lets it out. We must keep both doors in use. The mind is like a purse: if you keep paying out money, you must, now and then, put some into your purse or it will be empty. I once knew a man who was a liberal spender but never did any earning. We soon found that he had been making counterfeit money. The King's intellects have often put me in mind of him. They are flush with knowledge but they never learn anything. They can tell you all you may want to know but it is counterfeit knowledge."