The philosophers and divines looked at each other in silence, like fools who had shot their last bolt.
Here Franklin took up the cudgels; and looking at the young officer with a smile, said, "This, sir, puts me in mind of an affair that lately happened in a Philadelphia coffee-house."
The young fellow, rather pertly, said he should like to hear what had lately happened in a Philadelphia coffee-house.
"Why, sir," continued the doctor, "two gentlemen were sitting together in the coffee-house, when one said to the other, for heaven's sake, sir, sit further off, and don't poison me; you smell as bad as a pole-cat."
"Sir," resorted the other, "what do you mean? Draw, and defend yourself."
"O, sir," quoth the first, "I'll meet you in a moment, if you insist on it; but let's see first how that's to mend the matter. If you kill me, I shall smell as bad as a pole-cat too. And if I kill you, you will only smell ten times worse."
In short, that divine motto,
"Homo sum, nil humani a me alienum puto."
In English thus,
A man I am, in man I take a part,