There is a letter from Franklin to Josiah Davenport, the son of Sarah Davenport, written just after the failure of the latter in business which shows that, open as the door of the Post Office usually was to members of the Franklin family, it was sometimes slammed with a bang in the face of a mauvais sujet of that blood. Franklin advises Josiah not to think of any place in the Post Office.
The money you receive [he said] will slip thro' your Fingers, and you will run behind hand imperceptibly, when your Securities must suffer, or your Employers. I grow too old to run such Risques, and therefore wish you to propose nothing more of the kind to me. I have been hurt too much by endeavouring to help Cousin Ben Mecom. I have no Opinion of the Punctuality of Cousins. They are apt to take Liberties with Relations they would not take with others, from a Confidence that a Relation will not sue them. And tho' I believe you now resolve and intend well in case of such an Appointment, I can have no Dependence that some unexpected Misfortune or Difficulty will not embarras your Affairs and render you again insolvent. Don't take this unkind. It is better to be thus free with you than to give you Expectations that cannot be answered.
So Josiah, who was keeping a little shop at the time, like the famous office-seeker, who is said to have begun by asking Lincoln for an office and to have ended by asking him for a pair of trousers, had to content himself with a gift of four dozen of Evans' maps, "which," said Franklin in his letter, "if you can sell you are welcome to apply the Money towards Clothing your Boys, or to any other Purpose."
But, of all Franklin's collateral relatives, the one that he loved best was his sister Jane, the wife of Edward Mecom. She survived her brother four years, dying at the age of eighty-two, and, from her childhood until his death, they cherished for each other the most devoted affection. Her letters show that she was a woman of uncommon force of character and mind, and the possessor of a heart so overflowing with tenderness that, when she heard of the birth of Mrs. Bache's seventh child, she even stated to her brother in her delight that she was so fond of children that she longed to kiss and play with every clean, healthy one that she saw on the street. Mrs. Bache, she thought, might yet be the mother of twelve children like herself, though she did not begin so young.
In a letter written to her by Franklin from Philadelphia just after he reached his majority, and when she was a fresh girl of fourteen, he reminds her that she was ever his peculiar favorite. He had heard, he said, that she was grown a celebrated beauty, and he had almost determined to give her a tea table, but when he considered that the character of a good housewife was far preferable to that of being only a pretty gentlewoman he had concluded to send her a spinning wheel, as a small token of his sincere love and affection. Then followed this priggish advice:
Sister, farewell, and remember that modesty, as it makes the most homely virgin amiable and charming, so the want of it infallibly renders the most perfect beauty disagreeable and odious. But, when that brightest of female virtues shines among other perfections of body and mind in the same person, it makes the woman more lovely than an angel.
The spinning wheel was a fit symbol of the narrow, struggling life, which was to be Jane Mecom's portion, and which would have imposed upon her a load heavier than she could have borne if her good Philadelphia genius had not always been by her side, either in person or by his watchful proxy, Jonathan Williams, the father of his grandnephew of that name, to sustain her fainting footsteps. Children she had, and to spare, but they were all striking illustrations of the truth, uttered by the Virginia planter, who affirmed that it is easier for one parent to take care of thirteen children than it is for thirteen children to take care of one parent. Nothing could be more beautiful than the relations between brother and sister; on the one side a vigilant sympathy and generosity which never lost sight for a moment of the object of their affectionate and helpful offices; on the other a grateful idolatry, slightly tinged with the reserve of reverence. Clothes, flour, firewood, money were among the more direct and material forms assumed by Franklin's assistance, given not begrudgingly and frugally, but always with the anxious fear, to no little extent justified by Jane's own unselfish and self-respecting reticence, that she was not as frank as she might be in laying before him the real measure of her necessities. "Let me know if you want any assistance," he was quick to ask her after his return from England in 1775, signing the letter in which he made the request, "Your very loving brother." "Your bill is honoured," he writes to her on another occasion after his return from France to Philadelphia. "It is impossible for me always to guess what you may want, and I hope, therefore, that you will never be shy in letting me know wherein I can help to make your life more comfortable."
How has my poor old Sister gone thro' the Winter? [he inquired of Jonathan Williams, the younger]. Tell me frankly whether she lives comfortably, or is pinched? For I am afraid she is too cautious of acquainting me with all her Difficulties, tho' I am always ready and willing to relieve her when I am acquainted with them.
It is manifest that at times he experienced a serious sense of difficulty in doing for her as much as he was disposed to do, and once, when she had thanked him with even more than her usual emphasis for a recent benefaction, he parried her gratitude with one of the humorous stories that served him for so many different purposes. Her letter of extravagant thanks, he said, put him in mind of the story of the member of Parliament who began one of his speeches with saying he thanked God that he was born and bred a Presbyterian; on which another took leave to observe that the gentleman must needs be of a most grateful disposition, since he was thankful for such very small matters. The truth is that her pecuniary condition was such that gifts, which might have seemed small enough to others, loomed large to her. Many doubtless were the shifts to which she had to resort to keep her large family going. When her brother was in London on his second mission, he received a letter from her asking him for some fine old linen or cambric dyed with bright colors, such as with all her own art and the aid of good old Uncle Benjamin's memoranda she had been unable, she said, to mix herself. With this material, she hoped that she and her daughter Jenny, who, with a little of her assistance, had taken to making flowers for the ladies' heads and bosoms with pretty good acceptance, might get something by it worth their pains, if they lived till next spring. Her language was manifestly that of a person whose life had been too pinched to permit her to deal with the future except at very close range. Of course, her request was complied with. The contrast between her situation in life and that of her prosperous and distinguished brother is brought out as clearly as the colors that she vainly sought to emulate in a letter written by her to Deborah, when she hears the rumor that Franklin had been made a Baronet and Governor of Pennsylvania. Signing herself, "Your ladyship's affectionate sister, and obedient humble servant," she wrote:
Dear Sister: For so I must call you, come what will, and if I do not express myself proper, you must excuse it, seeing I have not been accustomed to pay my compliments to Governor and Baronet's ladies. I am in the midst of a great wash, and Sarah still sick, and would gladly be excused writing this post, but my husband says I must write, and give you joy, which we heartily join in.