Miss Polly Baker.
Towards the end of 1777, the abbé Raynal calling on Dr. Franklin found, in company with the doctor, their common friend, Silas Deane. “Ah! monsieur l’abbé,” said Deane, “we were just talking of you and your works. Do you know that you have been very ill served by some of those people who have undertaken to give you information on American affairs?” The abbé resisted this attack with some warmth; and Deane supported it by citing a variety of passages from Raynal’s works, which he alleged to be incorrect. At last they came to the anecdote of “Polly Baker,” on which the abbé had displayed a great deal of pathos and sentiment. “Now here,” says Deane, “is a tale in which there is not one word of truth.” Raynal fired at this, and asserted that he had taken it from an authentic memoir received from America. Franklin, who had amused himself hitherto with listening to the dispute of his friends, at length interposed, “My dear abbé,” said he, “shall I tell you the truth? When I was a young man, and rather more thoughtless than is becoming at our present time of life, I was employed in writing for a newspaper; and, as it sometimes happened that I wanted genuine materials to fill up my page, I occasionally drew on the stores of my imagination for a tale which might pass current as a reality—now this very anecdote of Polly Baker was one of my inventions.”
Bread Seals.
The new conundrum of “bread pats,” as the ladies call the epigrammatic impressors that their work-boxes are always full of now, pleases me mightily. Nothing could be more stupid than the old style of affiche—an initial—carefully engraved in a hand always perfectly unintelligible; or a crest—necessarily out of its place, nine times in ten, in female correspondence—because nothing could be more un-“germane” than a “bloody dagger” alarming every body it met, on the outside of an order for minikin pins! or a “fiery dragon,” threatening a French mantua-maker for some undue degree of tightness in the fitting of the sleeve! and then the same emblem, recurring through the whole letter-writing of a life, became tedious. But now every lady has a selection of axioms (in flower and water) always by her, suited to different occasions. As, “Though lost to sight, to memory dear!”—when she writes to a friend who has lately had his eye poked out. “Though absent, unforgotten!”—to a female correspondent, whom she has not written to for perhaps the three last (twopenny) posts; or, “Vous le meritez!” with the figure of a “rose”—emblematic of every thing beautiful—when she writes to a lover. It was receiving a note with this last seal to it that put the subject of seals into my mind; and I have some notion of getting one engraved with the same motto, “Vous le meritez,” only with the personification of a horsewhip under it, instead of a “rose”—for peculiar occasions. And perhaps a second would not do amiss, with the same emblem, only with the motto, “Tu l’auras!” as a sort of corollary upon the first, in cases of emergency! At all events, I patronise the system of a variety of “posies;” because where the inside of a letter is likely to be stupid, it gives you the chance of a joke upon the out.—Monthly Magazine
Bleeding for our Country.
It is related of a Lord Radnor in Chesterfield’s time, that, with many good qualities, and no inconsiderable share of learning, he had a strong desire of being thought skilful in physic, and was very expert in bleeding. Lord Chesterfield knew his foible, and on a particular occasion, wanting his vote, came to him, and, after having conversed upon indifferent matters, complained of the headach, and desired his lordship to feel his pulse. Lord Radnor immediately advised him to lose blood. Chesterfield complimented his lordship on his chirurgical skill, and begged him to try his lancet upon him. “A propos,” said lord Chesterfield, after the operation, “do you go to the house today?” Lord Radnor answered, “I did not intend to go, not being sufficiently informed of the question which is to be debated; but you, that have considered it, which side will you be of?”—The wily earl easily directed his judgment, carried him to the house, and got him to vote as he pleased. Lord Chesterfield used to say, that none of his friends had been as patriotic as himself, for he had “lost his blood for the good of his country.”