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year. I am in my seventy-ninth year; we are growing old together. It is now more than sixty years since I left Boston, but I remember well both your father and grandfather, having heard them both in the pulpit and seen them in their houses. The last time I saw your father was in the beginning of 1724, when I visited him after my first trip to Pennsylvania. He received me in his library, and on my taking leave showed me a shorter way out of the house through a narrow passage which was crossed by a beam overhead. We were still talking as I withdrew, he accompanying me behind, and I turning partly toward him, when he said hastily, "Stop, stop!" I did not understand him till I felt my head hit against the beam. He was a man that never missed any occasion of giving instruction, and upon this he said to me: "You are young and have the world before you; stoop as you go through it, and you will miss many hard thumps.” This advice, thus beat into my head, has frequently been of use to me; and I often think of it when I see pride mortified and misfortunes brought upon people by their carrying their heads too high.

Yours with esteem,

B. FRANKLIN.

XII.

TO THE REV. DR. LATHROP, BOSTON.

PHILADELPHIA, 31st May, 1788.

REVEREND SIR: I received your obliging favor of the 6th instant by Mr. Hillard, with whose conversa

tion I was much pleased, and would have been glad to have had more of it if he would have spared it to me; but the short time of his stay has prevented. You need make no apology for introducing any of your friends to me. I consider it as doing me honor as well as giving me pleasure. I thank you for the pamphlet of the Humane Society. In return, please to accept one of the same kind, which was published while I resided in France. If your society have not hitherto seen it, it may possibly afford them useful hints.

It would certainly, as you observe, be a very great pleasure to me if I could once again visit my native town and walk over the grounds I used to frequent when a boy, and where I enjoyed many of the innocent pleasures of youth, which would be so brought to my remembrance, and where I might find some of my old acquaintance to converse with. But when I consider how well I am situated here, with everything about me that I can call either necessary or convenient, the fatigues and bad accommodations to be met with and suffered in a land journey, and the unpleasantness of sea voyages to one who, although he has crossed the Atlantic eight times and made many smaller trips, does not recollect his having ever been at sea without taking a firm resolution never to go to sea again; and that, if I were arrived in Boston, I should see but little of it, as I could neither bear walking nor riding in a carriage over its pebbled streets; and, above all, that I should find very few indeed of my old friends living, it being now sixty-five years since I left it to settle here-all this considered, I say,

it seems probable, though not certain, that I shall hardly again visit that beloved place. But I enjoy the company and conversation of its inhabitants when any of them are so good as to visit me; for besides their general good sense, which I value, the Boston manner, turn of phrase, and even tone of voice and accent in pronunciation, all please and seem to refresh and revive me.

I have been long impressed with the same sentiments you so well express of the growing felicity of mankind, from the improvements in philosophy, morals, politics, and even the conveniences of common living, and the invention and acquisition of new and useful utensils and instruments, so that I have sometimes almost wished it had been my destiny to be born two or three centuries hence; for invention and improvement are prolific and beget more of their kind. The present progress is rapid. Many of great importance, now unthought of, will before that period be produced; and then I might not only enjoy their advantages, but have my curiosity gratified by knowing what they are to be. I see a little absurdity in what I have just written; but it is to a friend who will wink and let it pass, while I mention one reason more for such a wish, which is that if the art of physic shall be improved in proportion to other arts, we may then be able to avoid diseases and live as long as the patriarchs in Genesis, to which I suppose we should have little objection.

I am glad my dear sister has so good and kind a neighbor. I sometimes suspect she may be backward in acquainting me with circumstances in which I

might be more useful to her. If any such should occur to your observation, your mentioning them to me will be a favor I shall be thankful for.

With great esteem, I have the honor to be, reverend sir, your most obedient and most humble servant, B. FRANKLIN.

THE END.

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