In France he was as much the main stay of the cause of his country as General Washington was at home.
Returning home after the war, he was elected president of Pennsylvania for three successive years, at a salary of two thousand pounds a year. But by this time he had become convinced that offices of honor, such as the governorship of a State, ought not to have any salary attached to them. He thought they should be filled by persons of independent income, willing to serve their fellow-citizens from benevolence, or for the honor of it. So thinking, he at first determined not to receive any salary; but this being objected to, he devoted the whole of the salary for three years--six thousand pounds--to the furtherance of public objects. Part of it he gave to a college, and part was set aside for the improvement of the Schuylkill River.
Never was an eminent man more thoughtful of people who were the companions of his poverty. Dr. Franklin, from amidst the splendors of the French court, and when he was the most famous and admired person in Europe, forgot not his poor old sister, Jane, who was in fact dependent on his bounty. He gave her a house in Boston, and sent her every September the money to lay in her Winter's fuel and provisions. He wrote her the kindest, wittiest, pleasantest letters. "Believe me, dear brother," she writes, "your writing to me gives me so much pleasure that the great, the very great, presents you have sent me give me but a secondary joy."
How exceedingly absurd to call such a man "hard" and miserly, because he recommended people not to waste their money! Let me tell you, reader, that if a man means to be liberal and generous, he _must_ be economical. No people are so mean as the extravagant, because, spending all they have upon themselves, they have nothing left for others. Benjamin Franklin was the most consistently generous man of whom I have any knowledge.
THE MOTHER'S EDUCATION--THE SON'S TRAINING--DOMESTIC LOVE AND SOCIAL DUTIES.
It was in the Spring of 1758 that the daughter of a distinguished professor of medicine in the University of Edinburgh changed her maiden name of Rutherford for her married name of Scott, having the happiness to unite her lot with one who was not only a scrupulously honorable man, but who, from his youth up, had led a singularly blameless life. Well does Coventry Patmore sing: