* * * * *




II.

DEFENSE OF A GREAT MAN.


WAS DR. FRANKLIN MEAN?--JAMES PARTON'S ANSWER.


A man of no enviable notoriety is reported to have spoken of Dr.
Franklin as "hard, calculating, angular, unable to comprehend any higher
object than the accumulation of money." Not a few people who profess
much admiration for Franklin in other respects seem to think that in
money matters there was something about him akin to meanness. To correct
this false impression and show "how Franklin got his money, how much he
got, and what he did with it," one of his recent biographers is called
up in his defense, and to the question, "Was Dr. Franklin mean?" here is


JAMES PARTON'S ANSWER.


I will begin with the first pecuniary transaction in which he is known
to have been concerned, and this shall be given in his own words:

"When I was a child of seven years old my friends, on a holiday, filled