Scriptures.

We infer, from the foregoing, that useful conversation was
characteristic of the Franklins of each generation, indicating a good
degree of intelligence and talents of high order. Ignorance does not
indulge in improving conversation; it could not if it would. Nor do
small mental powers show themselves in excellence of conversation. So
that it is quite evident that talents in the Josiah Franklin family
were not limited to Benjamin. They reached back to former generations.

Mr. Parton says: "Thomas Franklin, the elder, had four sons: Thomas,
John, Benjamin, and Josiah. There lived at Ecton, during the boyhood
of these four sons, a Mr. John Palmer, the squire of the parish and
lord of an adjacent manor, who, attracted by their intelligence and
spirit, lent them books, assisted them to lessons in drawing and
music, and, in various ways, encouraged them to improve their minds.
All the boys appear to have been greatly profited by Squire Palmer's
friendly aid; but none of them so much as Thomas, the eldest,
inheritor of the family forge and farm."

It was this Thomas who became grandfather of our Benjamin, and whose
expressions in prayer we have quoted. Mr. Parton discovers such
talents there as make profitable conversation at the table and
elsewhere, and are transmitted to posterity. For he says, still
further:

"In families destined at length to give birth to an illustrious
individual, Nature seems sometimes to make an essay of her powers with
that material, before producing the consummate specimen. There was a
remarkable Mr. Pitt before Lord Chatham; there was an extraordinary