During his sojourn in England Franklin was overtaken by a heavy affliction; he received intelligence of the death of his wife, to whom he had been wedded forty-four years, and who, in all his successes, had been the constant object of his affectionate pride. The blow was a severe one for Franklin, and contributed in some measure to his additional sojourn in England, although the public duties with which he was charged rendered this to some extent necessary. The state of affairs in America entirely engrossed the public mind; debates in either House of Parliament were of daily occurrence, and the members who participated in them sought the assistance of Franklin, whose great experience and diplomatic sagacity were of invaluable service to his countrymen in tempering the zeal of their patriotism. The English ministers, however, proved intractable, and, after ten years of incessant effort, Franklin returned to Philadelphia (May, 1775), with bold and decided ideas as to the future policy of America. On the day after his arrival the Assembly of Pennsylvania elected him to the Continental Congress; also a member of the Committee of Safety. To the various duties of these important offices he devoted himself with earnestness, and throughout the great drama of Independence he was a principal actor. It is unnecessary to repeat the events of this period; they are a part of our common history, and must be studied separately.

On the 26th of September, 1776, Franklin was appointed a commissioner to join Silas Deane and Arthur Lee, already in Europe, and "transact the business of the United States at the court of France." He arrived in that country in December of the same year. The object of the mission was to obtain the moral and material aid of France for the struggling republic; and it was triumphantly gained. Money and munitions of war were loaned by the French monarch, and any quantity of volunteers offered their services to fight against their ancient foe, the English. In 1778, a formal treaty of commerce was signed between the American commissioners on the one part, and France on the other, and in March of the same year the commissioners were formally received by the French monarch as the representatives of an independent power. It is, of course, unjust to attribute the entire success of this mission to Franklin, but he, perhaps, more than any other individual member, contributed, by the popularity and known rectitude of his character, to its successful issue. On the dissolu

tion of the commission, Franklin was appointed minister plenipotentiary, and in that capacity remained in France to perform a great variety of offices, divided, in the present day, among several representatives. His industry was truly marvelous, and equal to any emergency. Although far advanced in years, he displayed the liveliest mental activity, throwing himself into the topics of the day, scientific and political, with the fervor of youth. When the time arrived for coming to terms with Great Britain, he was appointed one of the United States commissioners to effect a treaty of peace between the two countries. A great deal of delicate skill had to be displayed in the construction of this treaty, for there were keen susceptibilities on both sides which might easily be wounded. The calmness, dignity, and wisdom of Franklin's bearing was of inestimable value. So excellently was the preliminary treaty drawn up, that on the 3d of September, 1783, it was signed as the definitive one. After thus happily assisting at the inauguration of peace, Franklin insisted on returning to his own country. He had been absent in France for nearly nine years, and felt that he could no longer resist the encroachments of age. On the 27th of July, 1785, he set sail from London, and on the 14th of September he arrived once more in Philadelphia, where he was received with every demonstration of popular love and respect. It was difficult for a man of Franklin's eminence to obtain the repose of private life. So long had he been accustomed to bear the weight of public duties, that he could not throw off the load without injury to himself. The remaining years of his life were destined to be passed in the public service and in the pursuit of scientific subjects. He was chosen (1787) a delegate to the Convention for adopting a Constitution for the United States, and was a working member of that body. During the last years of his life he continued to wield his pen with the force and clearness of youth, and never missed an opportunity of proving that he was yet hale and hearty in mind, if weak and feeble in body.

Dr. Franklin suffered severely from gout, to which was added a painful calculous disease. The two became so distressing and continuous that he was scarcely able to leave his bed for the last twelve months of his life. "About sixteen days before his death," writes Dr. Jones, who attended the philosopher in his last sickness, "he was seized with a feverish disposition, without any par

ticular symptoms attending it till the third or fourth day, when he complained of a pain in his left breast, which increased until it became extremely acute, attended by a cough and laborious breathing. During this state, when the severity of his pains drew forth a groan of complaint, he would observe that he was afraid that he did not bear them as he ought; acknowledging his grateful sense of the many blessings he had received from the Supreme Being, who had raised him from small and low beginnings to such high rank and consideration among men, and made no doubt but that his present afflictions were kindly intended to wean him from a world in which he was no longer fit to act the part assigned him. In this frame of body and mind he continued until five days before his death, when the pain and difficulty of breathing entirely left him, and his family were flattering themselves with the hopes of his recovery; but an imposthume, which had formed in his lungs, suddenly burst, and discharged a quantity of matter, which he continued to throw up while he had power, but, as that failed, the organs of respiration became gradually oppressed, a calm, lethargic state succeeded, and on the 17th instant (April, 1790), about eleven o'clock at night, he quietly expired, closing a long and useful life of eighty-four years and three months." The funeral took place on the 21st of April, and his remains were placed, according to his request, at the side of those of his wife, in the northwest corner of Christ Church cemetery. No monument marks his resting-place, for he had by will prescribed a plain marble slab. When a young man of twenty-three years,

he penned the following quaint epitaph:

The Body
of

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

(Like the Cover of an old Book,

Its contents torn out,

and stripped of its lettering and gilding)
Lies here, food for worms.

But the work shall not be lost,

For it will, as he believed, appear once more
In a new and more elegant edition,

Revised and corrected

by

The Author.

ufacture three thousand a minute, and perform the work with much more satisfaction and completeness than by hand. He was cheated out of his right to the profit of this invention.

the usual fate of an inventor.

It was

At the age of twenty-five Mr. Evans married, and soon after entered into business with his brothers, who were millers. Here was a proper field for the exercise of his ingenuity, and he cultivated it in a way that has placed the milling fraternity under perpetual obligations to him. The improvements and inventions he applied were the elevator, the conveyor, the hopper-boy, the drill, and the descender, which five machines are variously applied in different mills according to their construction, so as to perform every necessary movement of the grain and meal from one part of the mill to the other, or from one machine to another, through all the various operations, from the time the grain is supplied from the farmer's wagon until it is converted into flour, ready for sending to all parts of the world. These improvements were laborsaving, and important in every respect. They required much time to perfect, and were, of course, received with opposition from interested sources. It was extremely difficult to introduce them. Mr. Evans dispatched his brother through the States of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, to offer his inventions gratis to the first in each county who would adopt them. Notwithstanding this remarkable inducement, he returned wholly unsuccessful, and without any favorable prospects for the future. The Brandywine millers, in particular, were especially hostile, and it was only after several mills had adopted the improvements that they held a consultation to inquire into its merits. The result of this meeting was conveyed to Mr. Evans in the following language--at least so Mr. Howe says, in his biographical sketch: "Oliver, we have had a meeting, and agreed that, if thou would furnish all the materials, and thy own boarding, and come thyself to set up the machinery in one of our mills, thee may come and try, and, if it answers a valuable purpose, we will pay thy bill; but if it does not answer, thee must take it all out again, and leave the mill just as thee finds it, at thy own expense." Those Brandywine millers were very obstinate and very blind up to the last moment, and gave no end of trouble to poor Evans, for they had the reputation of being excellent in their business, and hundreds of others were influenced by their decision. They were the

OLIVER EVANS.

OLIVER EVANS, who has been called the Watt of America, was born at Newport, Delaware, about the year 1755 or 1756. His parents were respectable farmers, and at the age of fourteen Oliver was placed as an apprentice to a wheelwright-an excellent and lucrative business. Having received but the simple rudiments of an education, Oliver was desirous of improving himself, and in the evenings, when his regular work was done, devoted himself attentively to study. His master, an illiterate man, observing the youth engaged in what he considered an unprofitable amusement, endeavored to put a stop to it by denying Oliver the use of candles. But the thirst for knowledge is not so easily snuffed out. Oliver collected the shavings he had made during the day, set them in a blaze, and continued his studies by their grateful light.

At this early period of his life young Evans gave evidence of the possession of active inventive faculties. He endeavored to find out a method of propelling carriages on common roads without the aid of horses or other animal power. All that had been written on the subject he perused carefully, studied the various experiments, and made himself master of the subject generally. The result was that he concluded it impracticable with the means then known to mechanics. During this time, however, he became acquainted with the powers of steam; he renewed his experiment, and with increased confidence in this force he declared unhesitatingly that he could accomplish his object. Of course, such a confident declaration, coming from so young a man, excited the ridicule of his hearers, and compelled him to abandon his scheme until a later day, when more age, if not more wisdom, would give weight and importance to his opinion.

Evans's ingenuity and aptness carried him much beyond the limits of his trade. When he was twenty-three or twenty-four years of age he was engaged in making card teeth by hand, that being the only way then known. Finding this process too slow, he set his wits to work and contrived a machine that would man