with the praises he so richly merited. The morning after his arrival
he was unanimously chosen by the Assembly, then in session, as a
member of the Continental Congress, which was to meet on the 10th
of the month, in that city. Sixteen days before Franklin's arrival
the memorable conflicts of Lexington and Concord had taken place.
Probably never were men more astounded, than were the members of
the British cabinet, in learning that the British regulars had been
defeated, routed and put to precipitate flight by American farmers
with their fowling-pieces. In this heroic conflict, whose echoes
reverberated around the world, the Americans lost in killed and
wounded eighty-three. The British lost two hundred and seventy-three.
Franklin wrote to his friend Edmund Burke,

"Gen. Gage's troops made a most vigorous retreat--twenty
miles in three hours--scarce to be paralleled in history.
The feeble Americans, who pelted them all the way, could
scarce keep up with them."

On the 10th of May Congress met. There were still two parties, one in
favor of renewed attempts at conciliation, before drawing the sword
and throwing away the scabbard; the other felt that the powers of
conciliation were exhausted, and that nothing now remained, but the
arbitrament of war.

George Washington was chosen, by the Assembly, Commander-in-Chief of
the American forces. On the 17th of June the battle of Bunker Hill was
fought. Mr. John Dickinson trembled in view of his great wealth. His
wife entreated him to withdraw from the conflict. Piteously she urged
the considerations, that he would be hung, his wife left a widow, and
his children beggared and rendered infamous. He succeeded in passing a
resolution in favor of a second petition to the king, which he drew
up, and which the Tory Governor Richard Penn was to present. John
Adams, who was weary of having his country continue in the attitude of
a suppliant kneeling at the foot of the throne, opposed this petition,
as a "measure of imbecility."

One of the first acts of Congress was to organize a system for the
safe conveyance of letters, which could no longer be trusted in the
hands of the agents of the British Court. Franklin was appointed
Postmaster General. He had attained the age of sixty nine years.
Notwithstanding his gravity of character and his great wisdom, he had
unfortunately become an inveterate joker. He could not refrain from
inserting, even in his most serious an