ded in his own business every dollar
of the funds he could raise, silently and almost without remark, read
the letter of Sir William Keith, and listened attentively to the
glowing descriptions of his son. Soon after Captain Holmes arrived.
The judicious father conversed fully with him, and expressed his
opinion that Sir William Keith must be a man of but little discretion
to think of setting up independently, in very responsible business, a
young man of but eighteen years of age.

Though Captain Holmes earnestly advocated the views of the Governor,
Josiah Franklin, after mature deliberation, decisively declined
furnishing the necessary funds.

"Benjamin," said he, "is too young to undertake an enterprise so
important. I am much gratified that he has been able to secure the
approbation of the Governor of Pennsylvania, and that by his industry
and fidelity he has been able to attain prosperity so remarkable. If
he will return to Philadelphia and work diligently until he is
twenty-one, carefully laying up his surplus earnings, I will then do
everything in my power to aid him."

The cautious Christian father then gave his son some very salutary
advice. He entreated him to be more careful in throwing out his arrows
of satire, and to cease presenting, in the aspect of the ridiculous,
so many subjects which religious men regarded with veneration. He
wrote a very courteous letter to Sir William Keith, thanking him for
his kindness to his son, and stating his reasons for declining the
proposed aid. Indeed, Josiah Franklin was intellectually, morally, and
in all sound judgment, immeasurably the superior of the fickle and
shallow royal Governor.

Sixty years after this visit of Franklin to his paternal home, he
wrote a letter to the son of the Rev. Cotton Mather, from which we
make the following pleasing extract:

"The last time I saw your father was in the beginning of
1724, when I visited him after my first trip to Pennsylvania.
He received me in his library; and on my taking leave showed
me a shorter way out of the house through a narrow passage
which was crossed by a beam overhead. We were still talking
as I withdrew, he accompanying me behind, and I, turning
partly toward him, when he said hastily, _stoop, stoop!_ I
did not understand him till I felt my head hit against the
beam. He was a man that never missed any occasion of giving
instruction; and upon this he said to