time so idly. But another
reflection comes to relieve me, whispering: '_You know that the soul is
immortal. Why, then, should you be such a niggard of a little time,
when you have a whole eternity before you?_' So, being easily
convinced, and, like other reasonable creatures, satisfied with a small
reason when it is in favor of doing what I have a mind to, I shuffle
the cards again, and begin another game." Yet the old man could not but
feel lonely at times in the new society growing up about him. He says
pathetically in another letter: "I seem to have intruded myself into
the company of posterity, when I ought to have been abed and asleep."

In 1787 the constitutional convention met in Philadelphia, and it was a
fitting thing that the statesman and philosopher should live to aid in
framing laws by which his country is still governed. He was now too
weak to stand long, so that his speeches on various questions had to be
read out by a friend. His work in the convention was altogether
subordinate to that of Madison and one or two other leading spirits;
but his part in reconciling various factious elements in the convention
was of the greatest importance. When at last the deadlock came between
the smaller and the larger States on the question of representation in
the legislature, it was Franklin who saved the day by a suggestion
which led to the famous compromise, making the Senate represent the
individual States, while the lower house is proportioned to population.
Washington presided over the assembly; and we are told that while "the
last members were signing, Dr. Franklin, looking towards the
president's chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be
painted, observed to a few members near him that painters had found it
difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. 'I
have,' said he, 'often and often in the course of the session and the
vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue looked at that
behind the president without being able to tell whether it was rising
or setting; but now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a
rising, and not a setting sun.'"

It was, however, the setting sun for Franklin. The few years that
remained to him were peaceful and noble; but his old maladies increased
on him, until at the last he was confined to his bed. Yet through it
all he showed the same untiring energy. He wrote against the study of
the classics, against the abuse of the liber