Never have I known such a fireside companion. Great as he was both as a
statesman and philosopher, he never shone in a light more winning than
when he was seen in a domestic circle. It was once my good fortune to pass
two or three weeks with him, at the house of a private gentleman, in the
back part of Pennsylvania, and we were confined to the house during the
whole of that time by the unintermitting constancy and depth of the snows.
But confinement never could be felt where Franklin was an inmate; His
cheerfulness and his colloquial powers spread around him a perpetual
spring.

When I speak, however, of his colloquial powers, I do not mean to awaken
any notion analogous to that which Boswell has given us of Johnson. The
conversation of the latter continually reminds one of the "pomp and
circumstance of glorious war." It was, indeed, a perpetual contest for
victory, or an arbitrary or despotic exaction of homage to his superior
talents. It was strong, acute, prompt, splendid, and vociferous; as loud,
stormy, and sublime as those winds which he represents as shaking the
Hebrides, and rocking the old castle which frowned on the dark-rolling sea
beneath.

But one gets tired of storms, however sublime they may be, and longs for
the more orderly current of nature. Of Franklin, no one ever became tired.
There was no ambition of eloquence, no effort to shine in anything which
came from him. There was nothing which made any demand upon either your
allegiance or your admiration. His manner was as unaffected as infancy. It
was nature's self. He talked like an old patriarch; and his plainness and
simplicity put you at once at your ease, and gave you the full and free
possession and use of your faculties. His thoughts were of a character to
shine by their own light, without any adventitious aid. They only required
a medium of vision like his pure and simple style, to exhibit to the
highest advantage their native radiance and beauty.

His cheerfulness was unremitting. It seemed to be as much the effect of a
systematic and salutary exercise of the mind, as of its superior
organization. His wit was of the first order. It did not show itself
merely in occasional coruscations[1]; but, without any effort or force on
his part, it shed a constant stream of the purest light over the whole of
his discourse. Whether in the company of commons or nobles, he was always
the same plain man; always most perfectly at his ease, with his facultie