ile period of my existence up to the present
day, has ever yielded the peculiar gratification which Franklin's memoirs
gave me, and my admiration and reverence for our illustrious sage have
through all subsequent inquiry into his actions and services, increased in
intensity, in proportion as I have contemplated his wondrous character and
his unparalleled achievements. I think I owe something to my mother for
this happy appreciation of our Franklin. She was by birth a Philadelphian,
and for years, during her residence in Arch street, was favored with
opportunities of again and again beholding Dr. Franklin pass her door, in
company with Dr. Rush and Thomas Paine. "There," the children of the
neighborhood would cry out, "goes Poor Richard, Common Sense, and the
Doctor." It is recorded that Franklin furnished many thoughts in the
famous pamphlet of _Common Sense_, while Paine wrote it, and Rush gave the
title. There is something in the hereditary transmission of the moral and
of the physical qualities; yet I have thought that the benevolent schemes
of Rush, the intrepid patriotism of Paine, and the honest maxims of
Franklin--the topics of daily converse in that day--had some influence in
strengthening the principles which my mother inculcated in her children.

You have told me, gentlemen, that you would be gratified with some
reminiscences touching New-York--social, literary, personal--of men and
books--all having a bearing, more or less immediate, either on the progress
of human development, or the character of our metropolitan city. I know
not how to satisfy either you or myself. To do justice to the subject
would require a different opportunity from the one here enjoyed, and
leisure such as I cannot now command.

The locality upon which we are assembled to-night has its associations. We
meet this evening on the memorable spot in our city's early topography
denominated the Bayard Farm--a property once in the possession of the
affluent Bayards, of him who was companion in his strife with Governor
Leisler, and whose death for high treason was the issue of that protracted
contest. That he fell a martyr to freedom, our friend Charles F. Hoffman
has ably demonstrated. Within a few doors of this place, on Broadway, very
many years after, but within my recollection, lived that arch negotiator
in public counsels, Talleyrand, the famous ambassador of France to the
United States. He published a small tractate on America, once much r