oundations of early legislation with prudence, and she turned to the
venerable Franklin to fill the chair of state. He was nominated for the
office of President of Pennsylvania, and elected, and twice re-elected;
and we find him now, over eighty years of age, in activities of young
manhood, and bringing to the office the largest experience of any
American.

He was among the first of most eminent Americans to crown his life after
the period of threescore and ten years with the results of the
scholarship of usefulness.

We have recently seen Gladstone, Tennyson, King William, Bismarck, Von
Moltke, Whittier, Holmes, and many other men of the enlightened world,
doing some of their strongest and most impressive work after seventy
years of age, and some of these setting jewels in the crown of life
when past eighty. We have seen Du Maurier producing his first great work
of fiction at sixty, and many authors fulfilling the hopes of years at a
like age.

We have a beautiful pen picture of Franklin in these several years, in
his youth's return when eighty years were past. It shows what is
possible to a life of temperance and beneficence, and it is only such a
life that can have an Indian summer, a youth in age.

"Dr. Franklin's house," wrote a clergyman who visited him in his old
age, "stands up a court, at some distance from the street. We found him
in his garden, sitting upon a grass-plot, under a very large mulberry
tree, with several other gentlemen and two or three ladies. When Mr.
Gerry introduced me, he rose from his chair, took me by the hand,
expressed his joy at seeing me, welcomed me to the city, and begged me
to seat myself close to him. His voice was low, but his countenance
open, frank, and pleasing. I delivered to him my letters. After he read
them he took me again by the hand, and, with the usual compliments,
introduced me to the other gentlemen.

[Illustration: FRANKLIN'S LAST DAYS.]

"Here we entered into a free conversation, and spent our time most
agreeably until it was quite dark. The tea table was spread under the
tree, and Mrs. Bache, who is the only daughter of the doctor and lives
with him, served it out to the company. She had three of her children
about her. They seemed to be excessively fond of their grandpa. The
doctor showed me a curiosity he had just received, and with which he was
much pleased. It was a snake with two heads, preserved in a large
vial. It was taken near the confluence of the