husband "had left many debts, which his successor might be call'd upon to pay." Few men, even if warmly enamored, would have entered into the matrimonial contract under circumstances so discouraging; and there are no indications save the marriage itself that Franklin was deeply in love. Yet on September 1, 1730, the pair were wedded. Mrs. Franklin survived for forty years thereafter, and neither seems ever to have regretted the step. "None of the inconveniences happened that we had apprehended," wrote Franklin; "she proved a good and faithful helpmate; assisted me much by attending the shop; we throve together, and have ever mutually endeavored to make each other happy." A sensible, comfortable, satisfactory union it was, showing how much better is sense than sensibility as an ingredient in matrimony. Mrs. Franklin was a handsome woman, of comely figure, yet nevertheless an industrious and frugal one; later on in life Franklin boasted that he had "been clothed from head to foot in linen of [his] wife's manufacture." An early contribution of his own to the domestic _menage_ was his illegitimate son, William, born soon after his wedding, of a mother of whom no record or tradition remains. It was an unconventional wedding gift to bring home to a bride; but Mrs. Franklin, with a breadth and liberality of mind akin to her husband's, readily took the babe not only to her home but really to her heart, and reared him as if he had been her own offspring. Mr. Parton thinks that Franklin gave this excellent wife no further cause for suspicion or jealousy. CHAPTER II A CITIZEN OF PHILADELPHIA: CONCERNMENT IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS So has ended the first stage, in the benign presence of Hymen. The period of youth may be regarded as over; but the narrative thereof, briefly as it has been given, is not satisfactory. One longs to help out the outline with color, to get the expression as well as merely the features of the young man who is going to become one of the greatest men of the nation. Many a writer and speaker has done what he could in this task, for Franklin has been for a century a chief idol of the American people. The Boston boy, the boy printer, the runaway apprentice, the young journeyman, friendless and penniless in distant London, are pictures which have been made familiar to many generations of schoolboys; and the trifling anecdote of the bread rolls eaten in the streets of Philadelphia has for its only rival among American historical traditions the more doubtful story about George Washington, the cherry-tree, and the little hatchet.