Their host showed them a sort of artificial arm—a long pole with prongs at the end that could be opened or shut with a rope, which he had devised to take down and put up books on the upper shelves. (Previously he had used a chair which could be unfolded into a ladder, but now he was not sufficiently agile.) He had other curiosities in the room, such as a glass machine for “exhibiting the circulation of the blood in the arteries and veins of the human body” and his rocking armchair, with a fan placed over it which he could operate by a small motion of his foot. Because Cutler was a botanist, Franklin showed him a precious folio containing _Systema Vegetabilium_, by Linnaeus, the founder of systematic botany. Heavy as the folio was, Franklin insisted on lifting it himself, and to Cutler he expressed regret that he had not in his youth given more attention to the science of botany. They discussed many other matters and Cutler was astonished at Franklin’s extensive knowledge, “the brightness of his memory, and clearness and vivacity of all his mental faculties, notwithstanding his age,” and at the “incessant vein of humour ... which seems as natural and involuntary as his breathing.” But his age was catching up with Benjamin Franklin, as no one realized better than he. In February 1788, he fell on the stone steps that led into his garden, bruising himself badly and spraining his wrist, so that temporarily he could not even write to his friends. The accident was followed by a severe attack of his kidney stone ailment. He was still confined to bed when Pennsylvania celebrated gloriously its twelfth Fourth of July. The Pennsylvania Council held meetings at his house during his illness, and in October, Thomas Mifflin, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, was elected to succeed him. To quiet the anxiety of his sister in Boston, Jane Mecom, he wrote, “There are in life real evils enough, and it is a folly to afflict ourselves with imaginary ones.... As to the pain I suffer, about which you make yourself so unhappy, it is, when compared with the long life I have enjoyed of health and ease, but a trifle.” He made his will that summer of 1788. In a codicil, he bequeathed to “my friend, and the friend of mankind, General Washington,” the walking stick with the gold head in the shape of a cap of liberty, which had been given him in France as a symbol of victory. Congress was now allotting many pensions and bonuses to patriots who had sacrificed their personal interests to serve in the cause of freedom. Franklin had hoped that his many years of foreign service might be thought worthy of a grant of a tract of land in the West “which might have been of some use and some honour to my posterity.” This was never given him.