One evening he attended quite a brilliant party at a nobleman's house, who was a friend to America. The conversation chanced to turn upon Esop's fables. It was said that that mine of illustration was exhausted. Franklin, after a moment's thought, remarked, that many new fables could be invented, as instructive as any of those of Esop, Gay, or La Fontaine. Can you think of one now, asked a lord. "I think so," said Franklin, "if you will furnish me with pencil and paper." He immediately sat down, surrounded by the gay assembly, and wrote, as rapidly as his pencil could move, "THE EAGLE AND THE CAT." "Once upon a time an eagle, scaling round a farmer's barn, and espying a hare, darted down upon him like a sunbeam, seized him in his claws, and remounted with him into the air. He soon found that he had a creature of more courage and strength than the hare; for which he had mistaken a cat. The snarling and scrambling of his prey were very inconvenient. And what was worse, she had disengaged herself from his talons, grasped his body with her four limbs, so as to stop his breath, and seized fast hold of his throat, with her teeth. "'Pray,' said the eagle, 'let go your hold, and I will release you.' "'Very fine,' said the cat. 'But I have no fancy to fall from this height, and to be crushed to death. You have taken me up, and you shall stoop and let me down.' "The eagle thought it necessary to stoop accordingly." This admirable fable was read to the company; and, as all were in sympathy with America, it was received with great applause. Little, however, did any of them then imagine, how invincible was the animal the British government was about to clutch in its talons, supposing it to be a defenseless hare. Franklin spent his last day in London with Dr. Priestly. The Doctor bears glowing testimony to his admirable character. Many thought Dr. Franklin heartless, since, in view of all the horrors of a civil war, his hilarity was never interrupted. Priestly, alluding to this charge against Franklin, says, that they spent the day looking over the American papers, and extracting from them passages to be published in England. "In reading them," he writes, "Franklin was frequently not able to proceed for the tears literally running down his cheeks." Upon his departure, he surrendered his agency to Arthur Lee. It was the 21st of March, 1775, when Franklin embarked at Portsmouth, in a Pennsylvania packet.