business had arrived, a little time should be allowed for the appearance of other members of the company, who, he knew, intended to come for the purpose of voting against the proposition. While this suggestion was being combated, who should appear but a waiter to tell Franklin that two gentlemen below desired to speak with him. These proved to be two of the Quaker members of the company. Eight of them, they said, were assembled at a tavern just by, who were ready to come and vote for the proposition, if they should be needed, but did not desire to be sent for, if their assistance could be dispensed with. Franklin then went back to Mr. Morris, and after a little seeming hesitation--for at times he had a way of piecing out the skin of the lion with the tail of the fox--agreed to a delay of another hour. This Mr. Morris admitted was extremely fair. Nobody else came, and, upon the expiration of the hour, the proposition was carried by a vote of eight to one. Franklin was a thoroughly normal man himself, but his wit, patience and rare capacity for self-transformation usually enabled him to deal successfully with any degree of abnormality in others, however pronounced. "Sensible people," he once said to his sister Jane, "will give a bucket or two of water to a dry pump, that they may afterwards get from it all they have occasion for." The next time that Franklin crosses the stage of war is when General Braddock and his men, in the buskins of high tragedy, are moving to their doom. It had been reported to the General that, not only had the Pennsylvania Assembly refused to vote money for the King's service, but that the Pennsylvanians themselves had sold provisions to the French, declined to aid in the construction of a road to the West, and withheld wagons and horses sorely needed by the expedition; and the General had just been compelled to settle down for a time in the temper of a chafed bull at Frederick, Maryland, for the want of wagons and horses to transport his army to Fort Duquesne, which he afterwards told Franklin could hardly detain him above three or four days on his triumphant progress to Niagara and Frontenac. Forts, he seemed to think, to recall Franklin's simile, could be taken as easily as snuff. Under these circumstances, the Pennsylvania Assembly decided to ask Franklin to visit Braddock's camp, ostensibly as Deputy Postmaster-General, for the purpose of arranging a plan, by which the General could effectively keep in postal touch with the Colonial Governors, but really for the purpose of removing the prejudices which the General had formed against Pennsylvania. And a pleasant April journey that must have been for the mounted Franklin through Pennsylvania and Delaware, and over "the green-walled hills of Maryland," with his son, and the Governors of New York and Massachusetts, also mounted, as his companions. That such a brave company, as it passed through the mild vernal