In one of her letters to her son Abiah tells him that she is very weak and short-breathed, so that she can't sit up to write much, although she sleeps well at night, and her cough is better, and she has a pretty good stomach to her victuals. In the same letter, she also says: "Pray excuse my bad writing and inditing, for all tell me I am too old to write letters." No courtier could have framed a more graceful response to this appeal, let alone the sincerity of filial respect and love. We received your kind Letter of the 2d Instant [wrote Franklin] and we are glad to hear you still enjoy such a Measure of Health, notwithstanding your great Age. We read your Writing very easily. I never met with a Word in your Letters but what I could readily understand; for, tho' the Hand is not always the best, the Sense makes everything plain. The numerous family details in this letter render it the most interesting of Franklin's letters to his mother. They had concluded, he said, to sell at the first good opportunity a negro slave and his wife, who appear to have been guilty of some thievery, "for we do not like Negro Servants," he declared. For the sake of human consistency, it is to be hoped that the pair were sold long before he became the President of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, and assailed the African slave trade with such telling raillery. But, to sell all one's own negroes, and then to enter upon a perfervid course of agitation for the enfranchisement of one's neighbor's negroes, without compensation, was a thing of not uncommon occurrence in American history, so long as the institution of slavery lasted. Will (William Franklin), he tells Abiah, had acquired a habit of idleness on the expedition against Canada, but had begun of late to apply himself to business, and he hoped would become an industrious man. "He imagin'd his Father," said Franklin, "had got enough for him, but I have assured him that I intend to spend what little I have myself, if it please God that I live long enough; and, as he by no means wants Sense, he can see by my going on, that I am like to be as good as my Word." Sally [he says] grows a fine Girl, and is extremely industrious with her Needle, and delights in her Book. She is of a most affectionate Temper, and perfectly dutiful and obliging to her Parents, and to all. Perhaps I flatter myself too much, but I have Hopes that she will prove an ingenious, sensible, notable, and worthy Woman, like her Aunt Jenny. She goes now to the Dancing-School.