This saucy boy, who had his "Hudibras" at his tongue's end, carried the satirical spirit with him to church on Sundays, and tried some of the brethren whom he saw there by the Hudibrastic standard. Even after his brother James had been in prison for his editorial conduct, Benjamin, who had been left in charge of the paper, drew with his subeditorial pen a caricature of a "Religious Knave, of all Knaves the Worst:" A most strict Sabbatarian, an exact observer not of the day only, but of the evening before and the evening after it; at church conspicuously devout and attentive, even ridiculously so, with his distorted countenance and awkward gesticulation. But try and nail him to a bargain! He will dissemble and lie, snuffle and whiffle, overreach and defraud, cut down a laborer's wages, and keep the bargain in the letter while violating its spirit. "Don't tell me," he cries; "a bargain is a bargain. You should have looked to that before. I can't help it now." Such was the religious knave invented by the author of "Hudibras," and borrowed by this Boston apprentice, who had, in all probability, never seen a character that could have fairly suggested the burlesque. The authorities rose upon these two audacious brothers, and indicated how much need there was of such a sheet in Boston by ordering James Franklin to print it no more. They contrived to carry it on a while in Benjamin's name; but that sagacious youth was not long in discovering that the Mathers and their adherents were too strong for him, and he took an early opportunity of removing to a place established on the principle of doing without pontiffs. But during his long, illustrious career in Philadelphia as editor and public man he constantly acted in the spirit of one of the last passages he wrote before leaving Boston: "Pieces of pleasantry and mirth have a secret charm in them to allay the heats and tumults of our spirits, and to make a man forget his restless resentments. They have a strange power in them to hush disorders of the soul and reduce us to a serene and placid state of mind." He was the father of our humorous literature. If, at the present moment, America is contributing more to the innocent hilarity of mankind than other nations, it is greatly due to the happy influence of this benign and liberal humorist upon the national character. "Poor Richard," be it observed, was the great comic almanac of the country for twenty-five years, and it was Franklin who infused the element of burlesque into American journalism. He could not advertise a stolen prayer-book without inserting a joke to give the advertisement wings: "The person who took it is desired to open it and read the Eighth Commandment, and afterward return it into the same pew again; upon which no further notice will be taken."