adoption of the Constitution.[6] As president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, Franklin signed a petition to Congress (12th February 1790) for immediate abolition of slavery, and six weeks later in his most brilliant manner parodied the attack on the petition made by James Jackson (1757-1806) of Georgia, taking off Jackson's quotations of Scripture with pretended texts from the Koran cited by a member of the Divan of Algiers in opposition to a petition asking for the prohibition of holding Christians in slavery. These were his last public acts. His last days were marked by a fine serenity and calm; he died in his own house in Philadelphia on the 17th of April 1790, the immediate cause being an abscess in the lungs. He was buried with his wife in the graveyard (Fifth and Arch Streets) of Christ Church, Philadelphia. Physically Franklin was large, about 5 ft. 10 in. tall, with a well-rounded, powerful figure; he inherited an excellent constitution from his parents--"I never knew," says he, "either my father or mother to have any sickness but that of which they dy'd, he at 89, and she at 85 years of age"--but injured it somewhat by excesses; in early life he had severe attacks of pleurisy, from one of which, in 1727, it was not expected that he would recover, and in his later years he was the victim of stone and gout. When he was sixteen he became a vegetarian for a time, rather to save money for books than for any other reason, and he always preached moderation in eating, though he was less consistent in his practice in this particular than as regards moderate drinking. He was always enthusiastically fond of swimming, and was a great believer in fresh air, taking a cold air bath regularly in the morning, when he sat naked in his bedroom beguiling himself with a book or with writing for a half-hour or more. He insisted that fresh, cold air was not the cause of colds, and preached zealously the "gospel of ventilation." He was a charming talker, with a gay humour and a quiet sarcasm and a telling use of anecdote for argument. Henri Martin, the French historian, speaks of him as "of a mind altogether French in its grace and elasticity." In 1730 he married Deborah Read, in whose father's house he had lived when he had first come to Philadelphia, to whom he had been engaged before his first departure from Philadelphia for London, and who in his absence had married a ne'er-do-well, one Rogers, who had deserted her. The marriage to Franklin is presumed to have been a common law marriage, for there was no proof that Miss Read's former husband was dead, nor that, as was suspected, a former wife, alive when Rogers married Miss Read, was still alive, and that therefore his marriage to Deborah was void. His "Debby," or his "dear child," as Franklin usually addressed her in his letters, received into the family, soon after her marriage, Franklin's illegitimate son, William Franklin