An interesting story is told concerning the proverb, "If you would have your business done, go; if not, send." John Paul Jones, one of the bravest men in the Revolutionary War, had become the terror of Britain, by the great number of vessels he had captured. In one cruise he is said to have taken sixteen prizes; burned eight and sent home eight. With the Ranger, on the coast of Scotland, he captured the Drake, a large sloop-of-war, and two hundred prisoners. At one time, Captain Jones waited for many months for a vessel which had been promised him. Eager for action, he chanced to see "Poor Richard's Almanac," and read, "If you would have your business done, go; if not, send." He went at once to Paris, sought the ministers, and was given command of a vessel, which, in honor of Franklin, he called Bon Homme Richard. The battle between this ship and the Serapis, when, for three hours and a half, they were lashed together by Jones' own hand, and fought one of the most terrific naval battles ever seen, is well known to all who read history. The Bon Homme Richard sunk after her victory, while her captain received a gold medal from Congress and an appreciative letter from General Washington. So bravely did Captain Pearson, the opponent, fight, that the King of England made him a knight. "He deserved it," said Jones, "and, should I have the good-fortune to fall in with him again, I will make a lord of him." No wonder that Franklin's proverbs were copied all over the continent, and translated into French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Bohemian, Greek, and Portuguese. In all these very busy years, Franklin did not forget to study. When he was twenty-seven, he began French, then Italian, then Spanish, and then to review the Latin of his boyhood. He learned also to play on the harp, guitar, violin, and violoncello. Into the home of the printer had come two sons, William and Francis. The second was an uncommonly beautiful child, the idol of his father. Small-pox was raging in the city, but Franklin could not bear to put his precious one in the slightest peril by inoculation. The dread disease came into the home, and Francis Folger, named for his grandmother--at the age of four years--went suddenly out of it. "I long regretted him bitterly," Franklin wrote years afterwards to his sister Jane. "My grandson often brings afresh to my mind the idea of my son Franky, though now dead thirty-six years; whom I have seldom since seen equalled in every respect, and whom to this day I cannot think of without a sigh." On a little stone in Christ Church burying-ground, Philadelphia, are the boy's name and age, with the words, "The delight of all that knew him." This same year, when Franklin was thirty, he was chosen clerk of the General Assembly, his first promotion. If, as Disraeli said, "the secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes," Franklin had prepared himself, by study, for his opportunity.