For near seventy years, he was to be, so far as the civilized world was concerned, the city and all in it worth knowing. By supreme good fortune all his past, or at least as much as it is desirable to know, is laid bare to the visitor. The houses in which he is said to have had his lodging as apprentice—old enough for this, at least—look down from Lodge Street on Dock Square. His old home on Market, between Third and Fourth, is long since gone, but it stood back from the street and was doubtless of the type of the roomy old houses now on Third south of Walnut, or the house of Hamilton in Woodlawn Cemetery. The letter-books of Franklin, with his correspondence for over twenty years, are at the American Philosophical Society which he founded, which first commemorated his death, and, a century later, the centenary of his obsequies. The best of his portraits is there, Houdon’s bust of the old man, and the roomy-seated chair of “Dr. Heavysides.” His dress buckles are in the Historical Society, and the teacups over which he bowed his compliments, and some speeches which Madame Helvetius rightly held more dearer than compliments, frowsy as Mrs. Adams found her. There, too, is the dubious portrait, which, whether it is Franklin in his youth or no, looks the youth of his male descendants. Part of his electric machine, and his printing-press, are in the Franklin Institute, part in the Philadelphia Library, which he also founded, and a Leyden jar, perhaps of the great experiment, at the American Philosophical Society. The fire-bucket of his company, and the sword he wore in his brief but not inglorious military service, are in the Historical Society. One probable site of the field in which he flew his kite is filled by the present Record building. His statue is on the front of the library at Juniper and Locust; another—worthy—is to the right on Chestnut Street, looking on the flow of men and women in the city life he loved, for in the country he never willingly spent a day. Not a stage of his life but can still be followed by the historical pilgrim in Philadelphia. He can follow in Franklin’s steps,—the steep slope up which he walked to enter—with old landing-stairs still in place south of Market—the Fourth Street corner, the site of his job office, the purlieus of Dock Street, from whence came the mire that never quite left his garments, the lots of the Market Street home where his better years were passed, his pew at Christ’s Church, the State House he entered for a half-century in so many capacities—King’s officer, contractor, colonial legislator, rebellious congressman, signer of the Declaration and Constitution,—his eye through all the years on the gilded sun one can yet trace on the back of the President’s chair—and last, when his own sun was at its setting, as member of the Constitutional Convention of his own State, and his modest grave at Fifth and Arch, where one may still uncover at the last memory of the most human of all Americans.