As a slight instance of Franklin’s humor and shrewdness in all affairs of common life I may quote the following: "QUESTION. I am about courting a girl I have had but little acquaintance with. How shall I come to a knowledge of her faults? ANSWER. Commend her among her female acquaintance!" Whether in science and study, or in politics and action, the great aim of Franklin’s mind was ever practical utility. Here again we may quote Sir Humphrey Davy as saying of Franklin that he sought rather to make philosophy a useful inmate and servant in the common habitations of man, than to preserve her merely as an object of admiration in temples and palaces. Thus, also, in affairs he had a keen eye to his own interest, but likewise a benevolent concern for the public good. Nor was he ever indifferent to cases of individual grievance or hardship. In the pursuit of his objects, public or private, he was, beyond most other men, calm, sagacious, and wary; neither above business nor yet below it; never turned aside from it by flights of fancy nor yet by bursts of passion. Among the good qualities which we may with just cause ascribe to Franklin we cannot number any firm reliance on the truths of Revelation. Only five weeks before his death we find him express a cold approbation of the "system of morals" bequeathed to us by "Jesus of Nazareth." In his Memoirs he declares that he always believed in the existence of a Deity and a future state of rewards and punishments, but he adds that although he continued to adhere to his first—the Presbyterian—sect, some of its dogmas appeared to him unintelligible, and others doubtful. "I early absented myself from the public assemblies of the sect; and I seldom attended any public worship; Sunday being my studying day." Such being Franklin’s own practice, and such his own description of it as to public worship, it seems worthy of note that it was he who in the American Convention brought forward a motion for daily prayers. "I have lived, Sir," said he, "a long time, and the longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?" But in spite of this most earnest appeal the motion was rejected, since, as we are told, "the Convention, except three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary."