This most pusillanimous practice was one day made the theme of conversation in a large party in London, where Doctor Franklin dined. The philosophers and divines of the company joined unanimously to execrate it; and so many sensible and severe things were said against it, that everybody seemed willing to give it up to its father, the devil, except a young officer, whose ugly distortions showed plainly enough that he did not at all relish their strictures. Soon as they were done, he called aloud, "well, gentlemen, you may preach as much as you please against duelling, but I'll never pocket an insult for all that. No, if any man affront me, I'll call him to an account, if I lose my life for it." The philosophers and divines looked at each other in silence, like fools who had shot their last bolt. Here Franklin took up the cudgels; and looking at the young officer with a smile, said, "This, sir, puts me in mind of an affair that lately happened in a Philadelphia coffee-house." The young fellow, rather pertly, said he should like to hear what had lately happened in a Philadelphia coffee-house. "Why, sir," continued the doctor, "two gentlemen were sitting together in the coffee-house, when one said to the other, for heaven's sake, sir, sit further off, and don't poison me; you smell as bad as a pole-cat." "Sir," resorted the other, "what do you mean? Draw, and defend yourself." "O, sir," quoth the first, "I'll meet you in a moment, if you insist on it; but let's see first how that's to _mend the matter_. If you kill me, I shall smell as bad as a pole-cat too. And if I kill you, you will _only smell ten times worse_." In short, that divine motto, "Homo sum, nil humani a me alienum puto." In English thus, _A man I am, in man I take a part, And good of man is ever next my heart._ has seldom been more justly applied than to Dr. Franklin. He seems to have been all eye, all ear, all touch, to every thing that affected human happiness. Did he, even at the early age of twenty-five, form an acquaintance with young persons fond of reading, but unable to purchase books? Instantly he suggested the plan for obviating that great, great misfortune, by founding a PUBLIC LIBRARY; whereby, at a _small expense_ in hand, and a much smaller paid annually, a subscriber might have his choice of books, on all subjects, whether of pleasure or profit. This Library, which was commenced in 1731, by Franklin and only thirty-seven members, and no more than one hundred volumes, consisting of much little parcels of books as each subscriber possessed, is now, 1820, enlarged to six hundred members, and upwards of twenty thousand volumes.