Now Franklin in his lifetime had written for himself an _epitaph_, to be put upon his grave, that honest posterity might see that he was no _unbeliever_, as certain enemies had slandered him, but that he _firmly believed_ "_that his Redeemer liveth; and that in the latter day he shall stand upon the earth; and that though worms destroyed his body, yet in his flesh he should see God_." FRANKLIN'S EPITAPH. "THE BODY OF _BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, PRINTER_, LIKE THE COVER OF AN OLD BOOK, _its contents torn out, and stripped of its lettering and gilding, lies here food for worms_. Yet the work itself shall not be lost; for it will, as he believed, appear once more IN A NEW _and more beautiful edition, corrected and amended_ BY _THE AUTHOR_." This epitaph was never put upon his tomb. But the friend of man needs no stone of the valley to perpetuate his memory. It lives among the clouds of heaven. The lightnings, in their dreadful courses, bow to the genius of Franklin. His magic rods, pointed to the skies, still watch the irruptions of the FIERY METEORS. They seize them by their hissing heads as they dart forth from the dark chambers of the thunders; and cradled infants, half waked by the sudden glare, are seen to curl the cherub smile hard by the spot where the dismal bolts had fallen. THE END. End of Project Gutenberg's The Life of Benjamin Franklin, by Mason Locke Weems