Benjamin Franklin’s eyes were blue-gray. How do we know this? Because Duplessis’s pastel portrait in colors tells us so. Franklin had bland, shrewd, clear seeing eyes that comprehended in their genial, open glance the whole of human nature. They first saw the light of day on January 17, 1706, and they were closed for--the last time on April 17, 1790. During all those years those luminous blue-gray eyes were observing life closely, studiously and intelligently, and they saw many great things come to pass--the most important being the making of a new nation. The eyes of Franklin saw Liberty in its cradle, and with earnest solicitude, watched its growth and development until it became the watchword and dominating principle of a great republic. Moreover, while witnessing these national events, and sharing actively in them, Franklin had time to look into the everyday affairs of men, to find solutions for many problems of the work-a-day world, to suggest and plan improved methods of doing things, to invent useful devices--and, with his printing establishment as a means of public expression, to give utterance to a system of practical philosophy that was a benefit and blessing to his fellow men. Franklin was the peerless Practical Man, and his writings contain the Complete Gospel of Common Sense. * * * * * It would be well if all of us could look at the world through Ben Franklin’s discerning, gray eyes. It is not the gray color of the eye, but the gray matter back of it that counts. I note here the color of Ben Franklin’s eyes only because I have just been “checked up” on the subject of eyes. A reader writes me as follows: Let me call attention to a discrepancy in the Julius Cæsar number of The Mentor. On cover page 2 the statement is made that Cæsar’s eyes were dark gray. On page 8 it is said that they were black. Our reader overlooks the fact that the two statements are not made by the same writer. The first statement is made by the English historian James Anthony Froude; the other by George W. Botsford, late professor of ancient history in Columbia University. These two eminent scholars present the conclusions that they have individually drawn from historical study. When two authorities differ it is the duty of The Mentor, as an educational publication, to present the two statements for the reader’s comparison. It is probable that the original evidence on which Mr. Froude and Professor Botsford based their statements was to the effect that Cæsar’s eyes were very dark and piercing in their glance--and that, surely, is near enough for the color of eyes nearly two thousand years ago. * * * * *