Fisher’s descriptions confirm the gossip which has descended by tradition in many Philadelphia families. He found Mrs. Franklin to be a woman of such “turbulent temper” that this and other unpleasant circumstances forced him to leave. Possibly these were some of the faults which her husband speaks of as so exceedingly small and so like his own that he scarcely could see them at all. The presence of her husband’s illegitimate son must have been very trying, and goes a long way to excuse her. All that Franklin has written about himself is so full of a serene philosophic spirit, and his biographers have echoed it so faithfully, that, in spite of his frankness, things are made to appear a little easier than they really were. His life was full of contests, but they have not all been noted, and the sharpness of many of them has been worn off by time. In Philadelphia, where he was engaged in the most bitter partisan struggles, where the details of his life were fully known,--his humble origin, his slow rise, his indelicate jokes, and his illegitimate children,--there were not a few people who cherished a most relentless antipathy towards him which neither his philanthropy nor his philosophic and scientific mind could soften. This bitter feeling against the “old rogue,” as they called him, still survives among some of the descendants of the people of his time, and fifty or sixty years ago there were virtuous old ladies living in Philadelphia who would flame into indignation at the mention of his name. Chief-Justice Allen, who was his contemporary and opponent in politics, described him as a man of “wicked heart,” and declared that he had often been a witness of his “envenomed malice.” In H. W. Smith’s “Life of Rev. William Smith” a great deal of this abuse can be found. Provost Smith and Franklin quarrelled over the management of the College of Philadelphia, and on a benevolent pamphlet by the provost Franklin wrote a verse from the poet Whitehead:[13] “Full many a peevish, envious, slanderous elf Is in his works, Benevolence itself For all mankind, unknown his bosom heaves, He only injures those with whom he lives. Read then the man. Does truth his actions guide? Exempt from petulance, exempt from pride? To social duties does his heart attend--As son, as father, husband, brother, friend? Do those who know him love him? If they do You have my permission--you may love him too.” (Smith’s Life of Rev. William Smith, vol. i. p. 341.) Provost Smith’s biographer resents this attack by giving contemporary opinions of Franklin; and a paragraph omitted in the regular edition (page 347 of volume i.), but printed on an extra leaf and circulated among the author’s friends, may be quoted as an example. It was, however, not original with Smith’s biographer, but was copied with a few changes from Cobbett’s attack on Franklin: