IT was midsummer. Benjamin Franklin, of fourscore years, President of Pennsylvania, had finished a long, three-story ell to his house on Market Street, and in this ell he had caused to be made a library which filled his heart with pride. He had invented a long arm with which to take down books from the high shelves of this library--an invention which came into use in other libraries in such a way as to make many librarians grateful to him. He was overburdened with care, and suffered from chronic disease. In his days of pain he had been comforted by letters from Jenny, now long past seventy years of age. She had written to him in regard to his sufferings such messages as these: "Oh, that after you have spent your whole life in the service of the public, and have attained so glorious a conclusion, as I thought, as would now permit you to come home and spend (as you say) the evening with your friends in ease and quiet, that now such a dreadful malady should attack you! My heart is ready to burst with grief at the thought. How many hours have I lain awake on nights thinking what excruciating pains you might then be encountering, while I, poor, useless, and worthless worm, was permitted to be at ease! Oh, that it was in my power to mitigate or alleviate the anguish I know you must endure!" When she heard of his arrival in Philadelphia she wrote: "I long so much to see you that I should immediately seek for some one that would accompany me, but my daughter is in a poor state of health and gone into the country to try to get a little better, and I am in a strait between two; but the comfortable reflection that you are at home among all your dear children, and no more seas to cross, will be constantly pleasing to me till I am permitted to enjoy the happiness of seeing and conversing with you." The tenderness and charity of Franklin for the many members of his own family still revealed his heart. "I tenderly love you," he wrote to Jane--Jenny--"for the care of our father in his sickness." One of his sisters, Mrs. Dowse, whose family had died, insisted upon living alone, on account of her love for the place that had been her home. Many other men would have compelled her removal, but there is nothing more beautiful in all Franklin's letters than the way that he advised Jenny how to treat this matter. He had been told that this venerable woman would have her own way.