tire interest and value to his own
pen. All, so far as they are biographies, are autobiographies; and for
that reason it may be fairly said that all of them are interesting.

It is also quite remarkable that though Franklin's life was a
continuous warfare, he had no personal enemies. His extraordinary and
even intimate experience of every phase of human life, from the very
lowest to the very highest, had made him so tolerant that he regarded
differences of opinion and of habits much as he regarded the changes
of the weather,--as good or bad for his purposes, but which, though he
might sometimes deplore, he had no right to quarrel with or assume
personal responsibility for. Hence he never said or did things
personally offensive. The causes that he represented had enemies, for
he was all his life a reformer. All men who are good for anything have
such enemies. "I have, as you observe," wrote Franklin to John Jay the
year that he retired from the French mission, "some enemies in
England, but they are my enemies as an American; I have also two or
three in America who are my enemies as a minister; but I thank God
there are not in the whole world any who are my enemies as a man: for
by his grace, through a long life, I have been enabled so to conduct
myself that there does not exist a human being who can justly say,
'Ben Franklin has wronged me.' This, my friend, is in old age a
comfortable reflection. You too have or may have your enemies; but let
not that render you unhappy. If you make a right use of them, they
will do you more good than harm. They point out to us our faults; they
put us upon our guard and help us to live more correctly."

Franklin's place in literature as a writer has not been generally
appreciated, probably because with him writing was only a means, never
an end, and his ends always dwarfed his means, however effective. He
wrote to persuade others, never to parade his literary skill. He never
wrote a dull line, and was never _nimious_. The longest production of
his pen was his autobiography, written during the closing years of his
life. Nearly all that he wrote besides was in the form of letters,
which would hardly average three octavo pages in length. And yet
whatever the subject he touched upon, he never left the impression of
incompleteness or of inconclusiveness. Of him may be said, perhaps
with as much propriety as of any other man, that he never said a word
too soon, nor a word too late, nor a wor