"'The air of this room will be much worse for you than that
out-of-doors,' Franklin retorted. He was then between the covers. 'I
beg of you to open the window and get into bed and if I do not prove my
case to your satisfaction, I will consent to its being closed.'

"I lay down on a straw filled mattress outside their door. I heard Mr.
Adams open the window and get into bed. Then Doctor Franklin began to
expound his theory of colds. He declared that cold air never gave any
one a cold; that respiration destroyed a gallon of air a minute and
that all the air in the room would be consumed in an hour. He went on
and on and long before he had finished his argument, Mr. Adams was
snoring, convinced rather by the length than the cogency of the
reasoning. Soon the two great men, whose fame may be said to fill the
earth, were asleep in the same bed in that little box of a room and
snoring in a way that suggested loud contention. I had to laugh as I
listened. Mr. Adams would seem to have been defeated, for, by and by,
I heard him muttering as he walked the floor."

Howe's barge met the party at Amboy and conveyed them to the landing
near his headquarters. It was, however, a fruitless journey. Howe
wished to negotiate on the old ground now abandoned forever. The
people of America had spoken for independence--a new, irrevocable fact
not to be put aside by ambassadors. The colonies were lost. The
concessions which the wise Franklin had so urgently recommended to the
government of England, Howe seemed now inclined to offer, but they
could not be entertained.

"Then my government can only maintain its dignity by fighting," said
Howe.

"That is a mistaken notion," Franklin answered; "It will be much more
dignified for your government to acknowledge its error than to persist
in it."

"We shall fight," Howe declared.

"And you will have more fighting to do than you anticipate," said
Franklin. "Nature is our friend and ally. The Lord has prepared our
defenses. They are the sea, the mountains, the forest and the
character of our people. Consider what you have accomplished. At an
expense of eight million pounds, you have killed about eight hundred
Yankees. They have cost you ten thousand pounds a head. Meanwhile, at
least a hundred thousand children have been born in America. There are
the factors in your problem. How much time and money will be required
for the job of killing all of us?"

The British Admir