nt the action which preceded the
address--a course of it which had impressed people with the integrity
and understanding of the speaker. For years I have had what Doctor
Johnson would call 'a wise and noble curiosity' about nature and have
had some success in gratifying it. Then, too, I have tried to order my
life so that no man could say that Ben Franklin had intentionally done
him a wrong. So I suppose that my words are entitled to a degree of
respect--a far more limited degree than the French are good enough to
accord them.'

"As we were leaving the table he said: 'Jack, I have an idea worthy of
Demosthenes. My friend, David Hartley of London, who still has hope of
peace by negotiation, wishes to come over and confer with me. I shall
tell him that he may come if he will bring with him the Lady Hare and
her daughter.'

"'More thrilling words were never spoken by Demosthenes,' I answered.
'But how about Jones and his _Bonne Homme Richard_? He is now a terror
to the British coasts. They would fear destruction.'

"'I shall ask Jones to let them alone,' he said. 'They can come under
a special flag.'

"Commodore Jones did not appear again in Paris until October, when he
came to Passy to report upon a famous battle.

"I was eager to meet this terror of the coasts. His impudent courage
and sheer audacity had astonished the world. The wonder was that men
were willing to join him in such dare devil enterprises.

"I had imagined that Jones would be a tall, gaunt, swarthy, raw-boned,
swearing man of the sea. He was a sleek, silent, modest little man,
with delicate hands and features. He wished to be alone with the
Doctor, and so I did not hear their talk. I know that he needed money
and that Franklin, having no funds, provided the sea fighter from his
own purse.

"Commodore Jones had brought with him a cartload of mail from captured
British ships. In it were letters to me from Margaret.

"'Now you are near me and yet there is an impassable gulf between us,'
she wrote. 'We hear that the seas are overrun with pirates and that no
ship is safe. Our vessels are being fired upon and sunk. I would not
mind being captured by a good Yankee captain, if it were carefully
done. But cannons are so noisy and impolite! I have a lot of British
pluck in me, but I fear that you would not like to marry a girl who
limped because she had been shot in the war. And, just think of the
possible effect on my disposition. So