ng began the
cutting of throats. You know it was said he carried the sword in
one hand and the olive branch in the other, and it seems he chose
to give them a taste of the sword first."

To another correspondent he said that "the feeble Americans, who pelted
them all the way, could scarcely keep up with" the rapidly retreating
redcoats. But the occurrence of bloodshed had an immense meaning for
Franklin; it opened to his vision all the future: an irreconcilable
struggle, and finally independence, with a bitter animosity long
surviving. He could not address all those who had once been near and
dear to him in England as he did the good Dr. Priestley. The letter to
Strahan of July 5, 1775, is famous:--

"MR STRAHAN,--You are a member of Parliament, and one of that
majority which has doomed my country to destruction. You have begun
to burn our towns and murder our people. Look upon your hands; they
are stained with the blood of your relations! You and I were long
friends; you are now my enemy, and I am,

"Yours, B. FRANKLIN."

But strained as his relations with Strahan were for a while, it is
agreeable to know that the estrangement between such old and close
friends was not everlasting.

To write at length concerning Franklin's services during his brief stay
at home would involve giving a history of the whole affairs of the
colonies at this time. But space presses, and this ground is familiar
and has been traversed in other volumes in this series. It seems
sufficient, therefore, rather to enumerate than to narrate his various
engagements, and thus to reserve more room for less well-known matters.

On the very day after his return, when he had scarce caught the breath
of land, he was unanimously elected by the Assembly a delegate to the
Provincial Congress. It was an emergency when the utmost must be made of
time, brains, and men. By subsequent reelections he continued to sit in
that body until his departure for France. There was business enough
before it: the organization of a government, of the army, of the
finances; most difficult of all, the arrangement of a national policy,
and the harmonizing of conflicting opinions among men of influence at
home. In all that came before the Congress Franklin was obliged to take
his full share. He seems to have been upon all the busy and important
committees. There were more ardent spirits, greater propelling forces,
than he was; but