Benjamin Franklin by Van Doren Carl 1885-1950

Author:Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790, Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790
Publisher: New York, The Viking Press
Published: 1966-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

4^2 : BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

the bulk became waste paper.""* Published as Abridgment of the Book of Couivion Prayer (1773), it had a preface by Franklin, who economically suggested that shorter services would save the time of both congregations and ministers.

The single recorded episode of Franklin at Wycombe shows his reputation as an American and a wit. His sly Edict by the King of Prussia appeared in a newspaper in September 1773. Franklin "was down at Lord Le Despencer's when the post brought that day's papers. Mr. Whitehead was there too (Paul Whitehead, the author of Manners), who runs early through all the papers and tells the company what he finds remarkable. He had them in another room, and we were chatting in the breakfast parlour, when he came running in to us, out of breath, with the paper in his hand. 'Here,' says he, 'here's news for ye. Here's the king of Prussia claiming a right to this kingdom.' All stared, and I as much as anybody; and he went on to read it. When he had read two or three paragraphs a gentleman present said: 'Damn his impudence, I dare say we shall hear by next post that he is upon his march with one hundred thousand men to back this.' Whitehead, who is very shrewd, soon after began to smoke [see through] it, and, looking in my face, said: 'I'll be hanged if this is not some of your American jokes upon us.' The reading went on and ended with abundance of laughing, and a general verdict that it was a fair hit; and the piece was cut out of the paper and preserved in my lord's collection."^

It was possibly at Le Despencer's that Franklin played what may have been another American joke on the company. John Adams, who had the story from Franklin himself, told it long afterwards, giving the date only as "before his return to America in 1775" and the place "I believe at Lord Spencer's."^ The conversation, whenever and wherever it was, turned to i^sop, La Fontaine, and Gay. One of the men present said he thought that all the imaginable beast fables had been written. Franklin said the subject was inexhaustible. Challenged to furnish a new fable, he promptly wrote out one about the eagle and the cat, which has till lately been known only in Adams's version. If, as is likely, this happened at Le Despencer's, not Spencer's, and during Franklin's final years in England, it was a hoax when Franklin pretended to improvise his fable. For he had already written

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