Page:Benjamin Franklin, self-revealed; a biographical and critical study based mainly on his own writings (IA cu31924092892177).pdf/18

 he sailed for England in 1757, upon his first foreign mission, the circumstances of his career had been such as to make him generally known to the people of the Colonies. HIs Almanac, his Gazette, his pithy sayings, his humorous stories, his visits to Boston, attended by the formation of so many wayside friendships, his postal expeditions, the printing presses set up by him at many different points, his private fortune, his public services, his electrical experiments were all breath for the trump of his fame. He knew Colonial America as few Colonial Americans knew it. He was born and reared in Boston, and after his removal to Philadelphia, he revisited his native city at regular intervals. "The Boston manner, turn of phrase and even tone of voice, and accent in pronunciation, all please, and seem to refresh and revive me," he said in his old age in a letter to the Rev. John Lathrop. Philadelphia, the most populous and opulent of the colonial towns, was his lifelong place of residence. In the Autobiography he refers to it as "A city I love, having lived many years in it very happily." He appears to have been quite frequently in New York. His postal duties took him as far south as Williamsburg, and the Albany Congress drew him as far north of New York as Albany. He was in the camp of Braddock at Frederick, Maryland, just before that rash and ill-starred general set out upon his long, dolorous march through the wilderness where disaster and death awaited him. Facts like these signify but little now when transit from one distant point to another in the United States is effected with such amazing rapidity, but they signified much under the crude conditions of colonial life. Once at least did Franklin have his shoulder dislocated by an accident on the atrocious roads of Colonial New England. Once he was thrown into the water from an upset canoe near Staten Island. His masterly answers, when examined before the House of Commons, showed how searchingly