Page:Benjamin Franklin, self-revealed; a biographical and critical study based mainly on his own writings (IA cu31924092892177).pdf/47

 parents, in their pristine state, did the lack of fig leaves. He accepted his natural son and William Temple Franklin, William's natural son, exactly as if both had come recommended to his outspoken affection by betrothal, honcst wedding ring and all. The idea that any stigma attached to either, or that they stood upon any different footing from his legitimate daughter, Sarah Bache and her children, was something that his mind does not appear to have harbored at all. His attitude towards them was as unblushingly natural and demonstrative, to get back to the Garden of Eden, as the mutual caresses of Adam and Eve before the Fall of Man. William was born a few months after the marriage of Franklin and Deborah, and his father, so far as we can see, took him under his roof with as little constraint as if his introduction had been duly provided for in the marriage contract. Indeed, John Bigelow, who is always disposed, in the spirit of Franklin's own limping lines on Deborah, to deem all his Joan's faults "exceedingly small," rather ludicrously observes: "William may therefore be said to have been born in wedlock, though he was not reputed to be the son of Mrs. Franklin." So identified did he become with all the other members of Franklin's household that Franklin in his letters not only frequently conveyed "Billy's" duty to his "mother" and "Billy's" love to his "sister" but on one occasion at least even "Billy's" duty to his "grandmother," Mrs. Read, the mother of Mrs. Franklin. As the boy outgrew his pony, of which we obtain a pleasant glimpse in a "lost" notice in the Pennsylvania Gazette, we find Franklin in a letter to his own mother, Abiah Franklin, in which he couples the name of "Billy" in the most natural way with that of his daughter Sally, saying: "Will is now nineteen years of age, a tall proper Youth, and much of a Beau." It was with William Franklin, when Governor of New Jersey, that Sally took refuge at the time that her father's