Page:Benjamin Franklin, self-revealed; a biographical and critical study based mainly on his own writings (IA cu31924092892177).pdf/53



It has been suggested that Franklin had another natural child in the wife of John Foxcroft. In a letter to the former, Foxcroft acquaints him that "his daughter" had been safely brought to bed, and had presented the writer with a sweet little girl, and in several letters to Foxcroft Franklin speaks of Mrs. Foxcroft as "my daughter." "God send my Daughter a good time, and you a Good Boy," are the words of one of them. The suggestion has been rejected by Albert Henry Smyth, the accomplished editor of Franklin's writings, on chronological grounds which, it seems to us, are by no means conclusive. The term, "daughter," however, standing alone, would certainly, under any circumstances, be largely deprived of its significance by the fact that Franklin, in his intercourse with other women than Mrs. Foxcroft, seems in the course of his life to have been addressed, in both English and French, by every paternal appellation from Pappy to Très cher Papa known to the language of endearment. Moreover, so singularly free from self-consciousness was he in relation to his own sexual vagaries, so urgent were his affectionate impulses, that it is hard to believe that he could have been the father of such an illegitimate daughter when there is no evidence to show that, aside from a little concession to the jealousy of Mrs. Franklin, he treated her exactly as he did his acknowledged daughter, Sally.