Page:Freeman v6.djvu/13

Rh to "humanize" the principal actors in it. It was characteristic of the spirit of the twenties and thirties, however, that the only way these realists could think of to humanize the signers was to subject them to a process of denigration.

A much simpler and far more dramatic means was at their hand, if they had only possessed the imagination to see it. The musty little tableau could have been brought startlingly alive. All its apparent drabness and seeming placidity could have been illuminated with a shattering light of hard reality. The reality was this:

If the Revolution failed, as there was at that time good reason to believe it might, everyone of those men was putting his name to something much more than a rhetorical declaration of political principles.

He was signing his own death warrant!

Does that make the picture a little less drab? Do those solemn-faced men in the funny garments and queer haircuts look a bit less funny now?

Does old Doctor Franklin, who was getting quite paunchy and bald and who peered at the world through queer-shaped lenses of his own devising-does he look a little different in this sharp white light of danger?

Legend has it that someone of the signers remarked that from now on there must be no dissension; that they must all hang together-and that Franklin replied jokingly, "Yes-or we shall all hang separately."

Jokingly? I doubt it. Franklin was a realist. Simply and bluntly, he was stating what might very well happen to everyone of them.