Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/31

Rh oratory on Franklin himself. He attended in April, 1740, one of Whitefield's meetings where he preached of his Orphanage, the location of which did not meet Franklin's approval, as Georgia was then destitute of materials and workmen, and it was proposed to send them from Philadelphia at a great expense. I thought it would have been better to have built the house here, and brought the children to it. This I advis'd; but he was resolute in his first project, rejected my counsel, and I, therefore, refus'd to contribute. I happened soon after to attend one of his sermons, in the course of which I perceived he intended to finish with a collection, and I silently resolved he should get nothing from me. I had, in my pocket, a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As he proceeded I began to soften, and concluded to give the coppers. Another stroke of his oratory made me asham'd of that, and determin'd me to give the silver; and he finished so admirably, that I empty'd my pocket wholly into the collectors dish, gold and all.

Franklin's trusteeship in this property in 1749 rendered the plan effectual then proposed of making the building the first home of his College and Academy; but for this happy instrumentality the young College would probably not for many years have had a home of its own so well adapted for its purposes. Built for the accommodation of the greatest preacher of the day, it became the Academy where the greatest teacher in the province, also a clergyman in like orders, established his fame as a Provost and nurtured into permanence the reputation of his College. In 1764 Whitefield himself wrote of the Academy as "one of the best regulated institutions in the world," after preaching on the opening of a new term of the College in September. He was in Philadelphia the following spring, and Dr. Smith asked him to preach at the Commencement of 1765, but