Page:The Curious Republic of Gondour, and Other Whimsical Sketches.djvu/151

 gentleman a chair.” And so he died, amid thunders of applause.

Next we have Benjamin Franklin. Franklin, the author of Poor Richard's quaint sayings; Franklin the immortal axiom-builder, who used to sit up at nights reducing the rankest old threadbare platitudes to crisp and snappy maxims that had a nice, varnished, original look in their regimentals; who said, “Virtue is its own reward;” who said, “Procrastination is the thief of time;” who said, “Time and tide wait for no man” and “Necessity is the mother of invention;” good old Franklin, the Josh Billings of the eighteenth century—though, sooth to say, the latter transcends him in proverbial originality as much as he falls short of him in correctness of orthography. What sort of tactics did Franklin pursue? He pondered over his last words for as much as two weeks, and then when the time came, he said, “None but the brave deserve the fair,” and died happy. He could not have said a sweeter thing if he had lived till he was an idiot.