Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/30

Rh abundance or to carry on trade. I cannot but commend them for their hearty good-will towards the English. They have not degenerated from the old friendship which existed between the two kingdoms. As they are a moral, strong, and healthy people, they have handsome children, and every house seems full of them. It is seldom that you find any family without three or four lads, and as many girls too; some have six, seven, or eight sons. And I must do them the justice to say that I have seen few young men more useful or more industrious.” Thus spoke the earliest witness of the old Swedish colony. They and the old Swedish church stand there still. A new Swedish church is now rising in the valley of the Mississippi in the West. I must see it.

I visited also yesterday Franklin's grave, and bound clover and other field-flowers into a garland for it. Franklin belongs to the group of fortunate men who are the heroes of peace, and the quiet benefactors of the human race. He was the third man in that great triumvirate (Fox, Penn, Franklin), and the first man in the battle of the press, for freedom of thought in America, and for American independence.

Franklin, with his quiet demeanour, his simple habits, his free, searching glance directed always upon the simplest and the most common laws as regarded everything, who “played with the lightning as with a brother, ” and without noise or tumult drew the lightning down from the sky”—Franklin, with his practical philosophy of life, which however was broad rather than deep; his great activity and his excellent temper; seems to me a fine representative of one phase of American character.

But I must tell you a little more about the Quakers, who not only founded Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, and gave to the State and the city their peculiar character, but who exercised a deep and lasting influence upon the spiritual life of the people, both of England and New