Page:Works of the Late Doctor Benjamin Franklin (1793).djvu/174

164 DOCTOR MATHER OF BOSTON.

REV. SIR,

RECEIVED your kind letter, with your excellent advice to the people of the United States, which I read with great pleaſure, and hope it will be duly regarded. Such writings, though they may be lightly paſſed over by many readers, yet, if they make a deep impreſſion on one active mind in a hundred, the effects may be conſiderable.

Permit me to mention one little inſtance, which, though it relates to myſelf, will not be quite unintereſting to you. When I was a boy, I met with a book entitled "Eſſays to do good," which I think was written by your father. It had been ſo little regarded by a former poſſeſſor, that ſeveral leaves of it were torn out; but the remainder gave me ſuch a turn of thinking, as to have an influence on my conduct through life: for I have always ſet a greater value on the character of a doer of good, than any other kind of reputation; and if I have been, as you ſeem to think, a uſeful citizen, the public owes the advantage of it to that book.

You mention your being in your ſeventy-eighth year. I am in my ſeventy-ninth. We are grown old together. It is now more than ſixty years ſince I left Boſton; but I remember well both your father and grandfather, having heard them both in the pulpit, and ſeen them in their houſes. The laſt time I ſaw your father