Sketches New and Old


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sometimes when I was a boy. If they had let me take my natural rest  
where would I have been now? Keeping store, no doubt, and respected by  
all.  
And what an adroit old adventurer the subject of this memoir was!  
In order to get a chance to fly his kite on Sunday he used to hang a key  
on the string and let on to be fishing for lightning. And a guileless  
public would go home chirping about the "wisdom" and the "genius" of the  
hoary Sabbath-breaker. If anybody caught him playing "mumblepeg" by  
himself, after the age of sixty, he would immediately appear to be  
ciphering out how the grass grew--as if it was any of his business.  
My grandfather knew him well, and he says Franklin was always  
fixed--always ready. If a body, during his old age, happened on him  
unexpectedly when he was catching flies, or making mud-pies, or sliding  
on a cellar door, he would immediately look wise, and rip out a maxim,  
and walk off with his nose in the air and his cap turned wrong side  
before, trying to appear absent-minded and eccentric. He was a hard lot.  
He invented a stove that would smoke your head off in four hours by the  
clock. One can see the almost devilish satisfaction he took in it by his  
giving it his name.  
He was always proud of telling how he entered Philadelphia for the first  
time, with nothing in the world but two shillings in his pocket and four  
rolls of bread under his arm. But really, when you come to examine it  
critically, it was nothing. Anybody could have done it.  
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