32 FuRNESs: Franklin 



If, at the time when Macaulay's ' New Zealander,' 

 standing on a broken arch of London Bridge, is cleaning 

 his palette after a successful sketch of the ruins of St. 

 Paul's, a Philadelphia 'Directory' of the present year 

 should be submitted, as the sole survival of this city, to 

 the eminent archaeologists of that distant day, they will 

 find, to their bewilderment, that about thirty trades or 

 manufactures from biscuit-making to bottling, from 

 banks to buttons, from skirt-making to sugar-refining, 

 one and all are preceded by a name or symbol almost as 

 mysterious as that on any cuneiform tablet now unearthed 

 at Nippur. Whereupon, a theory is evolved that all 

 tradesmen had a fetich or totem, called " Franklin." Of 

 course, the Higher Criticism of that day will maintain 

 that it was merely the name of a deified king. Let us 

 project our gratitude to the Higher Criticism on that 

 dim and nebulous horizon for coming so near the truth, 

 nearer possibly than it comes now-a-days, and for dis- 

 cerning the divinity that hedges this Franklin, this king 

 of men. Ay, every inch a king! (An extremely high 

 compliment to kings, let us remark in passing.) 



In sooth, for his own fame, Franklin was born too late. 

 Had he lived in ages nearer the beginning, when the 

 childhood of our race was fashioning the images of its 

 gods out of mud and clay in the uncouth likeness of its 

 heroes and benefactors, no station less august than the 

 Father of the World would have then sufficed for him; 



