AS Citizen and Philanthropist 33 



and their clay-baked " Jupiter Omnipotens " or, possibly, 

 more appropriately "Jupiter Tonans " would have borne 

 the lineaments of Benjamin Franklin, spectacles and all. 

 But for us, he was not born too late. No more aus- 

 picious star twinkles for us in the firmament than that 

 which shone on the birth of Franklin. Under it, he was 

 endowed with an inappeasible hunger for knowledge; 

 with a temperament so equable that the sight of injustice 

 could alone disturb its poise; with a wisdom so com- 

 prehensive that no experience of life, however humble, 

 failed to enlarge it; with a sagacity so sure that it par- 

 took of a prophet's fire; with an honesty so ingrained 

 that in his " Autobiography " he would endure disgrace 

 rather than seem to be what he was not; with a sense 

 of humour so keen that it kept him from yielding to the 

 obtrusive vagaries of overwrought enthusiasm. And, to 

 crown all, this happy mingle was born into the world 

 just in time to reach its full maturity when this young 

 nation was struggling perilously into manhood, and on 

 the stroke of the hour when there was needed precisely 

 the very help which a man like Franklin, and Franklin 

 alone, could supply. It is such times, — " times," as Tom 

 Paine then said, " which try men's souls," — that cry 

 aloud for all the finest elements of citizenship. Then 

 it is that the Commonwealth demands of her sons, from 

 the highest to the lowest, the very all and the very best, 

 they can give, and at the sacrifice of every other tie. 

 4 



