50 FuRNESS: Franklin 



gold, to bind these brother States in a union which 

 is to be perpetual. Nor was it alone in civic life that 

 he won admiration and reverence; his presence was 

 at firesides in thronged cities, and by smouldering logs 

 in lone frontier cabins, uttering words of counsel, and 

 appeals for the practice of honesty, frugality and in- 

 dustry, driving the counsel home in the irresistible 

 proverbs of Poor Richard. 



But let us not be carried away by an undue enthusi- 

 asm. In praise of Poor Richard we may exhaust all 

 adjectives and pant for more. But we must never forget 

 that the virtues which Poor Richard inculcates are those 

 which lie on the surface of our work-a-day life, — vir- 

 tues truly admirable, truly indispensable, — russet yeas 

 and honest kersey noes will be for ever respectable, and 

 life will glide the smoother where they are heeded. But 

 there is a life beyond life, illuminated 



" By the light that never was on sea or land 

 The consecration and the poet's dream," 



a life in the music, in the colour of this fair world of 

 God; and when ambition would pierce to this life, we 

 must, as Emerson says, " hitch our wagon to a star." 

 But for all life below the stars, on the level of this 

 homespun world, we may hitch our wagon to Poor 

 Richard. 



But I must bring to a close these remarks, fragmentary 

 as they must be in dealing with a character so colossal 



