Yours, B. Franklin

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.

I SUPPOSE the practical men of sense who were industriously writing out books from authors’ original copy, when Gutenberg and Fust and similar cranks were making movable type and promising to print as many as fifty books while one could be copied in script, never lost an hour’s sleep from a notion that their business was to come to an end. Probably the compositor who sets up this paragraph (if I succeed in edging into the lowest room at the Contributors’ Feast) smiles with a superior sense over the notion that in the near future — according to Bellamyopia — the art of printing will be one of the historic arts ; but I should like to see the same compositor when, a few years hence, he does me the honor to read one of my books, written apparently in my own handwriting, but really produced by the operation of that very ingenious invention, not yet perfected, which will enable the reader to follow with his eye the writing of his favorite author, while he hears the author reading the same book in a natural tone of voice. The phonographic accompaniment to the autographic form will permit the ear and the eye to be harmoniously assailed at once.

If this invention, for instance, had been perfected early enough, how nmny mistakes in interpretation would have been saved! For example, here is Mr. Morse, in his book on Benjamin Franklin, quoting Franklin’s celebrated letter to Strahan. Every school-boy knows the letter, but for the convenience of those who are not school-boys I give the lash, but without the snapper : —

“ PHILADELPHIA, July 5, 1775.

“ MR. STRAHAN, — You are a member of Parliament, and one of that majority which has doomed my country to destruction. You have begun to burn our towns, and murder our people. Look upon your hands, they are stained with the blood of your relations ! You and I were long friends; you are now my enemy,”

Now, Mr. Morse finishes his quotation of the letter as follows : —

“ and I am yours. B. FRANKLIN.”

But what Franklin really wrote was,

“ and

I am,

Yours,

B. FRANKLIN.”

If one reads this letter in autograph, he has an inkling of its meaning. If. in addition, he could hear Franklin’s voice, would he not get new light on its exact intent ? Mr. McMaster, when writing of Franklin in France in The Atlantic,¹ refers to this letter as generally misunderstood. “ We know of no collection of his works and letters in which this document is not treated as a piece of spirited and sober writing. Yet it certainly was no more than a jest. Had this not been so, all friendship, all correspondence, between the two would have ended the day the letter was received. But no such falling out took place, and they went on exchanging letters long after the war had seriously begun.”

Was it no more than a jest ? Only the uninvented phonographic - autographer could unmistakably show. A very grim sort of jest, to my thinking. I should not want a correspondent to crack that joke twice. My own theory, which would be substantiated by hearing Franklin read his letter, is this. Franklin sat down to write to Strahan in dead earnest. He had just heard of Bunker Hill. He remembered Falmouth, and he was stirred with indignation. There was to be no “ Dear Strahan ” about it. or even “Dear Sir.” His friend was concealed behind that brutish, insolent, and blind English Parliament, and so he dipped his pen in gall and wrote. Ira furor brevis est, as our Latin grammar hath it, and Franklin, when he had written as far as “ You and I were long friends,” was arrested by the last words. The antithesis, nevertheless, was at the point of his pen, “ You are now my enemy ; ” the second antithesis immediately suggested itself, but in the same moment, as by a flash, he recognized that this second antithesis, “ and I am yours,” was the familiar ending to a letter. “ Be it so,” the philosopher said to himself, with a faint smile. He was on the precipice of a rupture with an old friend; by a dexterous hair-breadth movement, he veered away from the edge. A quip saved him, and, his fierce wrath expended, he sat and looked at his letter. Yes, he would send it. The good Strahan would read between the lines, and would forgive him. Besides, there was the bitterness of truth in it. Now, if we could hear Franklin’s voice, and note the pauses, the change of tone, we should know exactly what this letter meant!