Читать книгу The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Volume 5 - Бенджамин Франклин - Страница 36

Saturday Evening,

2 September, 1769.

Just come home from a venison feast, where I have drunk more than a philosopher ought, I find my dear Polly’s cheerful, chatty letter, that exhilarates me more than all the wine.

Your good mother says there is no occasion for any intercession of mine in your behalf. She is sensible that she is more in fault than her daughter. She received an affectionate, tender letter from you, and she has not answered it, though she intended to do it; but her head, not her heart, has been bad, and unfitted her for writing. She owns that she is not so good a subject as you are, and that she is more unwilling to pay tribute to Cæsar, and has less objection to smuggling. But it is not, she says, mere selfishness or avarice; it is rather an honest resentment at the waste of those taxes in pensions, salaries, perquisites, contracts, and other emoluments for the benefit of people she does not love, and who do not deserve such advantages, because—I suppose— because they are not of her party.

Present my respects to your good landlord and his family. I honor them for their conscientious aversion to illicit trading. There are those in the world who would not wrong a neighbour, but make no scruple of cheating the King. The reverse, however, does not hold; for whoever scruples cheating the King, will certainly not wrong his neighbour.

You ought not to wish yourself an enthusiast. They have, indeed, their imaginary satisfactions and pleasures, but these are often balanced by imaginary pains and mortification. You can continue to be a good girl, and thereby lay a solid foundation for expected future happiness, without the enthusiasm that may perhaps be necessary to some others. As those beings who have a good sensible instinct have no need of reason, so those who have reason to regulate their actions have no occasion for enthusiasm. However, there are certain circumstances in life, sometimes, where it is perhaps best not to hearken to reason. For instance: possibly, if the truth were known, I have reason to be jealous of this same insinuating, handsome young physician; but, as it flatters more my vanity, and therefore gives me more pleasure, to suppose you were in spirits on account of my safe return, I shall turn a deaf ear to reason in this case, as I have done with success in twenty others. But I am sure you will always give me reason enough to continue your ever affectionate friend,

B. Franklin.

P. S.—Our love to Mrs. Tickell. We shall long for your return. Your Dolly was well last Tuesday; the girls were there on a visit to her; I mean at Bromley. Adieu. No time now to give you any account of my French journey.