“’Let the facts before us be my answer,” said Franklin.  “There are at this table four Frenchmen and four Americans.  Let these gentlemen stand up.”

“The Frenchmen were undersized, the Abbe himself being a mere shrimp of a man.  The Americans, Carmichael, Harmer, Humphries and myself, were big men, the shortest being six feet tall.  The contrast raised a laugh among the ladies.  Then said Franklin in his kindest tones: 

“’My dear Abbe, I am aware that manhood is not a matter of feet and inches.  I only assure you that these are average Americans and that they are pretty well filled with brain and spirit.’

“The Abbe spoke of a certain printed story on which he had based his judgment.

“Franklin laughed and answered:  ’I know that is a fable, because I wrote it myself one day, long ago, when we were short of news.’”

The guests having departed, Franklin asked the young man to sit down for a talk by the fireside.  The Doctor spoke of the women of France, saying: 

“’You will not understand them or me unless you remind yourself that we are in Europe and that it is the eighteenth century.  Here the clocks are lagging.  Time moves slowly.  With the poor it stands still.  They know not the thing we call progress.’

“‘Those who have money seem to be very busy having fun,’ I said.

“‘There is no morning to their day,’ he went on.  ’Their dawn is noontime.  Our kind of people have had longer days and have used them wisely.  So we have pushed on ahead of this European caravan.  Our fathers in New England made a great discovery.’

“‘What was it?’ I asked.

“’That righteousness was not a joke; that Christianity was not a solemn plaything for one day in the week, but a real, practical, working proposition for every day in the year; that the main support of the structure is industry; that its most vital commandment is this, ’six days shalt thou labor’; that no amount of wealth can excuse a man from this duty.  Every one worked.  There was no idleness and therefore little poverty.  The days were all for labor and the nights for rest.  The wheels of progress were greased and moving.’

“‘And our love of learning helped to push them along,’ I suggested.

“‘True.  Our people have been mostly like you and me,’ he went on.  ’We long for knowledge of the truth.  We build schools and libraries and colleges.  We have pushed on out of the eighteenth century into a new time.  There you were born.  Now you have stepped a hundred years backward into Europe.  You are astonished, and this brings me to my point.  Here I am with a great task on my hands.  It is to enlist the sympathy and help of France.  I must take things, not as I could wish them to be, but as I find them.  At this court women are all powerful.  It has long been a maxim here that a diplomatist must stand well with the ladies.  Even though he is venerable, he must be gallant, and