Note 23 — Chapter XI
Reading edition
“For dinner parties Franklin was in such demand that, during the London season, he sometimes dined out six days in the week for several weeks together. He also confesses that occasionally he drank more wine than became a philosopher. It would indeed have been extremely difficult to avoid it, in that soaking age, when a man’s force was reckoned by the number of bottles he could empty.”—Parton’s Life of Franklin, Vol. i, p. 540.
As an illustration of the state of the times, I give the following verse from one of the songs which Franklin wrote, and which he was accustomed to sing with great applause. At the meetings of the Junto, all the club joined in the chorus,
“Fair Venus calls; her voice obey In beauty’s arms spend night and day. The joys of love all joys excel, And loving’s certainly doing well.
Chorus.
Oh! no! Not so! For honest souls still know Friends and the bottle still bear the bell.”
“It is well,” Mr. Parton writes, “for us, in these days, to consider the spectacle of this large, robust soul, sporting in this simple, homely way. This superb Franklin of ours, who spent some evenings in mere jollity, passed nearly all his days in labor most fruitful of benefit to his country.”—Life of Franklin, Vol. i, p. 262.