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Disputes sake.” 12
    In crafting his argument, Franklin leaned on Defoe’s
Essay on Projects,
one of the few books in his father’slibrary that he liked. Defoe had proposed the establishment of an “Academy for Women”: “I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous Customs in the world, considering us as a Civilised and a Christian Countrey, that we deny the advantages of Learning to Women.” Like Astell, Defoe regretted the frivolousness of girls’ education: “Their youth is spent to teach them to Stitch and Sew, or make Bawbles. They are taught to Read indeed, and perhaps to Write their Names, or so; and that is the heighth of a Woman’s Education.” His Academy for Women was to embrace every subject: “To such whose Genius wou’d lead them to it, I wou’d deny no sort of Learning.” 13
    But, for all his Defoe, Franklin didn’t win the argument. Collins, he admitted, “was naturally more eloquent, had a ready Plenty of Words, and sometimes … bore me down more by his Fluency than by the Strength of his Reasons.” They parted without settling the question and continued the debate by letters. “Three or four Letters of a Side had pass’d,” Franklin wrote, “when my Father happen’d to find my Papers, and read them. Without entering into the Discussion, he took occasion to talk to me about the Manner of my Writing, observ’d that tho’ I had the Advantage of my Antagonist in correctSpelling and pointing (which I ow’d to the Printing House) I fell far short in elegance of Expression, in Method and in Perspicuity.” 14
    Spelling andpointing (punctuating) were genteel accomplishments; they date to the rise of printing. People used to spell however they pleased, even spelling their own names differently from one day to the next. Then came the printing press, and rules for printers: how to spell, how to point.More books meant more readers; more readers meant more writers. But only the learned, only the lettered, knew how to spell.
    Franklin was a better speller than his friend Collins, and he could point better, too, but Collins proved a better debater. Be more precise, Josiah urged his son. Be plainer. On the question itself, he did not venture an opinion.
    While Benny was improving hiswriting by arguing about the educationof girls, Jenny was at home, boiling soap and stitching. Quietly, with what time she could find, she did more. She once confided to her brother, “I Read as much as I Dare.” 15



CHAPTER XIV
Dear Reader
    J osiah Franklin, who left the forges of Ecton to sing a new song of faith, died in Boston in January 1745. He was eighty-seven.
    “Dear Sister, I love you tenderly for your care of our father in his sickness,” Benjamin Franklin wrote Jane. Whenever anyone in the family was unwell, Franklin offered cures: “I apprehend I am too busy in prescribing, and meddling in the Dr’s Sphere, when any of you complain of Ails in your Letters,” he once apologized. He sent recipes, but it was Jane who mixed remedies, made of tartar and wormwood and turpentine. 1
    Josiah Franklin was buried at the Granary Burying Ground, just past the Common. 2 The bulk of his small estate he had left to his wife; most of the rest he had divided into ninths, to be distributed to his remains: his surviving children or their heirs. To his youngest daughter, he left nothing above this portion. But even this meager bequest was generous because when Josiah Franklin died, Edward Mecom owed his father-in-law a debt the estate would never collect. 3 To his youngest son, the person who needed it least, Josiah left, above his ninth, the extraordinary sum of £30. He had taken him out of school; he had failed him; he meant to make it up to him. Franklin would not have it; he gave the money to Jane. 4
    The spring after her father died, Jane gave birth to a daughter: a namesake.
    Jane Mecom Born on Saturday April the 12. 1745
5
    Before baby Jenny was seven months old, Jane was pregnant again. This boy