distinguishing them from the first, are drawn with a different colour'd ink, red, blue, green, and yellow.1

These sets of excentric circular spaces intersect those of the concentric, and each other; and yet the numbers contained in each of the twenty excentric spaces, taken all around, make, with the central number, the same sum as those in each of the 8 concentric, viz. 360. The halves, also of those drawn from the centers A and C, taken above or below the double horizontal line, and of those drawn from centers, B and D, taken to the right or left of the vertical line, do, with half the central number, make just 180.

It may be observed, that there is not one of the numbers but what belongs at least to two of the different circular spaces; some to three, some to four, some to five; and yet they are all so placed as never to break the required number 360, in any of the twenty-eight circular spaces within the primitive circle.

These interwoven circles make so perplexed an appearance, that it is not easy for the eye to trace every circle of numbers one would examine, through all the maze of circles intersected by it; but if you fix one foot of the compasses in either of the centres, and extend the other to any number in the circle you would examine belonging to that center, the moving foot will point the others out, by passing round over all the numbers of that circle successively. I am, &c.

B. FRANKLIN.

1 In the plate they are distinguished by dashed or dotted lines, as different as the engraver could well make them.-F.

APPENDIX

IOI. THE SPEECH OF POLLY BAKER 1

The Speech of Miss Polly Baker before a Court of Judicature, at Connecticut near Boston in New England; where she was prosecuted the fifth time, for having a Bastard

1 The Speech of Polly Baker appeared in The Gentleman's Magazine, April, 1747, Vol. XVII, p. 175. It appeared later in The American Museum, March, 1787, and in other periodicals, and has been reprinted by Parton and Bigelow. Thomas Jefferson tells an interesting story concerning it : "The Doctor and Silas Deane were in conversation one day at Passy on the numerous errors in the Abbé's [Raynal] Histoire des deux Indes when he happened to step in. After the usual salutations, Silas Deane said to him: 'the Doctor and myself, Abbé, were just speaking of the errors of fact into which you have been led in your history.' 'Oh no, Sir,' said the Abbé, 'that is impossible. I took the greatest care not to insert a single fact for which I had not the most unquestionable authority.' 'Why,' says Deane, 'there is the story of Polly Baker, and the eloquent apology you have put into her mouth when brought before a court of Massachusetts to suffer punishment under a law, which you cite, for having had a bastard. I know there never was such a law in Massachusetts.' 'Be assured,' said the Abbé, 'you are mistaken, and that that is a true story. I do not immediately recollect indeed the particular information on which I quote it, but I am certain that I had for it unquestionable authority.' Doctor Franklin who had been for some time shaking with restrained laughter at the Abbé's confidence in his authority for the tale, said, 'I will tell you, Abbé, the origin of that story. When I was a printer and editor of a newspaper, we were sometimes slack of news and to amuse our customers, I used to fill up our vacant columns with anecdotes, and fables, and fancies of my own, and this of Polly Baker is a story of my own making, on one of those occasions.' The Abbé without the least disconcert, exclaimed with a laugh, 'Oh, very well, Doctor, I had rather relate your stories than other men's truths.'" (The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. X, p. 121, note.)

In The Gentleman's Magazine, May, 1747, a person who subscribed himself "William Smith" wrote to the editor: "When I was in New England

463

Child: Which influenced the Court to dispense with her Punishment, and which induced one of her Judges to marry her the next Day - by whom she had fifteen Children.

"May it please the honourable bench to indulge me in a few words: I am a poor, unhappy woman, who have no money to fee lawyers to plead for me, being hard put to it to get a living. I shall not trouble your honours with long speeches; for I have not the presumption to expect that you may, by any means, be prevailed on to deviate in your Sentence from the law, in my favour. All I humbly hope is, that your honours would charitably move the governor's in the year 1745, I had the pleasure of seeing the celebrated Polly Baker who was then, though near 60 years of age, a comely woman and the wife of Paul Dudley Esq., of Roxbury, about two miles from Boston, who marry'd her, as is mentioned in the papers and had 15 children by her. I send you this information because it has been insinuated, that the speech publish'd in her name was entirely fictitious; that it could not be the speech of any woman (in which many females for different reasons concur) but was entirely the invention of some Templar or Garretteer." In the following month "L. Americanus" wrote to the editor:

"MR. URBAN

“June 1, 1747

"The Author of the letter in your Magazine for May, sign'd William Smith is egregiously imposed upon; for 'tis well known, that Paul Dudley, Esq; never acted in any judicial capacity in Connecticut, but is chief justice of the province where he has always resided, and has been long married to a daughter of the late Gov. WINTHROP, by whom he never had any children.

"As they are of very good families, and he is one of the first rank, in the country 'tis pity their names should be ignorantly or wantonly used in support of a fictitious speech."

In July, 1748, The Gentleman's Magazine published an apology for the libel which "thro' the wicked contrivance of one William Smith, we unwarily publish'd in our Magazine for May, 1747."

The mystery surrounding the authorship and first publication of the "Speech" remains an impenetrable mystery. The style is altogether Franklinian, and the story seems unquestionably to have been written by him, but I have searched The Pennsylvania Gazette in vain for it. It is not there. I have reprinted it from The Gentleman's Magazine, and as it is impossible to assign a date for its publication I have relegated it to the Appendix. — ED.