If anybody caught him playing "mumblepeg" by himself, after the age of sixty, he would immediately appear to be ciphering out how the grass grew--as if it was any of his business.
My grandfather knew him well, and he says Franklin was always fixed--always ready.

If a body, during his old age, happened on him unexpectedly when he was catching flies, or making mud-pies, or sliding on a cellar door, he would immediately look wise, and rip out a maxim, and walk off with his nose in the air and his cap turned wrong side before, trying to appear absent-minded and eccentric.

He was a hard lot.
He invented a stove that would smoke your head off in four hours by the clock.

One can see the almost devilish satisfaction he took in it by his giving it his name.
He was always proud of telling how he entered Philadelphia for the first time, with nothing in the world but two shillings in his pocket and four rolls of bread under his arm.

But really, when you come to examine it critically, it was nothing.