Major Danvers, aide-de-camp, sate in the front of the carriage with the little postmaster from Philadelphia, Mr.Franklin, who, printer's boy as he had been, was a wonderful shrewd person, as his Excellency and the gentlemen of his family were fain to acknowledge, having a quantity of the most curious information respecting the colony, and regarding England too, where Mr.Franklin had been more than once.

"'Twas extraordinary how a person of such humble origin should have acquired such a variety of learning and such a politeness of breeding too, Mr.Franklin!" his Excellency was pleased to observe, touching his hat graciously to the postmaster.
The postmaster bowed, said it had been his occasional good fortune to fall into the company of gentlemen like his Excellency, and that he had taken advantage of his opportunity to study their honours' manners, and adapt himself to them as far as he might.

As for education, he could not boast much of that--his father being but in straitened circumstances, and the advantages small in his native country of New England: but he had done to the utmost of his power, and gathered what he could--he knew nothing like what they had in England.
Mr.Braddock burst out laughing, and said, "As for education, there were gentlemen of the army, by George, who didn't know whether they should spell bull with two b's or one.

He had heard the Duke of Marlborough was no special good penman.

He had not the honour of serving under that noble commander--his Grace was before his time--but he thrashed the French soundly, although he was no scholar." Mr.Franklin said he was aware of both those facts.
"Nor is my Duke a scholar," went on Mr.Braddock--"aha, Mr.Postmaster, you have heard that, too--I see by the wink in your eye." Mr.Franklin instantly withdrew the obnoxious or satirical wink in his eye, and looked in the General's jolly round face with a pair of orbs as innocent as a baby's.