Benjamin Franklin 1779 framed sleigh or the kind of library

or the kind of library that still smells faintly of pipe smoke

his burin tracing the quiet revolution by which American books finally learned to illustrate themselves

longhorns drifting across rangeland that runs flat to the horizon

and the natural patina of a document that has lived for nearly two hundred and fifty years

Benjamin Franklin 1779 framed sleigh or the kind of libraryBenjamin Franklin 1779 the printer philosopher rendered mid mission in Paris, charming a court whose alliance would decide the war. An engraving from the years when Franklin was less a man than a diplomatic instrument, his fur cap and spectacles doing the quiet work of a republic still arguing for its own existence. About the Source Bella Frye sources artifacts from the great American historical archive the Library of Congress, the National Archives,