Letter to Benjamin

From the text (and date of the letter), we can infer that Benjamin Franklin was writing the letter from London, where he studied law during the 1760s. In the first paragraph, Franklin suggests that “some country girl in the heart of the Massachusets” might have been successful in putting the ballad to music “than any of our masters here” indicates that Benjamin likely wrote the letter from England. Philadelphia, at that time, had no claim to a “master” of musical composition during that period.