evidence: As we negotiate our way through a time when facts and the evidence that supports them are increasingly under scrutiny, it is fair to ask if Franklin’s conversation with Powel, as recorded in McHenry’s journal, really happened. McHenry’s journal contains his notes on debates he observed at the convention. Did he also hear for himself the conversation between Benjamin Franklin and Elizabeth Willing Powel? Or did he learn about it from hearsay? Years later, after the anecdote had been published in the newspapers (sometimes with embellishments) and was widely known, Powel herself claimed to have forgotten it. "I have no recollection of any such conversations," she wrote in a letter to a friend in 1814. "Yet I cannot venture to deny after so many Years have elapsed that such conversations had passed. I well remember to have frequently associated with the most respectable, influential Members of the Convention that framed the Constitution, and that the all-important Subject was frequently discussed at our House."