Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Capítulo 1

1916

Copyright, 1916,

BY

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

June, 1922

THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS

RAHWAY, N. J.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Introduction vii

The Autobiography

I. Ancestry and Early Life in Boston 3

II. Beginning Life as a Printer 21

III. Arrival in Philadelphia 41

IV. First Visit to Boston 55

V. Early Friends in Philadelphia 69

VI. First Visit to London 77

VII. Beginning Business in Philadelphia 99

VIII. Business Success and First Public Service 126

IX. Plan for Attaining Moral Perfection 146

X. Poor Richard's Almanac and Other Activities 169

XI. Interest in Public Affairs 188

XII. Defense of the Province 201

XIII. Public Services and Duties 217

XIV. Albany Plan of Union 241

XV. Quarrels with the Proprietary Governors 246

XVI. Braddock's Expedition 253

XVII. Franklin's Defense of the Frontier 274

XVIII. Scientific Experiments 289

XIX. Agent of Pennsylvania in London 296

Appendix

Electrical Kite 327

The Way to Wealth 331

The Whistle 336

A Letter to Samuel Mather 34O

Bibliography 343

ILLUSTRATIONS

Franklin at the Court of Louis XVI Frontispiece

"He was therefore, feasted and invited to all the court

parties. At these he sometimes met the old Duchess of

Bourbon, who, being a chess player of about his force,

they very generally played together. Happening once to

put her king into prize, the Doctor took it. 'Ah,' says

she, 'we do not take kings so.' 'We do in America,'

said the Doctor."--Thomas Jefferson.

PAGE

Portrait of Franklin vii

Pages 1 and 4 of The Pennsylvania Gazette, Number

XL, the first number after Franklin took control xxi

First page of The New England Courant of December

4-11, 1721 33

"I was employed to carry the papers thro' the streets

to the customers" 36

"She, standing at the door, saw me, and thought I

made, as I certainly did, a most awkward, ridiculous

appearance" 48

"I took to working at press" 88

"I see him still at work when I go home from club" 120

Two pages from Poor Richard's Almanac for 1736 171

"I regularly took my turn of duty there as a common

soldier" 204

"In the evening, hearing a great noise among them,

the commissioners walk'd out to see what was the

matter" 224

"Our axes ... were immediately set to work to

cut down trees" 278

"We now appeared very wide, and so far from each

other in our opinions as to discourage all hope

of agreement" 318

"You will find it stream out plentifully from the key

on the approach of your knuckle" 328

Father Abraham in his study 330

The end papers show, at the front, the Franklin arms and

the Franklin seal; at the back, the medal given by the

Boston public schools from the fund left by Franklin for

that purpose as provided in the following extract from his

will:

"I was born in Boston, New England, and owe my first

instructions in literature to the free grammar-schools

established there. I therefore give one hundred pounds

sterling to my executors, to be by them ... paid over to

the managers or directors of the free schools in my native

town of Boston, to be by them ... put out to interest, and

so continued at interest forever, which interest annually

shall be laid out in silver medals, and given as honorary

rewards annually by the directors of the said free schools

belonging to the said town, in such manner as to the

discretion of the selectmen of the said town shall seem

meet."

[Illustration: B. Franklin From an engraving by J. Thomson from the

original picture by J. A. Duplessis]

[Illustration: B. Franklin's signature]

INTRODUCTION

We Americans devour eagerly any piece of writing that purports to tell

us the secret of success in life; yet how often we are disappointed to

find nothing but commonplace statements, or receipts that we know by

heart but never follow. Most of the life stories of our famous and

successful men fail to inspire because they lack the human element

that makes the record real and brings the story within our grasp.

While we are searching far and near for some Aladdin's Lamp to give

coveted fortune, there is ready at our hand if we will only reach out

and take it, like the charm in Milton's Comus,

"Unknown, and like esteemed, and the dull swain

Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon;"

the interesting, human, and vividly told story of one of the wisest

and most useful lives in our own history, and perhaps in any history.

In Franklin's Autobiography is offered not so much a ready-made

formula for success, as the companionship of a real flesh and blood

man of extraordinary mind and quality, whose daily walk and

conversation will help us to meet our own difficulties, much as does

the example of a wise and strong friend. While we are fascinated by

the story, we absorb the human experience through which a strong and

helpful character is building.

The thing that makes Franklin's Autobiography different from every

other life story of a great and successful man is just this human

aspect of the account. Franklin told the story of his life, as he

himself says, for the benefit of his posterity. He wanted to help them

by the relation of his own rise from obscurity and poverty to eminence

and wealth. He is not unmindful of the importance of his public

services and their recognition, yet his accounts of these achievements

are given only as a part of the story, and the vanity displayed is

incidental and in keeping with the honesty of the recital. There is

nothing of the impossible in the method and practice of Franklin as he

sets them forth. The youth who reads the fascinating story is

astonished to find that Franklin in his early years struggled with the

same everyday passions and difficulties that he himself experiences,

and he loses the sense of discouragement that comes from a

realization of his own shortcomings and inability to attain.

There are other reasons why the Autobiography should be an intimate

friend of American young people. Here they may establish a close

relationship with one of the foremost Americans as well as one of the

wisest men of his age.

The life of Benjamin Franklin is of importance to every American

primarily because of the part he played in securing the independence

of the United States and in establishing it as a nation. Franklin

shares with Washington the honors of the Revolution, and of the events

leading to the birth of the new nation. While Washington was the

animating spirit of the struggle in the colonies, Franklin was its

ablest champion abroad. To Franklin's cogent reasoning and keen

satire, we owe the clear and forcible presentation of the American

case in England and France; while to his personality and diplomacy as

well as to his facile pen, we are indebted for the foreign alliance

and the funds without which Washington's work must have failed. His

patience, fortitude, and practical wisdom, coupled with

self-sacrificing devotion to the cause of his country, are hardly less

noticeable than similar qualities displayed by Washington. In fact,

Franklin as a public man was much like Washington, especially in the

entire disinterestedness of his public service.

Franklin is also interesting to us because by his life and teachings

he has done more than any other American to advance the material

prosperity of his countrymen. It is said that his widely and

faithfully read maxims made Philadelphia and Pennsylvania wealthy,

while Poor Richard's pithy sayings, translated into many languages,

have had a world-wide influence.

Franklin is a good type of our American manhood. Although not the

wealthiest or the most powerful, he is undoubtedly, in the versatility

of his genius and achievements, the greatest of our self-made men. The

simple yet graphic story in the Autobiography of his steady rise

from humble boyhood in a tallow-chandler shop, by industry, economy,

and perseverance in self-improvement, to eminence, is the most

remarkable of all the remarkable histories of our self-made men. It is

in itself a wonderful illustration of the results possible to be

attained in a land of unequaled opportunity by following Franklin's

maxims.

Franklin's fame, however, was not confined to his own country.

Although he lived in a century notable for the rapid evolution of

scientific and political thought and activity, yet no less a keen

judge and critic than Lord Jeffrey, the famous editor of the

Edinburgh Review, a century ago said that "in one point of view

the name of Franklin must be considered as standing higher than any of

the others which illustrated the eighteenth century. Distinguished as

a statesman, he was equally great as a philosopher, thus uniting in

himself a rare degree of excellence in both these pursuits, to excel

in either of which is deemed the highest praise."

Franklin has indeed been aptly called "many-sided." He was eminent in

science and public service, in diplomacy and in literature. He was the

Edison of his day, turning his scientific discoveries to the benefit

of his fellow-men. He perceived the identity of lightning and

electricity and set up the lightning rod. He invented the Franklin

stove, still widely used, and refused to patent it. He possessed a

masterly shrewdness in business and practical affairs. Carlyle called

him the father of all the Yankees. He founded a fire company, assisted

in founding a hospital, and improved the cleaning and lighting of

streets. He developed journalism, established the American

Philosophical Society, the public library in Philadelphia, and the

University of Pennsylvania. He organized a postal system for the

colonies, which was the basis of the present United States Post

Office. Bancroft, the eminent historian, called him "the greatest

diplomatist of his century." He perfected the Albany Plan of Union for

the colonies. He is the only statesman who signed the Declaration of

Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the Treaty of Peace

with England, and the Constitution. As a writer, he has produced, in

his Autobiography and in Poor Richard's Almanac, two works that

are not surpassed by similar writing. He received honorary degrees

from Harvard and Yale, from Oxford and St. Andrews, and was made a

fellow of the Royal Society, which awarded him the Copley gold medal

for improving natural knowledge. He was one of the eight foreign

associates of the French Academy of Science.

The careful study of the Autobiography is also valuable because of

the style in which it is written. If Robert Louis Stevenson is right

in believing that his remarkable style was acquired by imitation then

the youth who would gain the power to express his ideas clearly,

forcibly, and interestingly cannot do better than to study Franklin's

method. Franklin's fame in the scientific world was due almost as much

to his modest, simple, and sincere manner of presenting his

discoveries and to the precision and clearness of the style in which

he described his experiments, as to the results he was able to

announce. Sir Humphry Davy, the celebrated English chemist, himself an

excellent literary critic as well as a great scientist, said: "A

singular felicity guided all Franklin's researches, and by very small

means he established very grand truths. The style and manner of his

publication on electricity are almost as worthy of admiration as the

doctrine it contains."

Franklin's place in literature is hard to determine because he was not

primarily a literary man. His aim in his writings as in his life work

was to be helpful to his fellow-men. For him writing was never an end

in itself, but always a means to an end. Yet his success as a

scientist, a statesman, and a diplomat, as well as socially, was in no

little part due to his ability as a writer. "His letters charmed all,

and made his correspondence eagerly sought. His political arguments

were the joy of his party and the dread of his opponents. His

scientific discoveries were explained in language at once so simple

and so clear that plow-boy and exquisite could follow his thought or

his experiment to its conclusion."[1]

[1] The Many-Sided Franklin. Paul L. Ford.

As far as American literature is concerned, Franklin has no

contemporaries. Before the Autobiography only one literary work of

importance had been produced in this country--Cotton Mather's

Magnalia, a church history of New England in a ponderous, stiff

style. Franklin was the first American author to gain a wide and

permanent reputation in Europe. The Autobiography, Poor Richard,

Father Abraham's Speech or The Way to Wealth, as well as some of

the Bagatelles, are as widely known abroad as any American writings.

Franklin must also be classed as the first American humorist.

English literature of the eighteenth century was characterized by the

development of prose. Periodical literature reached its perfection

early in the century in The Tatler and The Spectator of Addison

and Steele. Pamphleteers flourished throughout the period. The

homelier prose of Bunyan and Defoe gradually gave place to the more

elegant and artificial language of Samuel Johnson, who set the

standard for prose writing from 1745 onward. This century saw the

beginnings of the modern novel, in Fielding's Tom Jones,

Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe, Sterne's Tristram Shandy, and

Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. Gibbon wrote The Decline and Fall

of the Roman Empire, Hume his History of England, and Adam Smith

the Wealth of Nations.

In the simplicity and vigor of his style Franklin more nearly

resembles the earlier group of writers. In his first essays he was not

an inferior imitator of Addison. In his numerous parables, moral

allegories, and apologues he showed Bunyan's influence. But Franklin

was essentially a journalist. In his swift, terse style, he is most

like Defoe, who was the first great English journalist and master of

the newspaper narrative. The style of both writers is marked by

homely, vigorous expression, satire, burlesque, repartee. Here the

comparison must end. Defoe and his contemporaries were authors. Their

vocation was writing and their success rests on the imaginative or

creative power they displayed. To authorship Franklin laid no claim.

He wrote no work of the imagination. He developed only incidentally a

style in many respects as remarkable as that of his English

contemporaries. He wrote the best autobiography in existence, one of

the most widely known collections of maxims, and an unsurpassed series

of political and social satires, because he was a man of unusual scope

of power and usefulness, who knew how to tell his fellow-men the

secrets of that power and that usefulness.

The Story of the Autobiography

The account of how Franklin's Autobiography came to be written and

of the adventures of the original manuscript forms in itself an

interesting story. The Autobiography is Franklin's longest work,

and yet it is only a fragment. The first part, written as a letter to

his son, William Franklin, was not intended for publication; and the

composition is more informal and the narrative more personal than in

the second part, from 1730 on, which was written with a view to

publication. The entire manuscript shows little evidence of revision.

In fact, the expression is so homely and natural that his grandson,

William Temple Franklin, in editing the work changed some of the

phrases because he thought them inelegant and vulgar.

Franklin began the story of his life while on a visit to his friend,

Bishop Shipley, at Twyford, in Hampshire, southern England, in 1771.

He took the manuscript, completed to 1731, with him when he returned

to Philadelphia in 1775. It was left there with his other papers when

he went to France in the following year, and disappeared during the

confusion incident to the Revolution. Twenty-three pages of closely

written manuscript fell into the hands of Abel James, an old friend,

who sent a copy to Franklin at Passy, near Paris, urging him to

complete the story. Franklin took up the work at Passy in 1784 and

carried the narrative forward a few months. He changed the plan to

meet his new purpose of writing to benefit the young reader. His work

was soon interrupted and was not resumed until 1788, when he was at

home in Philadelphia. He was now old, infirm, and suffering, and was

still engaged in public service. Under these discouraging conditions

the work progressed slowly. It finally stopped when the narrative

reached the year 1757. Copies of the manuscript were sent to friends

of Franklin in England and France, among others to Monsieur Le

Veillard at Paris.

The first edition of the Autobiography was published in French at

Paris in 1791. It was clumsily and carelessly translated, and was

imperfect and unfinished. Where the translator got the manuscript is

not known. Le Veillard disclaimed any knowledge of the publication.

From this faulty French edition many others were printed, some in

Germany, two in England, and another in France, so great was the

demand for the work.

In the meantime the original manuscript of the Autobiography had

started on a varied and adventurous career. It was left by Franklin

with his other works to his grandson, William Temple Franklin, whom

Franklin designated as his literary executor. When Temple Franklin

came to publish his grandfather's works in 1817, he sent the original

manuscript of the Autobiography to the daughter of Le Veillard in

exchange for her father's copy, probably thinking the clearer

transcript would make better printer's copy. The original manuscript

thus found its way to the Le Veillard family and connections, where it

remained until sold in 1867 to Mr. John Bigelow, United States

Minister to France. By him it was later sold to Mr. E. Dwight Church

of New York, and passed with the rest of Mr. Church's library into the

possession of Mr. Henry E. Huntington. The original manuscript of

Franklin's Autobiography now rests in the vault in Mr. Huntington's

residence at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street, New York City.

When Mr. Bigelow came to examine his purchase, he was astonished to

find that what people had been reading for years as the authentic

Life of Benjamin Franklin by Himself, was only a garbled and

incomplete version of the real Autobiography. Temple Franklin had

taken unwarranted liberties with the original. Mr. Bigelow says he

found more than twelve hundred changes in the text. In 1868,

therefore, Mr. Bigelow published the standard edition of Franklin's

Autobiography. It corrected errors in the previous editions and was

the first English edition to contain the short fourth part,

comprising the last few pages of the manuscript, written during the

last year of Franklin's life. Mr. Bigelow republished the

Autobiography, with additional interesting matter, in three volumes

in 1875, in 1905, and in 1910. The text in this volume is that of Mr.

Bigelow's editions.[2]

[2] For the division into chapters and the chapter

titles, however, the present editor is responsible.

The Autobiography has been reprinted in the United States many

scores of times and translated into all the languages of Europe. It

has never lost its popularity and is still in constant demand at

circulating libraries. The reason for this popularity is not far to

seek. For in this work Franklin told in a remarkable manner the story

of a remarkable life. He displayed hard common sense and a practical

knowledge of the art of living. He selected and arranged his material,

perhaps unconsciously, with the unerring instinct of the journalist

for the best effects. His success is not a little due to his plain,

clear, vigorous English. He used short sentences and words, homely

expressions, apt illustrations, and pointed allusions. Franklin had a

most interesting, varied, and unusual life. He was one of the greatest

conversationalists of his time.

His book is the record of that unusual life told in Franklin's own

unexcelled conversational style. It is said that the best parts of

Boswell's famous biography of Samuel Johnson are those parts where

Boswell permits Johnson to tell his own story. In the Autobiography

a no less remarkable man and talker than Samuel Johnson is telling his

own story throughout.

F. W. P.

The Gilman Country School,

Baltimore, September, 1916.

[Illustration: Pages 1 and 4 of The Pennsylvania Gazette, the first

number after Franklin took control. Reduced nearly one-half.

Reproduced from a copy at the New York Public Library.]

[Transcriber's note: Transcription of these pages are given at the end

of the text.]

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

OF

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

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Title: Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Author: Benjamin Franklin

Editor: Frank Woodworth Pine

Illustrator: E. Boyd Smith

Release date: December 28, 2006 [eBook #20203]

Most recently updated: October 19, 2022

Language: English

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[Illustration: FRANKLIN ARMS]

[Illustration: FRANKLIN SEAL]

[Illustration: Franklin at the Court of Louis XVI

"He was therefore, feasted and invited to all the court

parties. At these he sometimes met the old Duchess of

Bourbon, who, being a chess player of about his force,

they very generally played together. Happening once to

put her king into prize, the Doctor took it. 'Ah,' says

she, 'we do not take kings so.' 'We do in America,' said

the Doctor."--Thomas Jefferson.]

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

OF

BENJAMIN

FRANKLIN

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

by

E. BOYD SMITH

EDITED

by

FRANK WOODWORTH PINE

[Illustration: Printers Mark]

New York

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY