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ECLECTIC ENGLISH CLASSICS
FRANKLIN'S
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
EDITED BY
O. LEON REID
HEAD OF ENGLISH DEPARTMENT, LOUISVILLE MALE
HIGH SCHOOL, LOUISVILLE, KY.
NEW YORK · CINCINNATI · CHICAGO
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY
Copyright, 1896 and 1910, by
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
W. P. 12
INTRODUCTION.
When Franklin was born, in 1706, Queen Anne was on the English throne,
and Swift and Defoe were pamphleteering. The one had not yet written
"Gulliver's Travels," nor the other "Robinson Crusoe;" neither had
Addison and Steele and other wits of Anne's reign begun the
"Spectator." Pope was eighteen years old.
At that time ships bringing news, food and raiment, and laws and
governors to the ten colonies of America, ran grave chances of falling
into the hands of the pirates who infested the waters of the shores.
In Boston Cotton Mather was persecuting witches. There were no stage
coaches in the land,--merely a bridle path led from New York to
Philadelphia,--and a printing press throughout the colonies was a
raree-show.
Only six years before Franklin's birth, the first newspaper report for
the first newspaper in the country was written on the death of Captain
Kidd and six of his companions near Boston, when the editor of the
"News-Letter" told the story of the hanging of the pirates, detailing
the exhortations and prayers and their taking-off. Franklin links us
to another world of action.
His boyhood in Boston was a stern beginning of the habit of hard work
and rigid economy which marked the man. For a year he went to the
Latin Grammar School on School Street, but left off at the age of ten
to help his father in making soap and candles. He persisted in showing
such "bookish inclination," however, that at twelve his father
apprenticed him to learn the printer's trade. At seventeen he ran off
to Philadelphia and there began his independent career.
In the main he led such a life as the maxims of "Poor Richard"[1]
enjoin. The pages of the Autobiography show few deviations from such a
course. He felt the need of school training and set to work to educate
himself. He had an untiring industry, and love of the approval of his
neighbor; and he knew that more things fail through want of care than
want of knowledge. His practical imagination was continually forming
projects; and, fortunately for the world, his great physical strength
and activity were always setting his ideas in motion. He was
human-hearted, and this strong sympathy of his, along with his
strength and zeal and "projecting head" (as Defoe calls such a
spirit), devised much that helped life to amenity and comfort. In
politics he had the outlook of the self-reliant colonist whose
devotion to the mother institutions of England was finally alienated
by the excesses of a power which thought itself all-powerful.
In this Autobiography Franklin tells of his own life to the year 1757,
when he went to England to support the petition of the legislature
against Penn's sons. The grievance of the colonists was a very
considerable one, for the proprietaries claimed that taxes should not
be levied upon a tract greater than the whole State of Pennsylvania.
Franklin was received in England with applause. His experiments in
electricity and his inventions had made him known, and the sayings of
"Poor Richard" were already in the mouths of the people. But he
waited nearly three years before he could obtain a hearing for the
matter for which he had crossed the sea.
During the delay he visited the ancient home of his family, and made
the acquaintance of men of mark, receiving also that degree of Doctor
of Civil Law by which he came to be known as Dr. Franklin. In this
time, too, he found how prejudiced was the common English estimate of
the value of the colonies. He wrote Lord Kames in 1760, after the
defeat of the French in Canada: "No one can more sincerely rejoice
than I do on the reduction of Canada; and this is not merely as I am a
colonist, but as I am a Briton. I have long been of opinion that the
_foundations of the future grandeur and stability of the British
empire lie in America_; and though, like other foundations, they are
low and little now, they are, nevertheless, broad and strong enough to
support the greatest political structure that human wisdom ever yet
erected. I am, therefore, by no means for restoring Canada. If we keep
it all the country from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi will in
another century be filled with British people. Britain itself will
become vastly more populous by the immense increase of its commerce;
the Atlantic sea will be covered with your trading ships; and your
naval power, thence continually increasing, will extend your influence
round the whole globe and awe the world!... But I refrain, for I see
you begin to think my notions extravagant, and look upon them as the
ravings of a madman."
At last Franklin won the king's signature to a bill by the terms of
which the surveyed lands of the proprietaries should be assessed, and,
his business accomplished, he returned to Philadelphia. "You require
my history," he wrote to Lord Kames, "from the time I yet sail for
America. I left England about the end of August, 1762, in company
with ten sail of merchant ships, under a convoy of a man-of-war. We
had a pleasant passage to Madeira.... Here we furnished ourselves with
fresh provisions, and refreshments of all kinds; and, after a few
days, proceeded on our voyage, running southward until we got into the
trade winds, and then with them westward till we drew near the coast
of America. The weather was so favorable that there were few days in
which we could not visit from ship to ship, dining with each other and
on board of the man-of-war; which made the time pass agreeably, much
more so than when one goes in a single ship; for this was like
traveling in a moving village, with all one's neighbors about one.
"On the 1st of November I arrived safe and well at my own home, after
an absence of near six years, found my wife and daughter well,--the
latter grown quite a woman, with many amiable accomplishments acquired
in my absence,--and my friends as hearty and affectionate as ever,
with whom my house was filled for many days to congratulate me on my
return. I had been chosen yearly during my absence to represent the
city of Philadelphia in our Provincial Assembly; and on my appearance
in the House, they voted me three thousand pounds sterling for my
services in England, and their thanks, delivered by the Speaker. In
February following, my son arrived with my new daughter; for, with my
consent and approbation, he married, soon after I left England, a very
agreeable West India lady, with whom he is very happy. I accompanied
him to his government [New Jersey], where he met with the kindest
reception from the people of all ranks, and has lived with them ever
since in the greatest harmony. A river only parts that province and
ours, and his residence is within seventeen miles of me, so that we
frequently see each other.
"In the spring of 1763 I set out on a tour through all the northern
colonies to inspect and regulate the post offices in the several
provinces. In this journey I spent the summer, traveled about sixteen
hundred miles, and did not get home till the beginning of November.
The Assembly sitting through the following winter, and warm disputes
arising between them and the governor, I became wholly engaged in
public affairs; for, besides my duty as an Assemblyman, I had another
trust to execute, that of being one of the commissioners appointed by
law to dispose of the public money appropriated to the raising and
paying an army to act against the Indians and defend the frontiers.
And then, in December, we had two insurrections of the back
inhabitants of our province.... Governor Penn made my house for some
time his headquarters, and did everything by my advice; so that for
about forty-eight hours I was a very great man, as I had been once
some years before, in a time of public danger.[2]
"But the fighting face we put on and the reasoning we used with the
insurgents ... having turned them back and restored quiet to the city,
I became a less man than ever; for I had by this transaction made
myself many enemies among the populace; and the governor, ... thinking
it a favorable opportunity, joined the whole weight of the proprietary
interest to get me out of the Assembly; which was accordingly effected
at the last election by a majority of about twenty-five in four
thousand voters. The House, however, when they met in October,
approved of the resolutions taken, while I was Speaker, of petitioning
the Crown for a change of government, and requested me to return to
England to prosecute that petition; which service I accordingly
undertook, and embarked at the beginning of November last, being
accompanied to the ship, sixteen miles, by a cavalcade of three
hundred of my friends, who filled our sails with their good wishes,
and I arrived in thirty days at London."
Instead of giving his efforts to the proposed change of government
Franklin found greater duties. The debt which England had incurred
during the war with the French in Canada she now looked to the
colonists for aid in removing. At home taxes were levied by every
device. The whole country was in distress and laborers starving. In
the colonies there was the thrift that comes from narrowest means; but
the people refused to answer parliamentary levies and claimed that
they would lay their own taxes through their own legislatures. They
resisted so successfully the enforcement of the Stamp Act that
Parliament began to discuss its repeal. At this juncture Franklin was
examined before the Commons in regard to the results of the act.
_Q._ Do you not think the people of America would submit to pay
the stamp duty if it was moderated?
_A._ No, never, unless compelled by force of arms....
_Q._ What was the temper of America toward Great Britain before
the year 1763?[3]
_A._ The best in the world. They submitted willingly to the
government of the Crown, and paid, in their courts, obedience to
the acts of Parliament. Numerous as the people are in the several
old provinces, they cost you nothing in forts, citadels, garrisons,
or armies, to keep them in subjection. They were governed by this
country at the expense only of a little pen, ink, and paper; they
were led by a thread. They had not only a respect but an affection
for Great Britain, for its laws, its customs and manners, and even
a fondness for its fashions that greatly increased the commerce.
Natives of Britain were always treated with particular regard; to
be an "Old England man" was, of itself, a character of some
respect, and gave a kind of rank among us.
_Q._ And what is their temper now?
_A._ Oh, very much altered....
_Q._ If the Stamp Act should be repealed, would it induce the
assemblies of America to acknowledge the right of Parliament to
tax them, and would they erase their resolutions?
_A._ No, never.
_Q._ Are there no means of obliging them to erase those
resolutions?
_A._ None that I know of; they will never do it unless compelled
by force of arms.
_Q._ Is there a power on earth that can force them to erase them?
_A._ No power, how great soever, can force men to change their
opinions....
_Q._ What used to be the pride of the Americans?
_A._ To indulge in the fashions and manufactures of Great Britain.
_Q._ What is now their pride?
_A._ To wear their old clothes over again, till they can make new
ones.
After the repeal of the act, Franklin wrote to his wife: "I am willing
you should have a new gown, which you may suppose I did not send
sooner as I knew you would not like to be finer than your neighbors
unless in a gown of your own spinning. Had the trade between the two
countries totally ceased, it was a comfort to me to recollect that I
had once been clothed from head to foot in woolen and linen of my
wife's manufacture, that I never was prouder of any dress in my life,
and that she and her daughter might do it again if it was necessary."
Franklin stayed ten years in England. In 1774 he presented to the king
the petition of the first Continental Congress, in which the
petitioners, who protested their loyalty to Great Britain, claimed the
right of taxing themselves. But, finding this and other efforts at
adjustment of little avail, he returned to Philadelphia in May, 1775.
On the 5th of July he wrote to Mr. Strahan, an old friend in London:
"You are a member of Parliament, and one of that majority which has
doomed my country to destruction. You have begun to burn our towns and
murder our people. Look upon your hands; they are stained with the
blood of your relations! You and I were long friends; you are now my
enemy, and I am yours."
After the Declaration of Independence and the establishment of the
States as a nation, Franklin was chosen as representative to France.
"I am old and good for nothing," he said, when told of the choice,
"but, as the storekeepers say of their remnants of cloth, I am but a
fag-end; you may have me for what you please."
It was a most important post. France was the ancient enemy of England,
and the contingent of men and aid of money which Franklin gained served
to the successful issue of the Revolution. He lived while in France at
Passy, near Paris, from which he wrote to a friend in England: "You are
too early ... in calling me rebel; you should wait for the event which
will determine whether it is a rebellion or only a revolution.... I know
you wish you could see me; but, as you cannot, I will describe myself to
you. Figure me in your mind as jolly as formerly, and as strong and
hearty, only a few years older; very plainly dressed, wearing my thin,
gray, straight hair, that peeps out under my only coiffure, a fine fur
cap which comes down my forehead almost to my spectacles. Think how this
must appear among the powdered heads of Paris! I wish every lady and
gentleman in France would only be so obliging as to follow my fashion,
comb their own heads as I do mine, dismiss their friseurs, and pay me
half the money they pay to them."
At last, in 1785, he came home, old and broken in health. He was
chosen president, or governor, of Pennsylvania, and the faith of the
people in his wisdom made him delegate to the convention which framed
the Constitution in 1787. He died in 1790, and was buried by his wife
in the graveyard of Christ Church, Philadelphia.
The epitaph which he had written when a printer was not put upon his
tomb:
THE BODY
OF
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,
PRINTER
(Like the cover of an old book,
Its contents torn out,
And stript of its lettering and gilding,)
Lies here, food for worms.
But the work shall not be lost,
For it will (as he believed) appear once more
In a new and elegant edition,
Revised and corrected
by
The Author.
[Footnote 1: See pp. 198-206.]
[Footnote 2: The time of Braddock's defeat.]
[Footnote 3: When the old duties "upon all rum, spirits, molasses,
syrups, sugar," etc., were renewed, and extended to other articles.]
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
§ 1. PARENTAGE AND BOYHOOD.
TWYFORD,[4] _at the Bishop of St. Asaph's, 1771_.
Dear Son:[5] I have ever had pleasure in obtaining any little
anecdotes of my ancestors. You may remember the inquiries I made among
the remains of my relations when you were with me in England, and the
journey I undertook for that purpose. Imagining it may be equally
agreeable to you to know the circumstances of my life, many of which
you are yet unacquainted with, and expecting the enjoyment of a week's
uninterrupted leisure in my present country retirement, I sit down to
write them for you. To which I have besides some other inducements.
Having emerged from the poverty and obscurity in which I was born and
bred, to a state of affluence and some degree of reputation in the
world, and having gone so far through life with a considerable share
of felicity, the conducing means I made use of, which with the
blessing of God so well succeeded, my posterity may like to know, as
they may find some of them suitable to their own situations, and
therefore fit to be imitated.
That felicity, when I reflected on it, has induced me sometimes to say
that, were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a
repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the
advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults of
the first. So I might, besides correcting the faults, change some
sinister accidents and events of it for others more favorable. But
though this were denied, I should still accept the offer. Since such a
repetition is not to be expected, the next thing like living one's
life over again seems to be a recollection of that life, and to make
that recollection as durable as possible by putting it down in writing.
Hereby, too, I shall indulge the inclination, so natural in old men,
to be talking of themselves and their own past actions; and I shall
indulge it without being tiresome to others,--who, through respect to
age, might conceive themselves obliged to give me a hearing,--since
this may be read or not as any one pleases. And, lastly, (I may as
well confess it, since my denial of it will be believed by nobody,)
perhaps I shall a good deal gratify my own vanity. Indeed, I scarce
ever heard or saw the introductory words, "Without vanity, I may say,"
etc., but some vain thing immediately followed. Most people dislike
vanity in others, whatever share they may have of it themselves; but I
give it fair quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it
is often productive of good to the possessor, and to others that are
within his sphere of action; and therefore, in many cases, it would
not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity
among the other comforts of life.
And now I speak of thanking God, I desire with all humility to
acknowledge that I owe the mentioned happiness of my past life to his
kind providence, which led me to the means I used and gave them
success. My belief of this induces me to hope, though I must not
presume, that the same goodness will still be exercised toward me in
continuing that happiness, or enabling me to bear a fatal reverse,
which I may experience as others have done; the complexion of my
future fortune being known to Him only in whose power it is to bless
to us even our afflictions.
The notes one of my uncles (who had the same kind of curiosity in
collecting family anecdotes) once put into my hands furnished me with
several particulars relating to our ancestors. From these notes I
learned that the family had lived in the same village, Ecton, in
Northamptonshire,[n] for three hundred years, and how much longer he
knew not, (perhaps from the time when the name of Franklin, that
before was the name of an order of people,[6] was assumed by them as a
surname when others took surnames all over the kingdom,) on a freehold
of about thirty acres, aided by the smith's business, which had
continued in the family till his time, the eldest son being always
bred to that business,--a custom which he and my father followed as to
their eldest sons. When I searched the registers at Ecton, I found an
account of their births, marriages, and burials from the year 1555
only, there being no registers kept in that parish at any time
preceding. By that register I perceived that I was the youngest son of
the youngest son for five generations back. My grandfather, Thomas,
who was born in 1598, lived at Ecton till he grew too old to follow
business longer, when he went to live with his son John, a dyer at
Banbury, in Oxfordshire, with whom my father served an apprenticeship.
There my grandfather died and lies buried. We saw his gravestone in
1758. His eldest son, Thomas, lived in the house at Ecton, and left it
with the land to his only child, a daughter, who, with her husband,
one Fisher, of Wellingborough, sold it to Mr. Isted, now lord of the
manor there. My grandfather had four sons that grew up, namely,
Thomas, John, Benjamin, and Josiah. I will give you what account I
can of them, at this distance from my papers, and if these are not
lost in my absence, you will among them find many more particulars.
Thomas was bred a smith under his father; but, being ingenious, and
encouraged in learning (as all my brothers were) by an Esquire[7]
Palmer, then the principal gentleman in that parish, he qualified
himself for the business of scrivener;[8] became a considerable man in
the county; was a chief mover of all public-spirited undertakings for
the county or town of Northampton and his own village, of which many
instances were related of him; and much taken notice of and patronized
by the then Lord Halifax. He died in 1702, Jan. 6, old style,[9] just
four years to a day before I was born. The account we received of his
life and character from some old people at Ecton, I remember, struck
you as something extraordinary, from its similarity to what you knew
of mine. "Had he died on the same day," you said, "one might have
supposed a transmigration."[10]
John was bred a dyer, I believe, of woolens. Benjamin was bred a silk
dyer, serving an apprenticeship at London. He was an ingenious man. I
remember him well, for when I was a boy he came over to my father in
Boston, and lived in the house with us some years. He lived to a great
age. His grandson, Samuel Franklin, now lives in Boston. He left
behind him two quarto volumes, in manuscript, of his own poetry,
consisting of little occasional pieces addressed to his friends and
relations, of which the following, sent to me, is a specimen.[11] He
had formed a shorthand of his own, which he taught me, but, never
practicing it, I have now forgot it. I was named after this uncle,
there being a particular affection between him and my father. He was
very pious, a great attender of sermons of the best preachers, which
he took down in his shorthand, and had with him many volumes of them.
He was also much of a politician; too much, perhaps, for his station.
There fell lately into my hands, in London, a collection he had made
of all the principal pamphlets relating to public affairs, from 1641
to 1717; many of the volumes are wanting, as appears by the numbering,
but there still remain eight volumes in folio and twenty-four in
quarto and octavo. A dealer in old books met with them, and knowing me
by my sometimes buying of him, he brought them to me. It seems my
uncle must have left them here when he went to America, which was
above fifty years since. There are many of his notes in the margins.
This obscure family of ours was early in the Reformation, and
continued Protestants through the reign of Queen Mary,[12] when they
were sometimes in danger of trouble on account of their zeal against
the queen's religion. They had got an English Bible, and to conceal
and secure it, it was fastened open with tapes under and within the
cover of a joint stool.[13] When my great-great-grandfather read it to
his family, he turned up the joint stool upon his knees, turning over
the leaves then under the tapes. One of the children stood at the door
to give notice if he saw the apparitor coming, who was an officer of
the spiritual court. In that case the stool was turned down again upon
its feet, when the Bible remained concealed under it as before. This
anecdote I had from my uncle Benjamin.
The family continued all of the Church of England till about the end
of Charles II.'s reign, when some of the ministers that had been outed
for nonconformity,[14] holding conventicles in Northamptonshire,
Benjamin and Josiah adhered to them, and so continued all their lives;
the rest of the family remained with the Episcopal Church.
Josiah, my father, married young, and carried his wife, with three
children, into New England, about 1682. The conventicles having been
forbidden by law, and frequently disturbed, induced some considerable
men of his acquaintance to remove to that country, and he was
prevailed with to accompany them thither, where they expected to enjoy
their mode of religion with freedom. By the same wife he had four
children more born there, and by a second wife ten more,--in all
seventeen, of which I remember thirteen sitting at one time at his
table, who all grew up to be men and women and married. I was the
youngest son, and the youngest child but two, and was born in Boston,
New England.[15] My mother, the second wife, was Abiah Folger,
daughter of Peter Folger, one of the first settlers of New England, of
whom honorable mention is made by Cotton Mather, in his Church history
of that country entitled "Magnalia Christi Americana," as "a goodly
learned Englishman," if I remember the words rightly. I have heard
that he wrote sundry small occasional pieces, but only one of them was
printed, which I saw now many years since. It was written in 1675, in
the homespun verse of that time and people, and addressed to those
then concerned in the government there. It was in favor of liberty of
conscience, and in behalf of the Baptists, Quakers, and other
sectaries that had been under persecution,[16] ascribing the Indian
wars, and other distresses that had befallen the country, to that
persecution, as so many judgments of God to punish so heinous an
offense, and exhorting a repeal of those uncharitable laws. The whole
appeared to me as written with a good deal of decent plainness and
manly freedom. The six concluding lines I remember, though I have
forgotten the two first of the stanza; but the purport of them was
that his censures proceeded from good will, and, therefore, he would
be known to be the author.
"Because to be a libeler [says he]
I hate it with my heart;
From Sherburne[17] town, where now I dwell,
My name I do put here;
Without offense your real friend,
It is Peter Folgier."[18]
My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was
put to the grammar school[19] at eight years of age, my father intending
to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the church. My
early readiness in learning to read, (which must have been very early,
as I do not remember when I could not read,) and the opinion of all his
friends that I should certainly make a good scholar, encouraged him in
this purpose of his. My uncle Benjamin, too, approved of it, and
proposed to give me all his shorthand volumes of sermons, I suppose as a
stock to set up with, if I would learn his character.[20] I continued,
however, at the grammar school not quite one year, though in that time I
had risen gradually from the middle of the class of that year to be the
head of it, and, further, was removed into the next class above it in
order to go with that into the third at the end of the year. But my
father in the mean time, from a view of the expense of a college
education, which, having so large a family, he could not well afford,
and the mean living many so educated were afterward able to
obtain,--reasons that he gave to his friends in my hearing,--altered his
first intention, took me from the grammar school, and sent me to a
school for writing and arithmetic, kept by a then famous man, Mr. George
Brownell, very successful in his profession generally, and that by mild,
encouraging methods. Under him I acquired fair writing pretty soon, but
I failed in the arithmetic, and made no progress in it. At ten years old
I was taken home to assist my father in his business, which was that of
a tallow chandler and soap boiler, a business he was not bred to, but
had assumed on his arrival in New England, and on finding his dyeing
trade would not maintain his family, being in little request.
Accordingly, I was employed in cutting wick for the candles, filling the
dipping mold and the molds for cast candles,[21] attending the shop,
going of errands, etc.
I disliked the trade, and had a strong inclination for the sea, but my
father declared against it. However, living near the water, I was much
in and about it, learned early to swim well and to manage boats; and
when in a boat or canoe with other boys I was commonly allowed to
govern, especially in any case of difficulty; and upon other occasions
I was generally a leader among the boys, and sometimes led them into
scrapes, of which I will mention one instance, as it shows an early
projecting public spirit, though not then justly conducted.
There was a salt marsh that bounded part of the mill pond, on the edge
of which, at high water, we used to stand to fish for minnows. By much
trampling we had made it a mere quagmire. My proposal was to build a
wharf there fit for us to stand upon, and I showed my comrades a large
heap of stones which were intended for a new house near the marsh and
which would very well suit our purpose. Accordingly, in the evening,
when the workmen were gone, I assembled a number of my playfellows,
and working with them diligently like so many emmets,[22] sometimes
two or three to a stone, we brought them all away and built our little
wharf. The next morning the workmen were surprised at missing the
stones, which were found in our wharf. Inquiry was made after the
removers; we were discovered and complained of; several of us were
corrected by our fathers; and, though I pleaded the usefulness of the
work, mine convinced me that nothing was useful which was not honest.
I think you may like to know something of his person and character. He
had an excellent constitution of body, was of middle stature, but well
set and very strong. He was ingenious, could draw prettily, was
skilled a little in music, and had a clear, pleasing voice, so that
when he played psalm tunes on his violin and sung withal, as he
sometimes did in an evening after the business of the day was over, it
was extremely agreeable to hear. He had a mechanical genius, too, and
on occasion was very handy in the use of other tradesmen's tools; but
his great excellence lay in a sound understanding and solid judgment
in prudential matters, both in private and public affairs. In the
latter, indeed, he was never employed, the numerous family he had to
educate and the straitness of his circumstances keeping him close to
his trade; but I remember well his being frequently visited by leading
people, who consulted him for his opinion in affairs of the town or of
the church he belonged to, and showed a good deal of respect for his
judgment and advice; he was also much consulted by private persons
about their affairs when any difficulty occurred, and frequently
chosen an arbitrator between contending parties. At his table he liked
to have as often as he could some sensible friend or neighbor to
converse with, and always took care to start some ingenious or useful
topic for discourse, which might tend to improve the minds of his
children. By this means he turned our attention to what was good,
just, and prudent in the conduct of life, and little or no notice was
ever taken of what related to the victuals on the table, whether it
was well or ill dressed, in or out of season, of good or bad flavor,
preferable or inferior to this or that other thing of the kind, so
that I was brought up in such a perfect inattention to those matters
as to be quite indifferent what kind of food was set before me, and so
unobservant of it that to this day if I am asked I can scarce tell a
few hours after dinner what I dined upon. This has been a convenience
to me in traveling, where my companions have been sometimes very
unhappy for want of a suitable gratification of their more delicate,
because better instructed, tastes and appetites.
My mother had likewise an excellent constitution. I never knew either
my father or mother to have any sickness but that of which they died,
he at eighty-nine and she at eighty-five years of age. They lie buried
together at Boston, where I some years since placed a marble[23] over
their grave with this inscription:
JOSIAH FRANKLIN,
and
ABIAH his wife,
lie here interred.
They lived lovingly together in wedlock
fifty-five years.
Without an estate, or any gainful employment,
By constant labor and industry,
with God's blessing,
They maintained a large family
comfortably,
and brought up thirteen children
and seven grandchildren
reputably.
From this instance, reader,
Be encouraged to diligence in thy calling,
And distrust not Providence.
He was a pious and prudent man;
She, a discreet and virtuous woman.
Their youngest son,
In filial regard to their memory,
Places this stone.
J. F. born 1655, died 1744, ætat[24] 89.
A. F. born 1667, died 1752, ---- 85.
By my rambling digressions I perceive myself to be grown old. I used
to write more methodically. But one does not dress for private company
as for a public ball. 'Tis perhaps only negligence.
To return: I continued thus employed in my father's business for two
years, that is, till I was twelve years old; and my brother John, who
was bred to that business, having left my father, married, and set up
for himself at Rhode Island, there was all appearance that I was
destined to supply his place and become a tallow chandler. But my
dislike to the trade continuing, my father was under apprehensions
that if he did not find one for me more agreeable I should break away
and get to sea, as his son Josiah had done, to his great vexation. He
therefore sometimes took me to walk with him, and see joiners,
bricklayers, turners, brasiers,[25] etc., at their work, that he might
observe my inclination and endeavor to fix it on some trade or other
on land. It has ever since been a pleasure to me to see good workmen
handle their tools; and it has been useful to me, having learned so
much by it as to be able to do little jobs myself in my house when a
workman could not readily be got, and to construct little machines for
my experiments while the intention of making the experiment was fresh
and warm in my mind. My father at last fixed upon the cutler's trade,
and my uncle Benjamin's son, Samuel, who was bred to that business in
London, being about that time established in Boston, I was sent to be
with him some time on liking. But his expectations of a fee with me
displeasing my father, I was taken home again.
From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came
into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the "Pilgrim's
Progress," my first collection was of John Bunyan's works in separate
little volumes. I afterward sold them to enable me to buy R. Burton's
"Historical Collections;" they were small chapmen's[26] books, and
cheap, forty or fifty in all. My father's little library consisted
chiefly of books in polemic divinity, most of which I read, and have
since often regretted that, at a time when I had such a thirst for
knowledge, more proper books had not fallen in my way, since it was
now resolved I should not be a clergyman. "Plutarch's Lives" there
was, in which I read abundantly, and I still think that time spent to
great advantage. There was also a book of Defoe's called an "Essay on
Projects," and another of Dr. Mather's called "Essays to Do Good,"
which perhaps gave me a turn of thinking that had an influence on some
of the principal future events of my life.
This bookish inclination at length determined my father to make me a
printer, though he had already one son (James) of that profession. In
1717 my brother James returned from England with a press and letters
to set up his business in Boston. I liked it much better than that of
my father, but still had a hankering for the sea. To prevent the
apprehended effect of such an inclination, my father was impatient to
have me bound to my brother. I stood out some time, but at last was
persuaded and signed the indentures[27] when I was yet but twelve
years old. I was to serve as an apprentice till I was twenty-one years
of age, only I was to be allowed journeyman's wages during the last
year. In a little time I made great proficiency in the business, and
became a useful hand to my brother. I now had access to better books.
An acquaintance with the apprentices of booksellers enabled me
sometimes to borrow a small one, which I was careful to return soon
and clean. Often I sat up in my room reading the greatest part of the
night, when the book was borrowed in the evening and to be returned
early in the morning, lest it should be missed or wanted.
And after some time an ingenious tradesman, Mr. Matthew Adams, who had
a pretty collection of books, and who frequented our printing house,
took notice of me, invited me to his library, and very kindly lent me
such books as I chose to read. I now took a fancy to poetry, and made
some little pieces; my brother, thinking it might turn to account,
encouraged me, and put me on composing occasional ballads. One was
called "The Lighthouse Tragedy," and contained an account of the
drowning of Captain Worthilake with his two daughters; the other was a
sailor's song on the taking of Teach (or Blackbeard), the pirate. They
were wretched stuff, in the Grub Street[28] ballad style; and when
they were printed he sent me about the town to sell them. The first
sold wonderfully, the event being recent, having made a great noise.
This flattered my vanity; but my father discouraged me by ridiculing
my performances and telling me verse makers were generally beggars. So
I escaped being a poet, most probably a very bad one; but as prose
writing has been of great use to me in the course of my life, and was
a principal means of my advancement, I shall tell you how, in such a
situation, I acquired what little ability I have in that way.
There was another bookish lad in the town, John Collins by name, with
whom I was intimately acquainted. We sometimes disputed, and very fond
we were of argument and very desirous of confuting each other; which
disputatious turn, by the way, is apt to become a very bad habit,[n]
making people often extremely disagreeable in company by the
contradiction that is necessary to bring it into practice; and thence,
besides souring and spoiling the conversation, is productive of
disgusts and perhaps enmities where you may have occasion for
friendship. I had caught it by reading my father's books of dispute
about religion. Persons of good sense, I have since observed, seldom
fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and men of all sorts
that have been bred at Edinburgh.
A question was once, somehow or other, started between Collins and me,
of the propriety of educating the female sex in learning, and their
abilities for study. He was of opinion that it was improper, and that
they were naturally unequal to it. I took the contrary side, perhaps a
little for dispute's sake. He was naturally more eloquent, had a ready
plenty of words, and sometimes, as I thought, bore me down more by his
fluency than by the strength of his reasons. As we parted without
settling the point, and were not to see each other again for some time,
I sat down to put my arguments in writing, which I copied fair and sent
to him. He answered, and I replied. Three or four letters of a side had
passed, when my father happened to find my papers and read them. Without
entering into the discussion, he took occasion to talk to me about the
manner of my writing. He observed that, though I had the advantage of my
antagonist in correct spelling and pointing (which I owed to the
printing house), I fell far short in elegance of expression, in method,
and in perspicuity, of which he convinced me by several instances. I saw
the justice of his remarks, and thence grew more attentive to the manner
in writing, and determined to endeavor at improvement.
About this time I met with an odd volume of the "Spectator."[29] It
was the third. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read
it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the
writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With this
view, I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the
sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without
looking at the book, tried to complete the papers again, by expressing
each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed
before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I
compared my "Spectator" with the original, discovered some of my
faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or
a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should
have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses; since
the continual occasion for words of the same import, but of different
length to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would
have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and
also have tended to fix that variety in my mind and make me master of
it. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them into verse;
and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned
them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into
confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the
best order before I began to form the full sentences and complete the
paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. By
comparing my work afterward with the original, I discovered many
faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying
that in certain particulars of small import I had been lucky enough to
improve the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think I
might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which
I was extremely ambitious. My time for these exercises and for reading
was at night after work, or before it began in the morning, or on
Sundays, when I contrived to be in the printing house alone, evading
as much as I could the common attendance on public worship, which my
father used to exact of me when I was under his care, and which indeed
I still thought a duty, though I could not, as it seemed to me, afford
time to practice it.
When about sixteen years of age I happened to meet with a book,
written by one Tryon, recommending a vegetable diet. I determined to
go into it. My brother, being yet unmarried, did not keep house, but
boarded himself and his apprentices in another family. My refusal to
eat flesh occasioned an inconveniency, and I was frequently chid for
my singularity. I made myself acquainted with Tryon's manner of
preparing some of his dishes, such as boiling potatoes or rice, making
hasty pudding, and a few others, and then proposed to my brother that
if he would give me weekly half the money he paid for my board I would
board myself. He instantly agreed to it, and I presently found that I
could save half what he paid me. This was an additional fund for
buying books. But I had another advantage in it. My brother and the
rest going from the printing house to their meals, I remained there
alone, and, dispatching presently my light repast, which often was no
more than a biscuit or a slice of bread, a handful of raisins, or a
tart from the pastry cook's, and a glass of water, had the rest of the
time till their return for study, in which I made the greater progress
from that greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension which
usually attend temperance in eating and drinking.
And now it was that, being on some occasion made ashamed of my
ignorance in figures, which I had twice failed in learning when at
school, I took Cocker's book of arithmetic, and went through the whole
by myself with great ease. I also read Seller's and Shermy's books of
navigation, and became acquainted with the little geometry they
contain, but never proceeded far in that science. And I read about
this time Locke "On the Human Understanding," and the "Art of
Thinking," by Messrs. du Port Royal.[30]
While I was intent on improving my language, I met with an English
grammar (I think it was Greenwood's), at the end of which there were
two little sketches of the arts of rhetoric and logic, the latter
finishing with a specimen of a dispute in the Socratic method;[31]
and soon after I procured Xenophon's "Memorable Things of Socrates,"
wherein there are many instances of the same method. I was charmed
with it, adopted it, dropped my abrupt contradiction and positive
argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer and doubter. And being
then, from reading Shaftesbury and Collins, become a real doubter in
many points of our religious doctrine, I found this method safest for
myself and very embarrassing to those against whom I used it.
Therefore I took a delight in it, practiced it continually, and grew
very artful and expert in drawing people, even of superior knowledge,
into concessions the consequences of which they did not foresee,
entangling them in difficulties out of which they could not extricate
themselves, and so obtaining victories that neither myself nor my
cause always deserved.
I continued this method some few years, but gradually left it,
retaining only the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest
diffidence; never using, when I advanced anything that may possibly be
disputed, the words "certainly," "undoubtedly," or any others that
give the air of positiveness to an opinion; but rather saying, "I
conceive" or "apprehend" a thing to be so and so; "it appears to me,"
or "I should think it so or so," for such and such reasons; or "I
imagine it to be so;" or "it is so, if I am not mistaken." This habit,
I believe, has been of great advantage to me when I have had occasion
to inculcate my opinions, and persuade men into measures that I have
been from time to time engaged in promoting; and, as the chief ends of
conversation are to inform or to be informed, to please or to
persuade, I wish well-meaning, sensible men would not lessen their
power of doing good by a positive, assuming manner, that seldom fails
to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat every one of
those purposes for which speech was given to us,--to wit, giving or
receiving information or pleasure. For if you would inform, a positive
and dogmatical manner in advancing your sentiments may provoke
contradiction and prevent a candid attention. If you wish information
and improvement from the knowledge of others, and yet at the same time
express yourself as firmly fixed in your present opinions, modest,
sensible men, who do not love disputation, will probably leave you
undisturbed in the possession of your error. And by such a manner you
can seldom hope to recommend yourself in pleasing your hearers, or to
persuade those whose concurrence you desire. Pope says judiciously:
"Men must be taught as if you taught them not,
And things unknown propos'd as things forgot;"
further recommending to us to
"Speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence."
And he might have coupled with this line that which he has coupled
with another, I think, less properly:
"For want of modesty is want of sense."
If you ask why less properly, I must repeat the lines:
"Immodest words admit of no defense,
For want of modesty is want of sense."[32]
Now, is not "want of sense" (where a man is so unfortunate as to want
it) some apology for his "want of modesty?" and would not the lines
stand more justly thus?
"Immodest words admit _but_ this defense,
That want of modesty is want of sense."
This, however, I should submit to better judgments.
My brother had, in 1720 or 1721, begun to print a newspaper. It was the
second that appeared in America, and was called the "New England
Courant."[33] The only one before it was the "Boston News-Letter." I
remember his being dissuaded by some of his friends from the
undertaking, as not likely to succeed, one newspaper being, in their
judgment, enough for America. At this time (1771) there are not less
than five and twenty. He went on, however, with the undertaking, and
after having worked in composing the types and printing off the sheets,
I was employed to carry the papers through the streets to the customers.