ability with his pen and put through a successful journalistic hoax.
He published in _The Public Advertiser_ what was for a time accepted
by many as an authentic edict of the King of Prussia. In this the king
held that the English were German colonists settled in Britain, and
that they should be taxed for the benefit of the Prussian coffers.
What claims were the English making in 1773? By looking through other
lives of Franklin, you may find an account of another literary hoax by
which he helped the American cause.
=86.= Franklin's original determination to secure money with his wife
should be judged by the standards of his time.
=89.= Beginning with the establishment of the Philadelphia public
library, keep a list of Franklin's plans and achievements for the
public good.
=92.= The high honors accorded to Franklin by foreign nations have
never been extended to any other American, with the possible exception
of Theodore Roosevelt.
=101.= "Address Powerful Goodness." Thomas Paine submitted the
manuscript of his _Age of Reason_ to Franklin for criticism. Franklin
advised him to burn it and concluded, "If men are so wicked with
religion, what would they be _without it_?"
A facsimile of Franklin's motion for prayers in the Federal Convention
of 1787, when agreement on the Constitution seemed hopeless, will be
found on page 168 of _The Many-sided Franklin_. The convention, though
much given to acting on Franklin's advice, was all but unanimous in
defeating this motion.
=111.= Franklin's boyhood debate on the subject of the education of
young women is reflected here as a settled conviction.
=113.= The great scholar and historian, Gibbon, agreed with Franklin
concerning the languages.
=115.= "Inoculation." Will you volunteer to make a report to the class
on inoculation and vaccination? The two combine in making one of the
most interesting chapters in the history of medical science.
=117.= You will be interested in comparing the constable's watch of
ragamuffins with the watch in Shakespeare's _Much Ado About Nothing_.
=118.= In many towns and cities there is much of interest connected
with the fire department. "The History of Our Fire Department," "Fire
Fighting," and many other subjects may suggest themselves to you for
written or oral reports. Possibly some one in the class may be able to
tell in this connection how Crassus, the friend of Julius Cæsar,
gained a great part of his wealth.
=119.= Have you read of the work of Whitefield and his associates in
England? See "The Methodist Movement" in Halleck's _History of English
Literature_, or in some good English history.
=132.= Your classmates will be interested in a report on the Franklin
stove. Make some simple drawings to illustrate its principles.
=141.= Find out definitely what system of street cleaning prevails in
your home town. Write a feature article on that system, as if for a
magazine. Some member of the class who has a camera will secure
illustrations for you. Also write an editorial for a newspaper, an
editorial inspired by the disclosures of the feature article.
=175.= Will several of you take up the subject of "Franklin's
Electrical Experiments" and make reports to the class?
=185.= Notice Franklin's alertness in suggesting the application of
scientific methods to practical affairs. Do you think that Emerson's
definition of "genius" as given in the first paragraph of his essay on
"Self-Reliance" can be justly applied to Franklin?
You will be interested in following Franklin's experiments in
determining the value of oil in stilling the waves, and also his
investigations of the Gulf Stream and of the nature of storms. He
asked, "What signifies philosophy that does not apply to some use?"
Yet he had a wonderful imagination back of his practical nature.
Emerson says that the chief use of a book is to inspire. On this basis
how do you rank the _Autobiography_ in usefulness?
ECLECTIC ENGLISH CLASSICS
=Addison's= Sir Roger de Coverley Papers (Underwood)
=Arnold's= Sohrab and Rustum (Tanner)
=Bunyan's= Pilgrim's Progress (Jones and Arnold)
=Burke's= Conciliation with America (Clark)
Speeches at Bristol (Bergin)
=Burns's= Poems--Selections (Venable)
=Byron's= Childe Harold (Canto IV), Prisoner of Chillon, Mazeppa,
and other Selections (Venable)
=Carlyle's= Essay on Burns (Miller)
=Chaucer's= Prologue and Knighte's Tale (Van Dyke)
=Coleridge's= Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Garrigues)
=Cooper's= Pilot (Watrous)
The Spy (Barnes)
=Defoe's= History of the Plague in London (Syle)
Robinson Crusoe (Stephens)
=De Quincey's= Revolt of the Tartars
=Dickens's= Christmas Carol and Cricket on the Hearth (Wannamaker)
Tale of Two Cities (Pearce)
=Dryden's= Palamon and Arcite (Bates)
=Eliot's= Silas Marner (McKitrick)
=Emerson's= American Scholar, Self-Reliance, Compensation
(Smith)
=Franklin's= Autobiography (Reid)
=Goldsmith's= Vicar of Wakefield (Hansen)
Deserted Village (See Gray's Elegy)
=Gray's= Elegy in a Country Churchyard, and =Goldsmith's= Deserted
Village (Van Dyke)
=Hughes's= Tom Brown's School Days (Gosling).
=Irving's= Sketch Book--Selections (St. John)
Tales of a Traveler (Rutland)
=Lincoln's= Addresses and Letters (Moores)
Address at Cooper Union (See =Macaulay's= Speeches on Copyright)
=Macaulay's= Essay on Addison (Matthews)
Essay on Milton (Mead)
Essays on Lord Clive and Warren Hastings
(Holmes)
Lays of Ancient Rome and other Poems (Atkinson)
Life of Johnson (Lucas)
Speeches on Copyright, and Lincoln's Address at Cooper
Union (Pittenger)
=Milton's= L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, Lycidas (Buck)
Paradise Lost. Books I and II (Stephens)
=Old Ballads= (Morton).
=Old Testament Narratives= (Baldwin)
=Poe's= Selected Poems and Tales (Stott)
=Pope's= Homer's Iliad. Books I, VI, XXII, and XXIV
Rape of the Lock and Essay on Man (Van Dyke)
=Ruskin's= Sesame and Lilies (Rounds)
=Scott's= Abbot
Ivanhoe (Schreiber)
Lady of the Lake (Bacon)
Marmion (Coblentz)
Quentin Durward (Norris)
Woodstock
=Shakespeare's= As You Like It (North)
Hamlet (Shower)
Henry V (Law)
Julius Cæsar (Baker)
Macbeth (Livengood)
Merchant of Venice (Blakely)
Midsummer Night's Bream (Haney)
The Tempest (Barley)
Twelfth Night (Weld)
=Southey's= Life of Nelson
=Stevenson's= Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey
(Armstrong)
Treasure Island (Fairley)
=Swift's= Gulliver's Travels (Gaston)
=Tennyson's= Idylls of the King--Selections (Willard)
Princess (Shryock)
=Thackeray's= Henry Esmond (Bissell)
=Washington's= Farewell Address, and =Webster's= First Bunker
Hill Oration (Lewis)
=Webster's= Bunker Hill Orations (See also Washington's
Farewell Address)
=Wordsworth's= Poems--Selections (Venable)
Transcriber's Note
* Obvious punctuation and spelling errors repaired.
* Footnotes moved to the end of the appropriate chapters.
* Text enclosed between equal signs was in bold face in the
original (=bold=).
* Notes [n] are at the end of the book as originally published.
End of Project Gutenberg's Franklin's Autobiography, by Benjamin Franklin