My brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. With
respect to myself, I was sent, at the age of eight years, to a
grammar-school. My father destined me for the church, and already
regarded me as the chaplain of the family. The promptitude with which
from my infancy I had learned to read, for I do not remember to have
been ever without this acquirement, and the encouragement of his
friends, who assured him that I should one day certainly become a man
of letters, confirmed him in this design. My uncle Benjamin approved
also of the scheme, and promised to give me all his volumes of
sermons, written, as I have said, in the short-hand of his invention,
if I would take the pains to learn it.
I remained, however, scarcely a year at the grammar-school, although,
in this short interval, I had risen from the middle to the head of my
class, from thence to the class immediately above, and was to pass,
at the end of the year, to the one next in order. But my father,
burdened with a numerous family, found that he was incapable, without
subjecting himself to difficulties, of providing for the expences
of a collegiate education; and considering besides, as I heard
him say to his friends, that persons so educated were often poorly
provided for, he renounced his first intentions, took me from the
grammar-school, and sent me to a school for writing and arithmetic,
kept by a Mr. George Brownwell, who was a skilful master, and
succeeded very well in his profession by employing gentle means only,
and such as were calculated to encourage his scholars. Under him I
soon acquired an excellent hand; but I failed in arithmetic, and made
therein no sort of progress.
At ten years of age, I was called home to assist my father in his
occupation, which was that of a soap-boiler and tallow-chandler;
a business to which he had served no apprenticeship, but which he
embraced on his arrival in New England, because he found his own,
that of dyer, in too little request to enable him to maintain his
family, I was accordingly employed in cutting the wicks, filling the
moulds, taking care of the shop, carrying messages, &c.
This business displeased me, and I felt a strong inclination for a
sea life; but my father set his face against it. The vicinity of the
water, however, gave me frequent opportunities, of venturing myself
both upon and within it, and I soon acquired the art of swimming, and
of managing a boat. When embarked with other children, the helm was
commonly deputed to me, particularly on difficult occasions; and, in
every other project, I was almost always the leader of the troop,
whom I sometimes involved in embarrassments. I shall give an instance
of this, which demonstrates an early disposition of mind for public
enterprises, though the one in question was not conducted by justice.
The mill-pond was terminated on one side by a marsh, upon the borders
of which we were accustomed to take our stand, at high water, to
angle for small fish. By dint of walking, we had converted the place
into a perfect quagmire. My proposal was to erect a wharf that
should afford us firm footing; and I pointed out to my companions
a large heap of stones, intended for the building a new house near
the marsh, and which were well adapted for our purpose. Accordingly,
when the workmen retired in the evening, I assembled a number of my
play-fellows, and by labouring diligently, like ants, sometimes four
of us uniting our strength to carry a single stone, we removed them
all, and constructed our little quay. The workmen were surprised the
next morning at not finding their stones; which had been conveyed
to our wharf. Enquiries were made respecting the authors of this
conveyance; we were discovered; complaints were exhibited against us;
and many of us underwent correction on the part of our parents; and
though I strenuously defended the utility of the work, my father at
length convinced me, that nothing which was not strictly honest could
be useful.
It will not, perhaps, be uninteresting to you to know what a sort of
man my father was. He had an excellent constitution, was of a middle
size, but well made and strong, and extremely active in whatever he
undertook. He designed with a degree of neatness, and knew a little
of music. His voice was sonorous and agreeable; so that when he sung
a psalm or hymn, with the accompaniment of his violin, as was his
frequent practice in an evening, when the labours of the day were
finished, it was truly delightful to hear him. He was versed also in
mechanics, and could, upon occasion, use the tools of a variety of
trades. But his greatest excellence was a sound understanding and
solid judgment, in matters of prudence, both in public and private
life. In the former, indeed, he never engaged, because his numerous
family, and the mediocrity of his fortune, kept him unremittingly
employed in the duties of his profession. But I well remember,
that the leading men of the place used frequently to come and ask
his advice respecting the affairs of the town, or of the church to
which he belonged, and that they paid much deference to his opinion.
Individuals were also in the habit of consulting him in their private
affairs, and he was often chosen arbiter between contending parties.
He was fond of having at his table, as often as possible,
some friends or well-informed neighbours, capable of rational
conversation, and he was always careful to introduce useful or
ingenious topics of discourse, which might tend to form the minds
of his children. By this means he early attracted our attention
to what was just, prudent, and beneficial in the conduct of life.
He never talked of the meats which appeared upon the table, never
discussed whether they were well or ill dressed, of a good or bad
flavour, high-seasoned or otherwise, preferable or inferior to this
or that dish of a similar kind. Thus accustomed, from my infancy, to
the utmost inattention as to these objects, I have been perfectly
regardless of what kind of food was before me; and I pay so little
attention to it even now, that it would be a hard matter for me
to recollect, a few hours after I had dined, of what my dinner
had consisted. When travelling, I have particularly experienced
the advantage of this habit; for it has often happened to me to
be in company with persons, who, having a more delicate, because
a more exercised taste, have suffered in many cases considerable
inconvenience; while, as to myself, I have had nothing to desire.
My mother was likewise possessed of an excellent constitution. She
suckled all her ten children, and I never heard either her or my
father complain of any other disorder than that of which they died:
my father at the age of eighty-seven, and my mother at eighty-five.
They are buried together at Boston, where, a few years ago, I placed
a marble over their grave, with this inscription:
"Here lie
JOSIAS FRANKLIN and ABIAH his wife: They lived together with reciprocal
affection for fifty-nine years; and without private fortune,
without lucrative employment, by assiduous labour and honest industry,
decently supported a numerous family, and educated with success,
thirteen children, and seven grand children. Let this example, reader,
encourage thee diligently to discharge the duties of thy calling, and to
rely on the support of divine providence,
He was pious and prudent,
She discreet and virtuous.
Their youngest son, from a sentiment of filial duty, consecrates
this stone
to their memory."
I perceive, by my rambling digressions, that I am growing old. But
we do not dress for a private company as for a formal ball. This
deserves, perhaps, the name of negligence.
To return. I thus continued employed in my father's trade for
the space of two years; that is to say, till I arrived at twelve
years of age. About this time my brother John, who had served his
apprenticeship in London, having quitted my father, and being
married and settled in business on his own account at Rhode Island,
I was destined, to all appearance to supply his place, and be
a candle-maker all my life: but my dislike of this occupation
continuing, my father was apprehensive, that, if a more, agreeable
one were not offered me, I might play the truant and escape to
sea; as, to his extreme mortification, my brother Josias had done.
He therefore took me sometimes to see masons, coopers, braziers,
joiners, and other mechanics, employed at their work; in order to
discover the bent of my inclination, and fix it if he could upon
some occupation that might retain me on shore. I have since, in
consequence of these visits, derived no small pleasure from seeing
skilful workmen handle their tools; and it has proved of considerable
benefit to have acquired thereby sufficient knowledge to be able
to make little things for myself, when I have had no mechanic at
hand, and to construct small machines for my experiments, while the
idea I have conceived has been fresh and strongly impressed on my
imagination.
My father at length decided that I should be a cutler, and I was
placed for some days upon trial with my cousin Samuel, son of my
uncle Benjamin, who had learned this trade in London, and had
established himself at Boston. But the premium he required for my
apprenticeship displeasing my father, I was recalled home.
From my earliest years I had been passionately fond of reading, and I
laid out in books all the money I could procure. I was particularly
pleased with accounts of voyages. My first acquisition was Bunyan's
works in small separate volumes. These I afterwards sold in order
to buy an historical collection by R. Burton, which consisted of
small cheap volumes, amounting in all to about forty or fifty. My
father's little library was principally made up of books of practical
and polemical theology. I read the greatest part of them. I have
since often regretted that at a time when I had so great a thirst
for knowledge, more eligible books had not fallen into my hands, as
it was then a point decided that I should not be educated for the
church. There was also among my father's books, Plutarch's Lives,
in which I read continually, and I still regard as advantageously
employed the time devoted to them. I found besides a work of De
Foe's, entitled an Essay on Projects, from which, perhaps, I derived
impressions that have since influenced some of the principal events
of my life.
My inclination for books at last determined my father to make me
a printer, though he had already a son in that profession. My
brother had returned from England in 1717, with a press and types,
in order to establish a printing-house at Boston. This business
pleased me much better than that of my father, though I had still a
predilection for the sea. To prevent the effects which might result
from this inclination, my father was impatient to see me engaged
with my brother. I held back for some time; at length, however, I
suffered myself to be persuaded, and signed my indentures, being then
only twelve years of age. It was agreed that I should serve as an
apprentice to the age of twenty-one, and should receive journeyman's
wages only during the last year.
In a very short time I made great proficiency in this business, and
became very serviceable to my brother. I had now an opportunity of
procuring better books. The acquaintance I necessarily formed with
booksellers' apprentices, enabled me to borrow a volume now and then,
which I never failed to return punctually and without injury. How
often has it happened to me to pass the greater part of the night
in reading by my bed-side, when the book had been lent me in the
evening, and was to be returned the next morning, lest it might be
missed or wanted!
At length, Mr. Matthew Adams, an ingenious tradesman, who had a
handsome collection of books, and who frequented our printing-house,
took notice of me. He invited me to see his library, and had the
goodness to lend me any books I was desirous of reading. I then took
a strange fancy for poetry, and composed several little pieces. My
brother, thinking he might find his account in it, encouraged me, and
engaged me to write two ballads. One, called the Light-house Tragedy,
contained an account of the shipwreck of captain Worthilake and his
two daughters; the other was a sailor's song on the capture of the
noted pirate called _Teach_, or _Blackbeard_. They were wretched
verses in point of style, mere blind-men's ditties. When printed, he
dispatched me about the town to sell them. The first had a prodigious
run, because the event was recent, and had made a great noise.
My vanity was flattered by this success; but my father checked my
exultation, by ridiculing my productions, and telling me that
versifiers were always poor. I thus escaped the misfortune of being
a very wretched poet. But as the faculty of writing prose has been
of great service to me in the course of my life, and principally
contributed to my advancement, I shall relate by what means, situated
as I was, I acquired the small skill I may possess in that way.
There was in the town another young man, a great lover of books,
of the name of John Collins, with whom I was intimately connected.
We frequently engaged in dispute, and were indeed so fond of
argumentation, that nothing was so agreeable to us as a war of words.
This contentious temper, I would observe by the bye, is in danger of
becoming a very bad habit; and frequently renders a man's company
insupportable, as being no otherwise capable of indulgence than by
an indiscriminate contradiction. Independently of the acrimony and
discord it introduces into conversation, it is often productive of
dislike, and even hatred, between persons to whom friendship is
indispensibly necessary. I acquired it by reading, while I lived with
my father, books of religious controversy. I have since remarked,
that men of sense seldom fall into this error: lawyers, fellows of
universities, and persons of every profession educated at Edinburgh,
excepted.
Collins and I fell one day into an argument, relative to the
education of women; namely, whether it was proper to instruct them in
the sciences, and whether they were competent to the study. Collins
supported the negative, and affirmed that the task was beyond their
capacity. I maintained the opposite opinion, a little perhaps for
the pleasure of disputing. He was naturally more eloquent than I;
words flowed copiously from his lips; and frequently I thought
myself vanquished, more by his volubility than by the force of his
arguments. We separated without coming to an agreement upon this
point, and as we were not to see each other again for some time, I
committed my thoughts to paper, made a fair copy, and sent it him.
He answered, and I replied. Three or four letters had been written
by each, when my father chanced to light upon my papers and read
them. Without entering into the merits of the cause, he embraced the
opportunity of speaking to me upon my manner of writing. He observed,
that though I had the advantage of my adversary in correct spelling
and pointing, which I owed to my occupation, I was greatly his
inferior in elegance of expression, in arrangement, and perspicuity.
Of this he convinced me by several examples. I felt the justice of
his remarks, became more attentive to language, and resolved to make
every effort to improve my style.
Amidst these resolves an odd volume of the Spectator fell into my
hands. This was a publication I had never seen. I bought the volume,
and read it again and again. I was enchanted with it, thought the
style excellent, and wished it were in my power to imitate it. With
this view I selected some of the papers, made short summaries of the
sense of each period, and put them for a few days aside. I then,
without looking at the book, endeavoured to restore the essays to
their due form, and to express each thought at length, as it was in
the original, employing the most appropriate words that occurred to
my mind. I afterwards compared my Spectator with the original; I
perceived some faults, which I corrected: but I found that I wanted
a fund of words, if I may so express myself, and a facility of
recollecting and employing them, which I thought I should by that
time have acquired, had I continued to make verses. The continual
need of words of the same meaning, but of different lengths for the
measure, or of different sounds for the rhyme, would have obliged me
to seek for a variety of synonymes, and have rendered me master of
them. From this belief, I took some of the tales of the Spectator and
turned them into verse; and after a time, when I had sufficiently
forgotten them, I again converted them into prose.
Sometimes also I mingled all my summaries together; and a few weeks
after, endeavoured to arrange them in the best order, before I
attempted to form the periods and complete the essays. This I did
with a view of acquiring method in the arrangement of my thoughts.
On comparing afterwards my performance with the original, many
faults were apparent, which I corrected; but I had sometimes the
satisfaction to think, that, in certain particulars of little
importance, I had been fortunate enough to improve the order of
thought or the style; and this encouraged me to hope that I should
succeed, in time, in writing decently in the English language, which
was one of the great objects of my ambition.
The time which I devoted to these exercises, and to reading, was
the evening after my day's labour was finished, the morning before
it began, and Sundays when I could escape attending divine service.
While I lived with my father, he had insisted on my punctual
attendance on public worship, and I still indeed considered it as a
duty, but a duty which I thought I had no time to practise.
When about sixteen years of age, a work of Tyron's fell into my
hands, in which he recommends vegetable diet. I determined to observe
it. My brother being a bachelor, did not keep house, but boarded
with his apprentices in a neighbouring family. My refusing to eat
animal food was found inconvenient, and I was often scolded for my
singularity. I attended to the mode in which Tryon prepared some of
his dishes, particularly how to boil potatoes and rice, and make
hasty puddings. I then said to my brother, that if he would allow
me per week half what he paid for my board, I would undertake to
maintain myself. The offer was instantly embraced, and I soon found
that of what he gave me, I was able to save half. This was a new fund
for the purchase of books; and other advantages resulted to me from
the plan. When my brother and his workmen left the printing-house
to go to dinner, I remained behind; and dispatching my frugal meal,
which frequently consisted of a biscuit only, or a slice of bread and
a bunch of raisins, or a bun from the pastry-cook's, with a glass of
water, I had the rest of the time, till their return, for study; and
my progress therein was proportioned to that clearness of ideas, and
quickness of conception, which are the fruit of temperance in eating
and drinking.
It was about this period, that having one day been put to the blush
for my ignorance in the art of calculation, which I had twice failed
to learn while at school, I took Cocker's Treatise of Arithmetic, and
went through it by myself with the utmost ease. I also read a book of
navigation by Seller and Sturmy, and made myself master of the little
geometry it contains, but I never proceeded far in this science.
Nearly at the same time I read Locke on the Human Understanding, and
the Art of Thinking, by Messrs. du Port Royal.
While labouring to form and improve my style, I met with an English
Grammar, which I believe was Greenwood's, having at the end of it
two little essays on rhetoric and logic. In the latter I found a
model of disputation, after the manner of Socrates. Shortly after I
procured Xenophon's work, entitled Memorable Things of Socrates, in
which are various examples of the same method. Charmed to a degree of
enthusiasm with this mode of disputing, I adopted it, and renouncing
blunt contradiction, and direct and positive argument, I assumed
the character of an humble questioner. The perusal of Shaftsbury
and Collins had made me a sceptic; and being previously so as to
many doctrines of Christianity, I found Socrates's method to be
both safest for myself, as well as the most embarrassing to those
against whom I employed it. It soon afforded me singular pleasure; I
incessantly practised it; and became very adroit in obtaining, even
from persons of superior understanding, concessions of which they did
not foresee the consequence. Thus I involved them in difficulties
from which they were unable to extricate themselves, and sometimes
obtained victories, which neither my cause nor my arguments merited.
This method I continued to employ for some years; but I afterwards
abandoned it by degrees, retaining only the habit of expressing
myself with modest diffidence, and never making use, when I
advanced any proposition which might be controverted, of the words
_certainly_, _undoubtedly_, or any others that might give the
appearance of being obstinately attached to my opinion. I rather
said, I imagine, I suppose, or it appears to me, that such a thing
is so or so, for such and such reasons; or it is so, if I am not
mistaken. This habit has, I think, been of considerable advantage
to me, when I have had occasion to impress my opinion on the minds
of others, and persuade them to the adoption of the measures I have
suggested. And since the chief ends of conversation are, to inform or
be informed, to please or to persuade, I could wish that intelligent
or well-meaning men would not themselves diminish the power they
possess of being useful, by a positive and presumptuous manner of
expressing themselves, which scarcely ever fails to disgust the
hearer, and is only calculated to excite opposition, and defeat every
purpose for which the faculty of speech has been bestowed on man. In
short, if you wish to inform, a positive and dogmatical manner of
advancing your opinion may provoke contradiction, and prevent your
being heard with attention. On the other hand, if, with a desire of
being informed, and of benefiting by the knowledge of others, you
express yourselves as being strongly attached to your own opinions,
modest and sensible men, who do not love disputation, will leave you
in tranquil possession of your errors. By following such a method,
you can rarely hope to please your auditors, conciliate their
good-will, or work conviction on those whom you may be desirous of
gaining over to your views. Pope judiciously observes,
Men must be taught, as if you taught them not,
And things unknown propos'd--as things forgot.