main of letters, for he has produced two works which of their kind have not yet been surpassed. One is "Father Abraham's Speech to the People at the Auction". The other is "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin". "

II

His early history was of the humblest. He came of ancestors respectable but in no way distinguished. His father was a tallowchandler. His only schooling was between the ages of eight and ten. The books he found at home were mostly theological discussions. Yet he showed such an avidity for reading that his father apprenticed him to his brother as a printer, and throughout his life he was above all things a student, not only of books but of things. He learned to speak French after he was seventy years old. Apart from his well-known discoveries in electricity, and his invention of the ventilating stove, he devised for himself the spectacles now so generally used, with two kinds of glass for each eye, objects, that

that above for distant

below for reading. He investigated the

Gulf Stream. He pointed out that the fresh water of many rivers, like the Delaware for example, never reaches the ocean. He examined into the causes of the saltness of the sea, and of the phosphorescence of sea-water; collected information about storms; advocated silk culture; introduced plaster-of-paris as a fertilizer; wrote on light and heat, magnetism, rainfall, evaporation, and the Aurora Borealis. He advised the use by farmers of horned cattle instead of horses; introduced the basketwillow; could play on the harp, the guitar, and the violin, and had fundamental theories about music; made curious investigations as to the navigation of ships, with carefully drawn pictures; and wrote an essay on the peopling of countries supposed to have supplied Malthus with the foundation of his famous theory. Though he never used a gun even for amusement he was made colonel of a militia regiment, and proved a most efficient officer. He was one of the commission that gave its death-wound to Mesmer's" compound of folly and fraud 10." It has been well said:

Practical Good Sense

15

"Goethe had something of that Ben Franklin quality in him, which one recognizes also in Shakspere. In such natures the imagination seems to spire up like Gothic cathedral over a prodigiously solid crypt of common sense, so that its likeness stands secure on the consciousness of an immovable basis, and is logically done up with it. The heavy understanding is the foundation of great characters, it seems to me. It is like prudence,-a beggarly quality in itself, but without it all other finer ones are good for little."

III

As an apprentice he did not live happily in his brother's printing office, and after awhile he ran away, and apprenticed himself in Philadelphia. Here he attracted the notice of Governor Keith, an unprincipled man of profuse promises that he never kept, who persuaded young Franklin to go to London to buy material for a printing-office at the governor's expense. He had been told that he would find letters of introduction and credit from the governor on board, but when he reached London there was

nothing of the sort, and he was friendless and penniless. He soon got work there, however, and remained until persuaded by a Mr. Denman to return to Philadelphia to take a place in a shop there. The death of the proprietor made Franklin once more a printer, and after a time he obtained a shop of his own, and was so successful that at the age of 42 he was able to sell his business for 18,000 pounds, then an enormous sum, and to retire to devote himself to scientific research. When he died his estate was valued at $150,000.

IV

His money had not been made through his printing business alone. Besides the general stationary shop which he carried on in connection with it, in 1729 he began the issue of a newspaper called the Pennsylvania Gazette. He had had some experience with his brother in Boston, in the publication of the New England Courant, so that he began the Gazette with some practice in writing, and some knowledge of what was demanded. This greatly increased his reputation and his fortune.

"Poor Richard's Almanac"

17

But a much a more notable success was the publication of "Poor Richard's Almanac", which began in October, 1732. It was a time when the almanac was almost a necessity in every household, and this was so much superior to its contemporaries that its sale was for that time immense, reaching 10,000 copies, or one for every 100 inhabitants of the land. The two features that gave it popularity were the personality of Poor Richard himself, who was as real ́a character of fiction as Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley; and the pithy sayings, which passed into the daily speech of the people, were quoted in sermons, were printed on the title-pages of pamphlets, and used as mottoes by the newspapers, and continued even down to the revolution to be used with avidity.

V

The most important of these sayings were gathered in 1758 into a single article representing the speech of Father Abraham at an auction, and this address had a sale then unprecedented. The newspapers published it again and again; Franklin himself sent