Albert Bushnell Hart

“ If I knew a miser, who gave up every kind of comfortable living, all the pleasure of doing good to others, all the esteem of his fellow citizens, and the joys of benevolent friendship, for the sake of accumulating wealth, Poor man, said I, you pay too much for your whistle.
When I met with a man of pleasure, sacrificing every laudable improvement of the mind or of his fortune to mere corporeal sensations, and ruining his health in their pursuit, Mistaken man, said I, you are providing pain for yourself instead of pleasure; you give too much for your whistle. ”

“ Public business and long years of diplomatic service interrupted the original study of science to a great extent; but even so, in England, in France, and in the closing years of his life in Philadelphia, Franklin found time, now and then, to devote to that loving investigation of Nature, which, after his thirtieth year, became the great passion of his life. ”

“ Moreover, while witnessing these national events, and sharing actively in them, Franklin had time to look into the everyday affairs of men, to find solutions for many problems of the work-a-day world, to suggest and plan improved methods of doing things, to invent useful devices—and, with his printing establishment as a means of public expression, to give utterance to a system of practical philosophy that was a benefit and blessing to his fellow men. Franklin was the peerless Practical Man, and his writings contain the Complete Gospel of Common Sense. ”

“ Benjamin was a human kind of boy, eager to run away to sea; went to the kind of school kept by a school-master only two years of his life; educated himself on a mixed diet of John Bunyan, “Plutarch’s Lives” and the “Spectator”; became a kind of printer’s devil to his brother James; and early got into trouble through incautious writing for the newspapers. At seventeen the graceless youth ran away from home. Yet he came back four times to visit Boston, and toward the end of his life wrote, “I long much to see again my native place and to lay my bones there—my best wishes attend my dear country.” ”

“ He took himself in hand at an early age, and with only two years schooling, educated himself so that he became a man of science, a man of letters, a philosopher, a statesman and a diplomat, and acquired a fortune besides. And not only was he all of these things, more than creditably, but he took rank among the greatest minds of the highly educated and scientific Eighteenth Century. This was a period of original investigation: much “new thought” of all kinds was coming into the world, and Franklin’s mind was exactly the type of mind that was characteristic of this age—particularly in France. ”

“ No matter what essay, what letter, what political pamphlet, or what year of “Poor Richard” we may pick up, we are always held by Franklin’s magic personality. His “Autobiography” is considered one of the greatest works of its kind ever written. ”

“ Intellectual, practical, industrious, capable and genial, combining so many qualities in one mind and with a vast amount of public work achieved, Franklin remains a puzzle, for he seems to have had abundant time to enjoy those social talents which amounted to genius. ”

“ Many Englishmen found their way to the American Colonies and made reputations there. Franklin was one of the few Americans that became renowned in England. For years he stood for the thought that Englishmen in Great Britain and the Colonies were alike citizens of a common Anglo-Saxon empire, which might look forward to a glorious future. He even ventured to assert that “the foundations of the future grandeur and stability of the British empire lie in America.”
The English government bestowed upon him the important post of deputy-postmaster-general for the Colonies. ”

“ These extraordinary activities, including those of a politician, diplomat, philanthropist, civic reformer, philosopher, scientist, printer, and author, covered a period of sixty years. And in between all these separate careers, as we might call them, we find stray hours filled with delightful pursuits and such pleasant diversions as studies in the realm of music, improving the musical glasses, and buying Bow, Worcester, and Chelsea china of the newest fashion. Moreover, Franklin always found time to write beautifully and to enjoy social pleasures. ”

“ His life in Paris was the happiest of his whole career. He was very social, and he therefore enjoyed the Parisian garden parties and dinners, the attractive women, and the literary, scientific and philosophical men. He left France with reluctance, saying he could never forget the years of happiness that he had spent “in the sweet society of a people whose conversation is instructive, whose manners are highly pleasing, and who, above all the nations in the world, have, in the greatest perfection, the art of making themselves beloved by strangers.”
Franklin had a great talent for making friends ”

“ But his discovery of the nature of lightning was so striking and so capable of arousing the wonder of the masses of mankind and his invention of the lightning rod was regarded as so valuable that he has received more popular applause than men whose achievements were greater and more important. ”

“ Besides his newspaper and almanac printing, Franklin printed books. He brought out the first novel ever published in America—Richardson’s “Pamela” (1744) . Franklin’s tremendous industry and his general thrift made him successful enough to retire at the age of forty-two. Then came a brief interval, before his political career began in earnest, during which he lived “more like a man of taste and a scholar accustomed to cultured surroundings than a self-made man who had battled for years with the material world.” ”

“ Besides his reputation as the greatest American writer of his time, and the most renowned scientific man, he gained and deserved the repute of being a main supporting pillar of the new United States of America. ”

“ Franklin prepared himself unconsciously for political life even in his boyhood, when he wrote articles for his brother’s newspaper attacking the established religious and political system of Massachusetts. In the paper that he established when he was but twenty-three—the Pennsylvania Gazette—he handled the questions of the day in masterly fashion. About this time he published a pamphlet in favor of paper money, which shows how early his mind was directed towards large questions concerning the government. When he joined the Pennsylvania Assembly, he became a leader of the Quaker majority ”

“ When the question of the Stamp Act arose in 1766, Franklin appeared before the House of Commons to protest, and in his examination occurred the famous passage:
“Question—‘Can anything less than a military force carry the Stamp Act into execution?’
“Answer—‘I do not see how a military force could be applied to that purpose.’
“Question—‘Why may it not?’
“Answer—‘Suppose a military force be sent into America, they will find nobody in arms; what are they then to do? ”

“ When the storm broke in 1775, Franklin needed to make no choice. An American through and through, he never thought of anything but casting his lot with that of his countrymen; and on March 21, 1775, he left England, and became an original Son of the American Revolution. ”

“ In a time when most Americans passed their lives within the borders of their own colony, Franklin was a citizen of two colonies, and an official of four. He honored Massachusetts by being born in Boston in 1706, the son of an emigrant, like millions after him—his father being of English birth. ”

“ At seventy-nine years of age most men expect retirement, and it was very grateful to Franklin that, on his return to America in 1785, he should almost immediately be chosen by Pennsylvania to be the president of the commonwealth. ”

“ When the thunder-clouds passed over the kite, the pointed wire drew the electric fire from them, and down the string to the key, from which electric fire was obtained. This experiment was made in 1752; and the news, as contained in Franklin’s simple letter to Mr. Collinson, spread over the world, and with various theatrical embellishments in the telling.
“Franklin,” writes one of his biographers, “cannot be ranked among the great men of science, the Newtons, the Keplers, or the Humboldts, Huxleys or Darwins. He belongs, rather, in the second class, among the minor discoverers. ”

“ Franklin began at once to experiment with this tube, and people came in crowds to see his performances. Thomas Hopkinson and Philip Syng, who experimented with him, discovered electrical fire, and invented an electrical machine for producing the electrical spark. Franklin discovered what is now known as “positive” and “negative” electricity. He also attempted to explain, in his letters to Collinson, thunder and lightning as phenomena of electricity; and, in 1759, sent him a paper announcing his invention of the lightning-rod, and an explanation of its purpose and action. ”

“ While the mornings are long and you have leisure to go abroad, what do you do? Why, instead of gaining an appetite for breakfast by salutary exercise, you amuse yourself with books, pamphlets, or newspapers, which commonly are not worth the reading. ”

“ MRS. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Born Deborah Reed. From a portrait painted by Matthew Pratt, and now owned by the Rev. F. B. Hodge, Wilkesbarre, Pa.
In 1732, he began the most popular and the most effective of all his publications—Poor Richard’s Almanac, an annual which sold the incredible number of ten thousand a year, and which applied the sagacity and humor of the writer to setting forth a standard of morals, which, however utilitarian and self-seeking, had a powerful influence upon a crude and growing people. ”

“ During this period of activity Franklin lived in Craven Street, London, pursued his scientific studies, was appointed on committees to put lightning-rods on St. Paul’s Cathedral and the government’s powder magazines, attended meetings of various scientific and learned societies and clubs of which he was a member, was entertained by the nobility, and knew everybody of distinction in the political, scientific, artistic, and literary worlds. ”

“ He also suggested an experiment that would prove that lightning was a form of electricity; and to show that lightning was attracted by points he proposed that a man should stand on a tall steeple, or tower, with a pointed rod and draw electricity from the thunder-clouds. The experiment was tried in France and England, and Franklin was proclaimed the discoverer of the identity of lightning with electricity. Some of the scientists used a tall metal rod. Franklin now thought of the kite experiment, because there were no steeples in Philadelphia tall enough. ”

“ Franklin took an honorable part in the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention of 1776, and to him was due the fine phrase in the Pennsylvania Bill of Rights, “That all men have a natural and inalienable right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences and understanding.”
HEAD OF FRANKLIN
Nineteenth-century, French tortoise-shell snuff-box. Metropolitan Museum of Art
Franklin as a Diplomat
Benjamin Franklin was now seventy years old, and said of himself to a fellow member of Congress, “I am old and good for nothing ”

“ In 1755, his school developed into a college which subsequently became the University of Pennsylvania. No man in America had such solid and thorough-going views as to the value of education.
FRANKLIN GIVING PART OF HIS BREAD TO A POOR WOMAN
Philadelphia, 1723
As has been the case with many journalists, his calling speedily brought him into political relations, for he was chosen to be the official printer of the Colonial legislature ”