BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Of all the great historic men of America Benjamin Franklin was doubtless the greatest specific American. Washington has been said to have much of the English gentleman; Jefferson of the French philosopher—but Franklin in all his ways of thinking and doing was the genuine characteristic product of the New World. He was the universal Yankee in ideal development; the very apostle of restless, inquiring, independent, courageous, prolific, versatile and genial common-sense; the self-made man in the greatest proportions—self-made in business, in morals, religion, science and statesmanship. His has been one of the useful lives in history in two respects: he not only did many things that were highly beneficial to his generation, but no human being, high or low, learned or ignorant, old or young, rich or poor, can study that life without drawing some valuable lesson from it, not only general, but specific. Few men, if any, have ever more effectually taught by precept and example the true science of life; that is, the science of virtue, of usefulness and of enjoyment. And among the great men of history there is scarcely one who, of the successes he achieved, owed more to himself and less to the favor of circumstances. He was born in Boston in 1706. His father was a soap boiler and tallow chandler, respectable, but rich only in the number of his children, of whom there were seventeen. Little Ben got very scanty schooling, was apprenticed to his brother as a printer, sold ballads on the streets composed by himself, wrote newspaper essays anonymously, quarreled with his brother and ran off to Philadelphia to seek his fortune when seventeen years old. At an early age he had become a voracious reader, one of those knights of the nocturnal tallow dip who surreptitiously wrest knowledge from poverty and hard work, to astonish the world in later life. He made his entry into Philadelphia, a shabby-looking lad with two large rolls of bread under his arm, and munching a third,—the young girl who was destined to become his wife standing in a doorway and smiling at the doleful apparition. He soon found employment as a journeyman printer. He was an uncommonly bright young man, but not at all a perfect one. On the contrary, there was a decided streak of badness in him. And here is one of the most striking peculiarities of his career: a struggle of a strong intellect with strong passions and faults, the intellect winning the battle by systematic effort. At first his principles, or what he called so, hung rather loosely about him. As a boy he had adopted vegetarianism, sincerely believing in it. He got rid of it in this way: a few months after his arrival in Philadelphia he had occasion to go to Boston for the purpose of seeing his father. On his way back the sloop on which he travelled was becalmed off Block Island and the seamen caught some cod.