href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@13942@[email protected]#LI" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">CHAPTER LI.

The Voice in Ramah.--"RACHEL WEEPING FOR HER CHILDREN, AND WOULD NOT BE COMFORTED BECAUSE THEY WERE NOT"

CHAPTER LII.

La Fayette.--THE FRIEND AND DEFENDER OF LIBERTY ON TWO CONTINENTS

CHAPTER LIII.

Lydia Sigourney.--THE LESSON OF A USEFUL AND BEAUTIFUL LIFE

CHAPTER LIV.

Old Age and Usefulness.--THE GLORY OF BRAVE MEN AND WOMEN

CHAPTER LV.

Rhymes and Chimes.--SUITABLE FOR AUTOGRAPH ALBUMS

I.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

(BORN 1706--DIED 1790.)

HIS FAME STILL CLIMBING TO HEAVEN--WHAT HE HAD DONE AT FIFTY-TWO--POOR RICHARD'S ADDRESS.

The late Judge Black was remarkable not only for his wit and humor, which often enlivened the dry logic of law and fact, but also for flashes of unique eloquence. In presenting a certain brief before the United States Supreme Court he had occasion to animadvert upon some of our great men. Among other things he said, as related to the writer by one who heard him: "The colossal name of Washington is growing year by year, and the fame of Franklin is still climbing to heaven," accompanying the latter words by such a movement of his right hand that not one of his hearers failed to see the immortal kite quietly bearing the philosopher's question to the clouds. It was a point which delivered the answer. In the life of every great man there is likewise a point which delivers the special message which he was born to publish to the world. Biography is greatly simplified when it confines itself chiefly to that one point. What does the reader, who has his own work to do, care for a great multitude of details which are not needed for the setting of the picture? To the point is the cry of our busy life.

Benjamin Franklin is here introduced to the reader

AT FIFTY-TWO.

What had he done at that age to command more than ordinary respect and admiration?

I. Born in poverty and obscurity, in which he passed his early years; with no advantages of education in the schools of his day, after he entered his teens; under the condition of daily toil for his bread; he had carried on, in spite of all obstacles, the process of self-education through books and observation, and become in literature and science, as well as in the practical affairs of every-day life, the best informed man in America.

II. Apprenticed to a printer in his native Boston, at thirteen; a journeyman in Philadelphia at seventeen; working at the case in London at nineteen; back to the Quaker City, and set up for himself at twenty-six; he had long since mastered all the details of a great business, prepared to put his hand to any thing, from the trundling of paper through the streets on a wheel-barrow to the writing of editorials and pamphlets, and had earned for himself a position as the most prosperous printer and publisher in the colonies.

III. Retired from active business at forty-six, considering that he had already earned and saved enough to supply his reasonable wants for the rest of his life; fired with ambition to do something for the advancement of science; he had now for six years given himself to philosophical investigation and experiment, among other things demonstrated the identity of electricity as produced by artificial means and atmospheric lightning, and made himself a name throughout the civilized world.

IV. Besides, it must not be forgotten that he had all along been foremost in many a work for the public good. The Franklin Library, of Philadelphia, owes to him its origin. The University of Pennsylvania grew out of an educational project in which he was a prime mover. And his ideas as to the relative importance of ancient and modern classics were more than a hundred years in advance of his times.

Such is a glimpse of Franklin at fifty-two, as preliminary to a single episode which will occupy the rest of this chapter. But the episode itself requires a special word.

V. For a quarter of a century Franklin had published an almanac under the pseudonym of Richard Saunders, into the pages of which he crowded year by year choice scraps of wit and wisdom, which made the little hand-book a welcome visitor in almost every home of the New World. Now in the midst of those philosophical studies which so much delighted him, when about to cross the Atlantic as a commissioner to the Home Government, he found time to gather up the maxims and quaint sayings of twenty-five years and set them in a wonderful mosaic, as the preface of Poor Richard's world-famous almanac--as unique a piece of writing as any language affords. Here it is:

POOR RICHARD'S ADDRESS.

Courteous Reader: I have heard that nothing gives an author so great pleasure as to find his works respectfully quoted by others. Judge, then, how much I must have been gratified by an incident I am going to relate to you. I stopped my horse lately where a great company of people were collected at an auction of merchants' goods. The hour of the sale not being come, they were conversing on the badness of the times; and one of the company called to a plain, clean old man, with white locks, "Pray, Father Abraham, what think you of the times? Will not those heavy taxes quite ruin the country? How shall we ever be able to pay them? What would you advise us to do?" Father Abraham stood up and replied, "If you would have my advice, I will give it you in short; 'for a word to the wise is enough,' as Poor Richard says." They joined in desiring him to speak his mind, and gathering around him, he proceeded as follows:--

"Friends," says he, "the taxes are indeed very heavy; and if those laid on by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly; and from these taxes the commissioners can not ease or deliver us by allowing an abatement. However, let us hearken to good advice, and something may be done for us; 'God helps them that help themselves,' as Poor Richard says.

"I. It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one-tenth of their time to be employed in its service, but idleness taxes many of us much more: sloth, by bringing on disease, absolutely shortens life. 'Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears, while the used key is always bright,' as Poor Richard says. 'But dost thou love life, then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of,' as Poor Richard says. How much more than is necessary do we spend in sleep! forgetting that the sleeping fox catches no poultry, and that there will be sleeping enough in the grave,' as Poor Richard says. 'If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be,' as Poor Richard says, 'the greatest prodigality;' since as he elsewhere tell us, 'Lost time is never found again; and