Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

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[4] In this connection Woodrow Wilson says, "And yet the
surprising and delightful thing about this book (the
_Autobiography_) is that, take it all in all, it has not
the low tone of conceit, but is a staunch man's sober
and unaffected assessment of himself and the
circumstances of his career."

Gibbon and Hume, the great British historians, who were
contemporaries of Franklin, express in their
autobiographies the same feeling about the propriety of
just self-praise.

And now I speak of thanking God, I desire with all humility to
acknowledge that I owe the mentioned happiness of my past life to His
kind providence, which lead me to the means I used and gave them
success. My belief of this induces me to _hope_, though I must not
_presume_, that the same goodness will still be exercised toward me,
in continuing that happiness, or enabling me to bear a fatal reverse,
which I may experience as others have done; the complexion of my
future fortune being known to Him only in whose power it is to bless
to us even our afflictions.

The notes one of my uncles (who had the same kind of curiosity in
collecting family anecdotes) once put into my hands, furnished me with
several particulars relating to our ancestors. From these notes I
learned that the family had lived in the same village, Ecton, in
Northamptonshire,[5] for three hundred years, and how much longer he
knew not (perhaps from the time when the name of Franklin, that before
was the name of an order of people,[6] was assumed by them as a
surname when others took surnames all over the kingdom), on a freehold
of about thirty acres, aided by the smith's business, which had
continued in the family till his time, the eldest son being always
bred to that business; a custom which he and my father followed as to
their eldest sons. When I searched the registers at Ecton, I found an
account of their births, marriages and burials from the year 1555
only, there being no registers kept in that parish at any time
preceding. By that register I perceived that I was the youngest son of
the youngest son for five generations back. My grandfather Thomas, who
was born in 1598, lived at Ecton till he grew too old to follow
business longer, when he went to live with his son John, a dyer at
Banbury, in Oxfordshire, with whom my father served an apprenticeship.
There my grandfather died and lies buried. We saw his gravestone in
1758. His eldest son Thomas lived in the house at Ecton, and left it
with the land to his only child, a daughter, who, with her husband,
one Fisher, of Wellingborough, sold it to Mr. Isted, now lord of the
manor there. My grandfather had four sons that grew up, viz.: Thomas,
John, Benjamin and Josiah. I will give you what account I can of them
at this distance from my papers, and if these are not lost in my
absence, you will among them find many more particulars.

[5] See _Introduction_.

[6] A small landowner.

Thomas was bred a smith under his father; but, being ingenious, and
encouraged in learning (as all my brothers were) by an Esquire Palmer,
then the principal gentleman in that parish, he qualified himself for
the business of scrivener; became a considerable man in the county;
was a chief mover of all public-spirited undertakings for the county
or town of Northampton, and his own village, of which many instances
were related of him; and much taken notice of and patronized by the
then Lord Halifax. He died in 1702, January 6, old style,[7] just four
years to a day before I was born. The account we received of his life
and character from some old people at Ecton, I remember, struck you as
something extraordinary, from its similarity to what you knew of mine.
"Had he died on the same day," you said, "one might have supposed a
transmigration."

[7] January 17, new style. This change in the calendar
was made in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII, and adopted in
England in 1752. Every year whose number in the common
reckoning since Christ is not divisible by 4, as well as
every year whose number is divisible by 100 but not by
400, shall have 365 days, and all other years shall have
366 days. In the eighteenth century there was a
difference of eleven days between the old and the new
style of reckoning, which the English Parliament
canceled by making the 3rd of September, 1752, the 14th.
The Julian calendar, or "old style," is still retained
in Russia and Greece, whose dates consequently are now
13 days behind those of other Christian countries.

John was bred a dyer, I believe of woollens, Benjamin was bred a silk
dyer, serving an apprenticeship at London. He was an ingenious man. I
remember him well, for when I was a boy he came over to my father in
Boston, and lived in the house with us some years. He lived to a
great age. His grandson, Samuel Franklin, now lives in Boston. He left
behind him two quarto volumes, MS., of his own poetry, consisting of
little occasional pieces addressed to his friends and relations, of
which the following, sent to me, is a specimen.[8] He had formed a
short-hand of his own, which he taught me, but, never practising it, I
have now forgot it. I was named after this uncle, there being a
particular affection between him and my father. He was very pious, a
great attender of sermons of the best preachers, which he took down in
his short-hand, and had with him many volumes of them. He was also
much of a politician; too much, perhaps, for his station. There fell
lately into my hands, in London, a collection he had made of all the
principal pamphlets relating to public affairs, from 1641 to 1717;
many of the volumes are wanting as appears by the numbering, but
there still remain eight volumes in folio, and twenty-four in quarto
and in octavo. A dealer in old books met with them, and knowing me by
my sometimes buying of him, he brought them to me. It seems my uncle
must have left them here when he went to America, which was about
fifty years since. There are many of his notes in the margins.

[8] The specimen is not in the manuscript of the
_Autobiography_.

This obscure family of ours was early in the Reformation, and
continued Protestants through the reign of Queen Mary, when they were
sometimes in danger of trouble on account of their zeal against
popery. They had got an English Bible, and to conceal and secure it,
it was fastened open with tapes under and within the cover of a
joint-stool. When my great-great-grandfather read it to his family, he
turned up the joint-stool upon his knees, turning over the leaves then
under the tapes. One of the children stood at the door to give notice
if he saw the apparitor coming, who was an officer of the spiritual
court. In that case the stool was turned down again upon its feet,
when the Bible remained concealed under it as before. This anecdote I
had from my uncle Benjamin. The family continued all of the Church of
England till about the end of Charles the Second's reign, when some of
the ministers that had been outed for non-conformity, holding
conventicles[9] in Northamptonshire, Benjamin and Josiah adhered to
them, and so continued all their lives: the rest of the family
remained with the Episcopal Church.

[9] Secret gatherings of dissenters from the established
Church.

[Illustration: Birthplace of Franklin. Milk Street, Boston.]

Josiah, my father, married young, and carried his wife with three
children into New England, about 1682. The conventicles having been
forbidden by law, and frequently disturbed, induced some considerable
men of his acquaintance to remove to that country, and he was
prevailed with to accompany them thither, where they expected to enjoy
their mode of religion with freedom. By the same wife he had four
children more born there, and by a second wife ten more, in all
seventeen; of which I remember thirteen sitting at one time at his
table, who all grew up to be men and women, and married; I was the
youngest son, and the youngest child but two, and was born in Boston,
New England.[10] My mother, the second wife, was Abiah Folger,
daughter of Peter Folger, one of the first settlers of New England, of
whom honorable mention is made by Cotton Mather,[11] in his church
history of that country, entitled _Magnalia Christi Americana_, as "_a
godly, learned Englishman_," if I remember the words rightly. I have
heard that he wrote sundry small occasional pieces, but only one of
them was printed, which I saw now many years since. It was written in
1675, in the home-spun verse of that time and people, and addressed to
those then concerned in the government there. It was in favour of
liberty of conscience, and in behalf of the Baptists, Quakers, and
other sectaries that had been under persecution, ascribing the Indian
wars, and other distresses that had befallen the country, to that
persecution, as so many judgments of God to punish so heinous an
offense, and exhorting a repeal of those uncharitable laws. The whole
appeared to me as written with a good deal of decent plainness and
manly freedom. The six concluding lines I remember, though I have
forgotten the two first of the stanza; but the purport of them was,
that his censures proceeded from good-will, and, therefore, he would
be known to be the author.

"Because to be a libeller (says he)
I hate it with my heart;
From Sherburne town,[12] where now I dwell
My name I do put here;
Without offense your real friend,
It is Peter Folgier."

[10] Franklin was born on Sunday, January 6, old style,
1706, in a house on Milk Street, opposite the Old South
Meeting House, where he was baptized on the day of his
birth, during a snowstorm. The house where he was born
was burned in 1810.--Griffin.

[11] Cotton Mather (1663-1728), clergyman, author, and
scholar. Pastor of the North Church, Boston. He took an
active part in the persecution of witchcraft.

[12] Nantucket.

My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was
put to the grammar-school at eight years of age, my father intending
to devote me, as the tithe[13] of his sons, to the service of the
Church. My early readiness in learning to read (which must have been
very early, as I do not remember when I could not read), and the
opinion of all his friends, that I should certainly make a good
scholar, encouraged him in this purpose of his. My uncle Benjamin,
too, approved of it, and proposed to give me all his short-hand
volumes of sermons, I suppose as a stock to set up with, if I would
learn his character.[14] I continued, however, at the grammar-school
not quite one year, though in that time I had risen gradually from the
middle of the class of that year to be the head of it, and farther was
removed into the next class above it, in order to go with that into
the third at the end of the year. But my father, in the meantime, from
a view of the expense of a college education, which having so large a
family he could not well afford, and the mean living many so educated
were afterwards able to obtain--reasons that he gave to his friends in
my hearing--altered his first intention, took me from the
grammar-school, and sent me to a school for writing and arithmetic,
kept by a then famous man, Mr. George Brownell, very successful in
his profession generally, and that by mild, encouraging methods. Under
him I acquired fair writing pretty soon, but I failed in the
arithmetic, and made no progress in it. At ten years old I was taken
home to assist my father in his business, which was that of a
tallow-chandler and sope-boiler; a business he was not bred to, but
had assumed on his arrival in New England, and on finding his dyeing
trade would not maintain his family, being in little request.
Accordingly, I was employed in cutting wick for the candles, filling
the dipping mould and the moulds for cast candles, attending the shop,
going of errands, etc.

[13] Tenth.

[14] System of short-hand.

I disliked the trade, and had a strong inclination for the sea, but my
father declared against it; however, living near the water, I was much
in and about it, learnt early to swim well, and to manage boats; and
when in a boat or canoe with other boys, I was commonly allowed to
govern, especially in any case of difficulty; and upon other occasions
I was generally a leader among the boys, and sometimes led them into
scrapes, of which I will mention one instance, as it shows an early
projecting public spirit, tho' not then justly conducted.

There was a salt-marsh that bounded part of the mill-pond, on the edge
of which, at high water, we used to stand to fish for minnows. By much
trampling, we had made it a mere quagmire. My proposal was to build a
wharf there fit for us to stand upon, and I showed my comrades a large
heap of stones, which were intended for a new house near the marsh,
and which would very well suit our purpose. Accordingly, in the
evening, when the workmen were gone, I assembled a number of my
playfellows, and working with them diligently like so many emmets,
sometimes two or three to a stone, we brought them all away and built
our little wharf. The next morning the workmen were surprised at
missing the stones, which were found in our wharf. Inquiry was made
after the removers; we were discovered and complained of; several of
us were corrected by our fathers; and, though I pleaded the usefulness
of the work, mine convinced me that nothing was useful which was not
honest.

I think you may like to know something of his person and character. He
had an excellent constitution of body, was of middle stature, but well
set, and very strong; he was ingenious, could draw prettily, was
skilled a little in music, and had a clear, pleasing voice, so that
when he played psalm tunes on his violin and sung withal, as he
sometimes did in an evening after the business of the day was over, it
was extremely agreeable to hear. He had a mechanical genius too, and,
on occasion, was very handy in the use of other tradesmen's tools; but
his great excellence lay in a sound understanding and solid judgment
in prudential matters, both in private and publick affairs. In the
latter, indeed, he was never employed, the numerous family he had to
educate and the straitness of his circumstances keeping him close to
his trade; but I remember well his being frequently visited by leading
people, who consulted him for his opinion in affairs of the town or of
the church he belonged to, and showed a good deal of respect for his
judgment and advice: he was also much consulted by private persons
about their affairs when any difficulty occurred, and frequently
chosen an arbitrator between contending parties. At his table he liked
to have, as often as he could, some sensible friend or neighbor to
converse with, and always took care to start some ingenious or useful
topic for discourse, which might tend to improve the minds of his
children. By this means he turned our attention to what was good,
just, and prudent in the conduct of life; and little or no notice was
ever taken of what related to the victuals on the table, whether it
was well or ill dressed, in or out of season, of good or bad flavor,
preferable or inferior to this or that other thing of the kind, so
that I was bro't up in such a perfect inattention to those matters as
to be quite indifferent what kind of food was set before me, and so
unobservant of it, that to this day if I am asked I can scarce tell a
few hours after dinner what I dined upon. This has been a convenience
to me in traveling, where my companions have been sometimes very
unhappy for want of a suitable gratification of their more delicate,
because better instructed, tastes and appetites.

My mother had likewise an excellent constitution: she suckled all her
ten children. I never knew either my father or mother to have any
sickness but that of which they dy'd, he at 89, and she at 85 years of
age. They lie buried together at Boston, where I some years since
placed a marble over their grave,[15] with this inscription:

Josiah Franklin,
and
Abiah his wife,
lie here interred.
They lived lovingly together in wedlock
fifty-five years.
Without an estate, or any gainful employment,
By constant labor and industry,
with God's blessing,
They maintained a large family
comfortably,
and brought up thirteen children
and seven grandchildren
reputably.
From this instance, reader,
Be encouraged to diligence in thy calling,
And distrust not Providence.
He was a pious and prudent man;
She, a discreet and virtuous woman.
Their youngest son,
In filial regard to their memory,
Places this stone.
J. F. born 1655, died 1744, AEtat 89.
A. F. born 1667, died 1752,----85.

[15] This marble having decayed, the citizens of Boston
in 1827 erected in its place a granite obelisk,
twenty-one feet high, bearing the original inscription
quoted in the text and another explaining the erection
of the monument.

By my rambling digressions I perceive myself to be grown old. I us'd
to write more methodically. But one does not dress for private company
as for a publick ball. 'Tis perhaps only negligence.

To return: I continued thus employed in my father's business for two
years, that is, till I was twelve years old; and my brother John, who
was bred to that business, having left my father, married, and set up
for himself at Rhode Island, there was all appearance that I was
destined to supply his place, and become a tallow-chandler. But my
dislike to the trade continuing, my father was under apprehensions
that if he did not find one for me more agreeable, I should break away
and get to sea, as his son Josiah had done, to his great vexation. He
therefore sometimes took me to walk with him, and see joiners,
bricklayers, turners, braziers, etc., at their work, that he might
observe my inclination, and endeavor to fix it on some trade or other
on land. It has ever since been a pleasure to me to see good workmen
handle their tools; and it has been useful to me, having learnt so
much by it as to be able to do little jobs myself in my house when a
workman could not readily be got, and to construct little machines for
my experiments, while the intention of making the experiment was fresh
and warm in my mind. My father at last fixed upon the cutler's trade,
and my uncle Benjamin's son Samuel, who was bred to that business in
London, being about that time established in Boston, I was sent to be
with him some time on liking. But his expectations of a fee with me
displeasing my father, I was taken home again.

II

BEGINNING LIFE AS A PRINTER

From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came
into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the _Pilgrim's
Progress_, my first collection was of John Bunyan's works in separate
little volumes. I afterward sold them to enable me to buy R. Burton's
_Historical Collections_; they were small chapmen's books,[16] and
cheap, 40 or 50 in all. My father's little library consisted chiefly
of books in polemic divinity, most of which I read, and have since
often regretted that, at a time when I had such a thirst for
knowledge, more proper books had not fallen in my way, since it was
now resolved I should not be a clergyman. Plutarch's _Lives_ there was
in which I read abundantly, and I still think that time spent to great
advantage. There was also a book of DeFoe's, called an _Essay on
Projects_, and another of Dr. Mather's, called _Essays to do Good_,
which perhaps gave me a turn of thinking that had an influence on
some of the principal future events of my life.

[16] Small books, sold by chapmen or peddlers.

This bookish inclination at length determined my father to make me a
printer, though he had already one son (James) of that profession. In
1717 my brother James returned from England with a press and letters
to set up his business in Boston. I liked it much better than that of
my father, but still had a hankering for the sea. To prevent the
apprehended effect of such an inclination, my father was impatient to
have me bound to my brother. I stood out some time, but at last was
persuaded, and signed the indentures when I was yet but twelve years
old. I was to serve as an apprentice till I was twenty-one years of
age, only I was to be allowed journeyman's wages during the last year.
In a little time I made great proficiency in the business, and became
a useful hand to my brother. I now had access to better books. An
acquaintance with the apprentices of booksellers enabled me sometimes
to borrow a small one, which I was careful to return soon and clean.
Often I sat up in my room reading the greatest part of the night, when
the book was borrowed in the evening and to be returned early in the
morning, lest it should be missed or wanted.

And after some time an ingenious tradesman, Mr. Matthew Adams, who
had a pretty collection of books, and who frequented our
printing-house, took notice of me, invited me to his library, and
very kindly lent me such books as I chose to read. I now took a fancy
to poetry, and made some little pieces; my brother, thinking it might
turn to account, encouraged me, and put me on composing occasional
ballads. One was called _The Lighthouse Tragedy_, and contained an
account of the drowning of Captain Worthilake, with his two daughters:
the other was a sailor's song, on the taking of _Teach_ (or
Blackbeard) the pirate. They were wretched stuff, in the
Grub-street-ballad style;[17] and when they were printed he sent me
about the town to sell them. The first sold wonderfully, the event
being recent, having made a great noise. This flattered my vanity; but
my father discouraged me by ridiculing my performances, and telling me
verse-makers were generally beggars. So I escaped being a poet, most
probably a very bad one; but as prose writing has been of great use to
me in the course of my life, and was a principal means of my
advancement, I shall tell you how, in such a situation, I acquired
what little ability I have in that way.

[17] Grub-street: famous in English literature as the
home of poor writers.

There was another bookish lad in the town, John Collins by name, with
whom I was intimately acquainted. We sometimes disputed, and very fond
we were of argument, and very desirous of confuting one another,
which disputatious turn, by the way, is apt to become a very bad
habit, making people often extremely disagreeable in company by the
contradiction that is necessary to bring it into practice; and thence,
besides souring and spoiling the conversation, is productive of
disgusts and, perhaps enmities where you may have occasion for
friendship. I had caught it by reading my father's books of dispute
about religion. Persons of good sense, I have since observed, seldom
fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and men of all sorts
that have been bred at Edinborough.

A question was once, somehow or other, started between Collins and me,
of the propriety of educating the female sex in learning, and their
abilities for study. He was of opinion that it was improper, and that
they were naturally unequal to it. I took the contrary side, perhaps a
little for dispute's sake. He was naturally more eloquent, had a ready
plenty of words, and sometimes, as I thought, bore me down more by his
fluency than by the strength of his reasons. As we parted without
settling the point, and were not to see one another again for some
time, I sat down to put my arguments in writing, which I copied fair
and sent to him. He answered, and I replied. Three or four letters of
a side had passed, when my father happened to find my papers and read
them. Without entering into the discussion, he took occasion to talk
to me about the manner of my writing; observed that, though I had the
advantage of my antagonist in correct spelling and pointing (which I
ow'd to the printing-house), I fell far short in elegance of
expression, in method and in perspicuity, of which he convinced me by
several instances. I saw the justice of his remarks, and thence grew
more attentive to the manner in writing, and determined to endeavor at
improvement.

About this time I met with an odd volume of the _Spectator_.[18] It was
the third. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it
over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing
excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With this view I
took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in
each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at
the book, try'd to compleat the papers again, by expressing each
hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed
before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I
compared my _Spectator_ with the original, discovered some of my
faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or
a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should
have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses; since
the continual occasion for words of the same import, but of different
length, to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme,
would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for
variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make
me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them
into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the
prose, turned them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collections
of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce
them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences
and compleat the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement
of thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I
discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the
pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I
had been lucky enough to improve the method of the language, and this
encouraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable
English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious. My time for these
exercises and for reading was at night, after work or before it began
in the morning, or on Sundays, when I contrived to be in the
printing-house alone, evading as much as I could the common attendance
on public worship which my father used to exact of me when I was under
his care, and which indeed I still thought a duty, thought I could
not, as it seemed to me, afford time to practise it.

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