In many ways this one citizen was typical of the new American nation. He was a self-made man, who had risen by his own effort from poverty to wealth, from obscurity to world-wide honor; he was an epitome of the shrewdness and practical sense that win reward in the business of life; and when he had signed the four notable documents of our early history, and represented us with marked success in the courts of Europe, he became a bond of unity among the people. For a quarter of a century his almanac had been their daily counselor; they read newspapers which bore the stamp of his genius; they comforted themselves about his new stove; they lost fear of the tempest under the protection of his lightning rods. In all these ways Franklin had entered into the warp and woof of American life. At home he was more widely known than any other man save Washington; abroad he was famous for his electrical experiments, and his maxims were household words in many places where the name of the great Virginian had never been heard. He seemed, therefore, and to many he still seems, a kind of totem or symbol of his age, the most representative American of the eighteenth century.

Thus, he was a contemporary of Jonathan Edwards; but while Edwards marks the end and glory of one age, Franklin is unmistakably the beginning of another. Contrast these two men in any way, and they are as different as the Freedom of the Will  and Poor Richard's Almanac , as a Greek temple and a modern workshop. He was born and bred in Boston, the stronghold of Puritanism, while Cotton Mather was in the autumn splendor of his influence; but there was nothing of the Puritan in Franklin, and Mather he regarded with mild curiosity. "There came in my way," he tells us, as if he were meeting a stranger, "a book of Dr. Mather's, called Essays to Do Good , which gave me a turn of thinking"; but we note that it was one of the least of Mather's works, and that Franklin did not get even the title right. All the rest of the Puritan's mighty interests, like outgoing ships, had already dropped below the rim of Franklin's horizon. Some five years before Mather died Franklin ran away to Philadelphia, and Boston lost in the same decade two prominent citizens; one departing broken-hearted because the city had become too liberal, the other shaking the dust gladly from his feet because the same city was too strait and narrow for his way of thinking. "I had already made myself a little obnoxious to the governing party," he tells us, without a smile at the conceit of this youth of seventeen, who takes issue with the Governor in affairs of statecraft, and with Doctors of Divinity in matters of religion and morals. His attitude toward his superiors reminds us strongly of the young Omar:

Our first impression, therefore, is that Franklin and his contemporaries have parted company; that he seems less a product of New England, with her faith and idealism, than of eighteenth-century Old England, with her skeptical philosophy and worldly manner of living.

From his life story we glean the following facts: that he was poor and obscure; that he had only two years of schooling; that he liked to read, but had very few books. Pilgrim's Progress , Plutarch's Lives , Burton's Historical Collection , Defoe's Essay on Projects , a translation of Xenophon's Memorabilia , a volume of the Spectator  essays, and a few unread volumes on \"Polemical Divinity.\"") ?> At ten he was working in the shop of his father, who made soap and candles; at twelve he was apprenticed to his brother, who was a printer, thereby spoiling his own plan to run away to sea, and his father's ambition to make a minister of him.

When he entered the printing house, Franklin set his foot promptly on the first rung of the ladder of fame and fortune. For a short time he was the odd-job boy of the place; then he determined to improve the newspaper by writing essays after the manner of Addison. He had studied this master of style in an odd volume of the Spectator , and thought that he "could improve the matter or the language." These essays, on such timely subjects as "Freedom of Thought" and "Hoop Petticoats," he slipped under the door, and listened with delight when the printer asked who could have written them. Here, at the outset of his career, we find him cultivating the talent to which, as he tells us, he owed most of his success, namely, his "little ability in writing." He seemed on the point of making a name for himself, when he quarreled with his brother, broke his articles, and ran away to Philadelphia. There he arrived, after an adventurous journey, with one Dutch dollar and a few coppers in his pocket.

From the Autobiography  we form a picture of him as he trudges up Market Street. Here he is, the future foremost citizen of Pennsylvania, the man who shall stand before princes. His clothes are soiled, his hair unkempt from sleeping in the fields; his pockets bulge out with his spare shirt and stockings; he is eating a puffy roll of bread, and holding another roll under each arm. No one recognizes the future great man. A girl on a stoop turns, glances at him, smiles at his awkward appearance; and this smiling girl is his future wife. What a chance for romance, for poetry, for sweet and tender recollections when they shall look back on the scene together! But alas! there is no sentiment in Franklin; to him poetry is a book with seven seals; and never, not even in the memory of a woman's smile, shall he look in at the golden door of romance. Interested in his new surroundings and wholly unconscious of self, he goes on his way, eating his roll, his keen eyes taking in the world as his mouth takes in the bread. When his hunger and curiosity are satisfied, he follows some well-dressed people into the Quaker meetinghouse and takes a comfortable nap during divine service.

Next day he was looking for work, and straightway found it. For a year or more he followed his printer's trade, exercising meanwhile his remarkable faculty for making influential friends. One of the latter, Governor Keith, sent him on a wild-goose chase to London, where he made the best of misfortune by learning improved methods of printing. Then he returned to Philadelphia, and was clerk in a store till fate drove him from the counter to the printing house again. This time he stayed to make his fortune.

The rest of the story is one of unbroken triumph. He succeeded rapidly in business, largely by industry and thrift, but occasionally advancing his own interests by methods which cannot stand for an instant in the white light of honor. At forty he had enough money, knew it, and retired from business to devote himself to the public welfare.

With his genius for practical leadership, he was appointed or elected to various offices, and in every case he revolutionized the methods of the public service. The modern post office dates from the day he was appointed postmaster at Philadelphia, and made it for the first time a useful and paying institution. He created the modern police force, to replace the ridiculous old night watch; he organized the first fire company, instituted the modern militia, started the American Philosophical Society, began a circulating library, founded an academy which became the University of Pennsylvania. Also he made inventions, like the iron stove, the first advance on the clumsy brick oven of the Romans, which added enormously to the comfort of the common people. All the while he wrote essays, using literature to serve some practical end. The result of his work and writing was that he soon became the leading citizen of a great colony. Not a project, from cleaning streets to starting a hospital, could succeed unless he indorsed it. Though ignorant of military affairs, he furnished transportation and food for Braddock's army; and after the rout of the British troops (1755) he was sent to build forts on the frontier to protect settlers from the fury of the savages.

While Franklin was debating whether to devote himself to science or to writing his cherished Art of Virtue , fate again interfered to push him away from the book, which he was hardly fitted to write, into an unexplored region where a great revelation was awaiting the time when he should apply his common sense to the clouds instead of to Braddock's army. Into his discovery, that the blinding flash from the thunder cloud and the amusing spark from a cat's back are one and the same thing, we cannot enter here; it is a matter of science rather than of literature. We note only that, when the discovery was quietly announced, this obscure tradesman was known and honored from one end of the civilized world to the other. He was then ready for his mission, and Europe was ready to listen to every message he might bring from America.

In 1757 he began his eighteen years' residence in England, going abroad as agent of his state. Here again he made influential friends, used the newspapers, till he became almost as well known in London as in Philadelphia. Meanwhile he did splendid service for the Colonies, securing the repeal of the Stamp Act, postponing and trying to avert the Revolution. When war seemed inevitable, England apparently offered liberal inducements to hold him to the British cause, but he sided squarely with the Patriots, while his own son went over to the Tories. There is sterling metal in this American, and it rings true when he rejects England's offer, and comes home to sign the Declaration of Independence.

Franklin was then an old man and longed for peace, but almost immediately he was sent to France as ambassador of the Colonies. His reception in Paris was perhaps the most remarkable ever accorded to a foreigner. Enthusiastic crowds followed him on the streets; his words were on every tongue, his picture in every shop window—curious pictures, with lightning flaming around his old fur cap and illuminating Turgot's poetic line: Eripuit coelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis . Taking shrewd advantage of the enthusiasm, he pleaded the cause of his country, used the newspapers, made powerful friends; and it is due largely to his personal influence that money and a fleet were sent to aid us in the Revolution.

When the treaty of peace was signed, in 1783, Franklin's great work for his country was practically done, and he seems for the first time a little weary, a little sad, as he writes home to an old friend:

"At length we are at peace. God be praised, and long, very long, may it continue. All wars are follies, very expensive and mischievous ones. When will mankind be convinced of this, and agree to settle their differences by arbitration? Were they to do it even by the cast of a die, it would be better than by fighting and destroying each other."

He had often asked to be recalled, but it was not till 1785 that he was allowed to return home in triumph. He had served his state and nation for a full half century, and looked forward to ease by his own fireside and to writing his Art of Virtue ; but hardly had he landed before he was elected Governor of Pennsylvania, and again took up the burden of public office. He lived long enough to help frame the Constitution, and to see his friend Washington made President of the new nation. His last years, when he met suffering and death with undiminished cheerfulness, seem to us the most heroic of his long career. His attitude toward life is summed up in a paragraph of the Autobiography , which tells us that he would be glad of the chance to repeat his course from the beginning, "only asking the advantage authors have in a second edition, to correct some faults in the first." His attitude toward death is summed up in a sentence:

"Death I shall submit to with the less regret as, having seen during a long life a great deal of this world, I feel a growing curiosity to be acquainted with some other."

Poor Richard's Almanac  was begun in 1732, the year of Washington's birth, and for twenty-five years was known throughout the Colonies. Franklin's work here, though not original, Astronomical Diary and Almanac  of Nathaniel Ames, of Dedham, Massachusetts. This appeared in 1724, and for forty years preached the gospel of work and cheerfulness. Franklin's general plan suggests that of Ames; his title, \"Poor Richard,\" was taken from an English almanac.") ?> was notable in this respect, that it produced our first typical character, Poor Richard,—who ranks with Leatherstocking and Uncle Remus among the enduring creations of American fiction.

Another detail is worthy of notice. At that time Pennsylvania's only almanac, a poor affair, was published by a quack astrologer named Titus Leeds. Franklin, in the guise of Poor Richard, informs the public that he would not start a second almanac but for this reason: the author of the first is doomed; the stars have been consulted, and by their infallible decree Leeds must die on October 17, after which his excellent almanac will be no more. Evidently Leeds had no sense of humor, for in his next almanac he replied hotly, insisting that he was alive, and abusing Poor Richard. In the following year Richard sadly informs his readers that Leeds must be dead for two reasons: first, the stars could not lie, as Leeds had often declared; and second, if that illustrious man were living, he would not use such unchristian language, nor publish such a wretched almanac. It was a good-natured kind of fooling, which we might better enjoy if we did not know that it was copied from Swift's Bickerstaff Almanac . But the public knew nothing of Swift; it applauded Poor Richard's stolen wit, and bought his almanacs as fast as he could print them.

Surprised at the success of his venture, Franklin resolved to make his almanac useful as well as profitable, and filled it with wise saws, anecdotes and moral precepts, till its pages were like a boy's pocket:

"Better slip with foot than tongue. Doors and walls are fools' paper. Diligence is the mother of good luck. Honesty is the best policy. Great talkers are little doers. God helps them that help themselves. Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other. If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some, for he that goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing. . . "

These and hundreds of similar aphorisms, scattered among the calendars and weather predictions, indicate the character of Franklin's philosophy. In thousands of homes his almanac was read over and over again by the winter fire; his proverbs were repeated by fathers to children, until his thought became almost a part of the national consciousness.

Before Franklin went abroad, in 1757, he made a last powerful impression on his countless readers. Reviewing all his almanacs, he packed their best wit and wisdom into the form of a speech heard at an auction—a remarkable homily on industry and thrift, seasoned with the salt of Poor Richard's maxims. As this famous speech is a short one, we forbear quotation, leaving it entire to the reader. It made a sensation, next to the Day of Doom  probably the greatest in our literary history. Under various names, such as "Father Abraham's Speech" and "The Way to Wealth," it was reprinted in every American newspaper. It went abroad on the first ship; was displayed in English stores and factories; two translations of it were made in France, where the clergy used to distribute it to their parishioners, and from France it spread through every other civilized country.

The Autobiography  was begun in 1771, while Franklin was visiting his friend Bishop Shipley, at Twyford, England. He was then sixty-five years old, and thinking, possibly, of his death and of newspaper obituaries, he wrote a letter to his son, at that time Governor of New Jersey. It opens as follows:

"Dear Son: I have ever had pleasure in obtaining any little anecdotes of my ancestors. . . . Imagining it may be equally agreeable to you to know the circumstances of my life, . . . I sit down to write them for you. To which I have besides some other inducements. Having emerged from the poverty and obscurity in which I was born and bred to a state of affluence and some degree of reputation in the world, and having gone so far through life with a considerable share of felicity, the conducing means I made use of, which with the blessing of God so well succeeded, my posterity may like to know, as they may find some of them suitable to their own situations and therefore fit to be imitated. . .

"Hereby, too, I shall indulge the inclination, so natural in old men, to be talking of themselves and their own past actions. . . . And lastly (I may as well confess it, since my denial of it will be believed by nobody) perhaps I shall a good deal gratify my own vanity . . . . Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share of it they have themselves; but I give it fair quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor, and to others that are within his sphere of action; and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life."

Here, on the first page, we have the author's three motives in writing: he will gratify a little natural vanity, record such family history as a son would like to remember, share the secret of his worldly success and so instruct others in the conduct of life. He has no thought of literary fame, and this explains the greatest charm of his book, its straightforwardness.

The son evidently cared little for this letter, which was lost for twelve years and rescued on its way to the bonfire. Autobiography  was first published in France, immediately after Franklin's death, in 1790. The first edition in English was a retranslation of this garbled French version. Not until 1868 was the work published as Franklin wrote it. The long delay is attributed to the carelessness of a grandson, Temple Franklin, who had charge of Franklin's manuscripts. It has been suspected, however, that this grandson was bribed by some stupid official to suppress all of Franklin's papers relating to his dealings with the English government.") ?> At the urgent request of friends Franklin wrote another chapter in Paris, and a third in Philadelphia, bringing the record down to 1757; but he cared so little for the story that he never completed it, and died without arranging for the publication of any of his writings.

The literary world has dealt more kindly with the Autobiography , which has been widely read at home and in many foreign countries. The secret of its popularity lies partly in the glamor which surrounds the author's worldly success, partly in the interest which we take in the story of any life, if it be told frankly from within. Here is a man who has "warmed both hands before the fire of life." He has risen from obscurity to fame; on his upward way he has met the heroes and shared in the fateful incidents of our national history. He tells us just how he did it, and somehow gives the impression that others may win the same success by the same methods. As the vast majority of readers are, like Franklin, born poor and ambitious, his story made a lasting impression, especially in a country where every man may set his own goal and win it by his own effort.

On these three accounts—the human interest of the work, its historical background, and its tonic influence on the reader's will power—Franklin's Autobiography  has become a classic in our literature. This is the fact, though some of us may doubt the value of the work and the judgment of those who praise it extravagantly. Regarded as a matter of self-portrayal, simple, clear, without affectation or concealment, it is an excellent piece of work; but the spirit of the author is too worldly and mechanical, too negligent of the higher attributes of humanity to rouse our enthusiasm. Many excellent critics commend the work nevertheless. They would give the Autobiography  to young people as a stimulus in the prosaic matter of getting a living, just as poetry is given to educate their sense of beauty, and the Iliad  and Morte d' Arthur  to develop their heroism and chivalry.

The remaining works of Franklin cover such a variety of subjects that the beginner will do well to read a small book of selections. Such a collection should include some of the Silence Dogood  and Busybody  papers, which are brief essays modeled on the Spectator ; a few dialogues, after the manner of Xenophon, like "Franklin and the Gout"; and a dozen of the later essays, like "The Ephemera" and "The Whistle." The last are of no consequence; but they indicate the curious fact that Franklin, at seventy-five, was writing with more vivacity than at any other period of his life. In an entirely different vein are the satires, like "Rules for Reducing a Great Empire to a Small One," "An Edict by the King of Prussia," and "From the Count de Schaumburgh"—keen, penetrating little works, suggesting a favorable comparison with Swift, the greatest master of satire that the English race has produced. The selections should include also some of Franklin's Letters , which are, in our judgment, the best of all his writings. Life of Franklin Written by Himself . Here the Autobiography  is supplemented by numerous letters.") ?>

Omitting Franklin's political and scientific writings, the bulk of his work is a kind of homily on the art of living; and here, we must remember, he marks the transition from the theological to the worldly period of American life. Unlike the Colonial writers, he looked at men steadily from a workaday viewpoint, and aimed to make the humdrum life of this world more comfortable and contented. To accomplish this desirable end, two things seemed to him essential, virtue and prosperity, and either of these must lead to the other. Thus he tells us in one work that "virtue is the best means of success," in another that "prosperity is the road to virtue." The chief fault of such a philosophy, if we may dignify worldly wisdom by so noble a name, is that it estimates virtue and human life on too low a plane. Virtue is not a means, but an end in itself; it is an immortal ideal which lightens the soul of every man coming into the world; it has nothing to do with riches or poverty, with present success or failure. As Tennyson writes:

We can honor Franklin heartily for his inventions and scientific discoveries, his patriotism and service to his country; but we are considering now his moral philosophy and his literary work. The philosophy seems to us an affair of policy, rather than of enduring principle. It is shortsighted, being bounded by earth's horizon. It lacks the tremendous emphasis of the eternally right. In his writings we find abundant sense and humor, but nothing of delicacy or culture, of sentiment or chivalry. In a word, he lacks idealism—that exquisite sense of unseen reality, of the eternal in the temporal, of the divine in the human, which is the glory of our life and literature.