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Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #26442.
The work is a historical‑fiction volume that imagines the early life of Benjamin Franklin, presented as the seventh instalment of the “Creators of Liberty” series. It opens with a reflective preface that ties the story to a discovered collection of pamphlets once owned by Franklin’s uncle, a poet whose marginal notes inspire the narrative. The author then launches directly into the first chapter, describing the birth of the future statesman on a cold January morning in 1706, the hurried christening in a Boston church, and the family’s deliberations over his name. The opening scene weaves together factual details, Josiah Franklin’s trade as a tallow chandler, the Folger lineage, and the colonial setting, with the author’s dramatized dialogue, establishing a blend of biography and imaginative storytelling.
The prose reflects the late‑nineteenth‑century style of its 1897 publication, employing a formal, descriptive voice that often digresses into moral commentary and genealogical exposition. Its language is ornate yet accessible, echoing the didactic tone of contemporary educational literature. Readers who enjoy richly detailed period pieces, especially those interested in early American history, biographical fiction, or the formative years of iconic figures, will find this book appealing. It also suits readers who appreciate a narrative that interlaces documented events with creative elaboration, offering a vivid portrait of Franklin’s childhood milieu.
The opening · free to read
Uncle Benjamin Franklin had a library of pamphlets that was very dear to him, for in the margins of the leaves he had placed the choicest thoughts of his life amid great political events. He was very poor, and he sold his library in his old age; we may reasonably suppose that he parted with it among other effects to get money to come to America, that he might give his influence to "Little Ben," after his brother had remembered him in his desolation by giving his name to the boy. The finding of these pamphlets in London fifty years after the old man was compelled to sell them was regarded by Benjamin Franklin as one of the most singular events of his remarkable life.
Mr. Parton, in his Life of Franklin, thus alludes to the circumstance:
A strange occurrence brought to the mind of Franklin, in 1771, a vivid recollection of his childhood. A dealer in old books, whose shop he sometimes visited, called his attention one day to a collection of pamphlets, bound in thirty volumes, dating from the Restoration to 1715. The dealer offered them to Franklin, as he said, because many of the subjects of the pamphlets were such as usually interested him. Upon examining the collection, he found that one of the blank leaves of each volume contained a catalogue of its contents, and the price each pamphlet had cost; there were notes and comments also in the margin of several of the pieces. A closer scrutiny revealed that the handwriting was that of his Uncle Benjamin, the rhyming friend and counselor of his childhood. Other circumstances combined with this surprising fact to prove that the collection had been made by his uncle, who had probably sold it when he emigrated to America, fifty-six years before. Franklin bought the volumes, and gave an account of the circumstance to his Uncle Benjamin's son, who still lived and flourished in Boston. "The oddity is," he wrote, "that the bookseller, who could suspect nothing of any relation between me and the collector, should happen to make me the offer of them."
It may please the reader to know that "Mr. Calamity" was suggested by a real character, and that the incidents in the life of "Jenny," Franklin's favorite sister, are true in spirit and largely in detail. It would have been more artistic to have had Franklin discover Uncle Benjamin's "pamphlets" later in life, but this would have been, while allowable, unhistoric fiction.
Says one of the greatest critics ever born in America, in speaking of the humble birth of Franklin:
That little baby, humbly cradled, has turned out to be the greatest man that America ever bore in her bosom or set eyes upon. Beyond all question, as I think, Benjamin Franklin had the largest mind that has shone on this side of the sea, widest in its comprehension, most deep-looking, thoughtful, far-seeing, the most original and creative child of the New World.
For the last four generations no man has shed such copious good influence on America, nor added so much new truth to popular knowledge; none has so skillfully organized its ideals into institutions; none has so powerfully and wisely directed the nation's conduct and advanced its welfare in so many respects. No man has so strong a hold on the habits or the manners of the people.
"The principal question in life is, What good can I do in the world?" says Franklin. He learned to ask this question in his home in "beloved Boston." It was his purpose to answer this all-important question after the lessons that he had received in his early home, to which his heart remained true through all his marvelous career.
This is the seventh volume of the Creators of Liberty Series of books of historical fiction, based for the most part on real events, in the purpose of presenting biography in picture.
The former volumes of this series of books have been very kindly received by the public, and none of them more generously than the last volume, The Wampum Belt. For this the writer is very grateful, for he is a thorough believer in story-telling education, on the Pestalozzi and Froebel principle that "life must be taught from life," or from the highest ideals of beneficent character.
H. B.
28 WORCESTER STREET, BOSTON, MASS., June, 1897.
CONTENTS.
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