The Mentor: Benjamin Franklin, Vol. 6, Num. 7, Serial No. 155, May 15, 1918

One

Benjamin Franklin, born in Boston, Massachusetts, January 17, 1706 (January 6, Old Style), of humble parents, was one of the heroes of the War of Independence, one of the cleverest of American diplomats, and one of the greatest American politicians and statesmen. But this was not all: he possessed so many talents that he can only be described properly as a universal genius.

Franklin’s life is one huge catalogue of performances, hard indeed to tabulate, for he went from one thing to another with remarkable rapidity and excelled in everything that he undertook. A recital of his accomplishments sounds like a round of the old counting game, “Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief.” He was, in fact, all the list but the “thief”--even the “beggarman.”

Franklin’s father, Josiah Franklin, a candle maker, intended that his son should enter the ministry of the Puritan Church, and with this idea sent him, when eight years old, to the Boston Grammar School. A year of this was too much for the slender means of the father, so Benjamin was sent to George Brownell for instruction. A year of this and Franklin’s school days were ended. He worked in his father’s shop for a time, and then apprenticed himself to his brother James, a printer.

While engaged in the printing business (and this did not merely consist of setting type and printing books, but in writing articles for his paper and also many political pamphlets that prepared the way for his future career), he was clerk of the General Assembly in 1736 (holding this office until 1751); postmaster in Philadelphia in 1737; and, after he gave up the post of clerk of the General Assembly, a member of that body for thirteen years (1751-1764). His activity in public affairs was enormous: he organized the first police and fire company in Philadelphia; established an academy which became the University of Pennsylvania; organized an important debating club--the Junto (1727); took the lead in improving the paving of the city; developed the lighting of the streets; organized a militia force; founded a city hospital, and in every way concerned himself with the bettering of conditions, both civic and political. He undertook to provide Braddock with horses and wagons for the march against Fort Duquesne, and, in 1756, he had charge of the Northwest frontier for a month, during which he erected blockhouses and watched the wily Indians.

In 1757, he was sent to London as agent for the people to petition the Crown. He returned home in 1762, expecting to settle down and devote the remainder of his life to scientific investigation and the pleasures of the pen. He brought with him many degrees and honors, and he thought that his public life was over. In two years’ time, however, he was again sent to England as agent to settle questions in relation to taxation, and represented not only Pennsylvania, but New Jersey, Georgia, and Massachusetts. He remained until 1775, and was, therefore, in England during all the stormy days of the Stamp Act. On the day after his return he was elected to the Continental Congress, and was one of the committee of five to draw up the Declaration of Independence. On September 26, 1776, he was chosen commissioner to France with Arthur Lee and Silas Deane, and arrived in Paris on December 22, 1776, after a perilous passage, to be welcomed like a hero. On October 28, 1776, he was appointed sole plenipotentiary to the Court of France. In 1781, he was appointed one of a commission to make peace with Great Britain. He returned to Philadelphia in 1785, having made commercial treaties with Sweden (1783) and Prussia (1785).

Even then, Franklin’s work was not finished. He was elected a member of the municipal council of Philadelphia, and was made a delegate to the Convention that drew up the Federal Constitution. It is interesting, also, to note that he signed a petition to Congress, in 1790, to abolish slavery. He died in Philadelphia on April 17, 1790, aged eighty-four.

These extraordinary activities, including those of a politician, diplomat, philanthropist, civic reformer, philosopher, scientist, printer, and author, covered a period of sixty years. And in between all these separate careers, as we might call them, we find stray hours filled with delightful pursuits and such pleasant diversions as studies in the realm of music, improving the musical glasses, and buying Bow, Worcester, and Chelsea china of the newest fashion. Moreover, Franklin always found time to write beautifully and to enjoy social pleasures.

PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 6. No. 7. SERIAL No. 155 COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.

Two

Benjamin Franklin was the first distinguished American “self-made man.” He took himself in hand at an early age, and with only two years schooling, educated himself so that he became a man of science, a man of letters, a philosopher, a statesman and a diplomat, and acquired a fortune besides. And not only was he all of these things, more than creditably, but he took rank among the greatest minds of the highly educated and scientific Eighteenth Century. This was a period of original investigation: much “new thought” of all kinds was coming into the world, and Franklin’s mind was exactly the type of mind that was characteristic of this age--particularly in France. Apart from his genial personality and his talent for always doing the right thing and the popular thing socially, his scientific and philosophical tastes were precisely those in fashion in France.

How did this man attain to such power and eminence? At twenty-three he was half-educated and crude. At forty he was known as one of the most famous scientists of the day and a brilliant writer; and before he was fifty he had received the Copley medal from the Royal Society; the freedom of the City of Edinburgh; LL.D. from the University of St. Andrews; degrees from Harvard, Yale, and William and Mary; and, in 1762, D.C.L. from Oxford.

What were the characteristics and the tastes, and what was the disposition and the appearance of the extraordinary personage who accomplished all these things? These are questions that are naturally asked.

We never think of Franklin in his youth. We picture him according to the Duplessis (dew-ples′-see) portrait painted in Paris when he was seventy-two; or, according to the old prints that show him wearing the familiar old fur cap and the heavy-rimmed spectacles. Franklin was rather tall (about five feet ten inches), corpulent and heavy, with rounded shoulders. He was a good swimmer; he was muscular and strong, and he was a believer in vegetarianism and air-baths. In late years he suffered from gout in his foot, and wrote in Paris a humorous dialogue from which we get a very good idea of the old gentleman’s habits and tastes. On his appeal to Gout to spare him, his persecutor exclaims: “Not a jot; your rhetoric and your politeness are thrown away; your apology avails nothing. If your situation in life is a sedentary one, your amusements, your recreations, at least, should be active. You ought to walk or ride; or, if the weather prevents that, play at billiards. But let us examine your course of life. While the mornings are long and you have leisure to go abroad, what do you do? Why, instead of gaining an appetite for breakfast by salutary exercise, you amuse yourself with books, pamphlets, or newspapers, which commonly are not worth the reading. Yet you eat an inordinate breakfast, four dishes of tea with cream, and one or two buttered toasts, with slices of hung beef, which I fancy are not things the most easily digested. Immediately afterwards you sit down to write at your desk, or converse with persons who apply to you on business. Thus the time passes till one, without any kind of bodily exercise. But all this I could pardon, in regard, as you say, to your sedentary condition. But what is your practice after dinner? Walking in the beautiful garden of those friends with whom you have dined, would be the choice of men of sense; yours is to be fixed down to chess, where you are found engaged for two or three hours!”

But notwithstanding his sedentary life and his gout and his other maladies, Franklin lived to be eighty-four, preserving his extraordinary brightness and gayety to the last. His mental faculties were unimpaired, his face was fresh and serene, and his spirits were buoyant.