Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln

XI.—A LEADING MAN IN PHILADELPHIA

When Franklin was twenty-four years old he was married to Miss Deborah Read, the young lady who had laughed at him when he was walking the street with his three rolls.

They lived together very happily for a great many years.

Some time before this marriage, Franklin's friend and employer, Mr.

Denham, had died.

The dry-goods store, of which he was the owner, had been sold, and Franklin's occupation as a salesman, or clerk, was gone. But the young man had shown himself to be a person of great industry and ability. He had the confidence of everybody that knew him.

A friend of his, who had money, offered to take him as a partner in the newspaper business. And so he again became a printer, and the editor of a paper called the Pennsylvania Gazette.

It was not long until Franklin was recognized as one of the leading men in Philadelphia. His name was known, not only in Pennsylvania, but in all the colonies.

He was all the time thinking of plans for making the people about him wiser and better and happier.

He established a subscription and circulating library, the first in America. This library was the beginning of the present Philadelphia Public Library.

He wrote papers on education. He founded the University of Pennsylvania. He organized the American Philosophical Society.

He established the first fire company in Philadelphia, which was also the first in America.

He invented a copper-plate press, and printed the first paper money of New Jersey.

He also invented the iron fireplace, which is called the Franklin stove, and is still used where wood is plentiful and cheap.

After an absence of ten years, he paid a visit to his old home in Boston. Everybody was glad to see him now,—even his brother James, the printer.

When he returned to Philadelphia, he was elected clerk of the colonial assembly.

Not long after that, he was chosen to be postmaster of the city. But his duties in this capacity did not require very much labor in those times.

He did not handle as much mail in a whole year as passes now through the Philadelphia post-office in a single hour.

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XII.—FRANKLIN'S RULES OF LIFE

Here are some of the rules of life which Franklin made for himself when he was a very young man:

1. To live very frugally till he had paid all that he owed.

2. To speak the truth at all times; to be sincere in word and action.

3. To apply himself earnestly to whatever business he took in hand; and to shun all foolish projects for becoming suddenly rich. "For industry and patience," he said, "are the surest means of plenty."

4. To speak ill of no man whatever, not even in a matter of truth; but to speak all the good he knew of everybody.

When he was twenty-six years old, he published the first number of an almanac called Poor Richard's Almanac.

This almanac was full of wise and witty sayings, and everybody soon began to talk about it.

Every year, for twenty-five years, a new number of Poor Richard's Almanac was printed. It was sold in all parts of the country. People who had no other books would buy and read Poor Richard's Almanac. The library of many a farmer consisted of only the family Bible with one or more numbers of this famous almanac. Here are a few of Poor Richard's sayings:

"A word to the wise is enough."

"God helps them that help themselves."

"Early to bed and early to rise, Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."

"There are no gains without pains."

"Plow deep while sluggards sleep, And you shall have corn to sell and to keep."

"One to-day is worth two to-morrows."

"Little strokes fell great oaks."

"Keep thy shop and thy shop will keep thee."

"The sleeping fox catches no poultry."

"Diligence is the mother of good luck."

"Constant dropping wears away stones."

"A small leak will sink a great ship."

"Who dainties love shall beggars prove."

"Creditors have better memories than debtors."

"Many a little makes a mickle."

"Fools make feasts and wise men eat them."

"Many have been ruined by buying good pennyworths."

"Rather go to bed supperless than rise in debt."

"For age and want save while you may;

No morning sun lasts the whole day."

It is pleasant to know that Franklin observed the rules of life which he made. And his wife, Deborah, was as busy and as frugal as himself.

They kept no idle servants. Their furniture was of the cheapest sort.

Their food was plain and simple.

Franklin's breakfast, for many years, was only bread and milk; and he ate it out of a twopenny earthen bowl with a pewter spoon.

But at last, when he was called one morning to breakfast, he found his milk in a china bowl; and by the side of the bowl there was a silver spoon.

His wife had bought them for him as a surprise. She said that she thought her husband deserved a silver spoon and china bowl as well as any of his neighbors.

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XIII.—FRANKLIN'S SERVICES TO THE COLONIES

And so, as you have seen, Benjamin Franklin became in time one of the foremost men in our country.

In 1753, when he was forty-five years old, he was made deputy postmaster-general for America.

He was to have a salary of about $3,000 a year, and was to pay his own assistants.

People were astonished when he proposed to have the mail carried regularly once every week between New York and Boston.

Letters starting from Philadelphia on Monday morning would reach Boston the next Saturday night. This was thought to be a wonderful and almost impossible feat. But nowadays, letters leaving Philadelphia at midnight are read at the breakfast table in Boston the next morning.

At that time there were not seventy post-offices in the whole country.

There are now more than seventy thousand.

Benjamin Franklin held the office of deputy postmaster-general for the American colonies for twenty-one years.

In 1754 there was a meeting of the leading men of all the colonies at Albany. There were fears of a war with the French and Indians of Canada, and the colonies had sent these men to plan some means of defence.

Benjamin Franklin was one of the men from Pennsylvania at this meeting.

He presented a plan for the union of the colonies, and it was adopted. But our English rulers said it was too democratic, and refused to let it go into operation.

This scheme of Franklin's set the people of the colonies to thinking. Why should the colonies not unite? Why should they not help one another, and thus form one great country?

And so, we may truthfully say that it was Benjamin Franklin who first put into men's minds the idea of the great Union which we now call the United States of America.

The people of the colonies were not happy under the rule of the English. One by one, laws were made which they looked upon as oppressive and burdensome. These laws were not intended to benefit the American people, but were designed to enrich the merchants and politicians of England.

In 1757 the people of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Georgia, decided to send some one to England to petition against these oppressions.

In all the colonies there was no man better fitted for this business than Benjamin Franklin. And so he was the man sent.

The fame of the great American had gone before him. Everybody seemed anxious to do him honor.

He met many of the leading men of the day, and he at last succeeded in gaining the object of his mission.

But such business moved slowly in those times. Five years passed before he was ready to return to America.

He reached Philadelphia in November, 1762, and the colonial assembly of Pennsylvania thanked him publicly for his great services.

But new troubles soon came up between the colonies and the government in England. Other laws were passed, more oppressive than before.

It was proposed to tax the colonies, and to force the colonists to buy stamped paper. This last act was called the Stamp Tax, and the American people opposed it with all their might.

Scarcely had Franklin been at home two years when he was again sent to England to plead the cause of his countrymen.

This time he remained abroad for more than ten years; but he was not so successful as before.

In 1774 he appeared before the King's council to present a petition from the people of Massachusetts.

He was now a venerable man nearly seventy years of age. He was the most famous man of America.

His petition was rejected. He himself was shamefully insulted and abused by one of the members of the council. The next day he was dismissed from the office of deputy postmaster-general of America.

In May, 1775, he was again at home in Philadelphia.

Two weeks before his arrival the battle of Lexington had been fought, and the war of the Revolution had been begun.

Franklin had done all that he could to persuade the English king to deal justly with the American colonies. But the king and his counsellors had refused to listen to him.

During his ten years abroad he had not stayed all the time in England. He had traveled in many countries of Europe, and had visited Paris several times.

Many changes had taken place while he was absent.

His wife, Mrs. Deborah Franklin, had died. His parents and fifteen of his brothers and sisters had also been laid in the grave.

The rest of his days were to be spent in the service of his country, to which he had already given nearly twenty years of his life.

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XIV.—FRANKLIN'S WONDERFUL KITE

Benjamin Franklin was not only a printer, politician, and statesman, he was the first scientist of America. In the midst of perplexing cares it was his delight to study the laws of nature and try to understand some of the mysteries of creation.

In his time no very great discoveries had yet been made. The steam engine was unknown. The telegraph had not so much as been dreamed about. Thousands of comforts which we now enjoy through the discoveries of science were then unthought of; or if thought of, they were deemed to be impossible.

Franklin began to make experiments in electricity when he was about forty years old.

He was the first person to discover that lightning is caused by electricity. He had long thought that this was true, but he had no means of proving it.

He thought that if he could stand on some high tower during a thunder-storm, he might be able to draw some of the electricity from the clouds through a pointed iron rod. But there was no high tower in Philadelphia. There was not even a tall church spire.

At last he thought of making a kite and sending it up to the clouds. A paper kite, however, would be ruined by the rain and would not fly to any great height.

So instead of paper he used a light silk handkerchief which he fastened to two slender but strong cross pieces. At the top of the kite he placed a pointed iron rod. The string was of hemp, except a short piece at the lower end, which was of silk. At the end of the hemp string an iron key was tied.

"I think that is a queer kind of kite," said Franklin's little boy.

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Wait until the next thunder-storm, and you will see," said Franklin.

"You may go with me and we will send it up to the clouds."

He told no one else about it, for if the experiment should fail, he did not care to have everybody laugh at him.

At last, one day, a thunder-storm came up, and Franklin, with his son, went out into a field to fly his kite. There was a steady breeze, and it was easy to send the kite far up towards the clouds.

Then, holding the silken end of the string, Franklin stood under a little shed in the field, and watched to see what would happen.

The lightnings flashed, the thunder rolled, but there was no sign of electricity in the kite. At last, when he was about to give up the experiment, Franklin saw the loose fibres of his hempen string begin to move.

He put his knuckles close to the key, and sparks of fire came flying to his hand. He was wild with delight. The sparks of fire were electricity; he had drawn them from the clouds.

That experiment, if Franklin had only known it, was a very dangerous one. It was fortunate for him, and for the world, that he suffered no harm. More than one person who has since tried to draw electricity from the clouds has been killed by the lightning that has flashed down the hempen kite string.

When Franklin's discovery was made known it caused great excitement among the learned men of Europe. They could not believe it was true until some of them had proved it by similar experiments.

They could hardly believe that a man in the far-away city of Philadelphia could make a discovery which they had never thought of as possible. Indeed, how could an American do anything that was worth doing?

Franklin soon became famous in foreign countries as a philosopher and man of science. The universities of Oxford and Edinburgh honored him by conferring upon him their highest degrees. He was now Doctor Benjamin Franklin. But in America people still thought of him only as a man of affairs, as a great printer, and as the editor of Poor Richard's Almanac.

All this happened before the beginning of his career as ambassador from the colonies to the king and government of England.

I cannot tell you of all of his discoveries in science. He invented the lightning-rod, and, by trying many experiments, he learned more about electricity than the world had ever known before.

He made many curious experiments to discover the laws of heat, light, and sound. By laying strips of colored cloth on snow, he learned which colors are the best conductors of heat.

He invented the harmonica, an ingenious musical instrument, in which the sounds were produced by musical glasses.

During his long stay abroad he did not neglect his scientific studies. He visited many of the greatest scholars of the time, and was everywhere received with much honor.

The great scientific societies of Europe, the Royal Academies in Paris and in Madrid, had already elected him as one of their members. The King of France wrote him a letter, thanking him for his useful discoveries in electricity, and for his invention of the lightning-rod.

All this would have made some men very proud. But it was not so with Dr. Franklin. In a letter which he wrote to a friend at the time when these honors were beginning to be showered upon him, he said:

"The pride of man is very differently gratified; and had his Majesty sent me a marshal's staff I think I should scarce have been so proud of it as I am of your esteem."

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XV.—THE LAST YEARS

In 1776 delegates from all the colonies met in Philadelphia. They formed what is called the second Continental Congress of America.

It was now more than a year since the war had begun, and the colonists had made up their minds not to submit to the king of England and his council.

Many of them were strongly in favor of setting up a new government of their own.

A committee was appointed to draft a declaration of independence, and Benjamin Franklin was one of that committee.

On the 4th of July, Congress declared the colonies to be free and independent states. Among the signers of the Declaration of Independence was Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania.

Soon after this Dr. Franklin was sent to Paris as minister from the United States. Early in the following year, 1777, he induced the king of France to acknowledge the independence of this country.

He thus secured aid for the Americans at a time when they were in the greatest need of it. Had it not been for his services at this time, the war of the Revolution might have ended very differently, indeed.

It was not until 1785 that he was again able to return to his home.

He was then nearly eighty years old.

He had served his country faithfully for fifty-three years. He would have been glad if he might retire to private life.

When he reached Philadelphia he was received with joy by thousands of his countrymen. General Washington was among the first to welcome him, and to thank him for his great services.

That same year the grateful people of his state elected him President of Pennsylvania.

Two years afterwards, he wrote:

"I am here in my niche in my own house, in the bosom of my family, my daughter and grandchildren all about me, among my old friends, or the sons of my friends, who equally respect me.

"In short, I enjoy here every opportunity of doing good, and everything else I could wish for, except repose; and that I may soon expect, either by the cessation of my office, which cannot last more than three years, or by ceasing to live."

The next year he was a delegate to the convention which formed the present Constitution of the United States.

In a letter written to his friend Washington not long afterwards, he said: "For my personal ease I should have died two years ago; but though those years have been spent in pain, I am glad to have lived them, since I can look upon our present situation."

In April, 1790, he died, and was buried by the side of his wife, Deborah, in Arch street graveyard in Philadelphia. His age was eighty-four years and three months.

Many years before his death he had written the following epitaph for himself:

"The Body of Benjamin Franklin, Printer, (Like the cover of an old book, Its contents torn out, And stripped of its lettering and gilding,) Lies here food for worms. Yet the work itself shall not be lost, For it will (as he believed) appear once more In a new And more beautiful Edition, Corrected and Amended By The Author."

THE STORY OF
DANIEL WEBSTER

THE STORY OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
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I.—CAPTAIN WEBSTER

Many years ago there lived in New Hampshire a poor farmer, whose name was Ebenezer Webster.

His little farm was among the hills, not far from the Merrimac River. It was a beautiful place to live in; but the ground was poor, and there were so many rocks that you would wonder how anything could grow among them.

Ebenezer Webster was known far and wide as a brave, wise man. When any of his neighbors were in trouble or in doubt about anything, they always said, "We will ask Captain Webster about it."

They called him Captain because he had fought the French and Indians and had been a brave soldier in the Revolutionary War. Indeed, he was one of the first men in New Hampshire to take up arms for his country.

When he heard that the British were sending soldiers to America to force the people to obey the unjust laws of the king of England, he said, "We must never submit to this."

So he went among his neighbors and persuaded them to sign a pledge to do all that they could to defend the country against the British. Then he raised a company of two hundred men and led them to Boston to join the American army.

The Revolutionary War lasted several years; and during all that time, Captain Webster was known as one of the bravest of the American patriots.

One day, at West Point, he met General Washington. The patriots were in great trouble at that time, for one of their leaders had turned traitor and had gone to help the British. The officers and soldiers were much distressed, for they did not know who might be the next to desert them.

As I have said, Captain Webster met General Washington. The general took the captain's hand, and said: "I believe that I can trust you, Captain Webster."

You may believe that this made Captain Webster feel very happy. When he went back to his humble home among the New Hampshire hills, he was never so proud as when telling his neighbors about this meeting with General Washington.

If you could have seen Captain Ebenezer Webster in those days, you would have looked at him more than once. He was a remarkable man. He was very tall and straight, with dark, glowing eyes, and hair as black as night. His face was kind, but it showed much firmness and decision.

He had never attended school; but he had tried, as well as he could, to educate himself. It was on account of his honesty and good judgment that he was looked up to as the leading man in the neighborhood.

In some way, I do not know how, he had gotten a little knowledge of the law. And at last, because of this as well as because of his sound common sense, he was appointed judge of the court in his county.

This was several years after the war was over. He was now no longer called Captain Webster, but Judge Webster.

It had been very hard for him to make a living for his large family on the stony farm among the hills. But now his office as judge would bring him three hundred or four hundred dollars a year. He had never had so much money in his life.

"Judge Webster," said one of his neighbors, "what are you going to do with the money that you get from your office? Going to build a new house?"

"Well, no," said the judge. "The old house is small, but we have lived in it a long time, and it still does very well."

"Then I suppose you are planning to buy more land?" said the neighbor.

"No, indeed, I have as much land now as I can cultivate. But I will tell you what I am going to do with my money. I am going to try to educate my boys. I would rather do this than have lands and houses."

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