also connected with our knowledge of the course of the most important characteristics of the Gulf Stream. He likewise gave much time to the inquiry as to the diverse powers of different colours to absorb solar heat, and arrived at many important results.

Not the least of his many services to mankind was the practical wisdom which, during the time that he was a printer and the publisher of a newspaper, he was forever throwing broadcast amongst the poor colonists, pointing out the way to wealth and independence, and thus doing much towards making them what they soon became, a patient, persevering, and self-reliant people. His essays in the Pennsylvania Gazette are mines of wealth in this respect. The following, taken from an article entitled "Necessary hints to those who would be rich," will serve as a specimen of his prudential counsels:

"The use of money is all the advantage there is in having money.

"For six pounds a year you may have the use of one hundred pounds, provided you are a man of known prudence and honesty.

"He that spends a groat a day idly, spends idly about six pounds a year, which is the price for the use of one hundred pounds.

"He that wastes idly a groat's worth of his time. per day, one day with another, wastes the privilege of using one hundred pounds each day.

"He that idly loses five shillings' worth of time loses five shillings, and might as prudently throw five shillings into the sea.

"He that loses five shillings, not only loses that sum, but all the advantages that might be made by turning it in dealing, which, by the time that a young man becomes old, will amount to a considerable sum of money."

This may be, and has been characterized by some as, very worldly wisdom; but as Franklin himself has pointed out, it is a wisdom that lies necessarily at the root of much that is better and higher. It exhibits, moreover, only one phase of that general and practical wisdom with which he viewed every department of life, from the lowest to the highest.

Reference is made in the Autobiography to one or two of Franklin's inventions, but nothing is said of the debt we owe to him in respect to the harmonica or musical glasses. He possessed considerable skill in music; and if he did not actually invent, he so far improved the harmonica as to develop it from a toy into an available instrument of music.

Franklin began to write the following account of his life in the form of a letter to his son, the Governor of New Jersey, in 1771, when on a visit to his friend, Dr. Jonathan Shipley, Bishop of St. Asaph. At this time he brought the Autobiography down to the period of his marriage. Nothing more was added

until 1784, when he wrote another chapter while living at Passy. The remainder was written some four years later, at which time he had returned to Philadelphia, and was eighty-two years old.

While Franklin was in France as United States minister, he showed a copy of his Autobiography to some of his friends there, one of whom, M. Le Veillard, translated it into French. Shortly after Franklin's death this translation was published in France. It was then retranslated into English and appeared in London, and was for a long time accepted both in England and the United States as though it were the author's original work. Finally, however, the Autobiography was published by Franklin's grandson, William Temple Franklin, from the original manuscript, and it is from this copy, edited by Jared Sparks, that the present edition has been prepared.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

OF

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

CHAPTER I.

FIRST START IN LIFE.

I HAVE ever had a pleasure in obtaining any little anecdotes of my ancestors. You may remember the inquiries I made among the remains of my relations when you were with me in England, and the journey I undertook for that purpose. Imagining it may be equally agreeable to you to learn the circumstances of my life, many of which you are acquainted with, and expecting the enjoyment of a few weeks' uninterrupted leisure, I sit down to write them. Besides, there are some other inducements that excite me to this undertaking. From the poverty and obscurity in which I was born, and in which I passed my earliest years, I have raised myself to a state of affluence and some degree of celebrity in the world. As constant

good fortune has accompanied me even to an advanced period of life, my posterity will perhaps be desirous of learning the means which I employed, and which, thanks to Providence, so well succeeded with me. They may also deem them fit to be imitated, should any of them find themselves in similar circumstances.

This good fortune, when I reflect on it (which is frequently the case), has induced me sometimes to say that, if it were left to my choice, I should have no objection to go over the same life from its beginning to the end, requesting only the advantage authors have of correcting in a second edition the faults of the first. So would I also wish to change some incidents of it for others more favorable. Notwithstanding, if this condition was denied, I should still accept the offer of recommencing the same life. But as this repetition is not to be expected, that which resembles most living one's life over again seems to be to recall all the circumstances of it, and, to render this remembrance more durable, to record them in writing.

In thus employing myself, I shall yield to the inclination so natural to old men, of talking of themselves and their own actions; and I shall indulge it without being tiresome to those who, from respect to my age, might conceive themselves obliged to listen to me, since they will be always free to read me or