...postdating his eighteenth century. And yet, his insistence that his progress through the world is exemplary ("I have been the more particular in this Description of my Journey," he explains in the Autobiography, "and shall be so of my first entry into that City [Philadelphia],...

...has "been the more particular in this Description of my Journey, and ... of my first entry into the City, that you may in your Mind compare such unlikely Beginnings with the Figure I have since then made."14 Forty years after the autobiography was first published, Hawthorne wrote the tale of...

...Franklin's "first Entry" into Philadelphia, a wonderful piece of storytelling, is designed, he says, to "compare such unlikely Beginnings with the Figure I have since made there." (75) By emphasizing the "awkward ridiculous Appearance" of the anonymous bumpkinconqueror, surveying...

...the Market street Wharff. — I have been the more particular in this Description of my Journey, & ess of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, Beginning with the Figure I have since made there. I was in my working Dress, my best Cloaths being...

...time in pointing out the moral: I have been the more particular in this Description of my Journey, & shall be so of my first Entry into that City, that you may in your mind compare such unlikely Beginning with the Figure I have since made there. ... I was dirty from my Journey; my Pockets were...

...arriv'd there about 8 or 9 a Clock, on the Sunday morning, and landed at the Market street Wharff. — which is not at another time. And now, says he, he will eat horse & shall be so of my first Entry into that City, that you may in your Mind compare such unlikely Beginning...

...scene begins with his own dramatic preface to alert his son about the pending importance of this image: "I have been the more particular in this Description...Beginnings with the Figure I have since made there" (20). Eight years later, in 1729, Franklin revisits this city and describes the expanding urban scene...

...with all he owned on his back and with the rolls of bread he purchased bulging out of his pockets, "that you may in your Mind compare such unlikely Beginnings with the Figure I have since made there." He also reports on his public recognition in his election to offices of government, saying that his...

...arriv'd there about 8 or 9 a Clock, on the Sunday morning, and landed at the Market street Wharff. — I have been the more particular in this Description of my Journey, & shall be so of my first Entry into that City, that you may in your Mind compare such unlikely Beginning...

...more particular in this Description, of my first Entry into that City," Franklin candidly confesses, "that you may in your Mind compare such unlikely Beginnings with the Figure I have since made there" 1751. In Franklin's world, the figure one cuts counts. Yet, Franklin's concern for appearance, albeit...