influential man in the colonies was perhaps Benjamin Franklin, then
sixty-nine years of age. Certainly it cannot be doubted that he was one
of the most illustrious founders of the American Republic. Among the
great statesmen of the period, his fame is second only to that of
Washington.

I will not dwell on his early life, since that part of his history is
better known than that of any other of our great men, from the charming
autobiography which he began to write but never cared to finish. He was
born in Boston, January 17, 1706, the youngest but two of seventeen
children. His father was a narrow-minded English Puritan, but
respectable and conscientious,--a tallow-chandler by trade; and his
ancestors for several generations had been blacksmiths in the little
village of Ecton in Northamptonshire, England. He was a precocious boy,
not over-promising from a moral and religious point of view, but
inordinately fond of reading such books as were accessible, especially
those of a sceptical character. He had no sympathy with the theological
doctrines then in vogue in his native town. At eight years of age he was
sent to a grammar school, and at ten he was taken from it to assist his
father in soap-boiling; but, showing a repugnance to this sort of
business, he was apprenticed to his brother James at the age of twelve,
to learn the art, or trade, of a printer. At fifteen we find him writing
anonymously, for his brother's newspaper which had just been started, an
article which gave offence to the provincial government, and led to a
quarrel with his brother, who, it seems, was harsh and tyrannical.

Boston at this time was a flourishing town of probably about ten
thousand or twelve thousand people, governed practically by the
Calvinistic ministers, and composed chiefly of merchants, fishermen, and
ship-carpenters, yet all tolerably versed in the rudiments of education