Vexed at the arbitrary proceedings of the assembly; willing to escape from a town where good people pointed with horror at his freedom; indignant, also, at the tyranny of a brother, who, as a passionate master, often beat his apprentice, -- Benjamin Franklin, in October, 1723, then but seventeen years old, sailed clandestinely for New York; and, finding there no employment, crossed to Amboy; went on foot to the Delaware; for want of a wind, rowed in a boat from Burlington to Philadelphia; and, bearing marks of his labor at the oar, weary, hungry, having for his whole stock of cash a single dollar, the runaway apprentice -- greatest of the sons of New England of that generation, the humble pupil of the free schools of Boston, rich in the boundless hope of youth and the unconscious power of genius, which modestly adorned -- stepped on shore to seek food, occupation, shelter, and fortune. On the deep foundations of sobriety, frugality, and industry, the young journeyman built his fortunes and fame; and he soon came to have a printing-office of his own. Toiling early and late, with his own hands he set types and worked at the press; with his own hands would trundle to the office in a wheelbarrow the reams of paper which he was to use. His ingenuity was such, he could form letters, make types and wood cuts, and engrave vignettes in copper. The assembly of Pennsylvania respected his merit, and chose him its printer. He planned a newspaper; and, when he became its proprietor and editor, he fearlessly defended absolute freedom of thought and speech, and the inalienable power of the people. Desirous of advancing education, he proposed improvements in the schools of Philadelphia; he invented the system of subscription libraries, and laid the foundation of one that was long the most considerable library in America; he suggested the establishment of an academy, which has ripened into a university; he saw the benefit of concert in the pursuit of science, and gathered a philosophical society for its advancement. The intelligent and highly-cultivated Logan bore testimony to his merits before they had burst upon the world: -- Our most ingenious printer has the clearest understanding, with extreme modesty. He is certainly an extraordinary man, -- of a singularly good judgment, but of equal modesty, -- excellent, yet humble. Do not imagine, he adds, that I overdo in my character of Benjamin Franklin, for I am rather short in it. When the scientific world began to investigate the wonders of electricity, Franklin excelled all observers in the marvellous simplicity and lucid exposition of his experiments, and in the admirable sagacity with which he elicited from them the laws which they illustrated. It was he who first suggested the explanation of thunder-gusts and the northern lights on electrical principles, and, in the summer of 1752, going out into the fields, with no instrument but a kite, no companion but his son, established his theory by obtaining a line of connection with a thunder-cloud. Nor did he cease till he had made the lightning a household pastime, taught his family to catch the subtile fluid in its inconceivably rapid leaps between the earth and the sky, and compelled it to give warning of its passage by the harmless ringing of bells. History of the Colonization of the United States, 1841
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 09:50:51 +0000
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