"Benjamin Franklin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for an instrument which would leave a permanent record that might be read at leisure, and this was the invention of Samuel Finley Breeze Morse. He was born at the foot of Breed's Hill, in Charlestown, Massachusetts, on the 27th of April, 1791. The place was a little over a mile from where Benjamin Franklin was born, and the date was a little over a year after he died. His family was of British origin. Anthony Morse, of Marlborough, in Wiltshire, had emigrated to America in 1635, and settled in Newbury, Massachusetts, He and ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... charges that attached to his memory. In writing the "Life of Andrew Jackson" he also had access to original and unpublished documents. This work was published in three volumes in 1859-60. Other works of later publication are: "General Butler in New Orleans" (1863 and 1882); "Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin" (1864); "How New York is Governed" (1866); "Famous Americans of Recent Times," containing Sketches of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, John Randolph, and others (1867); "The People's Book of Biography," containing ...
— Revolutionary Heroes, And Other Historical Papers • James Parton
... it to parents and guardians. Never! But the fiendish tutors, chuckling in their glee, little knew what was passing through the cold, haughty intellect of Charles Fanuel Hall Golightly, aged ten; what curled the lip of Benjamin Franklin Jenkins, aged seven; or what shone in the bold blue eyes of Bromley Chitterlings, aged six and a half, as they sat in the corner of the playground at recess. Their only other companion and confidant was the negro porter and janitor of the ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... been thus with men of other races subjugated by the whites. Benjamin Franklin in his autobiography tells that when he was a commissioner to the Indians at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, he and his fellow-commissioners agreed that they would allow the Indians no rum until the treaty they earnestly sought was concluded, and that ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... one moment. I don't doubt your delicacy and good-breeding; but in this particular case, as I was allowed the privilege of walking alone with a very interesting young woman, you must allow me to remark, in the classic version of a familiar phrase, used by our Master Benjamin Franklin, it is nullum ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... and Benjamin Franklin were well enough in their day, but the nation has made progress since then. Balloon is a man we know and can depend on to be true ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... Anti-Slavery Societies, established about the period of the American Revolution, and of which the late Judge Jay, Benjamin Franklin, Dr. Rush, and other distinguished statesmen were members, were composed mainly of the Religious Society of Friends. These societies were for many years active and energetic in their labors for ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... who made our nation borrowed most freely. Nowhere in Europe, except in England, can one find the origin of so much that is deepest and best in our national life—including the highest jewel of civilization, religious liberty—as in Holland, as John Adams and Benjamin Franklin long ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... Mr. Carroll was a delegate to the Revolutionary Convention of Maryland; in 1776 he went with three other commissioners (Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Father John Carroll) to try to induce the Canadian colonies to join in the revolt; and soon after his return from this unsuccessful journey he signed the Declaration of Independence. Of the circumstances ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... you, niece, what I think of the great men I have met? They are disagreeable, conceited creatures; and ought, all of them, to have died before they were born; and for my part, I am satisfied not to have had the fate to marry one of them. As for Benjamin Franklin,' she continued, 'he was a particularly great man, and I am particularly grateful that I never saw him but once. I formed my opinion of him then; for I only need to see a person once, to form an opinion—and he is dead! Well, then, every one ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... blood of kings and captains to help him fight his own battles. He reads of Bunker's Hill and the Declaration of Independence with constant reference to the part he shall take in the politics of the world. His motto is, Sic semper tyrannis! Benjamin Franklin, and after him John Smith,—perhaps a better man than he. We live on that perhaps. Every great man departed has played out his last card, has taken all his chances. We are glad to see his power limited and scaled up. Shakspeare, we say, did not know everything; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... Pennsylvania. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Mafflin, Robert Morris, George Clymer, Thomas Fitzsimons, Jared Ingersoll, James Wilson, ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... of the committee was adopted and passed into a law, but the effect of it was null, for the journal eluded the prohibition by putting the name of Benjamin Franklin instead of James Franklin at the bottom of its columns, and this manoeuvre was ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... among men as Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, Samuel and John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... Mather from the Presidency and to refuse that office to his son. In the town of Boston, once hermetically sealed against heresy, there are Baptist and Episcopal churches—and a dancing-master. Young Benjamin Franklin, born in 1706, professes a high respect for the Mathers, but he does not go to church, "Sunday being my studying day," and neither the clerical nor the secular arm of Boston is long enough and strong enough to compel that industrious apprentice ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... masses of the people. Great Britain must either adopt that constructive and protective national policy which the greatest statesmen and Empire builders of modern times—Richelieu, Cromwell, Colbert, Lord Chatham, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Stein, and Bismarck—have pursued, or she will share the fate of the great commercial world empires of the past, from Phoenicia to the Netherlands. She must either follow the policy of Mr. Chamberlain, build up the Empire and make it strong and prosperous, or that of revolutionary demagogues, ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... grain. Farmers mow the grass. Farmers' boys spread the hay. The clerk sells the merchant's goods. An ostrich outruns an Arab's horse. Cecrops founded Athens. Gallileo invented the telescope. James Macpherson translated Ossian's poems. Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe. Doctor Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning-rod. Washington Irving ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... period of more than fifty years, he yet lived to see the day when "all that was most eminent in station or most distinguished in talents—all that most shone in society, or most ruled in court, seemed to bend before him." At this period he, for the first time, saw Benjamin Franklin. They embraced each other in the midst of public acclamations, and it was said to ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... of Moses was of the sternly practical kind, resembling that of Benjamin Franklin. He did not promise his people, as did the Egyptians, felicity in a future life. He confined himself to prosperity in this world. And to succeed in his end he set an attainable standard. A standard no higher, certainly than that accepted by the Egyptians, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... such haste to act thus. It was hardly a judicious policy. Andrew Johnson was the grandson of an Irishman; Mr. Seward was the son of an Irishwoman; General Jackson was the son of an Irishman; General Washington and Benjamin Franklin lived and died British subjects, if this law be correct. There is another point to which I wish to refer—it is to the manner in which my government ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... Benjamin Franklin Captain Kidd and the Early American Buccaneers Columbus and the Discovery of America Daniel Boone and the Early Settlement of Kentucky David Crockett and the Early Texas History De Soto, the Discoverer of the Mississippi ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... always such as an intelligent reader would desire, and they usually contain all the information needed for a perfect understanding of the matter in hand. Dr. Sparks's edition is a monument at once to the memory of Benjamin Franklin and to his own diligence, tact, and faithfulness." We take great pleasure in copying this passage, both because it seems to illustrate the spirit which Mr. Parton brought to his task, and because the value of Mr. Sparks's labors have not always been so freely acknowledged ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... English friends were Hume, Garrick, Wilkes, Sterne, Gibbon, Horace Walpole, Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin, Dr. Priestley, Lord Shelburne, Gen. Barr, Gen. Clark, Sir James MacDonald, Dr. Gem, Messrs. Stewart, Demster, Fordyce, Fitzmaurice, Foley, etc. Holbach addressed a letter to Hume in 1762, before making his acquaintance, in which he ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... of an iron screw in place of the wooden one. These were the inventions of William Janson Blaeuw, a printer of Amsterdam. Blaeuw's press was introduced into England and used there as well as on the continent. It was substantially the same press as that on which Benjamin Franklin worked ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... that of our other illustrious Bostonian, Benjamin Franklin, were within a kite-string's distance of each other. When the baby philosopher of the last century was carried from Milk Street through the narrow passage long known as Bishop's Alley, now Hawley Street, he ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... were Nathaniel Gorham, Massachusetts; Alex. Hamilton, New York; William Livingston and David Brearly, New Jersey; Benjamin Franklin, Jared Ingersoll, James Wilson, and Gouverneur Morris, Pennsylvania; Gunning Bedford, John Dickinson, and Jacob Broom, Delaware; Daniel, of St. Thomas, Jenifer, Maryland; John Blair, Virginia; Richard Dobbs Spaight, North Carolina; ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... Netherland the houses were certainly very pretty, as all visitors stated who wrote accounts at that day. Madam Knights visited New York in 1704, and wrote of the houses,—I will give her own words, in her own spelling and grammar, which were not very good, though she was the teacher of Benjamin Franklin, and the ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... us an injustice, friend," he said. "Was it not Benjamin Franklin who a few months back gave such notable help to General Braddock that he called him the only man of honesty and vigour in all the western world? But the Lord showed that He would not have us attack our brother men, and Braddock's army was cut to pieces, and he himself slain. When the Lord shows ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... State, but the boundaries of the whole as one unit, one sovereignty, one nationality. Last of all, the commissioners who signed the treaty with the King's commissioner were not acting for the individual States, but for the United States. Three of them, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay, were from the North, and Henry Laurens from the South. The separate sovereignties whose existence was so persistently alleged by Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Toombs were not represented when independence ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), who was strictly contemporary with Edwards, was a contrast to him in every respect. As Edwards represents the spirituality and other-worldliness of Puritanism, Franklin stands for the worldly and secular ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... been ordered to the Asiatic station, Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, Lieutenant in the United States Navy, follows a custom (not at all unusual among naval officers, if Pierre Loti is to be believed) and for the summer sojourn in Japan leases a Japanese wife. (The word "wife" is a euphemism for housekeeper, companion, play-fellow, mistress, what ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... same country which gave men like Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln and Horace Greeley a chance to rise from the lower ranks to the highest places before they reached middle life. It was no longer a land where merit strove with merit, and the prize fell to the most earnest and the most gifted. The tremendous influx of foreign population since ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... corollaries from a problem in Euclid. If we are at war, as I think, with a foreign country, to all intents and purposes, how can a man here stand up and say that he is on the side of that foreign country and not be an enemy to his country? BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER. ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... using hydrogen as a lifting factor. Few people saw any possibilities in aerostation, in spite of the adventures of the duck and sheep and cock; voyages to the moon were talked and written, and there was more of levity than seriousness over ballooning as a rule. The classic retort of Benjamin Franklin stands as an exception to the general rule: asked what was the use of ballooning—'What's the use of a baby?' he countered, and the spirit of that reply brought both the dirigible and ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... theological writers with Jonathan Edwards, Horace Bushnell, Henry Ward Beecher, and their like, and political writers with Jefferson, Webster, and their like, the list need not be a long one. Only one writer in our narrower sense of literature must be named in the earlier day—Benjamin Franklin. In the period before the Civil War must be named Edgar Allan Poe (died 1849) and Washington Irving (died 1859). The Civil War group is the large one, and its names are those of the later group as well. Let them be alphabetical, ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... as our great statesman, Benjamin Franklin proved that "honesty is the best policy," so many a successful woman has proved that a pleasant, tactful manner is one of the most valuable assets a girl can possess, and should be practised steadily. At home, at school, ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... deflection experienced by the South African current, from the Lagullas Bank, which is fully from 70 to 80 fathoms deep, would seem to imply the existence of a far-extending propagation. Sand banks and shoals lying beyond the line of these currents may, as was first discovered by the admirable Benjamin Franklin, be recognized by the coldness of the water over them. This depression of the temperature appears to me to depend upon the fact that, by the propagation of the motion of the sea, deep waters rise to the margin ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... most needed, — a flannel suit, carefully rolled in a water-proof cloth. I knew that I must change my wet clothes for dry ones, or perish. This was no easy task to perform, with hands benumbed and limbs paralyzed with the cold. O shade of Benjamin Franklin, did not one of thy kinsmen, in his wide experience as a traveller, foresee this very disaster, and did he not, when I left the "City of Brotherly Love," force upon me an antidote, a sort of spiritual fire, which my New England temperance principles made me refuse to accept? "It ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... the Boston Gazette, the first number of which was published in December, 1719, by William Brookes, the successor of Campbell as postmaster. It was printed on half a sheet of foolscap by James Franklin, brother of Benjamin Franklin, who served his apprenticeship with him. The proprietor, printer, and publisher of the Gazette, however, were soon changed; and in 1721 the New England Courant was established in Boston by James Franklin, who was both proprietor and publisher. With the establishment ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Quitman and R.J. Walker. This intimacy influenced greatly the future of Quitman. Walker was from Pennsylvania, and had married Miss Bache, the niece of George M. Dallas, sister to the great Professor Bache, and great-granddaughter of Benjamin Franklin. Mrs. Walker was a lady of great beauty, of rare accomplishments, and distinguished for her modesty and womanly bearing. Mr. Bache, the father of Mrs. Walker, emigrated to Texas, was in the Senate of her Congress at the time she was received into the United States, and was the only man who ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Cornelia. "For I was in Paris before the French Revolution, at the same time as our philosopher, Benjamin Franklin. I was present at court on a grand occasion. The king, Louis Sixteenth, a handsome and amiable monarch, and the beautiful and graceful queen, Marie Antoinette, were there of course; the young Dauphin was, I hope, sound asleep. The ladies of the court were ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... hand, it would be possible to reproduce the words, voice, and accent of the dead. The photograph, the telegraph, the telephone, and the phonograph were all more or less latent in what seemed to our ancestors the kite-flying folly of Benjamin Franklin. Who knows but that in Telepathy we may have the faint foreshadowing of another latent force, which may yet be destined to cast into the shade even the marvels of ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... visible universe. The facts, moreover, show that discovery usually begins with the interest which men feel in the world immediately about them, or which is presented to their senses in a daily spectacle. Thus Benjamin Franklin, in the midst of a busy life, became deeply interested in the phenomena of lightning, and by a very simple experiment proved that this wonder of the air was due to electrical action such as we may arouse by rubbing a stick of sealing-wax or a piece ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... Empire." The two great literary frauds in our language were then given to the world in Chatterton's "Poems," and Macpherson's "Ossian." It was the age of Pitt and Burke, and Fox, of Horace Walpole and Chesterfield in English politics, Benjamin Franklin was then a potent force in America, Butler and Paley and Warburton, and Jonathan Edwards and Doddridge with many other equally powerful names were moulding the theology of ...
— William Black - The Apostle of Methodism in the Maritime Provinces of Canada • John Maclean
... for freedom was done on the battle-fields and in the camps. While Washington and his soldiers were skirmishing with the British and while they were encamped at Valley Forge, Benjamin Franklin, one of the foremost thinkers and statesmen of the time, was in Europe making friends for the American cause and asking help for the struggling colonists. The King of France made a treaty of alliance with him, which ...
— George Washington • Calista McCabe Courtenay
... Benjamin Franklin's account of his own method as related in his Autobiography, yet it will bear quotation ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... real, or psychic, are the sum of a number of elements. Some parts are due to services performed by the person himself. When one combs his own hair he is performing for himself a service that is a part of his income. Benjamin Franklin said it was better to teach a boy to shave himself than to give him a thousand dollars with which to pay barbers for a life-time. Other parts of income are the uses and fruits of legally controlled wealth; chance ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... to the study of Addison and by imitating the Spectator papers taught himself to write, is the best of lessons in self-cultivation in English. The "Autobiography" is proof of how well he learned, not Addison's style, which was suited to Joseph Addison and not to Benjamin Franklin, but a clear, firm manner of writing. In Franklin's case we can see not only what he owed to books, but how one side of his fine, responsive mind was starved because, as he put it, more proper books did not fall in his way. The blind side of Franklin's great ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. A philosopher and statesman. When a boy he associated himself with the development of the tallow-chandlery interest, and invented the Boston dip. He was lightning on some things, also a printer. He won distinction as the original ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... we note on the north side the Golden Cross Hotel, rebuilt. This is the successor of a famous old coaching inn, which stood further west. On the south side is Craven Street, formerly Spur Alley, where once Benjamin Franklin lived at No. 7. The site of Hungerford Market is now covered by the Charing Cross railway-station. In Charing Cross station-yard is a modern reproduction of the original Queen Eleanor's Cross. The market ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... boy is represented in history by the youthful George Washington, who suffered through his inability to invent a plausible fiction, and by Benjamin Franklin, whose abnormal simplicity in the purchase of musical instruments has become proverbial. But history is not taken down in shorthand as it occurs, and it sometimes lags a little. The modern American small boy is ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... societies, at home and abroad, and was elected in 1869 to our own National Academy of Sciences, becoming its vice-president in 1883. In 1893 he was chosen one of the eight foreign associates of the Institute of France,—the first native American since Benjamin Franklin to be so chosen. Newcomb's most famous work as an astronomer,—that which gained him world-wide fame among his brother astronomers,—was, as has been said, too mathematical and technical to appeal to the general public among his countrymen, who have ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... absurdity in saying of the ship General Williams, she is beautiful; or, of the steamboat Benjamin Franklin, she is out of date. It were far better to use no gender in such cases. But if people will continue the practice of making distinctions where there are none, they must do it from habit and whim, and not ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... against Roman Catholics, it was supposed in a peculiar manner to commend itself to Heaven. There were prayers without ceasing in churches and families, and all was ardor, energy, and confidence; while the other colonies looked on with distrust, dashed with derision. When Benjamin Franklin, in Philadelphia, heard what was afoot, he wrote to his brother in Boston, "Fortified towns are hard nuts to crack, and your teeth are not accustomed to it; but some seem to think that forts are as easy taken as snuff." [Footnote: Sparks, ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... procured the support of many others, who elected members to a convention. This body met at Greenville, in November, 1785, and framed a government of a State which they called "Franklin," in honor of the illustrious statesman, Benjamin Franklin. Colonel Sevier was elected Governor, and judges and other officers ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... laws, carry spirituous liquors among them, and take advantage of their inordinate appetite for it, to cheat them of their skins, and their wampum, which is their money." In 1753 governor Hamilton appointed Richard Peters, Isaac Norris and Benjamin Franklin, to hold a treaty with the Indians at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. In the report of these commissioners they say: "But in justice to these Indians, and the promises we made them, we cannot close our report, without taking notice, that the quantity of strong liquors ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... he determined to take holy orders, and returned to England for confirmation therein. Coming back to America he settled in the ministry at East Haddam, Conn. Some fifteen years later, in August, 1757, he died, while on a visit to Philadelphia, at the residence of his friend, Benjamin Franklin, then publisher of the Pennsylvania Gazette, who spoke of him, in an obituary notice in his paper, as "a gentleman of a humane and pious disposition, indefatigable in his ministry, easy and affable in his conversation, open and sincere in his friendship, and above every ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... certainly wanting in some of the elements of greatness displayed by the most distinguished of his contemporaries and compatriots. His style of statemanship was not so far-seeing, comprehensive, and solid as that of a Samuel Adams, a Thomas Jefferson, a John Dickenson, or a Benjamin Franklin, and it certainly lacked the Machiavellian coolness and argumentativeness of a Hutchinson. But what Otis accomplished was impossible to any of them. His work was quite unique in its way, and his public life and action have produced results as valuable and lasting as the public labors of ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... when Frederick the Great negotiated with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson the Treaty of Friendship and Commerce of September 9, 1785, between Prussia and the Republic of the West, German and American statesmen have, in fact, always stood together in the struggle ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... illustration. Everybody within this hall is aware that William Bradford was the first in time of the newspaper publishers of New-York. His gazette made its earliest appearance in October, 1725, four years after James, the brother of Benjamin Franklin, began the New England Courant—this being seventeen years after the commencement of the Boston News Letter, the first regular newspaper commenced in North America. I advert to this circumstance because we possess the completed file of that earliest of the journals of our land ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... with him some volumes of the Peter Parley series from which to teach me. He selected the life of Benjamin Franklin to begin with. He thought it would read like a story book and be both entertaining and instructive. But he found out his mistake soon after we began it. Benjamin Franklin was much too business-like a person. The narrowness of his calculated morality ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... memorable results of the gathering at Skibo in 1906 was that Miss Agnes Irwin, Dean of Radcliffe College, and great-granddaughter of Benjamin Franklin, spent the principals' week with us and all were charmed with her. Franklin received his first doctor's degree from St. Andrews University, nearly one hundred and fifty years ago. The second centenary of his birth was finely celebrated in Philadelphia, and St. Andrews, with numerous ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... R. K. Dent, John Baskerville, Cambridge, 1907. On page 19 the authors include a letter to Baskerville from Benjamin Franklin, written in 1760 in a jocular tone, which notes that he overheard a friend saying that Baskerville's types would be "the means of blinding all the Readers in the Nation owing to the thin and narrow strokes ...
— Why Bewick Succeeded - A Note in the History of Wood Engraving • Jacob Kainen
... no less notable a personage than Benjamin Franklin, who, much to the after-advantage of the Quaker City, had run away from too severe an apprenticeship in Boston, failed to obtain employment in New York, and learned that work might be had in Philadelphia. The story of how he came thither cannot be told better than in his own ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Little Wild Streets are called respectively Old and New Weld Streets by Strype. Weld House stood on the site of the present Wild Court, and was during the reign of James II. occupied by the Spanish Embassy. In Great Wild Street Benjamin Franklin worked ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... requires many words to tell, passed instantaneously with the rapidity of light. After they were seated, some minutes were spent in common-place questions and answers, such as those which Benjamin Franklin would wisely put all together, into one formula, to satisfy curiosity. Count Altenberg landed the preceding day—had not stopped to see any one in England—had not even heard of Lord Oldborough's resignation—had proceeded directly to the ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... poems and dramas before he was ten. Lord Macaulay read at three and began a compendium of universal history at seven. Although not a lover of books, George Washington early read Matthew Hale and became a master in thought. Benjamin Franklin would sit up all night at his books. Thomas Jefferson read fifteen hour a day. Patrick Henry read for employment, and kept store for pastime. Daniel Webster was a devouring reader, and retained all that he read. At the age of ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... a ripe age, in 1848, with a public funeral, which people in Leeds still recall as a unique demonstration of gratitude and esteem. In Yorkshire, where his career was better known than elsewhere, the name given to him by the generation that followed him was that of "the English Benjamin Franklin." ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... value of it. Crawford fixed the price at three days' work, and the future President pulled corn for three days, thus becoming owner of the coveted volume." In addition to this, he was fortunate enough to get hold of AEsop's Fables, Pilgrim's Progress, and the lives of Benjamin Franklin and Henry Clay. He made these books his own by conning them over and over, copying the more impressive portions until they were firmly fixed in his memory. Commenting upon the value of this sort ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... [Footnote 251: Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), American philosopher, statesman, diplomatist, and author. He discovered the identity of lightning with electricity, invented the lightning-rod, went on several diplomatic missions to Europe, was one of the committee that drew up the Declaration ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... a little more than a hundred years, it is of interest to see how irregular were the communications to and from foreign ports by mail packet. Benjamin Franklin, writing of the period 1757, mentions the following circumstances connected with a voyage he made from New York to Europe in that year. The packets were at the disposition of General Lord Loudon, then in charge of the army in America; and Franklin had to travel from Philadelphia to New York to ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... plain way? You think that words mean nothing more than themselves, and that you can talk without ellipsis, and that customary phrases have not their connotations? You think that, do you? Listen then to the tale of Mr Benjamin Franklin Hard, a kindly merchant of Cincinnati, O., who had no particular religion, but who had accumulated a fortune of six hundred thousand dollars, and who had a horror of breaking the Sabbath. He was not 'a kind husband and a good father,' for ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... by passing strong resolutions against the measure, which were transmitted to their agents in London, to be laid before government. The province of Pennsylvania appointed a new agent to London, in the person of the celebrated Benjamin Franklin, who was instructed to oppose the stamp-act to the very utmost, and indeed every other act that might be proposed to the British parliament to tax the Americans without their consent. A more efficient agent than Franklin could not have been chosen by the Pennsylvanians. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... accepted its principles of individual freedom, the rational interpretation of religion, and the necessity of bringing religious beliefs into harmony with modern science and philosophy. Among these may be properly included such men as Benjamin Franklin, John Marshall, Gerrit Smith, John G. Whittier, William Lloyd Garrison, Andrew D. White, and Abraham Lincoln. Whittier was a Friend, and White an Episcopalian; but the religion of both is acceptable to all Unitarians. Marshall was undoubtedly ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... House tower that rose impressively in the distance above the green of the Public Gardens. Boston looked on, dumb with shame and stifled rage, as the invaders took possession of the city and ran up their flags, red, white, and black, above the Old South Meeting House on Washington Street, where Benjamin Franklin was baptised, and above the sacred, now dishonoured, shaft of ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... selecting a wife (or husband) from a family of more than one or two children was emphasized by Benjamin Franklin, and is also one of the time-honored traditions of the Arabs, who have always looked at eugenics in a very practical, if somewhat cold-blooded way. It has two advantages: in the first place, one can get a better idea of what the individual really is, by examining ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... Marat had been a very different figure—an accomplished physician, the friend of nobles, a man of science and original thought, so that he was nearly elected to the Academy of Sciences. His studies in electricity gained for him the admiration of Benjamin Franklin and the praise of Goethe. But when he turned to politics he left all this career behind him. He plunged into the very mire of red republicanism, and even there he was for a time so much hated that he sought refuge in London to ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... of America.—The oldest scientific association in the United States is the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge. It owed its origin to Benjamin Franklin, who in 1743 published "A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations in America,'' which was so favourably received that in the same year the society was organized, with Thomas Hopkinson ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and he became a surveyor of some note. He attended closely, however, to his magnificent farm, and took a lively interest in all affairs affecting his fellow-citizens. In 1765 and 66, only just of age, he was sent to Nova Scotia to survey some lands belonging to Benjamin Franklin and others. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... proud days in its time," went on Nyoda. "The Carvers were staunch patriots, and many a meeting of loyal citizens was held around that table in the dining room. They say that Benjamin Franklin was once a guest here. The history of the Carver family was Uncle Jasper's pet hobby, and he has it all printed up in books which you may ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... This convention, of which Benjamin Franklin was president, having met and deliberated, and agreed upon a constitution, they next ordered it to be published, not as a thing established, but for the consideration of the whole people, their approbation or rejection, and then adjourned to a ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... family, that no distinction was made between the two young men, although Serre seems to have been considered as the originator of the bold move. The intervention of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld d'Enville was solicited, and a letter was obtained by him from Benjamin Franklin—then American minister at the Court of Versailles—to his son-in-law, Richard Bache. Lady Juliana Penn wrote in their behalf to John Penn at Philadelphia, and Mademoiselle Pictet to Colonel Kinloch, member of the Continental Congress from South Carolina. Thus supported in their ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... and violent storm, that seemed likely to wreck the vessel. The mob had robbed Mr. Hopper of his money and clothing. He had no comfortable garments to shield him from the severe cold, and his hands and feet were frozen. At last, he arrived at Providence, and went on board the steamer Benjamin Franklin, bound for New-York. There he had the good fortune to meet with a colored waiter, whose father had been redeemed from slavery by Friend Hopper's exertions. He was assiduously devoted to the son of his benefactor, and did everything in ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... between eight and half-past nine in the morning, a slender gentleman in an ulster, with a volume buttoned into the breast of it, may be observed leaving No. 608 Bush and descending Powell with an active step. The gentleman is R. L. S.; the volume relates to Benjamin Franklin, on whom he meditates one of his charming essays. He descends Powell, crosses Market, and descends in Sixth on a branch of the original Pine Street Coffee House, no less; I believe he would be capable of going to the original itself, if he could only find it. In the branch he seats himself ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... have added something to the permanent stock of what Matthew Arnold used to call 'the best that is known and thought in the world.' Even when the independent nationhood of the United States was still but an aspiration, Benjamin Franklin had familiarised Europe with much that has since been recognised as inherent in the modes of thought and ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... "ought to be careful NOT to give any sanction to it,"—Roger Sherman, who "was OPPOSED to a tax on slaves imported, because it implied they were property,"—James Madison, who "thought it WRONG to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men,"—and Benjamin Franklin, who likened American slaveholders to Algerine corsairs. In the face of these unequivocal judgments, it is absurd to suppose that these eminent citizens consented unanimously to any provision by which the National Government, the creature ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... the Winthrop cousins begin to put on airs, and to talk about autograph letters from Benjamin Franklin and Jefferson addressed to their great-great-great-grandmother, and to show beautiful carved fans and lace handkerchiefs which she carried at State balls in Philadelphia and New York, I have to bite my tongue to keep from reminding them that they have ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... of these, our protagonists of freedom, was Benjamin Franklin. After him it were difficult to name the second. It is always difficult to find the second man; for there are several who come after. In the case of our forerunners the second may have been Thomas Jefferson; ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... and natural virtue was embodied in Benjamin Franklin,—in all this eighteenth century the best type and herald of the coming development of man. Franklin inherited the characteristic virtue of the Englishman and the Puritan; he started in ground which Puritan and Quaker ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... a constable, and inquiries were set on foot to discover the perpetrators of the theft. In the course of the day warrants were issued, with the signature of a justice of the peace, to take the bodies of Benjamin Franklin and other evil-disposed persons who had stolen a heap of stones. If the owner of the stolen property had not been more merciful than the master mason, it might have gone hard with our friend Benjamin and his fellow-laborers. But, ...
— Biographical Stories - (From: "True Stories of History and Biography") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... conjectured to have been really the production of the ingenious compiler of the "Cross Readings." That compiler was one Caleb Whitefoord, a well-educated Scotch wine-merchant and picture-buyer, whose portrait figures in Wilkie's "Letter of Introduction." The friend of Benjamin Franklin, who had been his next-door neighbour at Craven Street, he became, in later years, something of a diplomatist, since in 1782-83 he was employed by the Shelburne administration in the Paris negotiation for the Treaty of Versailles. But at the date of the "Cross Readings" he was mainly what Burke, ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... BENJAMIN FRANKLIN was born in Milk Street, Boston, on January 6, 1706. His father, Josiah Franklin, was a tallow chandler who married twice, and of his seventeen children Benjamin was the youngest son. His schooling ended at ten, and at ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... The wonder is that we haven't had more than two wars. And it is no wonder that the ignorance of Englishmen about America and the American ignorance of England are monumental, stupendous, amazing, passing understanding. I have on my mantelpiece a statuette of Benjamin Franklin, an excellent and unmistakable likeness which was made here during his lifetime; and the inscription burnt on its base is Geo. Washington. It serves me many a good turn with my English friends. I use it as a measure of their ignorance of us. Of course this is a mere little error of a statuette-maker, ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... the birth of the "Boston News Letter"; the year 1719, of the "Boston Gazette" and of the "American Weekly Mercury" of Philadelphia. Boston added a third paper, the "New England Courant," in 1721, while New York issued its first sheet in 1725. Benjamin Franklin founded the "Pennsylvania Gazette" in 1729, and, in 1741, began the publication of the "General Magazine and Historical Chronicle for, all the British Plantations in America." In 1743, Boston sent out the "American Magazine and Historical Chronicle," containing, along with European news, ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... opposition and the natural and creditable desire to fulfil express engagements dies away, the inclination of a government is not to invite trouble by looking around for difficult tasks to do. "Those who govern, having much business on their hands," says Benjamin Franklin, "do not like to take the trouble to consider and carry into execution new projects." This is a political law to which all governments conform. Even the great reforming administration of Gladstone which took office in 1868, had earned five years later the famous jest of Disraeli: "The ministers ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... age when he began to learn English grammar and improve his writing and spelling. Benjamin Franklin was past fifty before he began the study of science and philosophy. Milton, in his blindness, was past the age of fifty when he sat down to complete his world-known epic, and Scott at fifty-five ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... an apprentice at Keimer's furnished the money to buy a printing outfit for his son and Franklin, but the son soon sold his share, and Benjamin Franklin, Printer, was fairly established in business at the age of twenty-four. The writing of an anonymous pamphlet on "The Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency" called attention to the need of a further issue of paper money ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... most offensive public plagues is the man who leaves a trail of untidiness behind him. No book of etiquette, not even a book of business etiquette, could counsel eating on the streets in spite of the historic and inspiring example of Mr. Benjamin Franklin walking down the streets of Philadelphia with a loaf of bread under each arm while he munched from a third which he held in his hand. One can forgive a man, however, if he, feeling the need of ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... the early practitioners of the new art to look to their reputations! By economizing the time of the public, they may squander their own good repute. It is not every printer who can afford, like Benjamin Franklin, to be a reformer; and pending the momentum when (the schoolmasters being all abroad) the grand causeway of the metropolis shall become, as it were, a moving diorama, inflicting knowledge upon the million whether it will or no—let us content ourselves with birds'-eye ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... up, nothing is better than the full hot bath at bed time, or the foot bath with mustard, followed by a hot drink. It is old-fashioned, but scientific, for nine colds out of ten are due to clogged pores. Benjamin Franklin said a hundred years ago that all colds come from impure air, lack of exercise, and over-eating, and nobody has ever bettered his conclusion. Even contagious colds will not be taken if the bodily resistance is kept at ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... dissent. In French society a discrepancy of views is always manifested by some courtesy-phrase, such as "Mais, ne pensez-vous pas" or "Je vous demande pardon"—the urbane substitutes for "No, you are wrong," "No, it isn't." Our own Benjamin Franklin, whose appreciation of the conversational art in France won completely the hearts of the French people, tells us in his autobiography that in later life he found it necessary to throw off habits acquired in youth: ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... In 1743, Benjamin Franklin, postmaster of Philadelphia, in an advertisement, dated April 14th, announces 'that the northern post will set out for New York on Thursdays, at three o'clock in the afternoon, till Christmas. The southern post sets out next Monday for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... wished to travel on to Saugatuck, Fairfield, Bridgeport, Stratford, Milford, and other points. The same column carried information for those who contemplated voyaging to Newport or Providence. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday the steamboats "Benjamin Franklin" (Capt. E.S. Bunker) and "President" (Capt. R.S. Bunker) left New York for those Rhode Island towns at ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... their masters, and have been recaptured after a few days of freedom, have been found to be entirely wild, as if they retained no remembrance, even for that short time, of all the petting which had been bestowed upon them. Dr. Benjamin Franklin is said to have had a pet hare which lived on the most friendly terms with a greyhound and cat, and would share the hearth-rug with them ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.—BENJAMIN FRANKLIN ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... disappeared and fled to St Louis. There he worked in the composing-room of the Evening News for a time, and then started out "to see the world"—New York, where a little World's Fair was in progress. He was somewhat better off than was Benjamin Franklin when he entered Philadelphia—for he had two or three dollars in pocket-change, and a ten-dollar bank-bill concealed in the lining of his coat. For a time he sweltered in a villainous mechanics' boarding-house in Duane Street, and worked at ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... received their first incentive to ambition and industry and perseverence by reading—when their minds were immature, but fresh and retentive—of the life and achievements of Benjamin Franklin and such other ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... during three days mourning for Benjamin Franklin, your fellow-citizen, your friend, and one of the most useful of your cooperators in the establishment of American liberty. They charge me to communicate their resolution to the Congress of the United States. In consequence I have the honor to address to you, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 10. • James D. Richardson
... generous and reckless of himself and of his own, that every one said immediately, "Here is no musty savant, but a man, a great man, a man on the heroic scale, not to serve whom is avarice and sin." He elevated the popular notion of what a student of Nature could be. Since Benjamin Franklin, we had never had among us a person of more popularly impressive type. He did not wait for students to come to him; he made inquiry for promising youthful collectors, and when he heard of one, he wrote, inviting and urging him to come. Thus there is hardly one now of the ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... the stone, so that all who pass may know that Washington once lived there. The house was built by Walter Franklin, a rich merchant, and was therefore called the Franklin House. The square, however, does not take its name from this man, but from the renowned Benjamin Franklin. ...
— The Story of Manhattan • Charles Hemstreet
... ingratiate himself, had sent an elegant package of perfumed soap, directed to Miss Iris, as a delicate expression of a lively sentiment of admiration, and that, after having met with the unfortunate treatment referred to, it was picked up by Master Benjamin Franklin, who appropriated it, rejoicing, and indulged in most unheard-of and inordinate ablutions in consequence, so that his hands were a frequent subject of maternal congratulation, and he smelt like a civet-cat for weeks after ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... first mention of French horns in America made by Benjamin Franklin, writing of the fine music in the church at Bethlehem, Pa., where flutes, oboes, French horns, and trumpets ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... there is nothing more curious that these incongruous printings, clearly the work of a practiced hand. Even the outside of the old edifice is not without its interest for an antiquarian. The lightening-rod which protects the Warner House to-day was put up under Benjamin Franklin's own supervision in 1762—such at all events is the credited tradition—and is supposed to be the first rod put up in New Hampshire. A lightening-rod "personally conducted" by Benjamin Franklin ought to be an attractive object to even the least susceptible electricity. The Warner House has another ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... He became member of the Assembly, Postmaster, and during the Revolution, while in France, induced that country to espouse our cause. If to-day the world has to thank Americans for making electricity their servant, Benjamin Franklin first discovered its most marked qualities. With a kite he brought down the spark from heaven to earth, and held it under control. Franklin died, honored by ...
— Harper's Young People, November 25, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Benjamin Franklin was not unlike other boys in his love for sophomoric phrases. It is related that one day he told his father that he had swallowed some acephalus molluscus, which so alarmed him that he shrieked for help. ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... water,—what he used to call O Sukray, —a-talkin' and a-talkin',—and sometimes he would laugh, and sometimes the tears would come into his eyes,—which was a kind of grayish blue eyes,—and there he'd set and set, and my boy Benjamin Franklin hangin' round and gettin' late for school and wantin' an excuse, and an old gentleman that's one of my boarders a-listenin' as if he wa'n't no older than my Benj. Franklin, and that schoolmistress settin' jest as if she'd been bewitched, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... interesting to know that, at this time, Casanova met his famous contemporary, Benjamin Franklin. "A few days after the death of the illustrious d'Alembert," Casanova assisted, at the old Louvre, in a session of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. "Seated beside the learned Franklin, I was a little surprised to hear ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... established a considerable and permanent reputation in the world of European thought prior to the present century,—Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Edwards. In 1736, Dr. Isaac Watts published in England Mr. Edwards' account of the beginning of the great awakening in the Connecticut valley. Here more than a century and a half ago, when the colonies were small, their future unsuspected and the ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... cried Tom heartily. "We'll all hang together or we'll hang separately', as Benjamin Franklin or some of those old chaps once remarked. I'm not the kind to desert a friend in the ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton
... world during the last half-century has been, and will ever continue to be, accorded to the name and genius of the illustrious American philosopher, Benjamin Franklin, for having first taught mankind that the wild and terrific ways and forces of the electric fluid, as it flies and flashes through the rent atmosphere, or descends to the surface of the earth, are guided by positive and ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... tree belongs to him and keep us from shooting the bear. The French, they added, are at least men who are prepared to fight; you weak and un-prepared English are like women and any day the French may turn you out. Benjamin Franklin told the delegates that they must unite to meet a common enemy. Unite, however, they would not. No one of them would surrender to a central body any authority through which the power of the King over them might be increased. The Congress—the word is full of omen for ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... When Benjamin Franklin started his "Poor Richard's Almanac," twenty-five years later, in the first issue he prophesied the death of one Dart who set the pace at that time as almanac-maker in America. The man was to expire on the afternoon of October Seventeenth, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... Child" Hartley Coleridge The World I am Passing Through Lydia Maria Child Terminus Ralph Waldo Emerson Rabbi Ben Ezra Robert Browning Human Life Audrey Thomas de Vere Young and Old Charles Kingsley The Isle of the Long Ago Benjamin Franklin Taylor Growing Old Matthew Arnold Past John Galsworthy Twilight A. Mary F. Robinson Youth and Age George Arnold Forty Years On Edward Ernest Bowen Dregs Ernest Dowson The Paradox of Time Austin Dobson Age William Winter Omnia Sonmia Rosamund Marriott Watson The ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... Koh-i-noor laughed a great rasping laugh, and the boy Benjamin Franklin looked sharp at his mother, as if he remembered the bun-experiment as a part ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia, in a letter to a Friend well known in the literary World, which I heard read, said that he was fully convinced that there was such a Current from West to East, and that he did not think that the Captain's remarkable Expedition ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams
... paint the H.B. Co. as an agrarian oligarchy. Organized for the purpose of "making fur" before the time of the Habeas Corpus, two decades ahead of the Bank of England, sixty-two years before Benjamin Franklin began publishing "Poor Richard's Almanac," and a century in advance of Watt's steam-engine, it is true that The Company, throughout the years, devoted itself to peltries and not to platting town sites. This was its business. From the beginning it has consistently ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... was due to Benjamin Franklin, who made Paine's acquaintance in London, and, having the wit to see his ability, recommended him 'as a clerk or assistant-tutor in a school or assistant-surveyor.' Thus armed, Paine made his appearance in Philadelphia, where he at once obtained employment as editor of an intended ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... effect in the way of making China known to the Western world. His book on "The Middle Kingdom," first published in 1848, continues to be, after the lapse of half a century, the highest of a long list of authorities on the Chinese Empire. Beginning like Benjamin Franklin as a printer, like Franklin he came to perform a brilliant part in the diplomacy of our country, aiding in the [Page 284] negotiation of a new treaty and filling more than once the post of ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... crumble into dust. Our eyes glisten and our hearts throb over the bright, glowing, and radiant pages of our history that record the deeds of patriotism of the sons of New England who sprang from our ranks, and wore the badges of toil. While the names of Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, Nathaniel Greene, and Paul Revere, live on the brightest pages of our history, the mechanics of Massachusetts and New England will never want illustrious examples to incite us to noble ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the interest aroused by Mesmer's methods and the many seemingly marvellous cures resulting therefrom, that the Royal Society of Paris appointed a commission, which included Benjamin Franklin, to investigate the subject. The members of this commission reported that those patients who were not aware of the fact that they were being magnetized experienced no effects from the treatment. Those who were told ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... who then thronged cosmopolitan Paris, none were so popular as Americans. Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane, by their courtesy and dignity, joined to republican simplicity, had provided passports for their countrymen to the good graces of all Frenchmen: besides, the name "republican" was a word of magic import in France at that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... fortunate for the United States that the American Peace Commissioners were broad-minded enough to appreciate the situation and to act on their own responsibility. Benjamin Franklin, although he was not the first to be appointed, was generally considered to be the chief of the Commission by reason of his age, experience, and reputation. Over seventy-five years old, he was more universally known and admired than probably any man of his ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... had lived near Lancaster, and had heard much of Robert Fulton's boyhood inventions, and he now hunted him out in Philadelphia, and helped him in his new line of work. The young artist met Benjamin Franklin and found him eager to aid him in his plans, and so, by his perseverance and the friends he was fortunate enough to make, he laid the foundations ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... house, much pleased with my whistle but disturbing all the family. My brothers and sisters and cousins, understanding the bargain I had made, told me I had given four times as much for it as it was worth ... The reflection gave me more chagrin than the whistle gave me pleasure. [BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.] ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... John and father and New York, and just a million things rolled into a bundle. And if you don't care I'll fight my way through. There, Benjamin Franklin! You'd sit on a stone in the middle of a field and ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... over-refined lineaments of the sculptured bust close at hand. In a room not far away, to reach which one passes a score or two of portraits and as many busts of celebrities—including, by-the-bye, both bust and portrait of Benjamin Franklin—one finds a cabinet containing other mementos similar to those on the library tables. Here is the first model of Davy's safety-lamp; there a chronometer which aided Cook in his famous voyage round the world. This is Wollaston's celebrated "Thimble Battery." It will slip readily ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... The body of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, PRINTER, Like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out, And stript 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 ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... thirty children. The Rev. John Sherman, of Watertown, had twenty-six children by two wives—twenty by his last wife. The Rev. Samuel Willard, first minister to Groton, had twenty children, and his father had seventeen children. Benjamin Franklin was one of a family of seventeen. Charles Francis Adams has told us of the fruitful vines of ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle |
