No More Learning

His friend asked him whether he was acquainted with all the
manuscripts and printed documents relating to the subject. It
was then that I pricked up my ears. They spoke at first of ori-
ginal sources; and I must confess they did so in a satisfactory


## p. 5915 (#503) ###########################################

ANATOLE FRANCE
5915
Then
manner, despite their innumerable and detestable puns.
they began to speak about contemporary studies on the subject.
"Have you read," asked Boulmier, "the notice of Courajod? »
"Good! " I thought to myself.
"Yes," replied Gélis; "it is accurate. "
"Have you read," said Boulmier, "the article by Tamisey de
Larroque in the Revue des Questions Historiques? "
"Good! " I thought to myself, for the second time.
"Yes," replied Gélis, "it is full of things. "
"Have you read," said Boulmier, "the "Tableau des Abbayes
Bénédictines en 1600,' by Sylvestre Bonnard? »
"Good! " I said to myself, for the third time.
"Ma foi! no! " replied Gélis.
Turning my head, I perceived that the shadow had reached
the place where I was sitting. It was growing chilly, and I
thought to myself what a fool I was to have remained sitting
there, at the risk of getting the rheumatism, just to listen to the
impertinence of those two young fellows!
"Let this prat-
"Well! well! " I said to myself as I got up.
tling fledgeling write his thesis, and sustain it! He will find my
colleague Quicherat, or some other professor at the school, to
show him what an ignoramus he is. I consider him neither more
nor less than a rascal; and really, now that I come to think of
it, what he said about Michelet awhile ago was quite insufferable,
outrageous! To talk in that way about an old master replete with
genius! It was simply abominable! "
"Bonnard is an idiot! "
CHILD-LIFE
From The Book of My Friend'
Ε΄
It was
VERYTHING in immortal nature is a miracle to the little child.
I was happy. A thousand things at once familiar and
mysterious filled my imagination, a thousand things which
were nothing in themselves, but which made my life.
very small, that life of mine; but it was a life—which is to say,
the centre of all things, the kernel of the world. Do not smile
at what I say,—or smile only in sympathy, and reflect: whoever
lives, be it only a dog, is at the centre of all things.
Deciding to be a hermit and a saint, and to resign the good
things of this world, I threw my toys out of the window.


## p. 5916 (#504) ###########################################

5916
ANATOLE FRANCE
"The child is a fool! " cried my father, closing the window.
I felt anger and shame at hearing myself thus judged. But im-
mediately I considered that my father, not being so holy as I,
could never share with me the glory of the blessed, and this
thought was for me a great consolation.
Every Saturday we were taken to confession. If any one will
tell me why, he will greatly oblige me. The practice inspired me
with both respect and weariness. I hardly think it probable that
M. le Curé took a lively interest in hearing my sins; but it was
certainly disagreeable to me to cite them to him. The first diffi-
culty was to find them. You can perhaps believe me, when I
declare that at ten years of age I did not possess the psychic
qualities and the methods of analysis which would have made it
possible rationally to explore my inmost conscience.
less it was necessary to have sins: for no sins, no confession.
I had been given, it is true, a little book which contained them
all: I had only to choose. But the choice itself was difficult.
There was so much obscurely said of "larceny, simony, prevari-
cation"! I read in the little book, "I accuse myself of having
despaired; I accuse myself of having listened to evil conversa-
tions. " Even this furnished little wherewith to burden my con-
science. Therefore ordinarily I confined myself to "distractions. "
Distractions during mass, distractions during meals, distractions.
in "religious assemblies,"I avowed all; yet the deplorable
emptiness of my conscience filled me with deep shame.
I was
humiliated at having no sins.
I will tell you what, each year, the stormy skies of autumn,
the first dinners by lamplight, the yellowing leaves on the shiver-
ing trees, bring to my mind; I will tell you what I see as I
cross the Luxembourg garden in the early October days - those
sad and beautiful days when the leaves fall, one by one, on the
white shoulders of the statues there.
.
-
What I see then is a little fellow who with his hands in his
pockets is going to school, hopping along like a sparrow. I see him
in thought only, for he is but a shadow, a shadow of the "me"
as I was twenty-five years ago. Really, he interests me,- this
little fellow. When he was living I gave him but little thought,
but now that he is no more, I love him well. He was worth alto-
gether more than the rest of the "me's" that I have been since.
He was a happy-hearted boy as he crossed the Luxembourg gar-
den in the fresh air of the morning. All that he saw then I see


## p. 5917 (#505) ###########################################

ANATOLE FRANCE
5917
to-day.
It is the same sky, and the same earth; the same soul
of things is here as before, that soul that still makes me gay,
or sad, or troubled: only he is no more! He was heedless enough,
but he was not wicked; and in justice to him I must declare
that he has not left me a single harsh memory. He was an
innocent child that I have lost. It is natural that I should
regret him; it is natural that I should see him in thought, and
delight in recalling him to memory.
Nothing is of more value for giving a child a knowledge of
the great social machine than the life of the streets. He should
see in the morning the milkwomen, the water carriers, the char-
coal men; he should look in the shop windows of the grocer, the
pork vender, and the wine-seller; he should watch the regiments
pass, with the music of the band. In short, he should suck in
the air of the streets, that he may learn that the law of labor is
Divine, and that each man has his work to do in the world.
Oh! ye sordid old Jews of the Rue Cherche-Midi, and you
my masters, simple sellers of old books on the quays, what
gratitude do I owe you! More and better than university pro-
fessors, have you contributed to my intellectual life! You dis-
played before my ravished eyes the mysterious forms of the life
of the past, and every sort of monument of precious human
thought. In ferreting among your shelves, in contemplating
your dusty display laden with the pathetic relics of our fathers
and their noble thoughts, I have been penetrated with the most
wholesome of philosophies. In studying the worm-eaten volumes,
the rusty iron-work, the worn carvings of your stock, I expe-
rienced, child as I was, a profound realization of the fluent,
changing nature of things and the nothingness of all, and I have
been always since inclined to sadness, to gentleness, and pity.
The open-air school taught me, as you see, great lessons; but
the home school was more profitable still. The family repast, so
charming when the glasses are clear, the cloth white, and the
faces tranquil,-the dinner of each day with its familiar talk,-
gives to the child the taste for the humble and holy things of
life, the love of loving. He eats day by day that blessed bread
which the spiritual Father broke and gave to the pilgrims in the
inn at Emmaus, and says, like them, "My heart is warmed
within me. " Ah! how good a school is the school of home! . .
The little fellow of whom I spoke but just now to you, with a
sympathy for which you pardon me, perhaps, reflecting that it is
-
•


## p. 5918 (#506) ###########################################

5918
ANATOLE FRANCE
not egotistic but is addressed only to a shadow, the little fellow
who crossed the Luxembourg garden, hopping like a sparrow,-
became later an enthusiastic humanist.
---
I studied Homer. I saw Thetis rise like a white mist over
the sea, I saw Nausicaa and her companions, and the palm-tree
of Delos, and the sky, and the earth, and the sea, and the tear-
ful smile of Andromache. I comprehended, I felt. For six
months I lived in the Odyssey. This was the cause of numerous
punishments: but what to me were pensums? I was with Ulys-
ses on his violet sea. Alcestis and Antigone gave me more noble
dreams than ever child had before. With my head swallowed up
in the dictionary on my ink-stained desk, I saw divine forms,-
ivory arms falling on white tunics,- and heard voices sweeter
than the sweetest music, lamenting harmoniously.
This again cost me fresh punishments. They were just; I was
"busying" myself "with things foreign to the class. " Alas! the
habit remains with me still. In whatever class in life I am put
for the rest of my days, I fear yet, old as I am, to encounter
again the reproach of my old professor: "Monsieur Pierre No-
zièrre, you busy yourself with things foreign to the class. "
But the evening falls over the plane-trees of the Luxembourg,
and the little phantom which I have evoked disappears in the
shadow. Adieu! little
Adieu! little "me" whom I have lost, whom I should
forever regret, had I not found thee again, beautified, in my son!
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature. '
FROM THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS ›
IN
RONY and pity are two good counselors: the one, who smiles,
makes life amiable; the other, who weeps, makes it sacred.
The Irony that I invoke is not cruel. She mocks neither
love nor beauty. She is gentle and benevolent. Her smile calms
anger, and it is she who teaches us to laugh at fools and sinners
whom, but for her, we might be weak enough to hate.


## p. 5919 (#507) ###########################################

5919
ST. FRANCIS D'ASSISI
(1182-1225)
BY MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN
RANCIS D'ASSISI was at first called Francis Bernardone. His
father Pietro was a merchant of Assisi, much given to the
pomps and vanities of the world, a lover of France and of
everything French. It was after a visit to France in 1182 that, re-
joining his beloved wife Pica in the vale of Umbria, he found that
God had given to him a little son. Pica called the boy John, in
honor of the playmate of the little Christ; but Pietro commanded
that he should be named Francis, because of the bright land from
whence he drew the rich silks and thick velvets he liked to handle
and to sell.
The vale of Umbria is the place for poets; it should be visited in
the summer, when the roses bloom on the trellises which the early
Italian painters put as backgrounds to their mothers and children.
Florence is not far away; and near is the birthplace of one of the
fathers of the sonnet, Fra Guittone, and of another poet, Propertius.
Francis's childhood, boyhood, and later youth were happy. His
father denied him no luxury in his power to give; he was sent to the
priests of the church of St. George. They taught him some Latin
and much of the Provençal tongue, - for at that time there was no
Italian language; there were only dialects, and the Provençal was
used by the elegant, those who loved poetry. Francis Bernardone
was one of these; he sang the popular Provençal songs of the day to
the lute, for he had learned music. And so passionately did he long
for "excess of it," that, the legend says, he stayed up all one night
singing a duet with a nightingale. The bird conquered; and later,
Francis made a poem glorifying the Creator who had given such a
thrilling voice to it.
Up to the age of twenty-four Francis had been one of the lightest
hearted and the lightest headed of the rich young men of Assisi.
His father openly rejoiced in his extravagance, and admired the
graceful manner with which he wore gay clothes cut in latest fashions
of France. Madonna Picā, his mother, trembled for his future, while
she adored him and in spite of herself believed in him. Her neigh-.
bors reproached her: "Your son throws money away; he is the son
of a prince! " And Picā, troubled, answered, "He whom you call the
child of a prince will one day be a child of God. "


## p. 5920 (#508) ###########################################

5920
ST. FRANCIS D'ASSISI
Pietro was delighted to see his son lead in all the sports of the
corti of Assisi. The corti were associations of young men addicted to
Provençal poetry and music and all sorts of gayety. Folgore da San
Gemiano gives, in a series of sonnets, well translated by Dante Ga-
briel Rossetti, descriptions of their sports arranged according to the
months. March was the season for
«-lamprey, salmon, eel, and trout,
Dental and dolphin, sturgeon, all the rout
Of fish in all the streams that fill the seas. "
In April are dances:
"And through hollow brass
A sound of German music on the air. »
When summer came, Folgore says the corti had other things:-
"For July, in Siena by the willow-tree
I give you barrels of white Tuscan wine,
In ice far down your cellars stored supine;
And morn and eve to eat, in company,
Of those vast jellies dear to you and me;
Of partridges and youngling pheasants sweet,
Boiled capons, sovereign kids; and let their treat
Be veal and garlic, with whom these agree. »
___
Francis was permeated with the ideas of chivalry, and his language
was its phraseology. So much was he in love with chivalry that he
became the founder of a new order, whose patroness should be the
Lady Poverty. Never had there been a time in Europe since the de-
cay of the Roman empire, when poverty was more derided. Princes,
merchants, even many prelates and priests, neglected and contemned
the poor.
The voices of the outcasts and the leper went up to God,
and he sent their terrible echoes to awaken the heart of Francis.
In Sicily, Frederick II. -the Julian of the time-lived among
fountains and orange blossoms and gorgeous pomegranate arches,— a
type of the arrogant voluptuousness of the time, a voluptuousness
which Dante symbolized later as the leopard. Against this luxury
Francis put the lady of his love, Poverty. In the 'Poètes Francis-
canis, Frederick Ozanam says:-
"He thus designated what had become for him the ideal of all
perfection, the type of all moral beauty. He loved to personify
Poverty as the symbolic genius of his time; he imagined her as the
daughter of Heaven; and he called her by turns the lady of his
thoughts, his affianced, and his bride. "
The towns of Italy were continually at war, in 1206 and thereabout.
Francis was taken prisoner in a battle of his native townsmen with
the Perugians. Restless and depressed, unsatisfied by the revelry of


## p. 5921 (#509) ###########################################

ST. FRANCIS D'ASSISI
5921
his comrades, he threw himself into the train of the Count de Brienne,
who was making war on the German Emperor for the two Sicilies.
About this time, he was moved to give his fine military clothes to a
shivering soldier. At Spoleto, after this act of charity, he dreamed
that the voice of God asked what he valued most in life. "Earthly
fame," he said. —“But which of two is better for you,-the Master, or
the servant? And why will you forsake the Master for the servant,
the Lord for the slave ? »-«O Lord, what shall I do? " asked Fran-
cis. -"Return unto the city," said the voice, "and there it will be
told you what you shall do and how you may interpret this vision. "
He obeyed; he left the army; his old companions were glad to see
him, and again he joined the corti. But he was paler and more silent.
"You are in love! " his companions said, laughingly.
"I am in truth thinking of a bride more noble, more richly dow-
ered, and more beautiful than the world has ever seen. "
Pietro was away from home, and his son made donations to the
poor. He grew more tranquil, though the Voice had not explained
its message. He knelt at the foot of the crucifix one day in the old
chapel of St. Damian, and waited. Then the revelation came:-
"Francis, go to rebuild my house, which is falling into ruin! "
Francis took this command, which seemed to have come from the
lips of his crucified Redeemer, literally. It meant that he should re-
pair the chapel of St. Damian. Later, he accepted it in a broader
sense. More important things than the walls of St. Damian were
falling into ruin.
Francis was a man of action, and one who took life literally. He
went to his father's shop, chose some precious stuffs, and sold them
with his horse at Foliquo, for much below their value. Pietro had
brought Francis up in a princely fashion: why should he not behave
as a prince? And surely the father who had not grudged the richest
of his stuffs for the celebrations of the corti, would not object to their
sacrifice at the command of the Voice for the repairing of St. Damian!
Pietro, who had not heard the Voice, vowed vengeance on his son for
his foolishness. The priest at St. Damian's had refused the money;
but Francis threw it into the window, and Pietro, finding it, went
away swearing that his son had kept some of it. Francis wandered
about begging stones for the rebuilding of St. Damian's. Pietro,
maddened by the foolishness of his son, appealed to a magistrate.
Francis cast off all his garments, and gave them to his father. The
Bishop of Assisi covered his nakedness with his own mantle until the
gown of a poor laborer was brought to him. Dipping his right hand
in a pile of mortar, Francis drew a rough cross upon his breast:
"Pietro Bernardone," he said, "until now I have called you my father;
henceforth I can truly say, 'Our Father who art in heaven,' for he
is my wealth, and in him do I place all my hope. "
X-371


## p. 5922 (#510) ###########################################

ST. FRANCIS D'ASSISI
5922
Francis went away, to build his chapel and sing in the Provençal
speech hymns in honor of God and of love for his greatness. In
June 1208 he began to preach. He converted two men, one rich and
of rank, the other a priest.
They gave all to the poor, and took up
their abode near a hospital for lepers. They had no home but the
chapel of the Angels, near the Portiuncula. This was the beginning
of the great order of the Friars Minors, the Franciscans.
Francis was the first poet to use the Italian speech
a poet who
was inspired to change the fate of Europe. "He would never," the
author of a recent monograph on St. Francis says, destroy or tread
on a written page. If it were Christian writing, it might contain
the name of God; even if it were the work of a pagan, it contained
the letters that make up the sacred name. When St. Francis, of the
people and singing for the people, wrote in the vernacular, he asked
Fra Pacifico, who had been a great poet in the world, to reduce his
verses to the rules of metre. "
«<
-
St. Bonaventura, Jacomino di Verona, and Jacopone di Todi, the
author of the Stabat Mater,' were Franciscans who followed in his
footsteps. "The Crusades were," to quote again, "defensive as well
as offensive. The Sultan, whom St. Francis visited and filled with
respect, was not far from Christendom. " Frederick of Sicily, with
his Saracens, menaced Assisi itself. Hideous doctrines and practices
were rife; and the thirty thousand friars who soon enrolled them-
selves in the band of Francis gained the love of the people, preached
Christianity anew, symbolized it rudely for folk that could not read,
and, as St. Francis had done, they appealed to the imagination. The
legends of St. Francis-one can find them in the 'Little Flowers,' of
which there are at least two good English translations - became the
tenderest poems of the poor.
If St. Francis had been less of a poet, he would have been less of
a saint. He died a poet, on October 4, 1225: he asked to be buried
on the Infernal Hill of Assisi, where the crusaders were laid to rest;
"and," he said, "sing my Canticle of the Sun,' so that I may add a
song in praise of my sister Death. The lines," he added, "will be
found at the end of the 'Cantico del Sole. '»
(
Paul Sabatier's 'Life of St. Francis,' and Mrs. Oliphant's, are best
known to English-speaking readers. The most exhaustive Life' is
by the Abbé Leon Le Monnier, in two volumes. It has lately been
translated into English.
manni Francis Egan


## p. 5923 (#511) ###########################################

ST. FRANCIS D'ASSISI
5923
ORDER
[Our Lord Speaks]
A
ND though I fill thy heart with hottest love,
Yet in true order must thy heart love me,
For without order can no virtue be;
By thine own virtue, then, I from above
Stand in thy soul; and so, most earnestly,
Must love from turmoil be kept wholly free:
The life of fruitful trees, the seasons of
The circling year move gently as a dove:
I measured all the things upon the earth;
Love ordered them, and order kept them fair,
And love to order must be truly wed.
O soul, why all this heat of little worth?
Why cast out order with no thought of care?
For by love's heat must love be governèd ?
Translation of Maurice Francis Egan.
THE CANTICLE OF THE SUN
[The title is Incipiunt Laudes Creaturarum quas fecit Franciscus ad Lau-
dem et Honorem Dei cum esset Infirmus ad Sanctum Damianum. ' It is
sometimes called the Canticle of the Creatures. › It is in Italian, and it
opens with these words: -"Altissimi, omnipotente, bon Signore, tue so le
laude la gloria e l'onore et omne benedictione. "]
O
MOST HIGH, Almighty, good Lord God, to thee belong praise,
glory, honor, and all blessing.
Praised be my Lord God, with all his creatures, and
specially our brother the sun, who brings us the day and who
brings us the light; fair is he, and he shines with a very great
splendor. O Lord, he signifies to us thee!
Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon, and for the stars,
the which he has set clear and lovely in heaven.
Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind, and for air and
clouds, calms and all weather, by which thou upholdest life in all
creatures.
Praised be my Lord for our sister water, who is very service-
able to us, and humble and precious and clean.


## p. 5924 (#512) ###########################################

5924
ST. FRANCIS D'ASSISI
Praised be my Lord for our brother fire, through whom thou
givest us light in the darkness; and he is bright and pleasant,
and very mighty and strong.
Praised be my Lord for our mother the earth, the which doth
sustain us and keep us, and bringest forth divers fruits, and
flowers of many colors, and grass.
Praised be my Lord for all those who pardon one another for
love's sake, and who endure weakness and tribulation; blessed are
they who peacefully shall endure, for thou, O Most High, wilt
give them a crown.
Praised be my Lord for our sister the death of the body, from
which no man escapeth. Woe to him who dieth in mortal sin.
Blessed are those who die in thy most holy will, for the second
death shall have no power to do them harm. Praise ye and bless
the Lord, and give thanks to him and serve him with great
humility.
[The last stanza, in praise of death, was added to the poem on the
day St. Francis left the world, October 4th, 1225. ]
Translation of Maurice Francis Egan.


## p. 5925 (#513) ###########################################

5925
100
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
(1706-1790)
BY JOHN BIGELOW
HE youngest of the four children of a Boston tallow-chandler
named Franklin was born a subject of Queen Anne of Eng-
land, on the 6th of January, 1706; and on the same day re-
ceived the baptismal name of Benjamin at the Old South Church in
that city. He continued for more than seventy of the eighty-four
years of his life a subject of four successive British monarchs. Dur-
ing that period, neither Anne nor either of the three Georges who
succeeded her had a subject of whom they had more reason to be
proud, nor one whom at his death their people generally supposed
they had more reason to detest. No Englishman of his generation
can now be said to have established a more enduring fame, in any
way, than Franklin established in many ways. As a printer, as a
journalist, as a diplomatist, as a statesman, as a philosopher, he was
easily first among his peers.
On the other hand, it is no disparagement of the services of any
of his contemporaries on either side of the Atlantic, to say that no
one of his generation contributed more effectually to the dissolution
of the bonds which united the principal British-American colonies to
the mother country, and towards conferring upon them independence
and a popular government.
As a practical printer Franklin was reported to have had no supe-
riors; as a journalist he exerted an influence not only unrivaled in his
day, but more potent, on this continent at least, than either of his
sovereigns or their Parliaments. The organization of police, and
later of the militia, for Philadelphia; of companies for extinguishing
fires; making the sweeping and paving of the streets a municipal
function; the formation of the first public library for Philadelphia,
and the establishment of an academy which has matured into the
now famous University of Pennsylvania, were among the conspicuous
reforms which he planted and watered in the columns of the Phila-
delphia Gazette. This journal he founded; upon the earnings of it
he mainly subsisted during a long life, and any sheet of it to-day
would bring a larger price in the open market probably than a single
sheet of any other periodical ever published.


## p. 5926 (#514) ###########################################

5926
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Franklin's Almanack, his crowning work in the sphere of jour-
nalism, published under the pseudonym of Richard Saunders, - better
known since as Poor Richard,—is still one of the marvels of modern
literature. Under one or another of many titles the contents of this
publication, exclusive of its calendars, have been translated into every
tongue having any pretensions to a literature; and have had more
readers, probably, than any other publication in the English or in-
deed in any other language, with the single exception of the Bible.
It was the first issue from an American press that found a popular
welcome in foreign lands, and it still enjoys the special distinction of
being the only almanac ever published that owed its extraordinary
popularity entirely to its literary merit.
What adds to the surprise with which we contemplate the fame
and fortunes of this unpretentious publication, is the fact that its
reputation was established by its first number, and when its author
was only twenty-six years of age. For a period of twenty-six years,
and until Franklin ceased to edit it, this annual was looked forward
to by a larger portion of the colonial population and with more
impatience than now awaits a President's annual message to Congress.
Franklin graduated from journalism into diplomacy as naturally.
as winter glides into spring. This was simply because he was by
common acclaim the fittest man for any kind of public service the
colony possessed, and especially for any duty requiring talents for
persuasion, in which he proved himself to be unquestionably past
master among the diplomatists of his time.
The question of taxing the Penn proprietary estates in Pennsyl-
vania, for the defense of the province from the French and Indians,
had assumed such an acute stage in 1757 that the Assembly decided
to petition the King upon the subject; and selected Franklin, then in
the forty-first year of his age, to visit London and present their peti-
tion. The next forty-one years of his life were practically all spent
in the diplomatic service. He was five years absent on this his first
mission. Every interest in London was against him. He finally sur-
mounted all obstacles by a compromise, which pledged the Assembly
to pass an act exempting from taxation the unsurveyed lands of the
Penn estate, the surveyed waste lands, however, to be assessed at
the usual rate. For his success the Penns and their partisans never
forgave him, and his fellow colonists never forgot him.
Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1762, but not to remain.
The question of taxing the colonies without representation was soon
thrust upon them in the shape of a stamp duty, and Franklin was
sent out again to urge its repeal. He reached London in November
1764, where he remained the next eleven years and until it became
apparent that the surrender of the right to arbitrarily tax the


## p. 5927 (#515) ###########################################

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
5927
colonies would never be made by England during the life of the
reigning sovereign, George III. Satisfied that his usefulness in Eng-
land was at an end, he sailed for Philadelphia on the 21st of March,
1775; and on the morning of his arrival was elected by the Assembly
of Pennsylvania a delegate to the Continental Congress which con-
solidated the armies of the colonies, placed General George Washing-
ton in command of them, issued the first Continental currency, and
assumed the responsibility of resisting the imperial government; his
last hope of maintaining the integrity of the empire having been
dissipated by recent collisions between the people and the royalist
troops at Concord and Lexington. Franklin served on ten com-
mittees in this Congress. He was one of the five who drew up the
Declaration of Independence in July 1776, and in September following
was chosen unanimously as one of the three commissioners to be
sent out to solicit for the infant republic the aid of France and the
sympathies of continental Europe. In this mission, the importance
of which to his country can hardly be exaggerated, he was greatly
favored by the reputation which had preceded him as a man of
science. While yet a journalist he had made some experiments in
electricity, which established its identity with lightning. The publi-
cation by an English correspondent of the letters in which he gave
an account of these experiments, secured his election as an honorary
member of the Royal Society of London and undisputed rank among
the most eminent natural philosophers of his time. When he arrived
in Paris, therefore, he was already a member of every important
learned society in Europe, one of the managers of the Royal Society
of London, and one of the eight foreign members of the Royal Acad-
emy in Paris, where three editions of his scientific writings had
already been printed. To these advantages must be added another
of even greater weight: his errand there was to assist in dismember-
ing the British Empire, than which nothing of a political nature was
at this time much nearer every Frenchman's heart.
The history of this mission, and how Franklin succeeded in procur-
ing from the French King financial aid to the amount of twenty-six
millions of francs, at times when the very existence of the republic
depended upon them, and finally a treaty of peace more favorable to
his country than either England or France wished to concede, has
been often told; and there is no chapter in the chronicles of this
republic with which the world is more familiar.
Franklin's reputation grew with his success. "It was," wrote
his colleague John Adams, "more universal than that of Leibnitz or
Newton, Frederick the Great or Voltaire, and his character more
beloved and esteemed than all of them.
If a collection
could be made of all the gazettes of Europe for the latter half of the
·


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5928
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
eighteenth century, a greater number of panegyrical paragraphs upon
le grand Franklin would appear, it is believed, than upon any other
man that ever lived. "
A few weeks after signing the definitive treaty of peace in 1783,
Franklin renewed an application which he had previously made just
after signing the preliminary treaty, to be relieved of his mission;
but it was not until the 7th of March, 1785, that Congress adopted a
resolution permitting "the Honorable Benjamin Franklin to return
to America as soon as convenient. " Three days later, Thomas Jeffer-
son was appointed to succeed him.
On the 13th of September, 1785, and after a sojourn of nearly nine
years in the French capital, first in the capacity of commissioner and
subsequently of minister plenipotentiary, Franklin once more landed
in Philadelphia, on the same wharf on which, sixty-two years before,
he had stepped, a friendless and practically penniless runaway appren-
tice of seventeen.
Though now in his seventy-ninth year, and a prey to infirmities
not the necessary incidents of old age, he had scarcely unpacked his
trunks after his return when he was chosen a member of the munici-
pal council of Philadelphia, and its chairman. Shortly after, he was
elected president of Pennsylvania, his own vote only lacking to make
the vote unanimous. "I have not firmness," he wrote to a friend, "to
resist the unanimous desire of my countryfolks; and I find myself
harnessed again into their service another year. They engrossed the
prime of my life; they have eaten my flesh, and seem resolved now
to pick my bones. "
He was unanimously re-elected to this dignity for the two succeed-
ing years, and while holding that office was chosen a member of the
convention which met in May 1787 to frame the Constitution under
which the people of the United States are still living.
With the adoption of that instrument, to which he probably con-
tributed as much as any other individual, he retired from official life;
though not from the service of the public, to which for the remain-
ing years of his stay on earth his genius and his talents were faith-
fully consecrated.
Among the fruits of that unfamiliar leisure, always to be remem-
bered among the noblest achievements of his illustrious career, was
the part he had in organizing the first anti-slavery society in the
world; and as its president, writing and signing the first remonstrance
against slavery ever addressed to the Congress of the United States.
In surveying the life of Dr. Franklin as a whole, the thing that
most impresses one is his constant study and singleness of purpose
to promote the welfare of human society. It was his daily theme as
a journalist, and his yearly theme as an almanac-maker. It is that


## p. 5929 (#517) ###########################################

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
5929
which first occurs to us when we recall his career as a member of
the Colonial Assembly; as an agent of the provinces in England;
as a diplomatist in France; and as a member of the conventions
which crowned the consistent labors of his long life. Nor are there
any now so bold as to affirm that there was any other person who
could have been depended upon to accomplish for his country or the
world, what Franklin did in any of the several stages of his versatile
career.
Though holding office for more than half of his life, the office
always sought Franklin, not Franklin the office. When sent to Eng-
land as the agent of the colony, he withdrew from business with a
modest competence judiciously invested mostly in real estate. He
never seems to have given a thought to its increase. Frugal in his
habits, simple in his tastes, wise in his indulgences, he died with a
fortune neither too large nor too small for his fame as a citizen or a
patriot. For teaching frugality and economy to the colonists, when
frugality and economy were indispensable to the conservation of their
independence and manhood, he has been sneered at as the teacher of
a "candle-end-saving philosophy," and his 'Poor Richard' as a "col-
lection of receipts for laying up treasures on earth rather than in
heaven. " Franklin never taught, either by precept or example, to lay
up treasures on earth. He taught the virtues of industry, thrift, and
economy, as the virtues supremely important in his time, to keep
people out of debt and to provide the means of educating and digni-
fying society. He never countenanced the accumulation of wealth
for its own sake, but for its uses, -its prompt convertibility into
social comforts and refinements. It would be difficult to name
another man of any age to whom an ambition to accumulate wealth
as an end could be imputed with less propriety. Though probably
the most inventive genius of his age, and thus indirectly the founder
of many fortunes, he never asked a patent for any of his inventions
or discoveries. Though one of the best writers of the English
language that his country has yet produced, he never wrote a line
for money after he withdrew from the calling by which he made a
modest provision for his family.
For the remaining half of his life both at home and abroad,
though constantly operating upon public opinion by his pen, he
never availed himself of a copyright or received a penny from any
publisher or patron for any of these labors. In none of the public
positions which he held, even when minister plenipotentiary, did his
pay equal his expenditures. He was three years president of Penn-
sylvania after his return from France, and for his services declined to
appropriate to his own use anything beyond his necessary expendi-
tures for stationery, postage, and transportation. It is not by such.


## p. 5930 (#518) ###########################################

5930
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
methods that men justly incur the implied reproach of "laying up
treasures on earth," or of teaching a candle-end-saving philosophy.
Franklin courted fame no more than fortune. The best of his
writings, after his retirement from journalism, he never gave to the
press at all; not even his incomparable autobiography, which is still
republished more frequently than any of the writings of Dickens or
of Thackeray. He always wrote for a larger purpose than mere per-
sonal gratification of any kind. Even his bagatelles and jeux d'esprit
read in the salons of Paris, though apparently intended for the eyes
of a small circle, were inspired by a desire to make friends and
create respect for the struggling people and the great cause he rep-
resented. Few if any of them got into print until many years after
his decease.
Franklin was from his youth up a leader, a lion in whatever
circle he entered, whether in the printing-house, the provincial As-
semblies, as agent in England, or as a courtier in France. There
was no one too eminent in science or literature, on either side of
the Atlantic, not to esteem his acquaintance a privilege. He was
an honorary member of every important scientific association in the
world, and in friendly correspondence with most of those who con-
ferred upon those bodies any distinction; and all this by force of a
personal, not to say planetary, attraction that no one brought within
his sphere could long resist.
Pretty much all of importance that we know of Franklin we
gather from his private correspondence. His contemporaries wrote
or at least printed very little about him; scarcely one of the multi-
tude whose names he embalmed in his 'Autobiography' ever printed
a line about him. All that we know of the later half of his life not
covered by his autobiography, we owe almost exclusively to his pri-
vate and official correspondence. Though reckoning among his warm
friends and correspondents such men as David Hume, Dr. Joseph
Priestley, Dr. Price, Lord Kames, Lord Chatham, Dr. Fothergill,
Peter Collinson, Edmund Burke, the Bishop of St. Asaph and his
gifted daughters, Voltaire, the habitués of the Helvétius salon, the
Marquis de Ségur, the Count de Vergennes, his near neighbors De
Chaumont and Le Veillard, the maire of Passy,- all that we learn of
his achievements, of his conversation, of his daily life, from these or
many other associates of only less prominence in the Old World,
might be written on a single foolscap sheet.
Nor are we under
much greater obligations to his American friends. It is to his own
letters (and except his 'Autobiography,' he can hardly be said to
have written anything in any other than the epistolary form; and
that was written in the form of a letter to his son William, and most
of it only began to be published a quarter of a century after his


## p. 5931 (#519) ###########################################

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
5931
death) that we must turn to learn how full of interest and importance
to mankind was this last half-century of his life. Beyond keeping
copies of his correspondence, which his official character made a duty
as well as a necessity, he appears to have taken no precautions to
insure the posthumous fame to which his correspondence during that
period was destined to contribute so much. Hence, all the biogra-
phies and they are numberless - owe almost their entire interest
and value to his own pen. All, so far as they are biographies, are
autobiographies; and for that reason it may be fairly said that all of
them are interesting.
It is also quite remarkable that though Franklin's life was a con-
tinuous warfare, he had no personal enemies. His extraordinary and
even intimate experience of every phase of human life, from the very
lowest to the very highest, had made him so tolerant that he regarded
differences of opinion and of habits much as he regarded the changes
of the weather, -as good or bad for his purposes, but which, though
he might sometimes deplore, he had no right to quarrel with or
assume personal responsibility for. Hence he never said or did things
personally offensive. The causes that he represented had enemies,
for he was all his life a reformer. All men who are good for any-
thing have such enemies. "I have, as you observe," wrote Franklin
to John Jay the year that he retired from the French mission, "some
enemies in England, but they are my enemies as an American; I
have also two or three in America who are my enemies as a minis-
ter; but I thank God there are not in the whole world any who
are my enemies as a man: for by his grace, through a long life, I
have been enabled so to conduct myself that there does not exist a
human being who can justly say, 'Ben Franklin has wronged me. '
This, my friend, is in old age a comfortable reflection. You too have
or may have your enemies; but let not that render you unhappy. If
you make a right use of them, they will do you more good than
harm. They point out to us our faults; they put us upon our guard
and help us to live more correctly. "
Franklin's place in literature as a writer has not been generally
appreciated, probably because with him writing was only a means,
never an end, and his ends always dwarfed his means, however
effective. He wrote to persuade others, never to parade his literary
skill. He never wrote a dull line, and was never nimious.
The long-
est production of his pen was his autobiography, written during the
closing years of his life. Nearly all that he wrote besides was in the
form of letters, which would hardly average three octavo pages in
length. And yet whatever the subject he touched upon, he never
left the impression of incompleteness or of inconclusiveness. Of him
may be said, perhaps with as much propriety as of any other man,


## p. 5932 (#520) ###########################################

5932
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
that he never said a word too soon, nor a word too late, nor a word
too much. Tons of paper have been devoted to dissuasives from duel-
ing, but the argument was never put more effectively than Frank-
lin put it in these dozen lines of a letter to a Mr. Percival, who had
sent him a volume of literary and moral dissertations.
"A gentleman in a coffee-house desired another to sit further from him.
(Why so? Because you stink. )-(That is an affront, and you must fight
me. ' 'I will fight you if you insist upon it, but I do not see how that will
mend the matter. For if you kill me, I shall stink too; and if I kill you, you
will stink, if possible, worse than at present. How can such miserable sin-
ners as we are, entertain so much pride as to conceit that every offense
against our imagined honor merits death? These petty princes, in their opin-
ion, would call that sovereign a tyrant who should put one of them to death
for a little uncivil language, though pointed at his sacred person; yet every
one of them makes himself judge in his own cause, condemns the offender
without a jury, and undertakes himself to be the executioner. »
Some one wrote him that the people in England were abusing the
Americans and speaking all manner of evil against them. Franklin
replied that this was natural enough:
"They impute to us the evil they wished us. They are angry with us, and
speak all manner of evil of us; but we flourish notwithstanding. They put
me in mind of a violent High Church factor, resident in Boston when I was a
boy. He had bought upon speculation a Connecticut cargo of onions which he
flattered himself he might sell again to great profit; but the price fell, and
they lay upon his hands. He was heartily vexed with his bargain, especially
when he observed they began to grow in his store he had filled with them.
He showed them one day to a friend. Here they are,' said he, 'and they are
growing too. I damn them every day, but I think they are like the Presby-
terians; the more I curse them, the more they grow. >»
Mr. Jefferson tells us that Franklin was sitting by his side in the
convention while the delegates were picking his famous declaration
of Independence to pieces, and seeing how Jefferson was squirming
under their mutilations, comforted him with the following stories, the
rare excellence of which has given them a currency which has long
since worn off their novelty: -
"I have made it a rule,' said he, whenever in my power, to avoid
becoming the draftsman of papers to be reviewed by a public body. I took
my lesson from an incident which I will relate to you.
<<<When I was a journeyman printer, one of my companions, an appren
ticed hatter, having served out his time, was about to open shop for himself.
His first concern was to have a handsome sign-board with the proper inscrip-
tion. He composed it in these words: John Thompson, Hatter, makes and
sells Hats for ready Money, with a figure of a hat subjoined. But he thought
he would submit it to his friends for their amendments. The first he showed


## p. 5933 (#521) ###########################################

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
5933
it to thought the word hatter tautologous, because followed by the words
makes hats, which showed he was a hatter. It was struck out. The next
observed that the word makes might as well be omitted, because his customers
would not care who made the hats; if good and to their mind, they would buy,
by whomsoever made.