Franklin's Autobiography Part 7

[Footnote 81: This method of expression was adopted on the reformation of the calendar in England in 1752. It shows in this case that the February was of the year 1726 according to the old style, and 1727 according to the new calendar. The year 1751 began on the 25th of March, the former New-Year's Day, and ended, by act of Parliament, at the 1st of January, 1752.]

[Footnote 82: Declared by word of mouth, not written.]

[Footnote 83: Those who were unable to pay for their pa.s.sage by s.h.i.+p from one country to another, sometimes sold their service for a term of years to the captain who brought them over.]

[Footnote 84: Bound by articles of apprentices.h.i.+p.]

[Footnote 85: The guinea contains twenty-one s.h.i.+llings, while the pound has twenty.]

[Footnote 86: A crimp is one who brings recruits to the army or sailors to s.h.i.+ps by false inducements.]

[Footnote 87: Molds.]

[Footnote 88: Here used for salesman.]

[Footnote 89: Marks or registers by which a bill may be identified.]

[Footnote 90: See Note 3, p. 19.]

[Footnote 91: Belief in the existence of a personal G.o.d, but denying revelation.]

[Footnote 92:

"Whatever is, is in its causes just, Since all things are by fate. But purblind man Sees but a part o' the chain, the nearest links; His eyes not carrying to the equal beam That poises all above."

DRYDEN, _dipus_, act iii. sc. I.

[Footnote 93: The word means an a.s.sembly of persons engaged for a common purpose. It is from the Spanish _junta_ ("a council").]

[Footnote 94: An instrument used in navigation for measuring the alt.i.tude of the sun.]

[Footnote 95: Putting the types no longer needed for printing into the proper boxes.]

[Footnote 96: Set up for printing.]

[Footnote 97: Type in a jumbled ma.s.s.]

[Footnote 98: "This paper was called The Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences and Pennsylvania Gazette. Keimer printed his last number--the thirty-ninth--on the twenty-fifth day of September, 1729."--BIGELOW.]

[Footnote 99: The governor brought instructions from the king that his salary should be one thousand pounds. The legislature claimed the liberty of fixing the sum themselves. Franklin ended his article with this sentence: "Their happy mother country will perhaps observe with pleasure that, though her gallant c.o.c.ks and matchless dogs abate their natural fire and intrepidity when transported to a foreign clime (as this nation is), yet her sons in the remotest part of the earth, and even to the third and fourth descent, still retain that ardent spirit of liberty, and that undaunted courage, which has in every age so gloriously distinguished Britons and Englishmen from the rest of mankind."]

[Footnote 100: FRANKLIN'S NOTE.--I got his son once five hundred pounds.]

[Footnote 101: This money had not the full value of the pound sterling.]

[Footnote 102: That is, the government of Delaware.]

[Footnote 103: In secret.]

[Footnote 104: Men on horseback who carried the mail.]

[Footnote 105: Miss Read's first marriage.]

[Footnote 106: Mrs. Franklin died Dec. 19, 1774. Franklin celebrated his wife in a song, of which the following verses are a part:

"Of their Chloes and Phyllises poets may prate, I sing my plain country Joan, These twelve years my wife, still the joy of my life, Blest day that I made her my own.

"Am I loaded with care, she takes off a large share, That the burden ne'er makes me to reel; Does good fortune arrive, the joy of my wife Quite doubles the pleasure I feel.

"Some faults have we all, and so has my Joan, But then they're exceedingly small; And, now I'm grown used to them, so like my own, I scarcely can see them at all.

"Were the finest young princess with millions in purse, To be had in exchange for my Joan, I could not get better wife, might get a worse, So I'll stick to my dearest old Joan."

[Footnote 107: FRANKLIN'S MEMORANDUM.--Thus far was written with the intention expressed in the beginning, and therefore contains several little family anecdotes of no importance to others. What follows was written many years after in compliance with the advice contained in these letters (see p. 192), and accordingly intended for the public.

The affairs of the Revolution occasioned the interruption.]

[Footnote 108: See Note 1.]

[Footnote 109: The Philadelphia Library was incorporated in 1742. In its building is a tablet which reads as follows:

Be it remembered, in honor of the Philadelphia youth (then chiefly artificers), that in MDCCx.x.xI.

they cheerfully, at the instance of Benjamin Franklin, one of their number, inst.i.tuted the Philadelphia Library, which, though small at first, is become highly valuable and extensively useful, and which the walls of this edifice are now destined to contain and preserve; the first stone of whose foundation was here placed the thirty-first day of August, 1789.

The inscription, save the mention of himself, was prepared by Franklin.]

[Footnote 110: See Prov. xxii. 29.]

--5. CONTINUED SELF-EDUCATION.

It was about this time I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. I wished to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into. As I knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other. But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I had imagined. While my care was employed in guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by another; habit took the advantage of inattention; inclination was sometimes too strong for reason. I concluded at length that the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous was not sufficient to prevent our slipping; and that the contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired and established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rect.i.tude of conduct. For this purpose I therefore contrived the following method.

In the various enumerations of the moral virtues I had met with in my reading, I found the catalogue more or less numerous, as different writers included more or fewer ideas under the same name. Temperance, for example, was by some confined to eating and drinking, while by others it was extended to mean the moderating every other pleasure, appet.i.te, inclination, or pa.s.sion, bodily or mental, even to our avarice and ambition. I proposed to myself, for the sake of clearness, to use rather more names, with fewer ideas annexed to each, than a few names with more ideas; and I included under thirteen names of virtues all that at that time occurred to me as necessary or desirable, and annexed to each a short precept, which fully expressed the extent I gave to its meaning.

These names of virtues, with their precepts, were:

1. TEMPERANCE.

Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.