Everyone knows the story of how he landed there, with only a few pennies
in his pocket, but with a sublime confidence in his ability to make
more; how he proceeded to the nearest bakeshop, asked for three pennies'
worth of bread, and when he was given three loaves, took them rather
than reveal his ignorance by confessing that he really wanted only one
loaf, and walked up Market street, with a loaf under each arm, and
eating the third. He has told the story in his inimitable way in his
autobiography, a work which gives him high place among American men of
letters. Small wonder that red-cheeked Deborah Reed smiled at him from
the door of her father's house--but Franklin saw the smile and
remembered it, and though it brought them both distress enough at first,
he asked Deborah to be his wife, six years later, and she consented, and
a good wife she made him. Years afterward, when he was Ambassador to
France and the pet of the French court, the centre of perhaps the most
brilliant and witty circle in Europe, the talk, one day, chanced to turn
upon tailors, of whom the company expressed the utmost detestation.
Franklin listened with a quiet smile, which some one at last observed.
"Don't you agree," he was asked, "that tailors are a conscienceless and
extortionate class?"
"No," he answered, still smiling; "how could I? You see, I'm in love
with mine."
And he told proudly and with shining eyes how the clothes he wore had
been spun into thread and woven into cloth and cut out and fitted and
sewed together by his wife's own hands; and it was no doubt Deborah he
had in mind when he said: "God bless all good women who help men to do
their work."
The young adventurer had no difficulty in finding employment as a
printer, for printers were in demand in that Quaker city. He prospered
from the first, and at the age of twenty-four, had a little business of
his own, and was editing the _Pennsylvania Gazette_. Two years later, he
began the publication of an almanac purporting to be written by one
Richard Saunders, and which soon won an immense reputation as "Poor
Richard's Almanac." As an almanac, it did not differ much from others,
but, in addition to the usual information about the tides and changes of
the moon and seasons of the year, it contained a wealth of wise and
witty sayings, many of which have passed into proverbs and are in common
use to-day. Here are a few of them:
Virtue and a trade are a child's best portions.
Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.
The way to be safe is never to be secure.
When you are good to others, you are best to yourself.
Well done is better than well said.
God helps them that help themselves.
Wish not so much to live long as to live well.
He that won't be counselled can't be helped.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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