Franklin's penchant for projects manifests itself nowhere more fully than in his schemes of education, both self and formal. One may deduce a pattern of educational principles not undeservedly called Franklin's _theories_ of education, theories which he successfully institutionalized, from an examination of his Junto ("the best school of philosophy, morality, and politics that then existed in the province"[i-76]), his Philadelphia Library Company (his "first project of a public nature"[i-77]), his _Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations in America_, calling for a scientific society of ingenious men or virtuosi, his _Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania_ and _Idea of the English School_, which eventually fathered the University of Pennsylvania, and from his fragmentary notes in his correspondence. Variously apotheosized, patronized, or damned for his practicality, expediency, and opportunism, dramatized for his allegiance to materiality, Franklin has commonly been viewed (and not only through the popular imagination) as one fostering in the American mind an unimaginative, utilitarian prudence, motivated by the pedestrian virtues of industry, frugality, and thrift. Whatever the educational effect of Franklin's life and writings on American readers, we shall find that his works contain schemes and theories which _transcend_ the more mundane habits and utilitarian biases ascribed to him. Franklin progressively felt "the loss of the learned education" his father had planned for him, as he realized in his hunger for knowledge that he must repair the loss through assiduous reading, accomplished during hours stolen from recreation and sleep.[i-78] Proudly he confessed that reading was his "only amusement."[i-79] In 1727 he formed the Junto, or Leather Apron Club, his first educational project. Franklin was never more eclectic than when founding the Junto. To prevent Boston homes from becoming "the porches of hell,"[i-80] Cotton Mather had created mutual improvement societies through which neighbors would help one another "with a rapturous assiduity."[i-81] Mather in his _Essays to do Good_ proposed: That a proper number of persons in a neighborhood, whose hearts God hath touched with a zeal to do good, should form themselves into a society, to meet when and where they shall agree, and to consider--"what are the disorders that we may observe rising among us; and what may be done, either by ourselves immediately, or by others through our advice, to suppress those disorders?"[i-82]