From Boyhood to Manhood: Life of Benjamin FranklinThayer, William Makepeace
History
From Boyhood to Manhood: Life of Benjamin Franklin
Thayer, William Makepeace
Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790
Examples of industry, enterprise, despatch, promptness, punctuality,
and circumspection are inspiring to both old and young; and nowhere do
these noble qualities appear to better advantage than they do where
busy brains and hands make the newspaper in the printing office. It is
a remarkably useful school. It was so when Benjamin was a boy. It was
a far better school for him than that of Williams or Brownwell. Here
he laid the foundation of his learning and fame. The same was true of
Horace Greeley, who founded the _New York Tribune_, and of Henry J.
Raymond, who made the _Times_ what it is. The late Vice-President
Schuyler Colfax was schooled in a printing office for his honorable
public career; and the same was true of other distinguished statesmen.
But none of these examples are so remarkable as the following, that
was made possible by Benjamin Franklin's example.
A waif two years of age was taken from a benevolent institution in
Boston, and given to a childless sailor, on his way from a voyage to
his home in Maine on the Penobscot River. The sailor knew not from
what institution the child was taken, nor whence he came. He carried
it home, without a name, or the least clue to his ancestry. The
sailor's wife was a Christian woman, and had prayed for just such a
gift as that. She resolved to train him for the Lord. At twelve years
of age he became a Christian, and, from that time, longed to be a
minister. But poverty stood in his way, and there was little prospect
of his hopes being realized.
At length, however, he read the life of Benjamin Franklin; and he
learned how the printing office introduced him into a noble life-work.
"I will go through the printing office into the ministry," he said to
his adopted mother. So, at fifteen, he became a printer in Boston.
After a while, his health broke down, and the way to regain it seemed
to be through service to a wealthy man on his farm in the country.
There his health was restored, and his benevolent employer got him
into Andover Academy, where he led the whole class. Near the close of
his preparatory course, on a Saturday night, the author met him under
the following circumstances:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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