"Henceforth be masterless," retorts Ben. "Be ye each one his own master unto himself, and don't let even the Lord put his spoke in. Each man his own master" is but a puffing up of masterlessness. Well, the first of Americans practised this enticing list with assiduity, setting a national example. He had the virtues in columns, and gave himself good and bad marks according as he thought his behaviour deserved. Pity these conduct charts are lost to us. He only remarks that Order was his stumbling block. He could not learn to be neat and tidy. Isn't it nice to have nothing worse to confess? He was a little model, was Benjamin. Doctor Franklin. Snuff-coloured little man! Immortal soul and all! The immortal soul part was a sort of cheap insurance policy. Benjamin had no concern, really, with the immortal soul. He was too busy with social man. 1. He swept and lighted the streets of young Philadelphia. 2. He invented electrical appliances. 3. He was the centre of a moralizing club in Philadelphia, and he wrote the moral humorisms of Poor Richard. 4. He was a member of all the important councils of Philadelphia, and then of the American colonies. 5. He won the cause of American Independence at the French Court, and was the economic father of the United States. Now what more can you want of a man? And yet he is _infra dig_, even in Philadelphia. I admire him. I admire his sturdy courage first of all, then his sagacity, then his glimpsing into the thunders of electricity, then his common-sense humour. All the qualities of a great man, and never more than a great citizen. Middle-sized, sturdy, snuff-coloured Doctor Franklin, one of the soundest citizens that ever trod or "used venery." I do not like him. And, by the way, I always thought books of Venery were about hunting deer. There is a certain earnest naïveté about him. Like a child. And like a little old man. He has again become as a little child, always as wise as his grandfather, or wiser. Perhaps, as I say, the most complete citizen that ever "used venery." Printer, philosopher, scientist, author and patriot, impeccable husband and citizen, why isn't he an archetype? Pioneer, Oh Pioneers! Benjamin was one of the greatest pioneers of the United States. Yet we just can't do with him. What's wrong with him then? Or what's wrong with us? I can remember, when I was a little boy, my father used to buy a scrubby yearly almanack with the sun and moon and stars on the cover. And it used to prophesy bloodshed and famine. But also crammed in corners it had little anecdotes and humorisms, with a moral tag. And I used to have my little priggish laugh at the woman who counted her chickens before they were hatched, and so forth, and I was convinced that honesty was the best policy, also a little priggishly. The author of these bits was Poor Richard, and Poor Richard was Benjamin Franklin, writing in Philadelphia well over a hundred years before.