Dr. Benjamin Franklin is one of those men who have made the task of succeeding biographers more difficult by having been in part their own. He was born at Boston in 1706, the youngest of ten sons. "My father," he says, "intended to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the Church;" but on further reflection, the charges of a college education were thought too burthensome, and young Benjamin became a journeyman printer. From a very early age he showed a passionate fondness for reading, and much ingenuity in argument, but, as he acknowledges, had at first contracted a disputatious and wrangling turn of conversation. "I have since observed," he says, "that persons of good sense seldom fall into it, except lawyers, University-men, and generally men of all sorts who have been bred at Edinburgh." Young Franklin was at first bound apprentice to one of his elder brothers, a printer at Boston; but some differences arising between them, he proceeded to Philadelphia, where he soon obtained employment, and ere long set up for himself. His success in life was secured by his great frugality, industry, and shrewdness. In his own words: "I spent no time in taverns, games, or frolics of any kind; reading was the only amusement I allowed myself." His knowledge and shrewdness,—great zeal in urging any improvements, and great ingenuity in promoting them,—speedily raised him high in the estimation of his fellow-townsmen, and enabled him to take a forward part in all the affairs of his province. In England, and indeed all Europe, he became celebrated by his experiments and discoveries in electricity. These may deserve the greater credit when we recollect both their practical utility and their unassisted progress,—how much the pointed rods which he introduced have tended to avert the dangers of lightning, and how far removed was Franklin at the time from all scientific society, libraries, or patronage. It has also been stated by no less an authority in science than Sir Humphrey Davy, that "the style and manner of Dr. Franklin’s publication on Electricity are almost as worthy of admiration as the doctrine it contains." The same remark may indeed be applied to all his writings. All of them are justly celebrated for their clear, plain, and lively style, free from every appearance of art, but, in fact, carefully pointed and nicely poised. In public speaking, on the other hand, he was much less eminent. His last American biographer observes of him, that he never even pretended to the accomplishments of an orator or debater. He seldom spoke in a deliberative assembly, except for some special object, and then only for a few minutes at a time.