Now, Mr. Mayor, I need not tell you that there never was a greater mistake in point of fact. A thirst for books, which he spared no pains to allay, is the first marked trait disclosed in the character of Franklin; his success throughout the early period of his life can be directly traced to the use he made of them; and his very first important movement for the benefit of his fellow-men was to found a public library, which still flourishes;--one of the most considerable in the country. Franklin not a book-man! whoever labors under that delusion, shows that somebody else is not a book-man, at least so far as concerns the biography of our illustrious townsman. We happen to have a little information on that subject, in a book written by Franklin himself. He there gives a very different account of himself, and I would ask any one who entertains the idea to which I am alluding, at what period of Franklin's career he supposes this taste for books began to be manifested by him; how soon he ceased to be a self-formed man? Perhaps after he had struggled through the years of his youthful poverty, escaped to Philadelphia, set up in business as a printer, and begun to have a little money in his pocket. I need not tell you, sir, that it was earlier than that. Was it, then, while he was the clever apprentice to his brother, the editor of a journal, and wrote articles for its columns in a disguised hand, and tucked them under the office door, enjoying the exquisite delight of being ordered to set up his own anonymous articles; was it then, at the age of fifteen or sixteen, that this fondness for reading, under the stimulus of boyish authorship, disclosed itself? Earlier than that. Well, then, at the grammar-school and Master Brownwell's writing-school, which he attended from eight to ten (for there are boys who show a fondness for reading, even at that tender age); was little Benjamin's taste for books developed while yet at school? Earlier than that. Hear his own words, which you will permit me to read from that exquisite piece of autobiography to which I have already alluded: "From my INFANCY I was _passionately_ fond of reading, and all the money that came into my hands was laid out in purchasing books. I was very fond of voyages. My first acquisition was Bunyan's works, in separate little volumes. I afterwards sold them to enable me to buy R. Burton's _Historical Collections_. They were small chapman's books and cheap, forty volumes in all. My father's little library consisted chiefly of books in polemic divinity, most of which I read. I have often regretted [and this is a sentence that might be inscribed on the lofty cornice of this noble hall] that at a time when I had such a thirst for knowledge, more proper books had not fallen in my way.... There was among them Plutarch's Lives, which I read abundantly, and I still think that time spent to great advantage. There was also a book of Defoe's, called an _Essay on Projects_, and another of Dr. Mather's,