Afterwards, when living in Paris, Jones became broken down in health. No wonder, for he had fought twenty-four naval battles! When he was taken sick, the queen sent her physician, to attend him. He died in Paris in 1792, at the early age of forty-five, thirteen years after his memorable victory. No one knows the place of his burial. At the public funeral a vast concourse filled the streets of the French capital. General sorrow was shown throughout the United States at the death of John Paul Jones, the great ocean hero of the Revolution--indeed, the first heroic character in our country's naval history. CHAPTER XIX. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: HIS HIGHLY USEFUL CAREER. =250. Benjamin Franklin, one of the most Useful and Influential Men of his Time.=--Among the many men who acted a conspicuous part as "makers of our country," Benjamin Franklin holds a unique and interesting place. Combined with shrewd common sense and a practical philosophy was a genial and rare personality, which made him during his long lifetime a most useful and influential citizen. Franklin did not fight and win battles like Washington and Greene, but he gained notable victories in diplomacy when the struggling colonies sorely needed them. For over sixty years he wrote hundreds of pamphlets, tracts, and newspaper articles, which moulded public opinion at critical times, and also served to increase the comfort and happiness of his fellow-men. Most men who have attempted to write their own lives have made a sad failure of it. This busy man of the world, with no education save that which he was able to get in the "odds and ends" of time, told the story of his own life in a way that has commanded the interest and admiration of multitudes of readers for over a hundred years. =251. Franklin's Early Life; his Genius for Useful Inventions.=--Benjamin Franklin, the fifteenth of a family of seventeen children, was born in Boston in 1706. His father was a poor man, who could afford his youngest boy only about two years of schooling. When he was ten, the lad left school to assist his father at his trade of making soap and tallow candles. Nothing else pleased the boy so much as a book. He had access at this time to very few, and most of these were dull, but he read them eagerly. He read and re-read Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_ until he knew it by heart. He disliked his father's trade and longed to do something more agreeable. He even thought of running away to sea as one of his brothers had done.