True to His Home: A Tale of the Boyhood of FranklinButterworth, Hezekiah
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True to His Home: A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin
Butterworth, Hezekiah
Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790 -- Fiction
I have written no book with a deeper sympathy with my subject, for,
although fiction, the story very truthfully shows that the good
intentions of a life which has seemed to fail do not die, but live in
others whom they inspire. Uncle Benjamin Franklin, "the poet," who was
something of a philosopher, and whose visions all seemed to end in
disappointment, deeply influenced his nephew and godson, Benjamin
Franklin, whom he morally educated to become what he himself had failed
to be.
The conduct of Josiah Franklin, the father of Benjamin Franklin, in
comforting his poor old brother in England by naming his fifteenth child
for him, and making him his godfather, is a touching instance of family
affection, to the memory of which the statesman was always true.
Uncle Benjamin Franklin had a library of pamphlets that was very dear to
him, for in the margins of the leaves he had placed the choicest
thoughts of his life amid great political events. He was very poor, and
he sold his library in his old age; we may reasonably suppose that he
parted with it among other effects to get money to come to America, that
he might give his influence to "Little Ben," after his brother had
remembered him in his desolation by giving his name to the boy. The
finding of these pamphlets in London fifty years after the old man was
compelled to sell them was regarded by Benjamin Franklin as one of the
most singular events of his remarkable life.
Mr. Parton, in his Life of Franklin, thus alludes to the circumstance:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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