"Benjamin Franklin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ablest thinkers whom America has yet produced were born in New England at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The theorists who would trace all our characteristics to inheritance from some remote ancestor might see in Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin normal representatives of the two types from which the genuine Yankee is derived. Though blended in various proportions, and though one may exist almost to the exclusion of the other, an element ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Benjamin Franklin, who was in London in 1760 as agent of the Pennsylvania Assembly, gave the British ministers some wholesome advice on the terms of the peace that should be made with France. The St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes regions, he said, must ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... and from 1790 to 1800, when the seat of government was moved to Washington, Philadelphia was the national capital. Here the first bank in the colonies, the Bank of North America, was opened in 1781, and here the first mint for the coinage of United States money was established in 1792. Here Benjamin Franklin and David Rittenhouse made their great contributions to science, and here on September 19, 1796, Washington delivered his farewell address to the people of the United States. Here lived Robert Morris, who managed the finances of the Revolution, Stephen Girard of ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... first incentive to ambition and industry and perseverence by reading—when their minds were immature, but fresh and retentive—of the life and achievements of Benjamin Franklin and such other grand models ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... him to be delivered up to the claimant. Some four hours were consumed in getting Court Street, State Street, &c., in a state of readiness for the removal of the prisoner. A regiment of Massachusetts Infantry had been posted on Boston Common, under command of Col. Benjamin Franklin (!) Edmands, from an early hour of the day, in anticipation of the Commissioner's decision. These troops, which had been called out by the Mayor, Jerome V.C. Smith, were marched to the scene of the kidnapping, and so placed as to guard every street, lane, and other ...
— The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society
... member of many scientific societies, at home and abroad, and was elected in 1869 to our own National Academy of Sciences, becoming its vice-president in 1883. In 1893 he was chosen one of the eight foreign associates of the Institute of France,—the first native American since Benjamin Franklin to be so chosen. Newcomb's most famous work as an astronomer,—that which gained him world-wide fame among his brother astronomers,—was, as has been said, too mathematical and technical to appeal ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... which Benjamin Franklin was president, having met and deliberated, and agreed upon a constitution, they next ordered it to be published, not as a thing established, but for the consideration of the whole people, their approbation ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... what was recommended as an easy road to French, and spent all morning learning to say, "l'orange est un fruit." I read the instructions for placing the tongue and puckering the lips and repeated les and las until I was dizzy. Then I looked through our bookcases for a life of Benjamin Franklin. I knew he had gone to court and "played ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... to this tyranny? Never! We repeat it firmly. Never! We repeat it to parents and guardians. Never! But the fiendish tutors, chuckling in their glee, little knew what was passing through the cold, haughty intellect of Charles Fanuel Hall Golightly, aged ten; what curled the lip of Benjamin Franklin Jenkins, aged seven; or what shone in the bold blue eyes of Bromley Chitterlings, aged six and a half, as they sat in the corner of the playground at recess. Their only other companion and confidant was the negro porter and janitor of ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... to M. Turgot, for having suggested the adoption of a measure which hath contributed so much to the reputation of the French government, it must not be forgotten, that the first thought of such a plan of conduct was probably owing to Dr. Benjamin Franklin. Thus much, at least, is certain, that this eminent philosopher, when ambassador at Paris from the United States of America, preceded the court of France in issuing a similar requisition; a copy Of which cannot fail of being ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... of conduct Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Clemens Bret Harte Court exertion. I love work "Do you swear?" "Not for amusement; only under pressure." Doing things and reflecting afterward Dr. Holmes's Songs in Many Keys His estimation of ...
— Widger's Quotations from Albert Bigelow Paine on Mark Twain • David Widger
... of Benjamin Franklin and the little white fringe on Horace Greeley's chin, this goddamned thing's been wrote by hand! Arent there any typewriters anymore? Did Mister Remington ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... production was submitted to Benjamin Franklin manuscript; he returned it to the author with a letter, from which the following quotations are extracted: "I would advise you not to attempt unchaining the Tiger, but to burn this piece before it is seen by any other person.... If men are so wicked with religion, ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880
... (188 miles); six weeks by sailing vessel from Southampton to Boston; and six months from England to India. People moved about but little. A journey of fifty miles was an event—for many something not experienced in a lifetime. To travel to a foreign land made a man a marked individual. Benjamin Franklin tells us that he was frequently pointed out on the streets of Philadelphia, then the largest city in the United States, as a man who had been to Europe. George Ticknor has left us an interesting record (R. 339) of his difficulties, in finding anything ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... to the Asiatic station, Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, Lieutenant in the United States Navy, follows a custom (not at all unusual among naval officers, if Pierre Loti is to be believed) and for the summer sojourn in Japan leases a Japanese wife. (The word "wife" ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... has seen proud days in its time," went on Nyoda. "The Carvers were staunch patriots, and many a meeting of loyal citizens was held around that table in the dining room. They say that Benjamin Franklin was once a guest here. The history of the Carver family was Uncle Jasper's pet hobby, and he has it all printed up in books which you ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... this particular case, as I was allowed the privilege of walking alone with a very interesting young woman, you must allow me to remark, in the classic version of a familiar phrase, used by our Master Benjamin Franklin, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... a face, for he hates a laugh at his cost; nothing less than a young American giant, with the attire of Dr. Benjamin Franklin and the manner of the Fauxbourg Saint Germain. But he had a whiff of deer leather about him, and shoulders and back and legs to make his fortune at Hockley in the Hole, had he lived two generations since. And ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), who was strictly contemporary with Edwards, was a contrast to him in every respect. As Edwards represents the spirituality and other-worldliness of Puritanism, Franklin stands for the worldly and secular side of American character, and he illustrates the ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... said Benjamin Franklin, "are the practice of fools that have not wit enough to be honest." Had the kindly philosopher been familiar with all the exigencies of the criminal law he might have added a qualification to this somewhat general, if indisputably moral, maxim. Though it doubtless remains true as ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... town of the young Republic that had most in it of the metropolitan, proved to this aspiring youth as true a University as the printing-office in old Boston was to Benjamin Franklin; for he found in it the culture best suited to him and his circumstances. Chancellor Wythe, then sixty-seven years of age, overflowing with knowledge and good nature, was the president of that university. Its professors were the cluster of able men who had gone along with ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... general subject. Very interesting was an evening passed with Admiral Porter of the navy, who had already visited Santo Domingo, and who gave me valuable points as to choosing routes and securing information. Another person with whom I had some conversation was Benjamin Franklin Butler, previously a general in the Civil War, and afterward governor of Massachusetts—a man of amazing abilities, but with a certain recklessness in the use of them which had brought him into nearly universal ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... Honourable John Ruffin. "There can be no reasonable doubt that the mantle of Solomon, to say nothing of Benjamin Franklin's, has ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... astonishing fact in our history. The wonder is that we haven't had more than two wars. And it is no wonder that the ignorance of Englishmen about America and the American ignorance of England are monumental, stupendous, amazing, passing understanding. I have on my mantelpiece a statuette of Benjamin Franklin, an excellent and unmistakable likeness which was made here during his lifetime; and the inscription burnt on its base is Geo. Washington. It serves me many a good turn with my English friends. I use it as a measure of their ignorance of us. Of course this is a mere little ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... "John Jay and Benjamin Franklin were well enough in their day, but the nation has made progress since then. Balloon is a man we know and can depend on to ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... Pennsylvania sent a memorial against the continued toleration of the slave trade; and this was followed the next day by a petition from the Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of the Abolition of Slavery, signed by Benjamin Franklin as president, asking ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... Horace Bushnell, Henry Ward Beecher, and their like, and political writers with Jefferson, Webster, and their like, the list need not be a long one. Only one writer in our narrower sense of literature must be named in the earlier day—Benjamin Franklin. In the period before the Civil War must be named Edgar Allan Poe (died 1849) and Washington Irving (died 1859). The Civil War group is the large one, and its names are those of the later group as well. Let them be alphabetical, for convenience: ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... historical documents (which are now in the British Museum), and every now and then coming up to London to enjoy the society of the "young orators" (as Walpole calls them) who frequented his house in Hill street, and the non-political clubs of litterateurs. Benjamin Franklin was among his visitors at this time, and the two, as Shelburne in a letter to Franklin nineteen years afterward reminds him, "talked upon the means of promoting the happiness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... period, he embarked, at the age of eleven years, in February, 1778, from the shore of his native town, with his father, in a small boat, which conveyed them to a ship in Nantasket Roads, bound for Europe. John Adams had been associated in a commission with Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee, as plenipotentiary to the Court of France. After residing in Paris until June, 1779, he returned to America, accompanied by his son. Being immediately appointed, by Congress, minister plenipotentiary to negotiate ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... a position as tutor in a nonconformist academy at Warrington, and here, for six years, he was able to pursue his studies in chemistry and electricity. In 1766, while on a visit to London, he met Benjamin Franklin, at whose suggestion he published his History of Electricity. From this time on he made steady progress in scientific investigations, keeping up his ecclesiastical duties at the same time. In 1780 he removed to Birmingham, having there for associates such scientists as James ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street-porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.' Wilcox's shop was in Little Britain. Benjamin Franklin, in 1725, lodged next door to him. 'He had,' says Franklin (Memoirs, i. 64), 'an immense collection of second-hand books. Circulating libraries were not then in use; but we agreed that on certain reasonable terms I might read ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... a plain thing in a plain way? You think that words mean nothing more than themselves, and that you can talk without ellipsis, and that customary phrases have not their connotations? You think that, do you? Listen then to the tale of Mr Benjamin Franklin Hard, a kindly merchant of Cincinnati, O., who had no particular religion, but who had accumulated a fortune of six hundred thousand dollars, and who had a horror of breaking the Sabbath. He was not 'a kind husband and a good father,' for he was unmarried; nor had ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... that for quite a while after studying vegetarian books I took a dislike to meat, but now I am in the comfortable state described by Benjamin Franklin in his autobiography. It seems that he had been converted to vegetarianism and had decided that he never again would eat the flesh of animals that had been ruthlessly slaughtered, when they so little deserved ...
— Diet and Health - With Key to the Calories • Lulu Hunt Peters
... of these, our protagonists of freedom, was Benjamin Franklin. After him it were difficult to name the second. It is always difficult to find the second man; for there are several who come after. In the case of our forerunners the second may have been Thomas ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... open this you will be seventy years old. I cannot forbear writing you a line to express the obligation which all the American people are under to you. As a diplomat you have come in that class whose foremost exponents are Benjamin Franklin and Charles Francis Adams, and which numbers also in its ranks men like Morris, Livingston, and Pinckney. As a politician, as a publicist, and as a college president you have served your country as only a limited number of ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... what they were doing for "young Benny," as they called him, while they assisted their mother in taking care of his clothes, in preparing his food, and in ministering to his other physical wants—yes, and to the wants of his mind, too. Who can say that Benjamin Franklin would ever have been what Benjamin Franklin was, without their aid, joined to the efforts ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... and Indian War, politics became the absorbing topic of the day, and Benjamin Franklin was the first to achieve fame in this field of letters. His writings in "Poor Richard's Almanac," honest and wholesome in tone, exercised a marked influence upon the literature of his time. Among the orators who won distinction in the discussion of civil liberty are James Otis, John and Samuel ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... the administration of the post-office in Canada, are dated 1750, at which period the celebrated Benjamin Franklin was Deputy Postmaster-General of North America. At the time of his appointment, the revenue of the department was insufficient to defray his salary of $1500 per annum, but under his judicious management, not only was the postal accommodation in the provinces considerably extended, but the ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... touch with the disaffected people to the south. It also had a magistrate of the name of Walker, the most rancorous of all the disaffected magistrates in Canada. This Walker, well mated with an equally rancorous wife, was the same man who entertained Benjamin Franklin and the other commissioners sent by Congress into Canada in 1776, the year in which both the American Republic and a truly British Canada were born. He would not have been flattered could he have seen the entry Franklin ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... for reading the English Scriptures, or for offering Protestant prayers, was death. In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin says that one of his ancestors, who lived in England in Mary's reign, adopted the following expedient for giving his family religious instruction. He fastened an open Bible with strips of tape on the under side of a stool. When he wished to ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... livelihood; Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, was mechanic to the University of Glasgow; Porson, the great professor of Greek, was trained as a weaver; George Washington was a land surveyor; Benjamin Franklin a printer. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... to our own instincts of liberty. A great many people did not want them because they did not like the way they dressed. They objected to the Chinaman's queue. George Washington wore one, so did Benjamin Franklin and John Hancock. The Chinese dress was not worse than some American clothes I have seen. Some may remember the crinoline monstrosities of '65, as I do—the coal-scuttle bonnets, the silver knee-buckles! The headgear of the fair sex has never ceased to be a mystery and a shock during all my ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... escape Hawthorne's penetrating glance. Alcott was an interesting personality, perfectly genuine, frank, kindly and imperturbably good-humored. He had a benevolent aspect, and in general appearance so much resembled the portraits of Benjamin Franklin that his ingenious daughters made use of him in charades and theatricals for that purpose. Hawthorne had known him many years earlier, and had spoken very pleasantly of him in his first publication of "The Hall of Fantasy." He even said, "So calm and gentle was he, so quiet in the utterance of what ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... of his daily routine at Detroit, he could hardly help making friends on the Free Press, the greatest newspaper there. In this he resembled that other great inventor, also a great worker as a boy—Benjamin Franklin. ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... signers of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, the author of that immortal document; George Wythe, afterwards Chancellor of Virginia; Francis Hopkinson, the poet and patriot Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Huntington, Edward Rutledge, and many others, have left upon record testimonials of their great obligations to their ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... named this handsome bird gallopavo (Lat. pavo, the "peacock"). The wild turkey is larger and more beautiful than the tame, and therefore Benjamin Franklin, when speaking sarcastically of the "American Eagle," insisted that the wild turkey was the ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... constituted the convention.—The convention included such men as George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Roger Sherman, Gouverneur Morris, Edmund Randolph, and the Pinckneys. "Of the destructive element, that which can point out defects but cannot remedy them, which is eager to tear down but inapt to build up, it would be difficult to name a representative ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... half-past nine in the morning, a slender gentleman in an ulster, with a volume buttoned into the breast of it, may be observed leaving No. 608 Bush and descending Powell with an active step. The gentleman is R. L. S.; the volume relates to Benjamin Franklin, on whom he meditates one of his charming essays. He descends Powell, crosses Market, and descends in Sixth on a branch of the original Pine Street Coffee House, no less; I believe he would be capable of going to the original itself, if he could only find it. In the branch he seats himself ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... whistling all over the house, much pleased with my whistle but disturbing all the family. My brothers and sisters and cousins, understanding the bargain I had made, told me I had given four times as much for it as it was worth ... The reflection gave me more chagrin than the whistle gave me pleasure. [BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.] ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... said that Mr. Whitefield preached like a lion. So strange a comparison conveyed no unapt a notion of the force and vehemence and passion of that oratory which awed the hearers, and made them tremble like Felix before the apostle.' Benjamin Franklin writes (Memoirs, i. 163):—'Mr. Whitefield's eloquence had a wonderful power over the hearts and purses of his hearers, of which I myself was an instance.' He happened to be present at a sermon which, he perceived, was to finish with a collection for an object which had not ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... was a delegate to the Revolutionary Convention of Maryland; in 1776 he went with three other commissioners (Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Father John Carroll) to try to induce the Canadian colonies to join in the revolt; and soon after his return from this unsuccessful journey he signed the Declaration of Independence. Of the circumstances of the signing the late Robert ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... this stage of the conflict that Lafayette determined to cross the Atlantic and take up the cause of the thirteen little republics. Benjamin Franklin, one of America's two representatives in France, who at first had welcomed this offer of assistance, upon learning of the continued American reverses, and almost despairing of the success of the cause, is reported honourably to have endeavoured to ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... Oliver Wendell Holmes Benjamin Franklin "Josh Billings" "Mark Twain" Charles Dudley Warner James T. Fields Henry Ward ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... west end, we note on the north side the Golden Cross Hotel, rebuilt. This is the successor of a famous old coaching inn, which stood further west. On the south side is Craven Street, formerly Spur Alley, where once Benjamin Franklin lived at No. 7. The site of Hungerford Market is now covered by the Charing Cross railway-station. In Charing Cross station-yard is a modern reproduction of the original Queen Eleanor's Cross. The market was built in 1680, rebuilt in 1831, ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... Benjamin Franklin, five weeks before his death, said of Christ: "I think His system of morals, and His religion, as He left them, are the best the world ever saw or is likely to see." The services of the Bible in behalf of human rights and freedom, and in reforming and purifying jurisprudence ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... forces? What settled Ethan Allen in the wilderness of the Green Mountains ready to strike Ticonderoga? Whence came that power to draft state papers, in a new and unlettered land, which compelled the admiration of the cultured Earl of Chatham? What lengthened out the days of Benjamin Franklin that he might negotiate the Treaty of Paris? What influence sent the miraculous voice of Daniel Webster from the outlying settlements of New Hampshire to rouse the land with his appeal for Liberty and Union? And finally who raised up Lincoln, to lead, to inspire, ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... boarding-house. The presents were all arranged, and among them none gave more pleasure than the modest tributes of our fellow-boarders,—for there was not one, I believe, who did not send something. The landlady would insist on making an elegant bride-cake, with her own hands; to which Master Benjamin Franklin wished to add certain embellishments out of his private funds,—namely, a Cupid in a mouse-trap, done in white sugar, and two miniature flags with the stars and stripes, which had a very pleasing effect, I assure you. The landlady's daughter sent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... where were kept odd specimens of sea-life brought in by the Delaware Bay fishermen. He saw once there a sea-horse—just a queer little sea-animal that looked somewhat like a horse—and another time he saw an electric eel which Benjamin Franklin's discovery had explained. One day he saw a squid and a lobster put in the tank, and in connection with them was witness to a tragedy which stayed with him all his life and cleared things up considerably intellectually. The ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... authorship. He says, in his Autobiography, that a man may live half a century and not be acquainted with his own character. He did not know that he was an antiquary until the world informed him of it, from having read his 'History of Birmingham,' and then, he said, he could see it himself. Benjamin Franklin was alike eminent as a printer and bookseller—an author, a philosopher ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... alderman who lives there, have had upon the ideals of the youth in the vicinity. The path which leads to riches and success, to civic prominence and honor, is the path of political corruption. We might compare this to the path laid out by Benjamin Franklin, who also secured all of these things, but told young men that they could be obtained only by strenuous effort and frugal living, by the cultivation of the mind, and the holding fast to righteousness; or, again, we might compare it to the ideals ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... had signed our Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin said, "And now we must all hang together or we all ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... Unitarian churches. They have accepted its principles of individual freedom, the rational interpretation of religion, and the necessity of bringing religious beliefs into harmony with modern science and philosophy. Among these may be properly included such men as Benjamin Franklin, John Marshall, Gerrit Smith, John G. Whittier, William Lloyd Garrison, Andrew D. White, and Abraham Lincoln. Whittier was a Friend, and White an Episcopalian; but the religion of both is acceptable to all Unitarians. Marshall was ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... outcome of a study of our children's ideals and ambitions should be the direction of their vocational choices. We have read of Benjamin Franklin's father, who took his boys about to various shops with a view to helping them make up their minds as to what kind of trade they should follow. Nowadays we should consider this method rather crude; but for a variety of reasons most ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... Pennsylvania. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Mafflin, Robert Morris, George Clymer, Thomas Fitzsimons, Jared Ingersoll, James ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the Harvard Yard, but the liberal party are soon to force Mather from the Presidency and to refuse that office to his son. In the town of Boston, once hermetically sealed against heresy, there are Baptist and Episcopal churches—and a dancing-master. Young Benjamin Franklin, born in 1706, professes a high respect for the Mathers, but he does not go to church, "Sunday being my studying day," and neither the clerical nor the secular arm of Boston is long enough and strong enough to compel that industrious apprentice ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... now came to Mr. Curtis to purchase The Saturday Evening Post, a Philadelphia weekly of honored prestige, founded by Benjamin Franklin. It was apparent at once that the company could not embark upon the development of two magazines at the same time, and as a larger field was seen for The Saturday Evening Post, it was decided to leave Country Life in abeyance ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... laughed a great rasping laugh, and the boy Benjamin Franklin looked sharp at his mother, as if he remembered the bun-experiment as a part ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... historical fiction, but the plan of it was suggested by biography, and is made to include the most interesting and picturesque episodes in the home side of the life of Benjamin Franklin, so as to form a connected narrative or picture ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... skeptic, explained Whitefield's charm by saying that the preacher spake to his audience with the same passionate abandon with which an ardent lover speaks to his sweetheart when he pleads for her hand. But Benjamin Franklin tells us that the charm in Whitefield's speech was not his musical voice, not his stream of thought running clear as crystal, not his sudden electric outbursts, when the great man seemed on fire; the something that ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Benjamin Franklin (born 1706, died 1790): a native of Boston, U.S.A., who lived for some time in England. As a scientist he is famous for electrical experiments; as a politician, for the share he took in upholding the independence of ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... men I have met? They are disagreeable, conceited creatures; and ought, all of them, to have died before they were born; and for my part, I am satisfied not to have had the fate to marry one of them. As for Benjamin Franklin,' she continued, 'he was a particularly great man, and I am particularly grateful that I never saw him but once. I formed my opinion of him then; for I only need to see a person once, to form an opinion—and he is dead! Well, then, every one dies ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... the twentieth century finds few recent guides to avoid, or to follow. American literature offers scarcely one working model for high education. The student must go back, beyond Jean Jacques, to Benjamin Franklin, to find a model even of self-teaching. Except in the abandoned sphere of the dead languages, no one has discussed what part of education has, in his personal experience, turned out to be useful, and what not. This ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... circumstances it was fortunate for the United States that the American Peace Commissioners were broad-minded enough to appreciate the situation and to act on their own responsibility. Benjamin Franklin, although he was not the first to be appointed, was generally considered to be the chief of the Commission by reason of his age, experience, and reputation. Over seventy-five years old, he was more universally known and admired than probably any man of his time. This ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... of a bill, drawn by Benjamin Franklin while the savages were raging in the colony and the smoke of a hundred villages was ascending to the skies, was received with indignation by the people, and this rose to such a height that the Assembly must have yielded unconditionally, ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... literature. Not the greatest we shall produce, but a literature continuous from the first settlement of the colonies. It is a very significant fact that the three men before the Revolution whom we may call literary men were men born in New England—Benjamin Franklin, who is too well known to all of you for comment; John Woolman, of whose work Charles Lamb said: "Woolman's writings should be learned by heart;" and that great theologian, who wrote in a stately style, Jonathan Edwards. After the Revolution I have but to call the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... fashionable to paint the H.B. Co. as an agrarian oligarchy. Organized for the purpose of "making fur" before the time of the Habeas Corpus, two decades ahead of the Bank of England, sixty-two years before Benjamin Franklin began publishing "Poor Richard's Almanac," and a century in advance of Watt's steam-engine, it is true that The Company, throughout the years, devoted itself to peltries and not to platting town sites. This was its business. From the beginning it has consistently kept faith with the Indians; ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... Benjamin Franklin, at the moment representing in France the American colonies then struggling for liberty, witnessed this ascension! "Of what use is a new-born child?" he remarked sententiously as the balloon vanished. ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... the relation of books to books, it was the "Memoirs" of Madame Campan that took me into the society of Benjamin Franklin. There were legends about him in Philadelphia, where we thought we knew more about this distinguished American than anybody else; but it was through certain passages in the "Memoirs on Marie Antoinette and her Court" that I turned to his ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... very pretty, as all visitors stated who wrote accounts at that day. Madam Knights visited New York in 1704, and wrote of the houses,—I will give her own words, in her own spelling and grammar, which were not very good, though she was the teacher of Benjamin Franklin, and the friend ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... career of Benjamin Franklin is full of inspiration for any young man. When he left school for good he was only twelve years of age. At first he did little but read. He soon found, however, that reading, alone, would not make him an educated man, and he proceeded to act upon this discovery at once. ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... than fifty years ago Dr. Simon Newcomb, a world-famous astronomer and the first American since Benjamin Franklin to be made an associate of the Institute of France, the hierarchy of the world science, said, "It can't be." Then he went on to explain that flight without gas bags would require the discovery of some new material or a ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... great man in Paris at this period. There was another as great as he, but great in a very different fashion,—Benjamin Franklin, the American philosopher and statesman, as famous for common sense and public spirit as Voltaire was for poetical power and satirical keenness. These two great men met, and their meeting is worthy of description. The American envoys had asked ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... Surgeons Benjamin Franklin Harney, Richard Smith Satterlee, Charles Stuart Tripler, Burton Randall, James Meck Cuyler; Assistant Surgeons Alexander F. Suter, Josiah Simpson, David Camben De Leon, Henry H. Steiner, James Simons, Joseph K. Barnes, Levi H. Holden, Charles Carter Keeney, James ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... this spider, this corporal, has dared to point his impotent spleen at the memory of that illustrious patriot, statesman and philosopher, Benjamin Franklin. ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... The World I am Passing Through Lydia Maria Child Terminus Ralph Waldo Emerson Rabbi Ben Ezra Robert Browning Human Life Audrey Thomas de Vere Young and Old Charles Kingsley The Isle of the Long Ago Benjamin Franklin Taylor Growing Old Matthew Arnold Past John Galsworthy Twilight A. Mary F. Robinson Youth and Age George Arnold Forty Years On Edward Ernest Bowen Dregs Ernest Dowson The Paradox of Time Austin Dobson ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... Marquis through his sad and singular experience at Loudun, his meeting with his old friend De Thou, his brilliant exploit at Perpignan, his rapid preferment at court, and—just here Walter called us from our rapid review of the career of Cinq-Mars to show us a head of Benjamin Franklin in terra cotta. This excellent low relief of Franklin is in a case with a number of other medallions, made by an Italian, Nini, whom the owner of Chaumont brought here in the hope of turning to account some clay found on the estate. This admirable medallion excited the ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... the well-known one—in Washington at least—of Benjamin Franklin at the Court of France; interesting no doubt in a general way, but scarcely calculated to hold the eye at so critical an instant. Neither did the shelf below call for more than momentary attention, for it was absolutely ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... be superseded. But this method of suppressing it is too thorough. It involves not merely the extermination of the fighting spirit, but of many excellent qualities, physical and moral, which are associated with the fighting spirit. Benjamin Franklin seems to have been the first to point out that "a standing army diminishes the size and breed of the human species." Almost in Franklin's lifetime that was demonstrated on a wholesale scale, for there seems little reason to doubt that the size and stature ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... yourself, take it up at the outset. Don't wait for it to develop. To break it up, nothing is better than the full hot bath at bed time, or the foot bath with mustard, followed by a hot drink. It is old-fashioned, but scientific, for nine colds out of ten are due to clogged pores. Benjamin Franklin said a hundred years ago that all colds come from impure air, lack of exercise, and over-eating, and nobody has ever bettered his conclusion. Even contagious colds will not be taken if the bodily resistance is kept ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... clerk sells the merchant's goods. An ostrich outruns an Arab's horse. Cecrops founded Athens. Gallileo invented the telescope. James Macpherson translated Ossian's poems. Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe. Doctor Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning-rod. Washington Irving wrote ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... our great statesman, Benjamin Franklin proved that "honesty is the best policy," so many a successful woman has proved that a pleasant, tactful manner is one of the most valuable assets a girl can possess, and should be practised steadily. At home, at school, in the office and in the world ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... thus with men of other races subjugated by the whites. Benjamin Franklin in his autobiography tells that when he was a commissioner to the Indians at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, he and his fellow-commissioners agreed that they would allow the Indians no rum until the treaty they earnestly sought was concluded, and that then they should ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... know that, at this time, Casanova met his famous contemporary, Benjamin Franklin. "A few days after the death of the illustrious d'Alembert," Casanova assisted, at the old Louvre, in a session of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. "Seated beside the learned Franklin, I was a little surprised to hear Condorcet ask him if he believed ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... that is not connected, in the popular imagination, with the Old South Meeting-House. It stands on the site of John Winthrop's garden; it is rich in memories of Cotton and Increase Mather. Within its ancient walls was Benjamin Franklin christened, and the building which stands to-day comes down to us from 1730, and was designed in obedient imitation of English masters. There, too, were enacted many scenes in the drama of revolution; there it was that the famous ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... been a very different figure—an accomplished physician, the friend of nobles, a man of science and original thought, so that he was nearly elected to the Academy of Sciences. His studies in electricity gained for him the admiration of Benjamin Franklin and the praise of Goethe. But when he turned to politics he left all this career behind him. He plunged into the very mire of red republicanism, and even there he was for a time so much hated that he sought refuge in London to ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... Christopher Columbus, S. Fursa, S. Brendan, Marshal MacMahon, Charlemagne, Theobald Wolfe Tone, the Mother of the Maccabees, the Last of the Mohicans, the Rose of Castile, the Man for Galway, The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, The Man in the Gap, The Woman Who Didn't, Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte, John L. Sullivan, Cleopatra, Savourneen Deelish, Julius Caesar, Paracelsus, sir Thomas Lipton, William Tell, Michelangelo Hayes, Muhammad, the Bride of Lammermoor, Peter the Hermit, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... friends were Hume, Garrick, Wilkes, Sterne, Gibbon, Horace Walpole, Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin, Dr. Priestley, Lord Shelburne, Gen. Barr, Gen. Clark, Sir James MacDonald, Dr. Gem, Messrs. Stewart, Demster, Fordyce, Fitzmaurice, Foley, etc. Holbach addressed a letter to Hume in 1762, before making his acquaintance, in which he expressed his admiration of his philosophy and ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... 1783, were among the first sea captains to carry the American flag around the world. That you knew many of the Free Quakers and other patriots of the Revolution and that they buried you among them, near Benjamin Franklin, is a matter of pride to your descendants. That you were born in Wales and spoke Welsh, as did also those three great prophets of spiritual liberty, Roger Williams, William Penn, and Thomas Jefferson, is still further ground ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... of March 1784, seconded by another commission of the Academie des Sciences, to investigate the phenomena and report upon them. The first commission was composed of the principal physicians of Paris; while, among the eminent men comprised in the latter, were Benjamin Franklin, Lavoisier, and Bailly the historian of astronomy. Mesmer was formally invited to appear before this body, but absented himself from day to day, upon one pretence or another. M. D'Eslon was more honest, because he thoroughly believed in the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... shoulders above all others towered George Washington. The man most widely known, except Washington, was Benjamin Franklin, eighty-one years old; the youngest delegate was Mr. Dayton of New Jersey, ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... established a considerable and permanent reputation in the world of European thought prior to the present century,—Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Edwards. In 1736, Dr. Isaac Watts published in England Mr. Edwards' account of the beginning of the great awakening in the Connecticut valley. Here more than a century and a half ago, when the colonies were small, their future unsuspected and the ability of their leaders ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... prunes devoid of succulence, and boxes of starch and candles. Its only ornament is the cat, and his beauty is more apparent to the artist than to the fancier. His splendid stripes, black and grey and tawny, are too wide for noble lineage. He has a broad benignant brow, like Benjamin Franklin's; but his brooding eyes, golden, unfathomable, deny benignancy. He is large and sleek,—the grocery mice must be many, and of an appetizing fatness,—and I presume he devotes his nights to the pleasures of the chase. His days are spent in contemplation, in a serene and wonderful ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... passengers who wished to travel on to Saugatuck, Fairfield, Bridgeport, Stratford, Milford, and other points. The same column carried information for those who contemplated voyaging to Newport or Providence. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday the steamboats "Benjamin Franklin" (Capt. E.S. Bunker) and "President" (Capt. R.S. Bunker) left New York for those Rhode Island towns at ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... Ruskin read at four years of age, was a book-worm at five, and wrote numerous poems and dramas before he was ten. Lord Macaulay read at three and began a compendium of universal history at seven. Although not a lover of books, George Washington early read Matthew Hale and became a master in thought. Benjamin Franklin would sit up all night at his books. Thomas Jefferson read fifteen hour a day. Patrick Henry read for employment, and kept store for pastime. Daniel Webster was a devouring reader, and retained all that he read. At the age of fourteen he could ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... a still more difficult consideration for our average men, that while all their teachers, from Solomon down to Benjamin Franklin and the ungodly Binney, have inculcated the same ideal of manners, caution, and respectability, those characters in history who have most notoriously flown in the face of such precepts are spoken of in hyperbolical terms of praise, and honoured ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... holy orders, and returned to England for confirmation therein. Coming back to America he settled in the ministry at East Haddam, Conn. Some fifteen years later, in August, 1757, he died, while on a visit to Philadelphia, at the residence of his friend, Benjamin Franklin, then publisher of the Pennsylvania Gazette, who spoke of him, in an obituary notice in his paper, as "a gentleman of a humane and pious disposition, indefatigable in his ministry, easy and affable in his conversation, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... "mere amateur." He worked at things for the love of them. So were Murchison, Lyell, Benjamin Franklin, Herschel. So were or are Bates, Herbert Spencer, Alfred Russel Wallace. "Mere amateurs!" ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... while yet in humble circumstances, she visited Boston. Upon seeing a statue of Benjamin Franklin she stood transfixed before it. It stirred the latent genius within the untutored child, and produced an emotion she had never felt before. "I, too, can make a stone man," she said. Almost instinctively, she turned ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... vision of the expansionist, making large plans for the establishment of a colony to be seated upon his own lands. Henderson, too, recognized the importance of the great country west of the Appalachians. He agreed with the opinion of Benjamin Franklin, who in 1756 called it "one of the finest in North America for the extreme richness and fertility of the land, the healthy temperature of the air and the mildness of the climate, the plenty of hunting, fishing and fowling, the facility of ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... 17th of September, 1787, that the Federal Convention broke up. For most of the delegates there was a long and tedious journey home before they could meet their fellow-citizens and explain what had been done at Philadelphia during this anxious summer. Not so, however, with Benjamin Franklin and the Pennsylvania delegation. At eleven o'clock on the next morning, radiant with delight at seeing one of the most cherished purposes of his life so nearly accomplished, the venerable philosopher, attended by his seven colleagues, presented to the legislature of Pennsylvania a copy ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... price at three days' work, and the future President pulled corn for three days, thus becoming owner of the coveted volume." In addition to this, he was fortunate enough to get hold of AEsop's Fables, Pilgrim's Progress, and the lives of Benjamin Franklin and Henry Clay. He made these books his own by conning them over and over, copying the more impressive portions until they were firmly fixed in his memory. Commenting upon the value of this sort of ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... word for a scrap of fiction told for true, put in to enliven the column of morning news when it is flat. We owe the discovery to Benjamin Franklin, the inventor of the lightning conductor and the republic. That journalist completely deceived the Encyclopaedists by his transatlantic canards. Raynal gives two of them for facts in his Histoire ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... came to his aid in the shape of Benjamin Franklin, then postmaster-general of Pennsylvania. That sagacious personage,—the sublime of common-sense, about equal in his instincts and motives of character to the respectable average of the New England that produced him, but gifted with ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... a life of freedom.[2] While students of government were exposing the inconsistency of slaveholding among a people contending for political liberty, and men like Samuel Webster, James Swan, and Samuel Hopkins attacked the institution on economic grounds;[3] Jonathan Boucher,[4] Dr. Rush,[5] and Benjamin Franklin[6] were devising plans to educate slaves for freedom; and Isaac Tatem[7] and Anthony Benezet[8] were actually in the schoolroom endeavoring to enlighten ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... Nick), was quite aware of this necessity as a tax upon travellers; and at every stage, on halting, he used to stand upright in his stirrups, crying aloud, 'Gentlemen and Ladies, here I am at your service; Benjamin Franklin by name; once (but that was in boyhood) a devil; viz., in the service of a printer; next a compositor and reader to the press; at present a master-printer. My object in this journey is—to arrest a knave who will else be off to Europe with ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... B.F., to bring down two books, of which I will mark the places on this slip of paper. (While he is gone, I may say that this boy, our landlady's youngest, is called BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, after the celebrated philosopher of that name. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... added an equal sum, and Beaumarchais was allowed to buy from government arsenals. Meanwhile agents were received from the United States, and French officers passed into its service with little real hindrance from their government. Beaumarchais' house was started in 1776; in December of that year Benjamin Franklin landed in France, and in May, 1777, Lafayette came to America. Meanwhile the preparations for war, especially for a sea war, were pushed on; the navy was steadily increased, and arrangements were made for threatening an invasion from the Channel, while the real scene of the war ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... this representation would have controlled the legislation of the government, and carried against the North every question vital to its interests, would Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, Elbridge Gerry, William Livingston, John Langdon, and Rufus King have been such madmen, as to sign the constitution, and the Northern States such suicides as to ratify it? Every self-preserving instinct would have shrieked at such an infatuate immolation. At the adoption of the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... States, and accordingly commits the crime of "Treason" which consists in levying war against the United States—the "amount of force is not material." And it is their duty to indict all persons in that form offending. The Attorney, the Hon. Benjamin Franklin Hallett, offers to "bet ten dollars that I will get" Nason "indicted," and urges the matter. But no bill is found, the Jury is discharged, a new Jury is summoned, and Mr. William W. Greenough, the Brother-in-law of the Judge is put on it, "drawn ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... Benjamin Franklin was the fifteenth child of a poor tallow chandler. It is altogether probable that his coming seemed a misfortune to his mother, taxed with the care of such a brood. Think what the world would have missed had ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... once lived there. The house was built by Walter Franklin, a rich merchant, and was therefore called the Franklin House. The square, however, does not take its name from this man, but from the renowned Benjamin Franklin. ...
— The Story of Manhattan • Charles Hemstreet
... Through Bookland contains any other selection so full of meat as this extract (Volume VI, page 407) from the writings of Benjamin Franklin; in fact, it is so full of wisdom on so many homely subjects and contains so much practical advice that no one can master it in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... Dr. Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia, in a letter to a Friend well known in the literary World, which I heard read, said that he was fully convinced that there was such a Current from West to East, and that he did not ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams
... Tom heartily. "We'll all hang together or we'll hang separately', as Benjamin Franklin or some of those old chaps once remarked. I'm not the kind to desert a friend in ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton
... very little, a seal with a dove on it, some sticks of spangled sealing-wax, a paper knife of coloured wood with a picture of Benjamin Franklin on the handle and some sheets of note-paper ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... asked to name the most remarkable all-around genius this country has produced, the answer would be Benjamin Franklin—whose life was perhaps the fullest, happiest and most useful ever lived in America. There are half a dozen chapters of this series in which he might rightfully find a place, and in which, indeed, it will be necessary to refer to him, for he was an inventor, a ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... Boston Miscellany" for May, 1842, and had added one more to his little books, "Biographical Stories [Footnote: Biographical Stories for Children. Benjamin West, Sir Isaac Newton, Samuel Johnson, Oliver Cromwell, Benjamin Franklin, Queen Christina. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Author of Historical Tales for Youth, Twice-Told Tales, etc. Boston: Tappan and Dennet, 114 Washington St. 1842. 18mo. Pp. v, 161. "Historical Tales for Youth" was made up by binding the three Grandfather's Chair books in the 18mo ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... Wild Streets are called respectively Old and New Weld Streets by Strype. Weld House stood on the site of the present Wild Court, and was during the reign of James II. occupied by the Spanish Embassy. In Great Wild Street Benjamin Franklin worked ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... ISAAC REED reported themselves as having fled from the Eastern Shore of Maryland; that they had there been held to service or Slavery by Sarah Ann Burgess, and Benjamin Franklin Houston, from whom they fled. No incidents of slave life or travel were recorded, save that Perry left his wife Milky Ann, and two children, Nancy and Rebecca (free). Also Isaac left his wife, Hester Ann Louisa, and the following named children: Philip ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... and Robert Louis Stevenson are there, in those books, and you can learn them as well as their stories. And Henry W. Longfellow, writer of stories in verse; and John G. Whittier, writer of poems about barefoot boys and corn huskings; and Benjamin Franklin, a kindly philosopher-there, that word is too hard for you, but it just slipped out, and so you will have to be told that a philosopher is a person who thinks about ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... his hundredth night, and see have he and his words grown weary of each other. Wesley wrote every sermon, and repeatedly preached the same discourse, with the result that so far from losing by repetition it gained; and Benjamin Franklin, who was the American ambassador in England at the time, assures us he never became truly eloquent with a sermon till he had preached it thirty times. The following graphic picture of the effects produced by the preaching of Wesley and his two companions will scarcely help to support ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... nation was not divided. The ministers and the Parliament, as well as the American colonies, were for war. "There is no hope of repose for our thirteen colonies, as long as the French are masters of Canada," said Benjamin Franklin, on his arrival in London in 1754. He was already laboring, without knowing it, at that great work of American independence which was to be his glory and that of his generation; the common efforts and the common interest of the thirteen American colonies in the war against ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... books, experience, and downright hard thinking; and we Americans still like to tell of the immortal Lincoln poring over the pages of his few and hard-won volumes before the glare of the wood-fire on the hearth, or the uncertain light of the tallow dip. Benjamin Franklin got his education in ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... spirituous liquors among them, and take advantage of their inordinate appetite for it, to cheat them of their skins, and their wampum, which is their money." In 1753 governor Hamilton appointed Richard Peters, Isaac Norris and Benjamin Franklin, to hold a treaty with the Indians at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. In the report of these commissioners they say: "But in justice to these Indians, and the promises we made them, we cannot close our report, without taking notice, that the quantity of strong liquors sold to these Indians, in the places ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... resolutions against the measure, which were transmitted to their agents in London, to be laid before government. The province of Pennsylvania appointed a new agent to London, in the person of the celebrated Benjamin Franklin, who was instructed to oppose the stamp-act to the very utmost, and indeed every other act that might be proposed to the British parliament to tax the Americans without their consent. A more efficient agent than Franklin could not have been chosen by the Pennsylvanians. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... called taking an air-bath." It is said also, I know not on what authority, that he made his beautiful daughters take an air-bath naked on the terrace every morning. Another distinguished man of the same century, Benjamin Franklin, used sometimes to work naked in his study on hygienic grounds, and, it is recorded, once affrighted a servant-girl by opening the door in an ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... find Bennie and go swimming," he vowed. Calmly as Napoleon defying his marshals, General Carl disregarded the sordid facts that it was too late in the year to go swimming, and that Benjamin Franklin Rusk couldn't swim, anyway. He clumped along, planting his feet with spats of dust, very dignified and melancholy but, like all small boys, occasionally going mad and running in chase of nothing at all till he ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... deep ruts and the puddles which never dry, not even in mid-August, adorned Fairhaven's single street; the comfortable moss upon Fairhaven's roofs had not varied by a shade; and George Washington or Benjamin Franklin might have stepped out of any one of those brass-knockered doorways without incongruity and without finding any noticeable ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... holy wars. There are none. Let me remind you that it was Benjamin Franklin who said, 'There was never a good war or a ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing |
