The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 242 pages of information about The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 242 pages of information about The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.
you are good; temperate as you are temperate; and above all things, prove yourself as one, who from your infancy have loved justice, liberty and concord, in a way that has made it natural and consistent for you to have acted, as we have seen you act in the last seventeen years of your life.  Let Englishmen be made not only to respect, but even to love you.  When they think well of individuals in your native country, they will go nearer to thinking well of your country; and when your countrymen see themselves well thought of by Englishmen, they will go nearer to thinking well of England.  Extend your views even further; do not stop at those who speak the English tongue, but after having settled so many points in nature and politics, think of bettering the whole race of men.  As I have not read any part of the life in question, but know only the character that lived it, I write somewhat at hazard.  I am sure, however, that the life and the treatise I allude to (on the Art of Virtue) will necessarily fulfil the chief of my expectations; and still more so if you take up the measure of suiting these performances to the several views above stated.  Should they even prove unsuccessful in all that a sanguine admirer of yours hopes from them, you will at least have framed pieces to interest the human mind; and whoever gives a feeling of pleasure that is innocent to man, has added so much to the fair side of a life otherwise too much darkened by anxiety and too much injured by pain.  In the hope, therefore, that you will listen to the prayer addressed to you in this letter, I beg to subscribe myself, my dearest sir, etc., etc.,

     “Signed, BENJ.  Vaughan.”

Continuation of the Account of my Life, begun at Passy, near Paris, 1784.

It is some time since I receiv’d the above letters, but I have been too busy till now to think of complying with the request they contain.  It might, too, be much better done if I were at home among my papers, which would aid my memory, and help to ascertain dates; but my return being uncertain and having just now a little leisure, I will endeavor to recollect and write what I can; if I live to get home, it may there be corrected and improv’d.

Not having any copy here of what is already written, I know not whether an account is given of the means I used to establish the Philadelphia public library, which, from a small beginning, is now become so considerable, though I remember to have come down to near the time of that transaction (1730).  I will therefore begin here with an account of it, which may be struck out if found to have been already given.

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The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.