Remarks by Bill Nye (best non fiction books of all time .TXT) 📗
- Author: Bill Nye
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In 1730, at the age of 24, Franklin married and established the Pennsylvania Gazette. He was then regarded as a great man, and most everyone took his paper. Franklin grew to be a great journalist, and spelled hard words with great fluency. He never tried to be a humorist in any of his newspaper work, and everybody respected him.
Along about 1746 he began to study the construction and habits of lightning, and inserted a local in his paper, in which he said that he would be obliged to any of his readers who might notice any new or odd specimens of lightning, if they would send them into the Gazette office by express for examination. Every time there was a thunder storm, Franklin would tell the foreman to edit the paper, and, armed with a string and an old fruit jar, he would go out on the hills and get enough lightning for a mess.
{Illustration: “HOW'S TRADE?"}
In 1753 Franklin was made postmaster-general of the colonies. He made a good postmaster-general, and people say there were less mistakes in distributing their mail than there has ever been since. If a man mailed a letter in those days, old Ben Franklin saw that it went where it was addressed.
Franklin frequently went over to England in those days, partly on business, and partly to shock the king. He used to delight in going to the castle with his breeches tucked in his boots, figuratively speaking, and attract a good deal of attention. It looked odd to the English, of course, to see him come into the royal presence, and, leaving his wet umbrella up against the throne, ask the king: “How's trade?” Franklin never put on any frills, but he was not afraid of a crowned head. He used to say, frequently, that to him a king was no more than a seven spot.
He did his best to prevent the Revolutionary war, but he couldn't do it, Patrick Henry had said that the war was inevitable, and given it permission to come, and it came. He also went to Paris and got acquainted with a few crowned heads there. They thought a good deal of him in Paris, and offered him a corner lot if he would build there and start a paper. They also promised him the county printing, but he said no, he would have to go back to America, or his wife might get uneasy about him.
Franklin wrote “Poor Richard's Almanac” in 1732-57, and it was republished in England. Benjamin Franklin had but one son, and his name was William. William was an illegitimate son, and, though he lived to be quite an old man, he never got over it entirely, but continued to be but an illegitimate son all his life. Everybody urged him to do differently, but he steadily refused to do so.
Life Insurance as a Health Restorer.
Life insurance is a great thing. I would not be without it. My health is greatly improved since I got my new policy. Formerly I used to have a seal-brown taste in my mouth when I arose in the morning, but that has entirely disappeared. I am more hopeful and happy, and my hair is getting thicker on top. I would not try to keep house without life insurance. Last September I was caught in one of the most destructive cyclones that ever visited a republican form of government. A great deal of property was destroyed and many lives were lost, but I was spared. People who had no insurance were mowed down on every hand, but aside from a broken leg I was entirely unharmed.
{Illustration: PROTECTED BY LIFE INSURANCE.}
I look upon life insurance as a great comfort, not only to the beneficiary, but to the insured, who very rarely lives to realize anything pecuniarily from his venture. Twice I have almost raised my wife to affluence and cast a gloom over the community in which I lived, but something happened to the physician for a few days so that he could not attend to me, and I recovered. For nearly two years I was under the doctor's care. He had his finger on my pulse or in my pocket all the time. He was a young western physician, who attended me on Tuesdays and Fridays. The rest of the week he devoted his medical skill to horses that were mentally broken down. He said he attended me largely for my society. I felt flattered to know that he enjoyed my society after he had been thrown among horses all the week that had much greater advantages than I.
My wife at first objected seriously to an insurance on my life, and said she would never, never touch a dollar of the money if I were to die, but after I had been sick nearly two years, and my disposition had suffered a good deal, she said that I need not delay the obsequies on that account. But the life insurance slipped through my fingers somehow, and I recovered.
In these days of dynamite and roller rinks, and the gory meat-ax of a new administration, we ought to make some provision for the future.
The Opium Habit.
I have always had a horror of opiates of all kinds. They are so seductive and so still in their operations. They steal through the blood like a wolf on the trail, and they seize upon the heart at last with their white fangs till it is still forever.
Up the Laramie there is a cluster of ranches at the base of the Medicine Bow, near the north end of Sheep Mountain, and in sight of the glittering, eternal frost of the snowy range. These ranches are the homes of the young men from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and now there are several “younger sons” of Old England, with herds of horses, steers and sheep, worth millions of dollars. These young men are not of the kind of whom the metropolitan ass writes as saying “youbetcherlife,” and calling everybody “pardner.” They are many of them college graduates, who can brand a wild Maverick or furnish the easy gestures for a Strauss waltz.
They wear human clothes, talk in the United States language, and have a bank account. This spring they may be wearing chaparajos and swinging a quirt through the thin air, and in July they may be at Long Branch, or coloring a meerschaum pipe among the Alps.
Well, a young
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