The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - Benjamin Franklin (pocket ebook reader .txt) 📗

Franklin was born on Sunday, January 6, old style, 1706, in a house on Milk Street, opposite the Old South Meeting House, where he was baptized on the day of his birth, during a snowstorm. The house where he was born was burned in 1810. —⁠Griffin ↩

Cotton Mather (1663⁠–⁠1728), clergyman, author, and scholar. Pastor of the North Church, Boston. He took an active part in the persecution of witchcraft. ↩

Nantucket. ↩

Tenth. ↩

System of shorthand. ↩

This marble having decayed, the citizens of Boston in 1827 erected in its place a granite obelisk, twenty-one feet high, bearing the original inscription quoted in the text and another explaining the erection of the monument. ↩

Small books, sold by chapmen or peddlers. ↩

Grub-street: famous in English literature as the home of poor writers. ↩

A daily London journal, comprising satirical essays on social subjects, published by Addison and Steele in 1711⁠–⁠1712. The Spectator and its predecessor, the Tatler (1709), marked the beginning of periodical literature. ↩

John Locke (1632⁠–⁠1704), a celebrated English philosopher, founder of the so-called “common sense” school of philosophers. He drew up a constitution for the colonists of Carolina. ↩

A noted society of scholarly and devout men occupying the abbey of Port Royal near Paris, who published learned works, among them the one here referred to, better known as the Port Royal Logic. ↩

Socrates confuted his opponents in argument by asking questions so skillfully devised that the answers would confirm the questioner’s position or show the error of the opponent. ↩

Alexander Pope (1688⁠–⁠1744), the greatest English poet of the first half of the eighteenth century. ↩

Franklin’s memory does not serve him correctly here. The Courant was really the fifth newspaper established in America, although generally called the fourth, because the first, Public Occurrences, published in Boston in 1690, was suppressed after the first issue. Following is the order in which the other four papers were published: Boston News-Letter, 1704; Boston Gazette, December 21, 1719; The American Weekly Mercury, Philadelphia, December 22, 1719; The New England Courant, 1721. ↩

Disclosed. ↩

Kill van Kull, the channel separating Staten Island from New Jersey on the north. ↩

Samuel Richardson, the father of the English novel, wrote Pamela, Clarissa Harlowe, and the History of Sir Charles Grandison, novels published in the form of letters. ↩

Manuscript. ↩

The frames for holding type are in two sections, the upper for capitals and the lower for small letters. ↩

Protestants of the South of France, who became fanatical under the persecutions of Louis XIV, and thought they had the gift of prophecy. They had as mottoes “No Taxes” and “Liberty of Conscience.” ↩

Temple Franklin considered this specific figure vulgar and changed it to “stared with astonishment.” ↩

Pennsylvania and Delaware. ↩

A peepshow in a box. ↩

There were no mints in the colonies, so the metal money was of foreign coinage and not nearly so common as paper money, which was printed in large quantities in America, even in small denominations. ↩

Spanish dollar about equivalent to our dollar. ↩

“In one of the later editions of the Dunciad occur the following lines:

“ ‘Silence, ye wolves! while Ralph to Cynthia howls,
And makes night hideous⁠—answer him, ye owls.’

“To this the poet adds the following note:

“ ‘James Ralph, a name inserted after the first editions, not known till he writ a swearing-piece called Sawney, very abusive of Dr. Swift, Mr. Gay, and myself.’ ” ↩

One of the oldest parts of London, north of St. Paul’s Cathedral, called “Little Britain” because the Dukes of Brittany used to live there. See the essay entitled “Little Britain” in Washington Irving’s Sketch Book. ↩

A gold coin worth about four dollars in our money. ↩

A popular comedian, manager of Drury Lane Theater. ↩

Street north of St. Paul’s, occupied by publishing houses. ↩

Law schools and lawyers’ residences situated southwest of St. Paul’s, between Fleet Street and the Thames. ↩

Edward Young (1681⁠–⁠1765), an English poet. See his satires, Vol. III, Epist. ii, page 70. ↩

The printing press at which Franklin worked is preserved in the Patent Office at Washington. ↩

Franklin now left the work of operating the printing presses, which was largely a matter of manual labor, and began setting type, which required more skill and intelligence. ↩

A printing house is called a chapel because Caxton, the first English printer, did his printing in a chapel connected with Westminster Abbey. ↩

A holiday taken to prolong the dissipation of Saturday’s wages. ↩

The story is that she met Christ on His way to crucifixion and offered Him her handkerchief to wipe the blood from His face, after which the handkerchief always bore the image of Christ’s bleeding face. ↩

James Salter, a former servant of Hans Sloane, lived in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. “His house, a barbershop, was known as ‘Don Saltero’s Coffeehouse.’ The curiosities were in glass cases and constituted an amazing and motley collection⁠—a petrified crab from China, a ‘lignified hog,’ Job’s tears, Madagascar lances, William the Conqueror’s flaming sword, and Henry the Eighth’s coat of mail.” —⁠Smyth ↩

About three miles. ↩

About $167. ↩