Franklin's Autobiography (Eclectic English Classics)

Keimer's printing house, I found, consisted of an old shattered press and one small, worn-out font of English,[46] which he was then using himself, composing an elegy on Aquila...

My brother had, in 1720 or 1721, begun to print a newspaper. It was the second that appeared in America, and was called the "New England Courant."[33] The only one before it was...

In a garret of her house there lived a maiden lady of seventy, in the most retired manner, of whom my landlady gave me this account: she was a Roman Catholic, had been sent abro...

Josiah, my father, married young, and carried his wife, with three children, into New England, about 1682. The conventicles having been forbidden by law, and frequently disturbe...

When Franklin was born, in 1706, Queen Anne was on the English throne, and Swift and Defoe were pamphleteering. The one had not yet written "Gulliver's Travels," nor the other "...

The above fact I give for the sake of the following observation. It has been remarked, as an imperfection in the art of ship building, that it can never be known, till she is tr...

I grew convinced that truth, sincerity, and integrity in dealings between man and man were of the utmost importance to the felicity of life; and I formed written resolutions, wh...

These embarrassments that the Quakers suffered from having established and published it as one of their principles that no kind of war was lawful, and which, being once publishe...

Obliged as we were to Mr. Collinson for his present of the tube, etc., I thought it right he should be informed of our success in using it, and wrote him several letters contain...

Governor Morris, who had continually worried the Assembly with message after message, before the defeat of Braddock, to beat them into the making of acts to raise money for the...

On this it was proposed that we should each of us, at our next meeting, produce a piece of our own composing, in order to improve by our mutual observations, criticisms, and cor...

But this affair having turned my thoughts to marriage, I looked round me and made overtures of acquaintance in other places; but soon found that, the business of a printer being...

I considered my newspaper, also, as another means of communicating instruction, and in that view frequently reprinted in it extracts from the "Spectator," and other moral writer...

"Methinks I hear some of you say, Must a man afford himself no leisure? I will tell thee, my friend, what Poor Richard says: Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisur...

After some time I drew a bill for paving the city, and brought it into the Assembly. It was just before I went to England in 1757, and did not pass till I was gone, and then wit...

And, it being found inconvenient to assemble in the open air, subject to its inclemencies, the building of a house to meet in was no sooner proposed, and persons appointed to re...

I then suggested a method of doing the business without the governor, by orders on the trustees of the Loan Office,[162] which, by law, the Assembly had the right of drawing. Th...

I made a little book,[112] in which I allotted a page for each of the virtues. I ruled each page with red ink, so as to have seven columns, one for each day of the week, marking...