True to His Home: A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin

THAT was a charmed life that little Ben Franklin led in the early days of his apprenticeship. He always thought of provincial Boston as his "beloved city." When he grew old, the...

IT was the day of the award of the Franklin medals in the old Boston Latin School, a day in June, and such a one as James Russell Lowell so picturesquely describes. We say "old"...

SOME years ago I stood on the battlements of Metz, once a French but now a German town. Below the town, with its grand esplanade, on which is a heroic statue of Marshal Ney, rol...

Did little Ben's trumpet and gun indicate that he would become a statesman whose cause would employ armies? We do not know. The free will of a boy on the playground is likely to...

WHAT kind of a man was Governor Sir William Keith? There are not many such, but one such may be found in almost every large community. He desired popularity, and he loved to ple...

FRANKLIN'S paper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, which appeared in the year 1729, at first published by Franklin and Meredith, and always very neatly printed, had grown, and its inco...

FRANKLIN'S first day in Philadelphia is well known to the world. He has related it in Addisonian English, and it has been read almost as widely as the adventures of Robinson Cru...

THE fame of Benjamin Franklin now filled America. On the continent of Europe he was held to be the first citizen of America. In France he was ranked among the sages and philosop...

LITTLE Benjamin once had the boy fever to go to sea. This fever was a kind of nervous epidemic among the boys of the time, a disease of the imagination as it were. Many boys had...

THERE is a very delightful fiction, which may have blossomed from fact, which used to be found in schoolbooks, under the title of "The Story of Franklin's Return to his Mother a...

BESIDES his instruction from encouraging Mr. Brownell and his Uncle Benjamin, little Benjamin Franklin had spent one year at school and several years of self-instruction under h...

IT was the Sunday morning of the 6th of January, 1706 (January 17th, old style), when a baby first saw the light in a poor tallow chandler's house on Milk Street, nearly opposit...

Benjamin Franklin had no Froebel education. The great apostle of the education of the spiritual faculties had not yet appeared, and even Pestalozzi, the founder of common school...

"William," he said to his son, "I am expecting a shower to-day. I have long been looking for one. I want you to remain with me and witness an experiment that I am about to make."

IT was midsummer. Benjamin Franklin, of fourscore years, President of Pennsylvania, had finished a long, three-story ell to his house on Market Street, and in this ell he had ca...

OUR gentlemanly friend Mr. Calamity was now very, very old, long past the milestone of eighty. As Philadelphia grew, the streets lengthening, the fine houses rising higher and h...

"I have come to Boston once more," said Benjamin Franklin. "I would go to my parents' graves and the grave of Uncle Ben. But they are in the enemy's camp now. Samuel, I found yo...

MRS. FRANKLIN has said that she could hardly remember the time in her son's childhood when he could not read. He emerged almost from babyhood a reader, and soon began to "devour...

It was early spring; the winter fogs of London had disappeared, the squares were turning green, the hedgerows blooming, the birds were singing on the thorns. Such a sunny, blue...

LITTLE Ben now began to lead the sports of the boys. As there came to Froebel an inspiration to found a system of education in which the playground should be made a means of for...

IT has been said that Franklin forgot to be old. Verging upon eighty, he had asked to be recalled from France, and he dreamed of quiet old age among his grandchildren on the ban...

FRANKLIN is now a man of character, benevolence, wisdom, and humor. He is a printer, a publisher, a man whose thoughts are influencing public opinion. He is a very prosperous ma...

BLESSED is he who lends good books to young people. There was such a man in Boston town named Adams, one hundred and ninety years ago. His influence still lives, for he lent suc...

"Yes; and your Aunt Hannah and Aunt Prudence have come with them, with bandboxes, caps, snuffboxes, and all. They came on the sloop. It is a time for little boys to be quiet now...

WHEN Franklin appeared to sign the Treaty of Peace between England and the United States, he surprised the ministers, envoys, and his own friends by wearing an old velvet coat....

THE surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown brought the war to an end. The courier from the army came flying into Philadelphia at night. The watchman called out, "Past twelve o...

LITTLE Ben was fond of making toy boats and ships and sailing them. He sometimes took them to the pond on the Common, and sometimes to wharves at low tide.

AN old man sat by an open fire in a strange-looking room with a little boy on his knee. Beside him was a middle-aged man, the father of the boy.

THESE were fine old times, but they were English times; English ideas ruled Boston town. There was little liberty of opinion or of the press in those days. The Franklins belonge...

THERE came from Europe to America at this time some electrical tubes, which being rubbed produced surprising results. To the curious they were toys, but to Franklin they were pr...

THERE was a fine, busy old gentleman that young Franklin met about the time that he opened his printing office, whose course it will be interesting to follow. Almost every young...

IN his usual serene manner--for he very rarely became excited, notwithstanding that his conduct and his absentmindedness had surprised old Humphrey--Mr. Franklin made his way ag...

AT the age of fifteen Franklin had avowed himself a deist, or theist, which must have grieved his parents, who were people of positive Christian faith. He loved to argue, and wh...

PETER FOLGER, Quaker, the grandfather of Benjamin Franklin, was one of those noblemen of Nature whose heart beat for humanity. He had been associated in the work of Thomas Mayhe...

WHEN Dr. Franklin was abroad the first time after the misadventure with Governor Keith, and was an agent of the colonies, his fame as a scientist gave him a place in the highest...

BEN loved little animals. He not only liked to have them about him, but it gave him great joy to protect them. One of his pets was a guinea pig.

SILENCE Dogood is an old man now--a very old man. He looks back on the spring and summer and autumn of life--it is now the time of the snow. But there are sunny days in winter,...

SOME time after Uncle Benjamin, who became familiarly known as Uncle Ben, had revealed to little Ben his heart's secret, and how that he had for his sake sold his library of pam...

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN loved to meet Samuel Franklin, Uncle Benjamin's son, who also had caught the gentle philosopher's spirit, and was making good his father's intention. Samuel wa...

AS barren as was the early Puritan town in things that please the fancy of the child, Josiah Franklin's home was a cheerful one. It kept holidays, when the violin was played, an...

Books have stamped their character on young men at the susceptible age and the turning points of life. But their influence for good or evil comes to receptive characters. "He is...

"That handwriting," he said, "is fit to put before a king. Maybe it will be some day, who knows? But, Ben," he added, "I am sorry to say it, although you write your name so well...

Uncle Benjamin had entertained such large hopes of the future of little Ben since the boy first sent to him a piece of poetry to England, that he wrote of him: