with the paramount importance of things ingenious or useful, and to the end of his life he judged of the value of men's labors by their usefulness to mankind. When it was to be decided at what employment Franklin should be put, his father sought a practical solution of the problem by taking him to walk with him, "and see joiners, bricklayers, turners, braziers, etc., at their work, that he might observe my inclination, and endeavor to fix it on some trade or profession that would keep me on land. It has ever since been a pleasure to me to see good workmen handle their tools; and it has been often useful to me to have learnt so much by it as to be able to do some trifling jobs in the house, when a workman could not readily be got, and to construct little machines for my experiments, while the intention of making the experiment was fresh and warm in my mind."

From a child he was fond of reading, and he tells us that he spent the little money that came into his hands for books. It is natural for a man to insist that the education of the young should be like that which he received himself, and the books which Franklin read in his boyhood remained, in his opinion, the proper books for all children to read. "The Pilgrim's Progress," Burton's "Historical Collections," De Foe's "Essay on Projects," and Dr. Mather's "Essays to do Good" had an influence on some of the principal events of Franklin's life. It may be said that two of these books, "Pilgrim's Progress" and De Foe's "Essay on Projects" are among the most fertile books ever written. In evidence, it may be said, that except the Bible, "Pilgrim's Progress" is more freely read throughout the world than any other book, and De Foe's "Essay on Projects" contains intimations and projections of nearly all the most salutary reforms in morals, in law, and in practical ethics that have since blessed the world.

It was Franklin's bookish inclinations that made him a printer, and to the end of his life he illustrated, whenever he had occasion to speak or write on educational matters, how his training as a printer determined his ideas in education.

His mind was universal, and he was, therefore, interested in all human affairs. As a boy, he took a peculiar interest in the drama, and to the end of his life was fond of the theater. On this mimic stage he saw the larger action of life epitomized, and he was doubtless able to draw conclusions from the conduct of the players on the stage which were of value to him in his large diplomatic action. Throughout his works are constant references to the plays of the day, and he is fond of illustrating a letter to a friend by a passing remark upon some popular play. His boyhood was cast in the age of ballad mongery, and to the end of his days he enjoyed that kind of literature. The petty vender of street ballads is the potent illustration of the persistency of this kind of literature to our day.

A bookish boy would make friends of bookish lads, and one John Collins, with whom Franklin early became acquainted, enabled him to

enter upon a new epoch in life-the epoch of conversation. Between these boys there were long controversies on the passing questions of the day, and on the various theories in the projection of which youths are so fertile. Collins, we are told, denied the "propriety of educating the female sex in learning, and their abilities for study." Franklin took the opposite side, and it seems to have converted him in favor of woman's education. It was this controversy which, left unsettled in conversation, was carried on by correspondence, and Franklin thus began to be a writer. He tells us that

Three or four letters of a side had passed, when my father happened to find my papers and read them. Without entering into the discussion, he took occasion to talk to me about the manner of my writing; observed that though I had the advantage of my antagonist in correct spelling and pointing (which I owed to the printing house) I fell far short in elegance of expression, in method and perspicuity, of which he convinced me by several instances. I saw the justice of his remarks, and thence grew more attentive to the manner in writing and determined to endeavor at improvement.

This proof of the ability of Franklin to compare himself with others is significant, for it illustrates one of the chief powers of his mind. He was quick to notice points of superiority or of inferiority, and being ambitious to excel he proceeded in the most practical way to overcome the deficiencies. The method in which he overcame them became, in his opinion, the right procedure for all other persons in a similar condition, and it was later formulated by him as a method in education; it was to take the best writings of the day and to imitate them. Happily for him, Addison was giving the "Spectator" to the world, and an odd volume, a third, fell into Franklin's hands. He tells us that the reading of it produced a sensation new to him. He read it again and again and was delighted with it, and he afterwards laid down the proposition that all children could derive the same benefit from the "Spectator" which he had derived.

His method was simple, yet original; it was to read the "Spectator" and to rewrite it from memory; he compared his version with the original, and corrected and rewrote it until his own composition was as perfect as that of Addison himself. This taught him the limitations of his own vocabulary and led him, doubtless, afterwards to insert in his plan for the education of youth a provision for the study of the dictionary. In his "Sketch of an English School" he provides, for the first or lowest class to which children of his age when he began reading the "Spectator" would belong, that

A vocabulary of the most usual difficult words might be formed for their use, with explanations; and they might daily get a few of those words and explanations by heart, which would a little exercise their memories; or at least they might write a number of them in a small book for the purpose, which would help to fix the meaning of those words in their minds, and at the same time furnish every one with a little dictionary for his future use.

His own boyish experiences taught him the necessity for a vocabu

lary, and not for a vocabulary merely, but for a vocabulary always responsive to the thought that the word used might be the best word that could be used. This opinion, formulated by Franklin in his "Sketch of an English School for the Consideration of the Trustees of the Philadelphia Academy," to which I shall frequently refer, is plainly the result of Franklin's experience in self-education; and when he tells us in his "Autobiography" that he made verses because their composi tion laid him under the constant necessity of searching for variety of words and for words exactly suited to the thought, and that he turned tales into verse, and after he had forgotten the prose turned them back again, and in this manner, by comparing his work afterwards with the original, discovered his faults and amended them, we catch a glimpse of the value of comparison in education, and not merely of comparison, but of comparison made for practical purposes. So perfectly did this scheme work that he tells us in a delightful way how he sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that in certain parts of small import he had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language, and this encouraged him to think he might possibly, in time, come to be a "tolerable English writer," of which he was extremely ambitious; and to show how such a result was possible for any one who, like himself, was an indented apprentice, he adds that the time for making these exercises and for reading was at night after his work was done, or in the morning before it began, or even on Sundays when he was alone; and as he rather disliked to attend church, he eased his conscience by perfecting himself in English style. Certainly the judgment of pos terity has awarded him a first rank in English composition; in other words, Franklin takes pains to tell us how his self-education was a success, and how all other people, if they choose, may educate themselves and become "tolerable English writers."

He soon discovered his ignorance in figures, and at 17 was old enough to be ashamed of it. He overcame his deficiency in figures as he had overcome his deficiency in composition, by taking "Cocker's Arithmetic" and going through the whole by himself "with great ease." Not only arithmetic, but books of navigation, Seller's and Shermy's, were studied in the same manner, but, having no practical use for the higher mathematics, he never pursued them. About this time he read Locke "On the Human Understanding," and the "Art of Thinking," by Messrs. Du Port Royal.

Intent on improving his language, he found an English grammar, Greenwood's, at the end of which "there were two little sketches of the arts of rhetoric and logic, the latter finishing with a specimen of a dispute in the Socratic method," and he soon afterwards procured Xenophon's "Memorable Things of Socrates." He had made a discovery: If Addison had charmed him, Xenophon captivated him, and from Xenophon he learned the greatest lesson of his life. "From that time," says he, "I was charmed by it, adopted it, dropped my abrupt contra

diction and positive argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer and doubter."

Again and again in the "Autobiography" and from other sources we learn how Franklin through his long life avoided dogmatic disputation and won his cause quite as much by his practice in the art of doubting and questioning as by his powers for confutation. He was a born diplomat, and his sense of the principles of diplomacy was early manifest. So important did the Socratic method become in his ideas of education that, in drawing up his "Proposals relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania," out of which grew the University of Pennsylvania, he encouraged all those studies which involve conversation and writing. He would acquaint youth with the best models among the ancients, particularly pointing out their beauties. But his diplomatic experience made him familiar with the feebleness of mere talk, and he said:

Modern political oratory being chiefly performed by the pen and press, its advantages over the ancients in some respects are to be shown; as that its effects are more extensive and more lasting.

He anticipated the age of books, newspapers, magazines, and the numerous productions of pen and press, and was fully conscious of the enormous and superior power of the printed page over the spoken word; so, from his own experience, he advocated all those studies by which the human mind is most widely reached and most powerfully influenced.

His own writings are frequently in the Socratic method, and in his "Sketch of an English School" he advocated the reading of short pieces by the master, not exceeding the length of a "Spectator,” with the proper modulations of voice, due emphasis, and suitable action where action is required, and that the youth should imitate the manner of the original. The beauties of the piece were to be discussed by the instructor, and from a variety of readings, by which good styles of all kinds were made known, children should learn to imitate such excellence and be able readily to put their thoughts into the form best adapted to accomplish the end.

Having discovered the value of the Socratic method, he next discovered the value of expressing himself in terms of modest diffidence, and to the end of his life he was noted for the modesty with which he advanced his opinions. Perhaps no illustration of this quality is finer than his speech read to the convention of 1787 in its closing words. Franklin himself was too feeble to read his speech, and his colleague, Thomas Wilson, read it for him. Perhaps this speech gave us the Constitution of the United States.

I confess [said Franklin] that there are several parts in this Constitution that I do not at present approve, but I am not sure that I shall never approve them, for, having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information or fuller consideration to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is, therefore, that the older I grow the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment and to pay more respect

to the judgment of others. Most men, indeed, as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that whenever others differ from them it is so far error.

And then he characteristically points his speech by a telling illustra tion:

Steele, a protestant in education, tells Pope that the only difference between our churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrines is that the Church of Rome is infallible and the Church of England is never in the wrong. But though so many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibity as they do of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain French lady, who, in a dispute with her sister said: "I do not know how it happens, sister, but I meet with nobody but myself that is always in the right"-"il n'y a personne que moi qui a toujours raison."

It is not often that the lessons of childhood regulate our lives, but the Socratic method of Franklin's boyhood determined his whole attitude toward public questions, and, probably more than any other characteristic of the man, made him the most successful diplomat that our country has ever had. Frequently in addressing his younger friends he laid down the lesson of modest diffidence as highly conducive to practical success in life. His defense for this training was that if we advance our sentiments too dogmatically we may not only provoke contradiction, but prevent a candid attention, so that he bases his philosophy of diffi dence upon its utility.

The facility with which Franklin had undertaken his self-education in literature and in mathematics characterized all his efforts in practical affairs. Throughout his "Autobiography" he is fond of mentioning, whenever he can, the advantages of self-education. The principle which won success in rewriting a "Spectator" he applied in industry, and soon detected its virtues in practical affairs. Like all self-educated men, his experience crystallized in maxims, some of which he formulated himself, but nearly all of them were taken from the experience of mankind at large. Like Daniel Webster, Franklin made great use of the labor of others, and it is interesting to note his account of the principles and morals which influenced the events of his life.

My parents [he writes] had early given me religious impressions, and brought me through my childhood piously in the dissenting way. But I was scarce 15, when, after doubting by turns several points, as I found them disputed in the different books I read, I began to doubt of the Revelation itself. Some books against deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of the sermons which had been preached at Boyle's lectures. It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them, for the arguments of the deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough deist.

His habit of doubting where he could not overcome by an adequate reply bred in him not only a love of experiment to test the explanations of phenomena, but led him when he was unable to obtain a satisfactory explanation to remain in doubt. He was one of the greatest of experimentalists. As might be expected of one whose whole philosophy was utilitarian, his life is replete with apt illustrations of the