



Produced by David Edwards, Josephine Paolucc and the Online
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BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

SELF-REVEALED

A BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL STUDY BASED MAINLY ON HIS OWN WRITINGS

BY

WILLIAM CABELL BRUCE

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOLUME II

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
_The Knickerbocker Press_
1917


COPYRIGHT, 1917
BY
W. CABELL BRUCE

_The Knickerbocker Press, New York_




CONTENTS


CHAPTER                                      PAGE

I.--FRANKLIN'S PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS         1

II.--FRANKLIN AS A MAN OF BUSINESS             26

III.--FRANKLIN AS A STATESMAN                  95

IV.--FRANKLIN AS A MAN OF SCIENCE             350

V.--FRANKLIN AS A WRITER                      423

INDEX                                         531




Benjamin Franklin

Self-Revealed




CHAPTER I

Franklin's Personal Characteristics


The precise explanation of the great concourse of friends that Franklin
drew about him, at the different stages of his long journey through the
world, is to be found partly in his robust, honorable character and mental
gifts. The sterner virtues, which are necessarily the foundations of such
esteem as he enjoyed, he possessed in an eminent degree. An uncommonly
virile and resolute spirit animated the body, which was equal in youth to
the task of swimming partly on and partly under water from near Chelsea to
Blackfriars, and of exhibiting on the way all of Thevenot's motions and
positions as