FRANKLIN 

 AS CITIZEN AND PHILANTHROPIST 



By Horace Howard Furness 



[Address delivered in The Academy of Music, Friday, April 20.] 



IN compliance with the request of my fellow associ- 

 ates of The American Philosophical Society, I am 

 to speak to you on the " Character of Franklin as a 

 Citizen and a Philanthropist." And if I dwell chiefly 

 on his Citizenship, it is because it is the larger term, 

 and includes Philanthropy. 



The words that I utter cannot be many, — who can com- 

 press, within the limits of patience, an account of the 

 trials, and the triumphs of eighty years? — and they 

 must be trite and mere iterations, — for has not Franklin's 

 every deed and word been set before you, within the last 

 few months, in mouths of far wiser censure than mine? 



Let us, then, here and now, approach this great mem- 

 ory with the reverence of children and stammer our 

 gratitude by rehearsing some elements of the inextin- 

 guishable indebtedness due from every one of us to that 

 great benefactor, to whom, at this very hour, we owe 

 comforts, without which life, civic or social, would be 

 barely tolerable. 



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