AS Citizen and Philanthropist 35 



his character on his fellow-citizens, that this friendless, 

 penniless boy had been chosen Clerk of the Pennsylvania 

 Assembly, made a Justice of the Peace, and appointed 

 Postmaster. 



A career so remarkable, rising so rapidly from 

 absolute pennilessness to competence, from friendless- 

 ness to political prominence, may well give us pause. 

 Those early years must assuredly bear in them the 

 promise, whereof the following fifty bore the fruit. 

 What manner of man, then, must Franklin have been 

 when he was young? His portraits have made the 

 venerable appearance of his old age so familiar that 

 we never think of him as a jocund youth. No contem- 

 porary testimony will help us. We have only his own 

 "Autobiography " wherein with invincible honesty he 

 presents the worse side of his own character. We must 

 read between the lines of this "Autobiography," if we 

 are to answer this question, and thence draw our conclu- 

 sions. If we search we shall there find the following pic- 

 ture: It is evening, in New Jersey, on the road to 

 Philadelphia, and a youth of seventeen applies for 

 lodging at a roadside inn; he is footsore after a solitary 

 tramp of thirty miles, his clothes are shabby, dirty, and 

 show the effects of a thorough drenching in the rain of 

 the day before, with the pockets stuffed out with shirt 

 and stockings. He looks suspiciously like a fugitive 



