74 Choate: Franklin 



the runaway apprentice from Boston gave promise of 

 being by and by the most eminent citizen of America. 



You can actually trace the successive steps here in 

 Philadelphia by which this green and awkward youth, 

 after sowing his wild oats in London, advanced from 

 obscurity to recognition, from recognition to influence, 

 from influence to leadership, in this town which he had 

 made his home. Diligence in his business was at the 

 bottom of it all. " Seest thou a man diligent in his 

 business, he shall stand before Kings," and he was proud 

 to say in his old age that he had stood before five kings 

 and sat with one of them; and then, constant study, read- 

 ing and writing and thinking on every branch of knowl- 

 edge in every hour that he could snatch from labor made 

 him what he came to be. 



The founding of the Junto for debate and self-im- 

 provement, composed of a dozen quick-witted, young 

 working men of his own age, and its ramification into as- 

 sociated clubs; the purchase and editing of the Pennsyl- 

 vania Gazette, and the establishment of Poor Richard's 

 Almanac, into both of which he threw the whole weight 

 of his rich and charming personality, making the one the 

 best newspaper in the colonies and the other a familiar 

 and welcome guest in nearly every household in the 

 land, and both his personal organs, when no one else 

 had an organ, through the whole period of his growth 

 to greatness; his original conception of the library which 



