THE LA TE BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 277 



" Early to bed and early to rise 

 Makes a man healthy and wealthy and wise." 



As if it were any object to a boy to be healthy and wealthy and wise on such 

 terms. The sorrow that that maxim has cost me through my parents' experi- 

 menting on me with it, tongue cannot tell. The legitimate result is my present state 

 of general debility, indigence, and mental aberration. My parents used to have 

 me up before nine o'clock in the morning, sometimes, when I was a boy. If 

 they had let me take my natural rest, where would I have been now ? Keeping 

 store, no doubt, and respected by all. 



And what an adroit old adventurer the subject of this memoir was! In 

 order to get a chance to fly his kite on Sunday he used to hang a key on the 

 string and let on to be fishing for lightning. And a guileless public would go 

 home chirping about the "wisdom " and the "genius" of the hoary Sabbath- 

 breaker. If anybody caught him playing " mumble-peg" by himself, after the 

 age of sixty, he would immediately appear to be ciphering out how the grass 

 grew — as if it was any of his business. My grandfather knew him well, and he 

 says Franklin was always fixed — always ready. If a body, during his old age, 

 happened on him unexpectedly when he was catching flies, or making mud 

 pies, or sliding on a cellar-door, he would immediately look wise, and rip out a 

 maxim, and walk off with his nose in the air and his cap turned wrong side 

 before, trying to appear absent-minded and eccentric. He was a hard lot. 



He invented a stove that would smoke your head off in four hours by the 

 clock. One can see the almost devilish satisfaction he took in it by his giving 

 it his name. 



He was always proud of telling how he entered Philadelphia for the first time, 

 with nothing in the world but two shillings in his pocket and four rolls of 

 bread under his arm. But really, when you come to examine it critically, it 

 was nothing. Anybody could have done it. 



To the subject of this memoir belongs the honor of recommending the army 

 to go back to bows and arrows in place of bayonets and muskets. He observed, 

 with his customary force, that the bayonet was very well under some circum- 

 stances, but that he doubted whether it could be used with accuracy at a long 

 range. 



