Benjamin Franklin: An American Life Read Online Free Page B

brother Benjamin, who emigrated from England in 1715 when he was 65 and his namesake was 9. Like Josiah, the elder Benjamin found the New World inhospitable to his craft of silk dyeing, but unlike Josiah, he did not have the drive to learn a new trade. So he sat around the Franklin house writing bad poetry (including a 124-quatrain autobiography) and a useful family history, attending and transcribing sermons, amusing his nephew, and gradually getting on his brother’s nerves. 22
    Uncle Benjamin stayed with the Franklins for four years, easily outlasting his welcome with his brother, if not with his nephew. Finally, he moved in with his own son Samuel, a cutler who had also immigrated to Boston. Years later, the younger Benjamin would write to his sister Jane and humorously recount the “disputes and misunderstandings” that grew between their father and uncle. The lesson his father drew was that visits from distant relatives “could not well be short enough for them to part good friends.” In Poor Richard’s almanac, Franklin would later put it more pithily: “Fish and guests stink after three days.” 23
Education
    The plan for young Benjamin was to have him study for the ministry, Josiah’s tenth son anointed as his tithe to the Lord. Uncle Benjamin was strongly supportive; among the many benefits of this plan was that it gave him something to do with his stash of secondhand sermons. For decades, he had scouted out the best preachers and transcribed their words in a neat shorthand of his own device. His nephew later noted with wry amusement that he “proposed to give me all his shorthand volumes, I suppose as a stock to set up with.”
    To prepare him for Harvard, Josiah sent his son, at age 8, to Boston Latin School, where Cotton Mather had studied and his son Samuel was then enrolled. Even though he was among the least privileged students, Franklin excelled in his first year, rising from the middle of the class to the very top, and then was jumped a grade ahead. Despite this success, Josiah abruptly changed his mind about sending him to Harvard. “My father,” Franklin wrote, “burdened with a numerous family, was unable without inconvenience to support the expense of a college education.”
    This economic explanation is unsatisfying. The family was well-off enough, and there were fewer Franklin children being supported at home (only Benjamin and his two younger sisters) than had been the case for many years. There was no tuition at the Latin School, and as the top of his class he would easily have won a scholarship to Harvard. Of the forty-three students who entered the college when Franklin would have, only seven were from wealthy families; ten were sons of tradesmen, and four were orphans. The university at that time spent approximately 11 percent of its budget for financial aid, more than it does today. 24
    Most likely there was another factor. Josiah came to believe, no doubt correctly, that his youngest son was not suited for the clergy. Benjamin was skeptical, puckish, curious, irreverent, the type of person who would get a lifelong chuckle out of his uncle’s notion that it would be useful for a new preacher to start his career with a cache of used sermons. Anecdotes about his youthful intellect and impish nature abound, but there are none that show him as pious or faithful.
    Just the opposite. A tale related by his grandson, but not included in the autobiography, shows Franklin to be cheeky not only about religion but also about the wordiness in worship that was a hallmark of Puritan faith. “Dr. Franklin, when a child, found the long graces used by his father before and after meals very tedious,” his grandson reported. “One day after the winter’s provisions had been salted—‘I think, Father,’ said Benjamin, ‘if you were to say Grace over the whole cask—once for all—it would be a vast saving of time.’ ” 25
    So Benjamin was enrolled for a year at a writing and arithmetic academy