Benjamin Franklin

When news of Benjamin Franklin’s death reached Paris, revolutionaries crowned his bust with oak leaves and carved one word beneath it: vir—“a man.” What did the Boston boy grow into that could earn such a tribute?

In Paul Elmer More’s late-19th-century biography, Franklin’s story begins in colonial Boston, where a large family makes its living modestly and young Benjamin’s schooling is brief. Yet he is hungry for books and alert to every experiment: he tests wooden paddles in the water, even tries to use a kite to pull himself across it, and spends all his pocket money on a whistle whose price teaches him a lesson for life. More traces the practical wit and restless curiosity behind the statesman, author, and scientist. What did Franklin learn from the small bargains and missteps of boyhood?

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