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"Ben Franklin"
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography: Page 64
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other people's affairs brought before us in a shape that is interesting; this
is sure to happen from your pen; our affairs and management will have an air
of simplicity or importance that will not fail to strike; and I am convinced
you have conducted them with as much originality as if you had been conducting
discussions in politics or philosophy; and what more worthy of experiments and
system (its importance and its errors considered) than human life?
"Some men have been virtuous blindly, others have speculated fantastically,
and others have been shrewd to bad purposes; but you, sir, I am sure, will
give under your hand, nothing but what is at the same moment, wise, practical
and good, your account of yourself (for I suppose the parallel I am drawing
for Dr. Franklin, will hold not only in point of character, but of private
history) will show that you are ashamed of no origin; a thing the more
important, as you prove how little necessary all origin is to happiness,
virtue, or greatness. As no end likewise happens without a means, so we shall
find, sir, that even you yourself framed a plan by which you became
considerable; but at the same time we may see that though the event is
flattering,the means are as simple as wisdom could make them;that is,
depending upon nature, virtue, thought and habit.Another thing demonstrated
will be the propriety of everyman's waiting for his time for appearing upon
the stage of the world. Our sensations being very much fixed to the moment, we
are apt to forget that more moments are to follow the first, and consequently
that man should arrange his conduct so as to suit the whole of a life. Your
attribution appears to have been applied to your life, and the passing moments
of it have been enlivened with content and enjoyment instead of being
tormented with foolish impatience or regrets. Such a conduct is easy for those
who make virtue and themselves in countenance by examples of other truly great
men, of whom patience is so often the characteristic. Your Quaker
correspondent, sir (for here again I will suppose the subject of my letter
resembling Dr. Franklin), praised your frugality, diligence and temperance,
which he considered as a pattern for all youth; but it is singular that he
should have forgotten your modesty and your disinterestedness, without which
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