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"Ben Franklin"
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography: Page 68
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majority of us so poor, that I was not able, with great industry, to find more
than fifty persons, mostly young tradesmen, willing to pay down for this purpose
forty shillings each, and ten shillings per annum. On this little fund we began.
The books were imported; the library wag opened one day in the week for lending
to the subscribers, on their promissory notes to pay double the value if not
duly returned. The institution soon manifested its utility, was imitated by
other towns, and in other provinces. The libraries were augmented by donations;
reading became fashionable; and our people, having no publick amusements to
divert their attention from study, became better acquainted with books, and in a
few years were observ'd by strangers to be better instructed and more
intelligent than people of the same rank generally are in other countries.
When we were about to sign the above-mentioned articles, which were to be
binding upon us, our heirs, etc., for fifty years, Mr. Brockden, the scrivener,
said to us, "You are young men, but it is scarcely probable that any of you will
live to see the expiration of the term fix'd in the instrument." A number of us,
however, are yet living; but the instrument was after a few years rendered null
by a charter that incorporated and gave perpetuity to the company.
The objections and reluctances I met with in soliciting the subscriptions, made
me soon feel the impropriety of presenting one's self as the proposer of any
useful project, that might be suppos'd to raise one's reputation in the smallest
degree above that of one's neighbors, when one has need of their assistance to
accomplish that project. I therefore put myself as much as I could out of sight,
and stated it as a scheme of a number of friends, who had requested me to go
about and propose it to such as they thought lovers of reading. In this way my
affair went on more smoothly, and I ever after practis'd it on such occasions;
and, from my frequent successes, can heartily recommend it. The present little
sacrifice of your vanity will afterwards be amply repaid. If it remains a while
uncertain to whom the merit belongs, some one more vain than yourself will be
encouraged to claim it, and then even envy will be disposed to do you justice by
plucking those assumed feathers, and restoring them to their right owner.
This library afforded me the means of improvement by constant study, for which I
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