poor boy must meet, when he must make his fortune alone. We see him a lad studying even while he eats. We see him wandering about the strange streets of Philadelphia, seeking work. We see him a young printer, busy in his shop, setting the type-early in the morning before others were up-late at night, after others had gone to bed. We see him a successful man directing reforms in Philadelphia. It is a book that makes success seem easy. It makes the winning of character and the respect of others seem easy. It is one of the best and most helpful books in our language. But only by a chance was it saved to us. During the stormy days of the Revolution, the manuscript was actually thrown into the street in Philadelphia, where it was found and rescued by an old friend of Franklin. Franklin had a heavy task as a statesman, and he made it a success. He was Washington's faithful and powerful friend. He helped greatly to make our government what it is today. In Paris he was envoy and minister; he acted as consul-general, navy department, banker and merchant, all in one. Without him the Revolution could not have succeeded as it did. Washington did the fighting but Franklin obtained the means for fighting. And for his work, as well, the greatest courage and patriotic devotion were needed. Franklin was one of his own people, thoroughly an American. He was always simple and dignified. He never boasted about his country or himself, and he greatly disliked pride. Many times he told the story of a call he had made, as a boy, on Cotton Mather. As he left the house he hit his head against a beam. "Stoop," said Mather. "You are young and have the world before you. Stoop as you go through it, and you will miss many hard thumps." His warm and generous faith in men and women, like his good humor, he never lost. The first of democrats, before kings he was perfectly at his ease; only his odd dress, no word or act of his, made him seem out of place in the most brilliant court scene. He was like many another American, who, starting life poor and without friends, has reached success through the power and the resolution that were within him. But few have lived on like Franklin in the minds and hearts of a people. Throughout America today his keen-eyed, clever face under his great fur cap is widely known and widely loved. Even his name, often given to towns, streets, societies and to business, by its very sound seems to suggest to us the high character and the friendly spirit of the man. If Life's compared to a Feast, Near Fourscore Years I've been a Guest; And feel quite satisfyd. 'Tis time that I retire to Rest; Landlord, I thank ye!-Friends, Good Night. Written by Benjamin Franklin April 22, 1784. GEORGE WASHINGTON THE FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY "God left him childless that he might be the father of his country." LIFE IN "OLD VIRGINIA” In 1732, when Benjamin Franklin first began to teach the colonists the wisdom of "Poor Richard," George Washington was born in the English colony of Virginia. Franklin was twenty-six years the older, a man of the town and the North. Washington was of the country and the South. Great was the difference between North and South. Unlike busy New England, "Old Virginia" had no cities, no industries. The only towns-and they were very small-were Norfolk, on the sea, and Williamsburg, the capital. Except on court and church days, the sleepy county seats, needed for court house, prison and church, were usually as quiet as the silent woods about them. Virginia was a land of plantations. The countless rivers, streams and inlets that cross it in the east, and through which the slow ocean tides from Chesapeake Bay ebb and flow, made roads almost unnecessary, for nearly every plantation could be reached by boat. The plantation was a little world by itself. In the center of a group of buildings that seemed a village, was the great, square, white house of the planter, with its wide verandahs and large brick chimneys. About it were lofty pines and oaks shading a velvety |