Franklin had ten pounds in his pocket, and knew a trade. Ralph had no money, and knew no trade. They were both strangers in a strange city. Now, in such circumstances, what would a mean, calculating young man have done? Reader, you know very well, without my telling you. What Franklin did was this: he shared his purse with his friend till his ten pounds were all gone; and having at once got to work at his trade, he kept on dividing his wages with Ralph until he had advanced him thirty-six pounds--half a year's income--not a penny of which was ever repaid. And this he did--the cold-blooded wretch!--because he could not help loving his brilliant, unprincipled comrade, though disapproving his conduct and sadly needing his money.
Having returned to Philadelphia, he set up in business as a printer and editor, and, after a very severe effort, he got his business well established, and at last had the most profitable establishment of the kind in all America. During the most active part of his business life he always found some time for the promotion of public objects. He founded a most useful and public-spirited club; a public library, which still exists, and assisted in every worthy scheme. He was most generous to his poor relations, hospitable to his fellow-citizens, and particularly interested in his journeymen, many of whom he set up in business.
The most decisive proof, however, which he ever gave that he did not overvalue money, was the retirement from a most profitable business for the purpose of having leisure to pursue his philosophical studies. He had been in business twenty years, and he was still in the prime of life--forty-six years of age. He was making money faster than any other printer on this continent. But being exceedingly desirous of spending the rest of his days in study and experiment, and having saved a moderate competency, he sold his establishment to his foreman on very easy terms, and withdrew. His estate, when he retired, was worth about a hundred thousand dollars. If he had been a lover of money, I am confident that he could and would have accumulated one of the largest fortunes in America. He had nothing to do but continue in business, and take care of his investments, to roll up a prodigious estate. But not having the slightest taste for needless accumulation, he joyfully laid aside the cares of business, and spent the whole remainder of his life in the services of his country; for he gave up his heart's desire of devoting his leisure to philosophy when his country needed him.
Being in London when Captain Cook returned from his first voyage to the Pacific, he entered warmly into a beautiful scheme for sending a ship for the purpose of stocking the islands there with pigs, vegetables, and other useful animals and products. A hard, selfish man would have laughed such a project to scorn.
In 1776, when he was appointed embassador of the revolted colonies to the French king, the ocean swarmed with British cruisers, General Washington had lost New York, and the prospects of the Revolution were gloomy in the extreme. Dr. Franklin was an old man of seventy, and might justly have asked to be excused from a service so perilous and fatiguing. But he did not. He went. And just before he sailed he got together all the money he could raise--about three thousand pounds--and invested it in the loan recently announced by Congress. This he did at a moment when few men had a hearty faith in the success of the Revolution. This he did when he was going to a foreign country that might not receive him, from which he might be expelled, and he have no country to return to. There never was a more gallant and generous act done by an old man.
In France he was as much the main stay of the cause of his country as General Washington was at home.
Returning home after the war, he was elected president of Pennsylvania for three successive years, at a salary of two thousand pounds a year. But by this time he had become convinced that offices of honor, such as the governorship of a State, ought not to have any salary attached to them. He thought they should be filled by persons of independent income, willing to serve their fellow-citizens from benevolence, or for the honor of it. So thinking, he at first determined not to receive any salary; but this being objected to, he devoted the whole of the salary for three years--six thousand pounds--to the furtherance of public objects. Part of it he gave to a college, and part was set aside for the improvement of the Schuylkill River.
Never was an eminent man more thoughtful of people who were the companions of his poverty. Dr. Franklin, from amidst the splendors of the French court, and when he was the most famous and admired person in Europe, forgot not his poor old sister, Jane, who was in fact dependent on his bounty. He gave her a house in Boston, and sent her every September the money to lay in her Winter's fuel and provisions. He wrote her the kindest, wittiest, pleasantest letters. "Believe me, dear brother," she writes, "your writing to me gives me so much pleasure that the great, the very great, presents you have sent me give me but a secondary joy."
How exceedingly absurd to call such a man "hard" and miserly, because he recommended people not to waste their money! Let me tell you, reader, that if a man means to be liberal and generous, he must be economical. No people are so mean as the extravagant, because, spending all they have upon themselves, they have nothing left for others. Benjamin Franklin was the most consistently generous man of whom I have any knowledge.