Brave Men and Women | Page 9

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.

* * * * *

III.
SIR WALTER SCOTT AND HIS MOTHER.
THE MOTHER'S EDUCATION--THE SON'S
TRAINING--DOMESTIC LOVE AND SOCIAL DUTIES.
It was in the Spring of 1758 that the daughter of a distinguished
professor of medicine in the University of Edinburgh changed her
maiden name of Rutherford for her married name of Scott, having the
happiness to unite her lot with one who was not only a scrupulously
honorable man, but who, from his youth up, had led a singularly
blameless life. Well does Coventry Patmore