Franklin Read Free Page A

hated to cut into his friend Titan’s profits. Now it was all right for him to publish, because Titan was about to die.
    Richard explained that according to the stars, Titan would die on October 17, 1733, while Titan’s calculations led him to believe he would survive until the twenty-sixth of the same month. Titan Leeds was infuriated and replied, insisting he was very much alive, calling Poor Richard a fraud. The next year, Poor Richard replied that Titan Leeds was certainly dead, because in the almanac that appeared under his name in 1734, “I am treated in a very gross and unhandsome manner. I am called a false predictor, an ignorant, a conceited scribbler, a fool and a lyar.” His friend Titan never would have treated him this way. Titan continued to spew insults, but the popularity of his almanac faded, while Poor Richard’s soared.
    Franklin became popular because of the proverbs that he sprinkled throughout Poor Richard’s Almanack. He took them from several books, including the Bible, but he often rewrote them to sharpen their wit.
    He’s a fool that makes his doctor his heir.
Fish and visitors smell in three days.
The worst wheel of a cart makes the most noise.
Experience keeps a dear school, yet fools will learn at no other.
It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.
    Franklin made fun of philomaths who pretended they really could predict the future. “I find that this will be a plentiful year of all manner of good things for those who have enough,” he wrote, “but the orange trees in Greenland will go near to fare the worse for the cold . . .”
    Franklin was working hard to improve Philadelphia. With the help of the Junto and the Gazette, he founded the city’s first volunteer fire department and reorganized the city’s policemen, who patrolled the streets at night. To help everyone educate themselves, he founded a subscription library, the first in America. He was the guiding spirit behind the Pennsylvania Hospital and the Philadelphia Academy, which became the University of Pennsylvania. He helped organize the colony’s first militia, the Philadelphia Associaters, to defend against a French and Spanish invasion. At the same time, he served as clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly.
    In all his endeavors, Franklin practiced an unusual strategy. When he began soliciting subscriptions for the library, he realized others thought he was doing the job solely for credit. Franklin quickly put himself “as much as I could out of sight” and described the project as “a scheme of a number of friends” who asked him to gather support of “lovers of reading.” The library soon was thriving, and Franklin stayed in the background, never taking credit for anything he achieved.
    One situation marred Franklin’s happiness. Six years after his marriage, Deborah gave birth to a son, whom Franklin named Francis Folger. At the age of four, the boy died of smallpox. Franklin blamed himself. While an apprentice to his brother, he had joined him in criticizing Cotton Mather’s appeal for mass smallpox inoculation. He followed through on this stance by refusing to have Francis inoculated. After Francis’ death, to spare other families his immense grief, he penned an editorial supporting smallpox inoculation. It was published in both his Almanack and the Gazette . For the rest of his life, any mention of Francis brought Franklin to tears.
    After this loss, Deborah became more jealous of William. She resented the attention Franklin showered on his only son. Franklin bought William expensive presents, such as a pony, which the boy let wander away. Seven years of common-law marriage had legitimized William, and Franklin meant to give him every advantage.
    Benjamin hired a tutor for his son at age eight. Theophilus Grew was a mathematician and astronomer, who collaborated with Franklin on Poor Richard’s Almanack. William studied for a year at