J. Bach McMaster, 1890.) Whoever attempts, even briefly, to tell the story of Franklin's life, does so under great disadvantages, for a comparison with The Autobiography is sure to result. The biographer can do no better than quote frequently from this work.
The Early Life of Franklin. — "My father married young, and carried his wife, with three children, to New England about 1685... His family increased to seventeen, of whom I remember to have seen thirteen sitting together at his table, who all grew up to years of maturity and were married. I was the youngest son and the youngest of all the children except two daughters. I was born in Boston in New England. My mother, the second wife of my father, was Abiah Folger, daughter of Peter Folger, one of the first settlers of New England, of whom honorable mention is made by Cotton Mather in his ecclesiastical history of that country, entitled Magnalia Christi Americana.... My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was put to the grammar school at eight years of age, my father intending to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the church. My early readiness in learning to read, which must have been very early, as I do not remember when I could not read, and the opinion of all his friends that I should certainly make a good scholar, encouraged him in this purpose of his. My uncle Benjamin, too, approved of it, and proposed to give me his short-hand volumes of sermons, to set up with, if I would learn his short-hand. I continued however at the grammar school rather less than a year, though in that time I had risen gradually from the middle class of that year to be at the head of the same class, and was removed into the next class, whence I was to be placed in the third at the end of the year.
"But my father, burdened with a numerous family, was unable, without inconvenience, to support the expense of a college education. Considering, moreover, as he said to one of his friends in my presence, the little encouragement that line afforded to those educated for it, he gave up his first intentions, took me from the grammar school and sent me to a school for writing and arithmetic
