MARK TWAIN ON BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

Evening Post, Volume XL, Issue 136, 6 December 1890, Page 1 (Supplement)

MARK TWAIN ON BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

Mark Twain's wit may be found in his mock biography of Benjamin Franklin. This is how the irreverent humorist deals with the great philosopher, taking as his motto a parody of one of Franklin's celebrated utterances — " Never put off till to-morrow what you can do the day after tomorrow just as well." This party, named Benjamin Franklin, was one of those persons whom they call philosophers. He was of a vicious disposition, and early prostituted his talents to the invention of maxims and aphorisms, calculated to inflict suffering upon the rising generation of all subsequent ages. His simplest acts, also, were contrived with a view to their being held up for the emulation of boys for ever — boys who might otherwise have been happy. It was in this spirit that he became the son of a soapboiler, and probably for no other reason than that the efforts of all future boys who tried to be anything might be looked upon with suspicion unleßS they were the sons of soapboilers. With a malevolence which is without parallel in history, he would work all day and Bit up at nights, and let on to be studying algebra by the light of a smouldering fire, so that all other boys might have to do that also, or else have Benjamin Franklin thrown up to them. Not satisfied with these proceedings, he had a fat^ion of living wholly on bread and water, and studying astronomy at meal times, a thing which has wrought affliction to millions of boys since, whose fathers have read Franklin's pernicious biography. " His maxims were full of animosity towards boys. Nowadays a boy cannot follow out a single natural instinct without tumbling over some of those everlasting aphorisms and hearing from Franklin on the spot. If he buys two cents' worth of peanuts his father says, ' Remember what Franklin haß said, my son — "A groat a day's a penny a year," and the comfort is all pone out of those peanuts !' If he wants to spin his top when he is done work, his father quotes, ' Procrastination is the thief of time.' If he does a virtuous action he never gets anything for it, because ' Virtue is its own reward.' And that boy is hounded to death and robbed of his natural rest, because Franklin said once, in one of his inspired flights of malignity — Early to bed and early to rise Makes a man healthy, and wealthy, and wise. As if it were any object to a boy to be healthy, and wealthy, and wise on such terms. " My grandfather knew Franklin well, and he Bays that he was always fixed, always ready. If a body during his old age, happened on him unexpectedly when he was catching flies, or making mud pies, or sliding on a cellar door, he would immediately look wise and rip out a maxim, and walk off with his nose in the air and his cap turned the wrong side before, trying to appear absent-minded and eccentric. He waß a hard lot. He invented a stove that would smoke your head off in four hours by the clock. He was always proud of telling how be entered Philadelphia for the first time, with nothing in the world but two shillings in his pocket and four rolls of bred under his arm. But really, when you come to exa.mine it critically, it was nothing. Anybody could have done it."