Monday, March 22, 2010

Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

I'm currently reading the above title. I started it years ago, but just barely got into the scholarly introduction and never got around to finishing it. It was a mistake, but one I can live with. There are just so very many, many books worth reading. It's just something we have to learn to accept.

Anyway, I'm only part way into the opening chapter, but it's already a great read. Right now, it's just describing little Benjamin's colonial upbringing near Boston.
Yes, he is known as a man of Philadelphia, but he was raised in Boston.

Did you know Benjamin Franklin tried being a vegetarian for a while, around age 15? Odd what seems worth knowing.

Well, I will have to let you know a bit more. And now I want to look up a copy of Dr. Cotton Mather's Essays on Doing Good. You see, the vast majority of the books I have read weren't even written in Franklin's time. Even what I would consider historic works were usually written later, like Mark Twain or Emerson or even Les Miserables. Franklin's reading comments give me a whole new set of works to look into. The skeptical works of the Earl of Shaftesbury and Anthony Collins would be among those. And he also reminded me that I still haven't read any Locke.

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