of the United States, 1890-92; United States
circuit judge, 1892-1900; President Philippine Commission, 1900-04;
secretary of war, 1904-08; elected President, 1908; inaugurated, March
4, 1909.

* * * * *

CHAPTER V

STATESMEN

If one were asked to name the most remarkable all-around genius this
country has produced, the answer would be Benjamin Franklin--whose life
was perhaps the fullest, happiest and most useful ever lived in America.
There are half a dozen chapters of this series in which he might
rightfully find a place, and in which, indeed, it will be necessary to
refer to him, for he was an inventor, a scientist, a man of letters, a
philanthropist, a man of affairs, a reformer, and a great many other
things besides. But first and greatest of all, he was a benign,
humorous, kind-hearted philosopher, who devoted the greater portion of
his life to the service of his country and of humanity.

Benjamin Franklin was born at Boston in 1706, the fifteenth of a family
of seventeen children. His father was a soap-boiler, and was kept pretty
busy providing for his family, none of whom, with the exception of
Benjamin, ever attained any especial distinction; this being one of
those mysteries of nature, which no one has ever been able to explain,
and yet which happens so often--the production of an eagle in a brood of
common barnyard fowls--a miracle, however, which never happens except
when the barnyard fowls are of the human species. Benjamin himself, at
first, was only an ugly duckling in no way remarkable.

At the age of ten, he was apprenticed to his brother, who was a printer,
and needed a boy to do the dirty work around the office, and thought
there was no need of paying good money to an outsider, when it might
just as well be kept in the family. So Benjamin went to work sweeping
out, and washing up the dirty presses, and making himself generally
useful during the day; but--and here is the first gleam of the eagle's
feather--instead of going to bed with the sun as most boys did, he sat
up most of the night reading such books and papers as he was able to get
hold of at the office, or himself writing short articles for the paper
which his brother published. These he slipped unsigned under the front
door of the office, so that his brother would not suspect they came from
him; for no man is a prophet to his own family, and these contributions
would have promptly gone into the