istle,--men
sacrificing time and liberty and virtue for court favor; misers, giving
up comfort and esteem and the joy of doing good for wealth; others
sacrificing every laudable improvement of the mind and fortune and
health to mere corporal sensations, and all the other follies of
exorbitant desire.

Another experience, this time a more painful lesson in honesty, he
relates in his Autobiography. Having one day stolen some stones from an
unfinished house while the builders were away, he and his comrades
built up a wharf where they might stand and fish for minnows in the
mill-pond. They were discovered, complained of, and corrected by their
fathers; "and though I demonstrated the utility of our work," says
Franklin, "mine convinced me that that which was not honest could not
be truly useful."

It is interesting, too, to see the boy showing the same experimental
aptitude which brought scientific renown to the man. Like all American
boys living on the coast, he was strongly attracted to the water, and
early learned to swim. But ordinary swimming was not enough for
Benjamin: with some skill he made a pair of wooden paddles for his
hands, which enabled him to move through the water very rapidly,
although, as he says, they tired his wrists. Another time he combined
the two joyful pursuits of swimming and kite-flying in such a manner
perhaps as no boy before him had ever conceived. Lying on his back, he
held in his hands the stick to which the kite-string was attached, and
thus "was drawn along the surface of the water in a very agreeable
manner." Later in life he said he thought it not impossible to cross in
this manner from Dover to Calais. "But the packet-boat is still
preferable," he added. We shall see how he managed to put even his
knowledge of swimming to practical use; and kite-flying, every one
knows, served him in his most notable electrical experiment. Certainly,
if it could ever be said of any one, it might be said of him, "The
child is father of the man."

But swimming and boyish play formed a small, though it may be
important, part of his education. He was from childhood up
"passionately fond of reading," and he was moreover a wise reader,
which is still better. Books were not so easy to get in those days; and
the good libraries of the country were composed chiefly of great
theological volumes in folio on the shelves of the clergymen's studies.
But in one way and another Franklin contrived to lay hands on the