food
he most needed. All the money he could save he devoted to buying books,
and he even had recourse to unusual methods of saving for this purpose.
When sixteen he chanced to read a treatise commending a vegetable diet,
and forthwith he put himself under this regimen, finding he could thus
set aside half his board money to increase his library. He also made
the acquaintance of the booksellers' apprentices from whom he could
borrow books; and often he would read late into the night so as to
return the purloined volume early the next morning.

The first book he owned was the "Pilgrim's Progress," which remained a
favorite with him through life and even served to a certain extent as a
model for his own work. This book he sold to buy Burton's "Historical
Collections" in forty volumes. His father's library was mainly
theological, and the young lad was courageous enough to browse even in
this dry pasture, but to his little profit as he thought. There was,
however, a book on his father's shelves which was admirably suited to
train one destined himself to play a large part in a great drama of
history. Where could patriotism and fortitude of character better be
learnt than in Plutarch? and Plutarch he read "abundantly" and thought
his "time spent to great advantage." That was in the good days before
children's books and boys' books were printed. In place of--whom shall
we say, Henty or Abbott or another?--boys, if they read at all, read
Plutarch and the "Spectator." They came to the intellectual tasks of
manhood with their minds braced by manly reading and not deboshed by
silly or at best juvenile literature. It is safe to say that no book
written primarily for a boy is a good book for a boy to read. Apart
from lessons in generous living, Franklin may have had his natural
tendency to moralize strengthened by this study of Plutarch. It is
indeed notable that in one respect eighteenth-century literature has
marked affinity with the Greek. The writers of that age, and among them
Franklin, were like the Greeks distinctly ethical. In telling a story
or recording a life, their interest was in the moral to be drawn,
rather than in the passions involved.

Another book which had a special influence on his style may be
mentioned. An odd volume of the "Spectator" coming into his hands, he
read the essays over and over and took them deliberately as a model in
language. This was before the date of Johnson's well-known dictum:
"Whoever wi