history, and perhaps in any history.
In Franklin's _Autobiography_ is offered not so much a ready-made
formula for success, as the companionship of a real flesh and blood
man of extraordinary mind and quality, whose daily walk and
conversation will help us to meet our own difficulties, much as does
the example of a wise and strong friend. While we are fascinated by
the story, we absorb the human experience through which a strong and
helpful character is building.

The thing that makes Franklin's _Autobiography_ different from every
other life story of a great and successful man is just this human
aspect of the account. Franklin told the story of his life, as he
himself says, for the benefit of his posterity. He wanted to help them
by the relation of his own rise from obscurity and poverty to eminence
and wealth. He is not unmindful of the importance of his public
services and their recognition, yet his accounts of these achievements
are given only as a part of the story, and the vanity displayed is
incidental and in keeping with the honesty of the recital. There is
nothing of the impossible in the method and practice of Franklin as he
sets them forth. The youth who reads the fascinating story is
astonished to find that Franklin in his early years struggled with the
same everyday passions and difficulties that he himself experiences,
and he loses the sense of discouragement that comes from a
realization of his own shortcomings and inability to attain.

There are other reasons why the _Autobiography_ should be an intimate
friend of American young people. Here they may establish a close
relationship with one of the foremost Americans as well as one of the
wisest men of his age.

The life of Benjamin Franklin is of importance to every American
primarily because of the part he played in securing the independence
of the United States and in establishing it as a nation. Franklin
shares with Washington the honors of the Revolution, and of the events
leading to the birth of the new nation. While Washington was the
animating spirit of the struggle in the colonies, Franklin was its
ablest champion abroad. To Franklin's cogent reasoning and keen
satire, we owe the clear and forcible presentation of the American
case in England and France; while to his personality and diplomacy as
well as to his facile pen, we are indebted for the foreign alliance
and the funds without which Washington's work must have failed. His
patience, fort