He
had been in business twenty years, and he was still in the prime of
life--forty-six years of age. He was making money faster than any other
printer on this continent. But being exceedingly desirous of spending
the rest of his days in study and experiment, and having saved a
moderate competency, he sold his establishment to his foreman on very
easy terms, and withdrew. His estate, when he retired, was worth about a
hundred thousand dollars. If he had been a lover of money, I am
confident that he could and would have accumulated one of the largest
fortunes in America. He had nothing to do but continue in business, and
take care of his investments, to roll up a prodigious estate. But not
having the slightest taste for needless accumulation, he joyfully laid
aside the cares of business, and spent the whole remainder of his life
in the services of his country; for he gave up his heart's desire of
devoting his leisure to philosophy when his country needed him.

Being in London when Captain Cook returned from his first voyage to the
Pacific, he entered warmly into a beautiful scheme for sending a ship
for the purpose of stocking the islands there with pigs, vegetables, and
other useful animals and products. A hard, selfish man would have
laughed such a project to scorn.

In 1776, when he was appointed embassador of the revolted colonies to
the French king, the ocean swarmed with British cruisers, General
Washington had lost New York, and the prospects of the Revolution were
gloomy in the extreme. Dr. Franklin was an old man of seventy, and might
justly have asked to be excused from a service so perilous and
fatiguing. But he did not. He went. And just before he sailed he got
together all the money he could raise--about three thousand pounds--and
invested it in the loan recently announced by Congress. This he did at a
moment when few men had a hearty faith in the success of the Revolution.
This he did when he was going to a foreign country that might not
receive him, from which he might be expelled, and he have no country to
return to. There never was a more gallant and generous act done by an
old man.

In France he was as much the main stay of the cause of his country as
General Washington was at home.

Returning home after the war, he was elected president of Pennsylvania
for three successive years, at a salary of two thousand pounds a year.
But by this time he had become convinced that offices of honor, such as
the