gs in the almanac,
himself came to be called "Poor Richard."

CHAPTER XXV.

THE MAGICAL BOTTLE.

FRANKLIN is now a man of character, benevolence, wisdom, and humor. He
is a printer, a publisher, a man whose thoughts are influencing public
opinion. He is a very prosperous man; he is making money and reputation,
but it is not the gaining of either of these that is true success, but
of right influence. It is not the answer to the question, What are you
worth? or What is your popularity? but What is your influence? that
determines the value of a man.

He had founded life on right principles, and he had well learned the
trade in his youth that leads a poor young man of right principles and
nobility to success. He took the right guideboard, and the
"Please-everybody" Governor did him a good service when he showed him
that to become a printer in Philadelphia would bring him influence,
fame, and fortune. People who are well meaning, beyond the ability to
fulfill their intentions, sometimes reveal to others what may be of most
use to them. It was not altogether an unfortunate day when the wandering
printer boy met Governor Keith.

In the midst of his prosperity Silence Dogood was constantly seeking out
inventions to help people. When he was about thirty-four years of age,
in the Poor Richard days, he saw that the forests were disappearing,
and that there would be a need for the people to practice economy in the
use of fuel. The fireplaces in the chimneys were great consumers of
wood, and in many of them, to use the housewife's phrase, "the heat all
went up the chimney." But that was not all; many of the chimneys of the
good people smoked, and in making a fire rooms would be filled with
smoke, or, to use again the housewife's term, "the smoke would all come
out into the room."

When this was so the people would all flee to cold rooms with smarting
eyes. New houses in which chimneys smoked were sometimes taken down or
altered to make room for new chimneys that would draw. Franklin sought
to bring relief to this sorry condition of affairs.

He invented the Franklin stove, from which the heat would go out into
the room, and not "up the chimbly," to use a provincial word. This
cheerful stove became a great comfort to the province, and to foreign
countries as well. It saved fuel, and brought the heat of the fire into
the room.

He long afterward began to study chimneys, and after much experiment
found that those tha