miles from a friend, with three pence gone out of the only dollar he had in the world.

Next year, when he went home to see his parents, with his pocket full of money, a new suit of clothes and a watch, one of his oldest Boston friends was so much pleased with Franklin's account of Philadelphia, that he determined to go back with him. On the journey Franklin discovered that his friend had become a slave to drink. He was sorely plagued and disgraced by him, and, at last, the young drunkard had spent all his money, and had no way of getting on except by Franklin's aid. This hard, calculating, mercenary youth- did he seize the chance of shaking off a most troublesome and injurious travelling companion? Strange to relate, he stuck to his old friend, shared his purse with him till it was empty, and then began on some money which he had been entrusted with for another, and so got him to Philadelphia, where he still assisted him. It was seven years before Franklin was able to pay all the debt incurred by him to aid this old friend; for abandoning whom few would have blamed him.

A year after, he was in a still worse difficulty from a similar cause. He went to London to buy types and a press with which to establish himself in business at Philadelphia, — the Governor of Pennsylvania having promised to furnish the money. One of the passengers on the ship was a young friend of Franklin's, named James Ralph, with whom he had often studied, and of whom he was exceedingly fond. Ralph gave out that he, too, was proceeding to London to make arrangements for going into business for himself at Philadelphia. The young friends arrived -Franklin nineteen, and Ralph a married man with two children. On reaching London, Franklin learned, to his amazement and dismay, that the Governor had deceived him, that no money was to be expected from him, and that he must go to work and earn his living at his trade. No sooner had he learned this than James Ralph gave him another piece of stunning intelligence: namely, that he had run away from his family, and meant to settle in London as a poet and author!

Franklin had ten pounds in his pocket and knew a trade. Ralph had no money and knew no trade. They were both

strangers in a strange city. Now, in such circumstances, what would a mean, calculating young man have done? Reader, you know very well, without my telling you. What Franklin did was this: he shared his purse with his friend until his ten pounds were all gone; and, having at once got work at his trade, he kept on dividing his wages with Ralph until he had advanced him thirty-six pounds, half a year's income, — not a penny of which was ever repaid. And this he did, the coldblooded wretch! - because he could not help loving his brilliant, unprincipled comrade, though disapproving his conduct and sadly needing his money.

Having returned to Philadelphia, he set up in business as a printer and editor, and, after a very severe effort, he got his business well established, and, at last, had the most profitable establishment of the kind in all America. During the most active part of his business life, he always found some time for the promotion of public objects; he founded a most useful and public-spirited club, a public library which still exists, and assisted in every worthy scheme. He was most generous to his poorer relations, hospitable to his fellow-citizens, and particularly interested in the welfare of his journeymen, many of whom he set up in business.

The most decisive proof, however, which he ever gave, that he did not overvalue money, was his retirement from a most profitable business for the purpose of having leisure to pursue his philosophical studies. 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 of our present greenback 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 need

less accumulation, he joyfully laid aside the cares of business, and spent the whole of the remainder of his life in the service 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 ambassador 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. And who were the people, by whose restless vanity and all-clutching meanness his efforts were almost frustrated in Paris? Arthur Lee and William Lee, of Virginia, and Ralph Izard, of South Carolina!

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 governorship of a State, ought not to have any salary attached to them. He thought they should be filled by persons of independent income, willing to serve their fellow-citizens from benevolence, or for the honor of it. So thinking, he, at first, determined not to receive any salary; but this being objected to, he devcted the

whole of the salary for three years— six thousand pounds-to the furtherance of public objects. Part of it he gave to a college, and part was set aside for the improvement of the Schuylkill River.

Never was an eminent man more thoughtful of the lowly people who were the companions of his poverty. Dr. Franklin, from the midst of the splendors of the French court, and when he was the most famous and admired person in Europe, forgot not his poor old sister, Jane, who was, in part, dependent upon his bounty. He gave her a house in Boston, and sent her, every September, the money to lay in her winter's fuel and provisions. He wrote her the kindest, wittiest, pleasantest letters. "Believe me, dear brother," she writes, "your writing to me gives me so much pleasure, that the great, the very great, presents you have sent me give me but a secondary joy."

How exceedingly absurd to call such a man "hard" and miserly, because he recommended people not to waste their money! Let me tell you, reader, that if a man means to be liberal and generous, he must be economical. No people are so mean as the extravagant; because, spending all they have upon themselves, they have nothing left for others. Benjamin Franklin was the most consistently generous man of whom I have any knowledge.

THE BROTHERS MONTGOLFIER.

INVENTORS OF THE BALLOON.

THERE lived, a hundred years ago, in the South of France, a venerable man named Montgolfier, owner of a large paper mill, which gave employment to a great number of men and women, to whom the aged proprietor was more like a patriarch than a mere employer. This good old man, who lived to the age of ninety-three, had two sons, Stephen and Joseph, who relieved him of the cares of business, and conducted the paper works with the same energy and the same regard for the happiness and dignity of the operatives which had made their father so much honored and beloved in all that region. These young men, from their youth up, had been as studious and observant as they were virtuous. With little aid from instructors, they had acquired by reading and private study a great fund of knowledge, Stephen being particularly devoted to mathematics, and Joseph to natural philosophy and chemistry. They were tall and athletic, noble in their carriage and demeanor, of sedate but cheerful aspect. We could style them princes of industry, if the word prince did not bring to mind the inferiority of the best princes to such youths as these.

In the course of their studies, they had read of many attempts that had been made to navigate the air. They had read, perhaps, and laughed as they read, of the winged angels which, in the dark ages, ingenious priests had attempted to make ascend to heaven in the sight of their credulous flocks; of the Italian adventurer who leaped, with wings at his back, from the summit of a Scottish castle, and broke his thigh-bone in his fall; of the monk, Albert of Saxony, who, in the fourteenth century, first sug gested the notion of inflating a globe with something lighter than