" After
that, no one went to the young printer with complaints about his paper.
Franklin, as we have seen,[15] had learned to stoop; but he certainly
did not mean to go stooping through life.
[Footnote 15: See paragraph 114.]
117. Franklin's plan of life; what he did for Philadelphia.--Not many
young men can see their own faults, but Franklin could. More than
that, he tried hard to get rid of them. He kept a little book in which
he wrote down his faults. If he wasted half an hour of time or a
shilling of money, or said anything that he had better not have said,
he wrote it down in his book. He carried that book in his pocket all
his life, and he studied it as a boy at school studies a hard lesson.
By it he learned three things,--first, to do the right thing; next,
to do it at the right time; last of all, to do it in the right way.
As he was never tired of helping himself to get upward and onward,
so, too, he was never tired of helping others. He started the first
public library in Philadelphia, which was also the first in America.
He set on foot the first fire-engine company and the first military
company in that city. He got the people to pave the muddy streets
with stone; he helped to build the first academy,--now called the
University of Pennsylvania,--and he also helped to build the first
hospital.
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