Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, 2nd Edition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).

I'll have to return to the first part to remind myself what I found compelling, but the beginning of the second section contains letters from two of Franklin's friends. The first, Benjamin Vaughn, after going through some preliminary complements, writes, "But these, Sir, are small reasons in my opinion, compared with the chance which your life will give for the forming of future great men; and in conjunction with your Art of Virtue (which you design to public) of improving the features of private character, and consequently of aiding all happiness both public and domestic ... [the works I allude to] will give a particular give a rule and example of self-education. School and other education constantly proceed upon false principles, and shew a clumsy apparatus pointed at a false mark; but your apparatus is simple, and the mark of a true one; and while parents and younger person are left destitute of other just means of estimating and becoming prepared for a reasonable course in life, your discovery that the thing is in many a man's private power, will be invaluable!"