The Thomas Jefferson Hour; Benjamin Franklin

Welcome to the Thomas Jefferson Hour. The Thomas Jefferson Hour is produced by High Plains Public Radio and New Enlightenment Radio Network, a non-profit organization dedicated to the search for truth in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson. Today we have a special program we will be listening to Dr. Benjamin Franklin, possibly the wisest of all of our founding fathers. Humanity scholar Christopher Low will be portraying Benjamin Franklin in today's program. While very little introduction is needed for Dr. Benjamin Franklin, I would like to read a paragraph written by Roy F. Nichols, who in 1959 was at the University of Pennsylvania. He was chairman of the administrative board overseeing the writing of the papers of Benjamin Franklin volume one. Mr. Nichols writes. The first of the few wise men who were to grow up in the new American society was Benjamin Franklin, motivated by an intricate combination of interests in self-education and self-advertisement. This ambitious young man sought to collect, record, invent, and communicate aphorisms and bits of wisdom which

he used as advice to himself and admonition to others. In so doing, he promoted the dissemination of his ideas most effectively as a printer and newspaper editor. At the same time that he was organizing communication at first by stimulating the creation of a discussion group in a library and later on by scientific experimentation and by advancing the cause of higher education. Finally, as legislator diplomat and statesman, he put his wisdom and his talent for communicating to most practical use in the complicated task of creating a new and experimental body politic. He and his associates contrived this state in a highly sophisticated age of reason whose very intellectual sophistication had a tendency to make its leaders slightly naïve. Naïve in their reliance upon reason and in their discount of the force of human emotions. Mr. Nichols goes on to write. In presenting this edition, which is the papers of Benjamin Franklin volume one, the sponsors are motivated by a

decent respect for the needs of the hour, believing that wisdom now as ever is an element vital to the continued welfare of mankind. Now let us join Dr. Benjamin Franklin. Citizens, I bid you welcome. Thank you for your interest in my life and times. One of the most important times in my later years took place at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. I'm sure that all of you recall that we declared our independence from England in 1776, which you may not remember that it took seven years of bloody fighting to actually win it. The Constitutional Convention was called a few years after that to create a permanent framework for America to decide what kind of government we were going to have and how it was going to work. All through that unusually hot summer of 1787, we worked to

create a document acceptable to all. I had proposed a compromise to my fellow delegates a few days before when on September 17th, I rose to address my colleagues. My fellow delegates, for over four months we have worked with with great dedication to create a more permanent governmental structure for our nation and I say that it's now time to approve the document we have before us. Although it is imperfect, I am not sure that it is not the best we can fashion. To those delegates who may still have objections to this Constitution, I urge you to doubt a little of your own infallibility and with me put your name to it to make manifest our unanimity. For the sake of our posterity I ask that we act

heartily and unanimously. Then as the delegates filed out to consider my challenge to them, I sat back down alone for a few minutes in that great hall. I was 82 tired, poor health and as I sat there I took a moment to look back over my life now so assuredly in its last stage and I thought about the traits that had combined to bring me to this moment. Curiosity I thought was one and a sense of practicality and certainly a desire to be useful. Those were three threads that ran through the entire fabric of my life. My years in business, my scientific inquiries and inventions and my public service and I thought that behind these traits were an innate love of liberty and a

conviction that government should serve the people and not the other way around. Curiosity, well my first memories were of pressing my nose to the parlor window of our house on Milk Street in Boston watching the masts of the great sailing ships slowly moving into the Boston harbor and now into the Atlantic beyond. I was curious to know where they were going and what those places might be like. Fanning the flames of my curiosity were four world maps that my father had hung in his study. I spent hours just staring at these maps trying to memorize those strange names curious to know more of the world. I didn't know then of course that one day I'd become the most widely traveled man in the colonies. Perhaps it was this curiosity that made me love reading so much. My sister Jane said that I read from the age of three or anything that I could. When

I was 11 years old I was apprentice to my half-brother James, a printer in Boston supposedly for nine years to come and during those years I read to make up for the lack of my formal education teaching myself geometry and history and natural sciences French algebra and Italian. Of course all my reading and then working with printed materials led me quite naturally to writing. Now James and his friends wrote pieces of satire and cheeky social commentary for our newspaper The New England Current and at 16 I was curious to see if I could write similar things too and whether my efforts would be thought good enough to publish but how to do it. Well I knew that James would never publish anything written by his little brother so I invented a persona when silence do good

supposedly a young widow living out on the farms outside Boston. Late one night I moved quietly down the street and looked around to make sure nobody was seeing me and I slipped my anonymous letter from silence do good under the door of our print shop and then ran down the street. In the morning I had the exquisite satisfaction of listening to my brother and his friends chuckle over my letter and declare it worthy of publication and scratch their heads over who this silence do good might really be. After the letter appeared in print to my further delight the public loved it and so I I continued her anonymous correspondence with the readers. I wrote 14 letters from silence do good that year when I was 16 and all of them in secret. Only years later did I reveal the James that I'd been the author of. You're listening to the Thomas Jefferson

hour. Today's special guest is our founding father Dr. Benjamin Franklin. Well when I was 21 just five years later I had my own print shop and for over 20 years I worked hard to make it prosper and thrive and expand. Keep thy shop and thy shop will keep thee was my motto and I stuck to it. Well my early success with silence do good inspired me to to create a practical almanac for the public. I put out my first edition of this poor Richard's almanac as I called it in 1732 when I was 26 and it had the usual helpful advice on planting times for farmers and tables with the tides and moons and so on. Well to my surprise for the next 25 years poor Richard's almanac was the most widely circulated publication in the colonies and the reason for its popularity

were some little phrases that I had originally put in just for filler. Now some of these maxims, these aphorisms I'm sure will strike you as quaint in your time. A penny saved is a penny earned is is probably far out of date to you. But how wager that fish and guests still stink after three days. My printing days seemed a long time ago to me as I said in that great silent hall waiting for the delegates to return. But I thought that my curiosity and desire to serve the public certainly ran through other parts of my life my scientific investigations and my inventions for example. Oh I was curious about all sorts of things scientific. I studied and mapped that mysterious river in the Atlantic for instance the Gulf Stream not to prove theories but so the

chip captains could ride that river like a horse cutting by a third the time it took to cross the Atlantic was the practical consideration that I was interested in. I studied botany and invented a new science of meteorology. I redesigned shiphulls. I was the first to advance the idea that the common cold was transferred by contagion and had nothing to do with exposure to cold weather. In fact I thought that cold air was the best protection against catching a cold and ever since coming to that conclusion regardless of the season or the weather I began each day with an hour long deep breathing exercise in front of an open window in the nude. This habit apparently caused a bit of a stir with my neighbors just across the street when I lived in London but I took no heat of it and my inventions themselves the products of curiosity were all of immediate practical value of service to my foot well well maybe not the swim

fins no but surely the odometer the bifocals the rocking chair the first flexible catheter which relieved so much suffering for patients and hospitals and certainly the the new kind of stove I designed which heated homes more efficiently and with less soot that was of immediate practical value now I declined the offer of a 10-year patent on my Franklin stove saying that as we profit greatly from the invention of others we should be glad to serve others with an invention of ours and we should do this freely and willingly well of all my inventions I must tell you that the one gave me the most pleasure was not particularly practical but it certainly was lovely it was a musical instrument that I invented that I called the Armonica and I'll tell you how it

came about by the time I was 50 I'd been to as many public dinners as anyone in the colonies and I had occasionally noticed board dinner guests idly producing musical notes on their wine glasses by wetting their fingers and moving those fingers around the rim of the glass now perhaps you've seen this too well I fashioned my Armonica based on this principle I built it of 37 glass bowls of varying sizes and then I spun them by means of a foot pedal and a pulley well the sounds that were produced were so pleasing to the ear that the instrument became immediately popular I enjoyed playing duets with my daughter Sally on the Armonica Mozart composed one of his last works for my instrument and Marie Antoinette the Queen of France took lessons on one as much as I enjoyed creating the Armonica the one area of research that really combined my

inquisitiveness and my practical nature and my interest in serving the public was surely electricity now lightning was a powerful and frightening force and a real danger to lives and property in my time when lightning hit a church in Venice where gunpowder was stored the resultant explosion and fire killed 3,000 people one sixth of the entire population of the city of Venice closer to home lightning came so near land in Bucks County that it melted the pewter button right off the waistband of his breeches it was well that nothing else thereabouts was made of pewter well I was curious to see if lightning though certainly dangerous might not be just a dramatic form of static electricity and if it were it might be attracted by a pointed

metal rod and diverted from buildings I plan to attach such a rod to the top of the new Christ's Church Steeple in Philadelphia to see but I work on it had slowed I was impatient to conduct the experiment and remembering my kite flying days as a youth I attached a small metal rod to the top of a silk kite instead adding a brass key at its base and on a June evening in 1752 when storms were about I took my 21 year old son William we went out into the farmlands to test my theory a lightning did strike that metal rod and I felt the shock coming all the way from the brass key at the base and when that happened I knew that lightning was electricity and the public could be well served by this knowledge and only a month later the first lightning rods were installed on public buildings in Philadelphia here was science at its most

practical its its greatest service to man this this desire to serve man this drive that I had to live a useful life where did that come from was I sat there in that great hall I I thought that it came at least in part from from two books I read when I was just 15 in Plutarch's lives and in a series of essays on doing good by the Puritan orator cotton mother I first came across the idea that a single person could affect great changes in his society by by himself and by forming associations for the common good well I remembered that lesson and at 21 when I was a young printer with my own business I formed my first such association among tradesmen like myself we began sharing books

with each other and this was so profitable and enjoyable that I expanded the idea of the whole city creating the first public subscription library well this meant was such success that I was soon involved in other civic projects forming fire brigades and the first fire insurance corporation founding the first hospital in the colony and starting an Academy of Learning that you know in your time as the University of Pennsylvania one civic project I'm particularly pleased about although it is I must admit to you on a much smaller scale than hospitals and universities but I'd like to tell you about it just the same now my house faced the market and I was all too aware that the summer dust caused much coughing and the winter mud caused carriages to get stuck and closed to be constantly spattered it was not a pleasant place to be to improve

conditions I I came up with a new idea of having the market street paved with cobblestones and I paid an industrious young lad a couple of shillings a week to keep the road clean well the area quickly became a delight to visit and not a trial to endure the commerce increased residents and shoppers spent less time and effort cleaning their clothes and the aesthetics of the neighborhood improved word spread and other neighborhoods imitated our examples and soon Philadelphia became the first American city with paved streets I was pleased with that now some would would think that these trifles are not worthy of minding or or relating but human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune as seldom happen but by little improvements that occur every day and this was one of those little improvements that I was pleased to to be a part of it occurred to me sitting there then waiting for the delegates

that it was to continue making those little improvements that I sold my profitable printing business when I was 42 turned out to be the exact midpoint of my life I built up an adequate nest egg at the time for my family and I saw no reason to spend the rest of my time simply adding to it I was not the sort to acquire a new carriage every year or spend great sums on fancy clothing I didn't need or change my old puter candlesticks for gold ones I was much more interested in as you say in your time giving back to the community it is time for a short break please visit our website www.th hyphen jefferson.org for donation of nine dollars you may purchase today's program entitled Benjamin Franklin please call 1-800-274-240-1-800-274-240 please stay tuned we will be back in just a moment

welcome back to the Thomas Jefferson hour today we are listening to our founding father dr. Benjamin Franklin prior to the break dr. Franklin was

explaining his tremendous curiosity and his desire to make little improvements for mankind at 42 years of age dr. Franklin sold his thriving printing business he sold it in an effort to have more time to give back to his community let us join dr. Franklin as he explains to us how in the second part of his life he gave back to his community one thing my community needed badly was a just an equitable form of government so it was it was natural it was inevitable that I enter public service my love of liberty and my sensitivity to injustice which ran through all my political life really went back to those days as an apprentice printer my brother James beat me then frequently cruelly for no apparent reason then that he had the power to do so well at 17 I rebelled and I ran away from his unjust rule to Philadelphia to live

freely for the rest of my life I distressed in autocratic power and this distressed informed all of my public life from 1751 when I was first made a representative of the Pennsylvania Assembly for the almost 40 years that remained to me I was continually in public service first for my colony and then later for my new nation I was twice sent to London once for seven years and the second time for 10 to mediate and to try to heal the growing breach between the colonies and the motherland as I wrote Lord how of the admiralty long did I endeavor with unfained zeal to save from breaking that fine and noble vase the British Empire but I was unsuccessful my own personal evolution from British loyalist to American patriot was a slow one but by late 1775 when I returned from

England no one was more passionately committed to the American cause for separation than was I the following summer young Thomas Jefferson asked me to edit his splendid declaration of independence and I was pleased to do so one modification I made may be familiar to you in your time I changed his line we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable to we hold these truths to be self-evident and I suggested the model for our national seal e pluribus unum out of many one well it's one thing to declare one's independence and quite another to secure it particularly when you're faced by an organized army of 32,000 British Redcoats determined to prevent you're doing so we all knew that we would not win our war for independence without massive aid for our new country general Washington and his brave troops needed not only arms and

ammunition and muskets but they needed supplies they needed blankets and shoes clothing and our new country was in dire need of loans and credit so it was that at 71 I became our first ambassador our first secretary of state if you well and I was sent to the one country that could if it would supply this vital help France really spent almost nine years in Paris securing this crucially important aid and in 1783 and in writing many of the terms of the peace treaty that ended the war and made the United States an officially recognized and independent nation these musings about my life were were then cut short the delegates filed back in their decisions made I looked at them I must confess to you with some apprehension almost as a prisoner watches the

jury returning to render a verdict but to my relief and pleasure 39 of the 55 delegates signed the new constitution on the spot we had our new republic as the applause filled the hall I turned towards the chair that George Washington the president of our convention had occupied during our heated debates I observed that I hadn't until this point been sure whether the son that was painted on the back of that chair been arising or a setting one but now I was certain it was a rising sun seeing you here tonight looking as as free and as unoppressed and prosperous as you do when I think we did fairly well but I'm pleased to have shared these reflections with you and in a moment we'll be happy to take

some questions from you if you have them but but before I do I I do want to emphasize how meaningful it was to me to have to have led a useful life as I had intended from boyhood if I had not done so it just would not have been as satisfying or as meaningful to me in the last months of 1789 with the sand in my hour glass running low I received a letter from our new president general Washington that indicated that others were grateful for my my efforts as well in it he said if to be venerated for benevolence if to be admired for talents if to be esteemed for patriotism if to be beloved for philanthropy can gratify the human mind you must have the pleas in consolation to know that you have not lived in vain well I was more than consoled by these words of president Washington I was profoundly appreciative and deeply affected if you live

usefully and do what you can do to make those little improvements that occur every day and you will look back one day on your lives with satisfaction and peace of mind similar to mine I challenge you to do so for your kind attention and interest I sincerely and humbly thank you there you will Dr Franklin will now take questions and the first audience question is did you really fly kite during a thunderstorm oh yes I most certainly did fly a kite in an electric storm with the help of my son William who was 21 years old at the time I'll tell you how it came about I had done a variety of experiments with electricity I had found nothing in the mid 1740s

and later that so occupied my interest and fascination as the study of electricity nor the experiments that I did I I came to the conclusion though I hadn't proved it that lightning though certainly dramatic and a frightening force of nature was nothing more than a dramatic form of static electricity and if I were right in this assumption then lightning could be drawn away from buildings by the means of metal rods with a pointed tip at the end if if that could be done well the implications were staggering much property could be spared lives could be saved don't forget that when lightning struck a church in Venice where gunpowder was being held in a room the resultant explosion and fire killed three thousand people that was a sixth of the

population of the city of Venice at the time lightning was a significant force of nature well I I thought that it was time to as we said let the experiment begin and I was set to attach a metal rod to the top of the Christ's church bell tower in Philadelphia once it was completed well work dragged on and on and I was impatient to begin with my experiments so on a stormy night in June of 1752 seemed a propitious moment to test my theory so my son and I went out into the farmlands and as the rain came down we got the kite flying pretty well I had attached to the same kind of metal rod to the tip of my kite as I had planned to attach to the church people and I put a brass key down at the end of the string well my first few attempts were pretty unsuccessful despite the rumbling of thunder and the obvious flashes of

lightning that we saw about us nothing happened with the kite and I was beginning to despair although the kite was flying well when a lightning flash did hit that metal tip and I felt the shock down all the way down hit that brass key and I knew my theory was indeed a success now what I had not known well I was flying my kite in June of 1752 was that through a singular combination of events my theories on electricity had already been proved this is how it happened I had been in close correspondence with my friend Peter Collinson who was a member of the Royal Society in London about my experiments with electricity and although I was not at all certain that my my results or my

theories were were up to date with what was being proved in England I I sent him detailed messages of my of my work he had them translated into French because the Royal Society was so impressed with him and a month before William and I went out into that farmland to fly our kite some French scientists in a little town called Marley which is on the western side of Paris conducted similar experiments with a metal rod and a man stationed up high up on a platform near that metal rod and lightning struck the rod and was drawn away as we had theorized I always gave credit to these French scientists for their work but I didn't know about it for some time as we conducted experiments with electricity and we came aware that we had significantly underestimated the

power of that force and I think that I was fairly lucky to have gotten away with some of my experiments without being killed thank you Dr. Franklin the next audience question is you were on the committee to write the declaration of independence however the committee chose Thomas Jefferson to do the actual writing why did you not write the declaration of independence you were obviously the the choice you were probably the wisest of the founding fathers on that committee and you were certainly the oldest why didn't you write the declaration I didn't write the declaration of independence for a couple of reasons the first was that I was in very poor health in March of 1776 just a few months after returning from England I was sent up to Quebec as an envoy of our

Congress to talk with Benedict Arnold our brave general up there and he had asked for reinforcements but the Congress sent instead a committee and I was the head of it well I was 70 years old and the the trip all the way up the Hudson River and then up the St. Lawrence in the dead of winter it was a very very difficult one for me I was forced to sleep in barns on hard wooden floors I was suffering from gout and kidney stone and terrible boils and I I thought that that trip might even be my last when I got home in March in April of 76 it took me a long time given my age to recuperate and by the time the declaration of independence was being formulated to be quite frank with you I was I was not at

the height of my powers in fact I was still suffering in the early summer of 76 and not at all well so that was one reason and the second reason was probably more important and and more all encompassing and that was that young Thomas Jefferson who was then only 33 years old was I would have to say the better writer now I I could write pretty well but I think that Thomas Jefferson had a fluidity of style and an elegance of expression that was really appropriate to the moment besides it was appropriate that a Virginian composed the declaration as they were part of the deck the delegation that had first proposed it so for these two reasons I did not compose the declaration I did however at Mr. Jefferson's request edit the declaration as he composed it

line by line he did me that honor and I made one or two changes that I think you may know even in your time when Jefferson wrote we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable I saw fit to change that line to we hold these truths to be self-evident but make no mistake my participation in that document was relatively minor and the glory should go as it properly belongs to Thomas Jefferson. Dr. Franklin the next audience question is would you please tell us about your reputation with women while in Paris. Rumors about my amorous activities do not surprise me because such rumors always attend the lives of public figures. I will say that while in France I conducted much business in

the Salons of Paris diplomacy was conducted quite differently in Paris in the 1770s and 80s than it was in London for example where it was a male dominated society and we met often in clubs of men in Paris it was a different story and I think that the rumors of as you say my my amorous activities had their roots and the fact that I often spent long evenings and well into the early hours of the mornings in the company of beautiful and intelligent and powerful women. I will tell you in all candor that there were one or two that caught my eye a bit more than the others and with whom I enjoyed more intense friendships than the other and no doubt that's what contributed to this

reputation. But as Mr Shakespeare wrote reputation is an idol and oft false imposition, oft got without merit and lost without deserving. I also must tell you that to have a reputation for amorous activities in Europe when I only arrived there at the age of 70 and left at the age of 79 is I would say flattering to an older man. Dr Franklin another audience member would like to know why did you write poor Richard's Almanac what made you decide to write an Almanac. I came to write poor Richard's Almanac for two reasons one was for commercial profit. Almanacs were a profitable source of income for printers in my

day primarily because they had to be purchased each year. You have been listening to the Thomas Jefferson Hour where our featured guest today is our founding father Dr Benjamin Franklin. Dr Franklin is being portrayed by Christopher Woll of Colorado Springs, Colorado. For a donation of nine dollars you can receive a copy of today's program please call 1-800-274-1240-1800-274-1240. Please visit our website www.thythonjefferson.org www.thythonjefferson.org When we return from break Dr Franklin will continue with audience questions. Thank you for listening and please stay tuned we will be back in just a moment. Welcome back to the Thomas Jefferson Hour. Today we have a special guest

founding father Dr Benjamin Franklin. Prior to the break Dr Franklin was explaining to us the two reasons why he chose to write poor Richard's Almanac. When we join Dr Franklin in just a moment he will be explaining to us the second reason why he wrote poor Richard's Almanac. Secondly and this was genuine I truly wanted to provide the public with a document and an instrument that would be a value of public worth and remembering my success at writing satirical articles and letters under the pseudonym of silence do good when I was nearly 16 years old and an apprentice printer I thought that the 10 years later when I was 26 in 1732 it was time to write a

full Almanac for my readers. After all Almanacs contained much of use they contained guides to planting charts showing the phases of the moon which were particularly useful for people who wished or needed to travel at night. They contained all kinds of useful information and so I published my poor Richard's Almanac where the first issue being written in 1732 when I was 26 years old. What really surprised me about poor Richard's Almanac was that it not only became a success but it remained the best selling publication in all the colonies for the full extent of my business career 25 years. In fact I wrote the preface to the last edition after I had sold my business several years later on

route to England for my first diplomatic journey on behalf of my colony Pennsylvania in 1757. I had retired from business in 1748 but I continued to write the poor Richard's Almanac and what made this publication a success was not the usual fair that I included in my Almanac but rather the little expressions the witty aphorisms that I invented and I put in just for filler. It was I believe the first time that filler of that nature was ever used but it was those expressions that the public remembered. As poor Richard says was on everybody's lips for many many years and the success of that publication was of great satisfaction to me. Dr. Franklin we have yet another audience question and

that is Dr. Franklin would you please tell us about your relationship with your son William. My relationship with my son William was a great joy to me for many many years and a great disappointment to me in my later years. You see during my own negotiations in London as a representative of the colonies I was seen as difficult and intractable particularly by some of the members of the House of Lords but to represent my colonies interests fairly and and justly I had to take a hard position when it came to issues of being taxed without due representation and being controlled from London in strict defiance of the charter of our colony of Pennsylvania and other colonies as well. My son William

was appointed a royal governor of the state of or that then the colony not quite yet the state of New Jersey and I always suspected that he was given this royal post as a means of making me a little more pliable in negotiations of course that did not succeed. As the colonies moved closer and closer towards declaring our independence from England and as our colonies grew farther apart from the motherland my own relationship with William grew apart at about the same rate. He remained a loyalist loyal to the King in spite of the injustices the burning of houses in the New York and other places that the British red coats were guilty of my son William remained loyal to the crown as I grew more and more apart of the revolutionary movement. It is true that we tried to heal

our breach and on two occasions but I wrote him that despite our political differences there are obligations that a son has that transcends politics and I was greatly disappointed in William. I think I will I think I will let it go at that. Thank you Dr. Franklin. Dr. Franklin we have just a few more questions. The first question is why did you favor a unicameral form of government? I did indeed favor a unicameral form of government. I was always very skeptical that a bicameral legislature would ever be able to reach a consensus on anything. One of my friends had given me a sort of a freak of nature which was a small snake that had been born with two heads and I observed that if this snake wanted to

go to the creek for a drink of water and it reached a fence post and what a head wanted to go one way and the other head wanted to go the other way. It wouldn't be too long before the poor creature died of thirst and it never would get to the creek. I rather feared that a bicameral legislature would be something of the same sort. Never able to agree on anything. During the Constitutional Convention of 1787 my arguments in favor of a unicameral legislature were defeated. It was not the only defeat in my ideas during the course of those four months in the summer of 1787 and we really were forced to compromise at the end in order to reach the consensus that formed our republic. Thank you Dr.

Franklin. The next audience question is Dr. Franklin what role did you play at the Constitutional Convention? My role at the Constitutional Convention was a complicated one because I was old and I was tired. I was just a few months away from my 82nd birthday and I was in ill health to the point that I had to be carried into the convention in a sedan chair in the morning and take my seat at eleven o'clock and I had to be carried out on that same sedan chair in the afternoon but I am proud of the fact that I never missed a session. I think that I was because I was so much older than most of the the delegates to that convention. I think that I was regarded with respect and affection and that my ideas were listened to more out of veneration for the person than the

viability of the ideas. I was a conciliator by nature. I spent many days without saying a word and when I had a point to make I would often let a speech be read by someone else. I rather I rather fancied not being made the object of the attention because I lived just down the street and I had a big mulberry tree in the backyard. I often invited delegates to to come have tea with me in the garden and sit under the shade of that mulberry tree and speak of things. So it was that I was able to affect some compromises among people who in the heat of debate inside the sweltering hall itself might have held opposing views. So I think that I am pleased to have played a role in the convention and getting some

of the things that I wanted past and being gracious enough in defeat to set myself as an example when it came time to offer compromise which I did. Thank you Dr. Franklin. Dr. Franklin there's an audience member who would like to know why didn't you become president of the United States. I wasn't the president of the United States because I was I was too old. All I saw at the time was to just retire and from public life and service and retire to a little farm out in the Ohio Valley. That was that was a dream that was not to be realized but when President Washington was sworn in on April 30th of 1789 I had just 12 months to live. My health was declining greatly. I was 83

years old and I was tired from my many many years spent in the service of my country. Thank you Dr. Franklin. The last audience question is Dr. Franklin how did you train yourself to be such a lucid writer? Well I thank you for the compliment. You say that I was a lucid writer. I think that my taste for simplicity and lack of pretension in in dress in manner of living and in writing. All came from the same source and that was an instinctive affiliation with the middle class and a trust in its value and a dislike for pretension, aristocracy

and flamboyance. I got to be a decent writer the same way that anyone does and I'm sure in your time as well by writing and by reading good writers. I particularly appreciated the writings of Addison and Steel of Cloutark and the essays on doing good by that fiery Puritan orator Cotton Mather. When I was a young apprentice to my half-brother James in his print shop in Boston I spent all my day around the printed word and I set up type and was very much involved in the composing of sentences and paragraphs both for the newspaper that we got out there which was the New England current and for all manner of

written bills and deeds that we printed in our house in our printing house. So I was exposed to a good deal of writing and read everything that I could. It didn't hurt me in my writing that I loved to read as much as I did. In fact I'm sure it was the key to some of my success in writing because I imitated the style of Mr. Addison and others best I could. I remember taking some of Addison's writings when I was a young lad of 12 and 13 and I would write out a sentence or two or five and take those sentences and scramble them up put them in a drawer and come back to them a week later and try to see what the best order of those sentences would be or maybe even see if I could improve on those sentences with

a suggestion or two of my own. The fact that I loved to play with words enjoyed their usage and their meanings was always interested in language helped make me a good writer. I became interested at one point in my life in the science of phonetics, a new science at the time. I even went so far as to make some suggestions to my friend Noah Webster who was at the time undertaking a new dictionary as to which vowels were superfluous in our language and should be removed. On the other hand I suggested the addition of a few other vowels that we didn't have that I thought would make a good addition to the language. So I was always interested in the power of words and in finding just the right word to express my thought. To write well you have to write a lot and I wrote

voluminously all my life. I understand that my collected letters in your time or even though not a complete collection occupy some 38 or 39 volumes of six 700 pages each and are collected in a library of Yale University. I never I never knew that I wrote so much but I'm not surprised for I was writing continually. I recall one time when I was 79 years old and returning from France to Philadelphia and a boat. And on this ship passage four to five weeks I wrote some 50 pages a day for about three weeks on all manner of subjects. Primarily scientific but also took advantage of that time to write more chapters of my autobiography as well. So I think to answer your question my love of reading my love of the written word my imitation of other authors the

time I spent actually practicing the craft of writing my love of language all helped to make me a passable writer. You have been listening to the Thomas Jefferson Hour with a special presentation by Dr. Benjamin Franklin portrayed by humanity scholar Christopher Lowell of Colorado Springs Colorado to ask Mr. Jefferson a question or to donate nine dollars and receive a copy of today's program on CD please call one 888 458 1803 again the number is one 888 458 1803 please visit our website www.th hyphen Jefferson dot org www.th hyphen Jefferson dot org music for the Thomas Jefferson Hour was provided by Stephen Swinford of Las Vegas Nevada the Thomas Jefferson Hour is produced by high planes public radio and new enlightenment radio network a nonprofit organization dedicated to the search for truth in the tradition of

Thomas Jefferson the producer of today's program was Jane E. Quill of Reno Nevada thank you for listening and we hope you join us again next week for another entertaining historically accurate and thought provoking commentary through the eyes of Thomas Jefferson