With a malevolence which is without parallel in history, he would work
all day, and then sit up nights, and let on to be studying algebra by
the light of a smoldering fire, so that all other boys might have to do
that also, or else have Benjamin Franklin thrown up to them. Not satisfied
with these proceedings, he had a fashion of living wholly on bread and
water, and studying astronomy at meal time--a thing which has brought
affliction to millions of boys since, whose fathers had read Franklin's
pernicious biography. If it had not been for him, with his incendiary "Early to bed and
early to rise," and all that sort of foolishness, I wouldn't have
been so harried and worried and raked out of bed at such unseemly hours
when I was young. The late Franklin was well enough in his way; but it
would have looked more dignified in him to have gone on making candles
and letting other people get up when they wanted to. |
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