"Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Franklin Benjamin)

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY
1706-1757

TWYFORD, at the Bishop of St. Asaph's,<0> 1771.

<0> The country-seat of Bishop Shipley, the good bishop,
as Dr. Franklin used to style him.--B.

DEAR SON: I have ever had pleasure in obtaining any little
anecdotes of my ancestors. You may remember the inquiries I made
among the remains of my relations when you were with me in England,
and the journey I undertook for that purpose. Imagining it may be
equally agreeable to<1> you to know the circumstances of my life,
many of which you are yet unacquainted with, and expecting the enjoyment
of a week's uninterrupted leisure in my present country retirement,
I sit down to write them for you. To which I have besides some
other inducements. Having emerged from the poverty and obscurity
in which I was born and bred, to a state of affluence and some
degree of reputation in the world, and having gone so far through
life with a considerable share of felicity, the conducing means
I made use of, which with the blessing of God so well succeeded,
my posterity may like to know, as they may find some of them
suitable to their own situations, and therefore fit to be imitated.

<1> After the words "agreeable to" the words "some of" were
interlined and afterward effaced.--B.

That felicity, when I reflected on it, has induced me sometimes
to say, that were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection
to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking
the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults
of the first. So I might, besides correcting the faults, change some
sinister accidents and events of it for others more favorable.
But though this were denied, I should still accept the offer.
Since such a repetition is not to be expected, the next thing
most like living one's life over again seems to be a recollection
of that life, and to make that recollection as durable as possible
by putting it down in writing.

Hereby, too, I shall indulge the inclination so natural in old men,
to be talking of themselves and their own past actions; and I shall
indulge it without being tiresome to others, who, through respect
to age, might conceive themselves obliged to give me a hearing,
since this may be read or not as any one pleases. And, lastly (I may