Benjamin Franklin: Representative selections, with introduction, bibliograpy, and notes

1. This text uses UTF-8 (unicode) file encoding. If the apostrophes and quotation marks in this paragraph appear as garbage, you may have an incompatible browser or unavailable fonts. First, make sure that your browser’s “character set” or “file encoding” is set to Unicode (UTF-8). You may also need to change the default font. 2. The editor of the original book marked some mispelled words with [ sic ], and these have been retained as written, uncorrected. Additional words found to be mispelled have been corrected and are listed under "Spelling Corrections" at the end of this e-text. Additionally this work contains a large number of word spelling variations found to be valid in Webster's English Dictionary as well as several unverified spellings that appear multiple times, inconsistant word capitalization and hyphenation, all of which have been retained as printed. The interested reader will find an alphabetic "Word Variations" list at the end of this e-text. 3. Numbered footnotes in Sections I-VII of the Introduction have been relocated to the end of the Introduction and marked with an "i-". Lettered footnotes in the "Selections" have been relocated directly under the paragraph they pertain to. 4 Additional Transcriber's Notes are located at the end of this e-text. * AMERICAN WRITERS SERIES * HARRY HAYDEN CLARK General Editor * * AMERICAN WRITERS SERIES * Volumes of representative selections, prepared by American scholars under the general editorship of Harry Hayden Clark, University of Wisconsin. Volumes now ready are starred. American Transcendentalists , Raymond Adams, University of North Carolina * William Cullen Bryant , Tremaine McDowell, University of Minnesota * James Fenimore Cooper , Robert E. Spiller, Swarthmore College * Jonathan Edwards , Clarence H. Faust, University of Chicago, and Thomas H. Johnson, Hackley School * Ralph Waldo Emerson , Frederic I. Carpenter, Harvard University * Benjamin Franklin , Frank Luther Mott and Chester E. Jorgenson, University of Iowa * Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson , Frederick C. Prescott, Cornell University Bret Harte * Nathaniel Hawthorne , Austin Warren, Boston University Oliver Wendell Holmes , Robert Shafer, University of Cincinnati * Washington Irving , Henry A. Pochmann, Mississippi State College Henry James , Lyon Richardson, Western Reserve University Abraham Lincoln * Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Odell Shepard, Trinity College James Russell Lowell , Norman Foerster, University of Iowa, and Harry H. Clark, University of Wisconsin Herman Melville , Willard Thorp, Princeton University John Lothrop…