James Otis, Patrick Henry, Alexander Hamilton, and John
Jay (p. 71) were lawyers. Life was becoming more diversified, and there
were avenues other than theology attractive to the educated man. At the
same time, we must remember that the clergy have never ceased to be a
mighty power in American life. They were not silent or uninfluential during
the Revolution. Soon after the battle of Bunker Hill, John Adams wrote from
Philadelphia to his wife in Boston, asking, "Does Mr. Wibird preach against
oppression and other cardinal vices of the time? Tell him the clergy here
of every denomination, not excepting the Episcopalian, thunder and lighten
every Sabbath."
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, 1706-1790
[Illustration: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN]
AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND LIFE.--Franklin's _Autobiography_ stands first among
works of its kind in American literature. The young person who does not
read it misses both profit and entertainment. Some critics have called it
"the equal of Robinson Crusoe, one of the few everlasting books in the
English language." In this small volume, begun in 1771, Franklin tells us
that he was born in Boston in 1706, one of the seventeen children of a poor
tallow chandler, that his branch of the Franklin family had lived for three
hundred years or more in the village of Ecton, Northamptonshire, where the
head of the family, in Queen Mary's reign, read from an English _Bible_
concealed under a stool, while a child watched for the coming of the
officers.
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