The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Bonus:
Can I interest you in the whole thing?
Summary:
Commentary: Starting with The Autobiography for a couple reasons. First, it's in English, so I don't have to worry about translations. Second, I like it. Third, it's the first thing in T5FSOB. It was also the first selection in 15MAD so there's some fun alignment there. I grabbed the Standard Ebooks version, which is definitely easier to paste into the doc than the Gutenberg one. I've already read/blogged a couple chunks of this, but I'm just gonna start at the beginning and charge through.
Most of the intro was in 15MAD (though not as the first reading), so I think I've said much the same before. I appreciate Franklin wanting to leave his life story for his son. I don't have a ton of info about my family, so I would appreciate if my parents (who aren't dead) would leave something like that. I like that he emphasizes how happy (technically felicity) he is. He's not (bragging about being) rich, famous, etc. He just loves his life.
Indeed, I scarce ever heard or saw the introductory words, “Without vanity I may say,” etc., but some vain thing immediately followed.
Is this the origin of "Whenever someone says..."?
He died in 1702, January 6, old style, just four years to a day before I was born.
This is one of those weird things I learned about when I started this whole thing. For a while when countries were transitioning between the Julian and Gregorian calendars people would write the dates both ways. Neat.
The phrase "bred to x" for a profession is interesting. I guess it means passed down through the family, since some people are noted as not bred to their profession.
Things I learned: Emmet is an old word for Ant, and Ætat means "aged".
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