re
proved its necessity.

At the age of eight years, Benjamin entered the Boston Grammar School.
His progress was very rapid, and at the close of the year he was at
the head of his class. The father had hoped to give his promising boy
a liberal education; but his large family and straitened circumstances
rendered it necessary for him to abandon the plan. At the age of ten
years his school life was completed, and he was taken into his
father's shop to run of errands, and to attend to the details of
candle-making, cutting wicks, filling moulds, and waiting upon
customers. He could write a good hand, could read fluently, could
express himself with ease on paper, but in all arithmetical studies
was very backward.

There is scarcely any sport which has such a charm for boys as
swimming. Franklin excelled all his companions. It is reported that
his skill was wonderful; and that at any time between his twelfth and
sixtieth year, he could with ease have swum across the Hellespont. In
his earliest years, in all his amusements and employments, his
inventive genius was at work in searching out expedients. To
facilitate rapidity in swimming he formed two oval pallets, much
resembling those used by painters, about ten inches long, and six
broad. A hole was cut for the thumb and they were bound fast to the
palm of the hand. Sandals of a somewhat similar construction were
bound to the soles of the feet. With these appliances Franklin found
that he could swim more rapidly, but his wrists soon became greatly
fatigued. The sandals also he found of little avail, as in swimming,
the propelling stroke is partly given by the inside of the feet and
ankles, and not entirely by the soles of the feet.

In the vicinity of Boston there was a pond a mile wide. Franklin made
a large paper kite, and when the wind blew strongly across the pond,
he raised it, and entering the water and throwing himself upon his
back was borne rapidly to the opposite shore. "The motion," he says,
"was exceedingly agreeable." A boy carried his clothes around.
Subsequently he wrote to M. Dubourg,

"I have never since that time practiced this singular mode
of swimming; though I think it not impossible to cross in
this manner from Dover to Calais. The packet boat, however,
is still preferable."[1]

[Footnote 1: Sparks' Life and Works of Franklin, Vol. 6, p. 291.]

The taste for reading of this wonderful boy was insatiable. He had
access, compara