trade in London, in 1724-26, he made the acquaintance of Dr.
Mandeville, author of the _Fable of the Bees_, at a pale-ale house in
Cheapside, called "The Horns," where the famous free-thinker presided
over a club of wits and boon companions. Though a native of Boston,
Franklin is identified with Philadelphia, whither he arrived in 1723, a
runaway 'prentice boy, "whose stock of cash consisted of a Dutch dollar
and about a shilling in copper." The description in his
_Autobiography_ of his walking up Market Street munching a loaf of
bread, and passing his future wife, standing on her father's doorstep,
has become almost as familiar as the anecdote about Whittington and his
cat.

It was in the practical sphere that Franklin was greatest, as an
originator and executor of projects for the general welfare. The list
of his public services is almost endless. He organized the
Philadelphia fire department and street cleaning service, and the
colonial postal system which grew into the United States Post Office
Department. He started the Philadelphia public library, the American
Philosophical Society, the University of Pennsylvania, and the first
American magazine, _The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle_; so
that he was almost singly the father of whatever intellectual life the
Pennsylvania colony could boast of. In 1754, when commissioners from
the colonies met at Albany, Franklin proposed a plan, which was {361}
adopted, for the union of all the colonies under one government. But
all these things, as well as his mission to England in 1757, on behalf
of the Pennsylvania Assembly in its dispute with the proprietaries; his
share in the Declaration of Independence--of which he was one of the
signers--and his residence in France as Embassador of the United
Colonies, belong to the political history of the country; to the
history of American science belong his celebrated experiments in
electricity, and his benefits to mankind in both of these departments
were aptly summed up in the famous epigram of the French statesman
Turgot:

"_Erupuit coelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis_."

Franklin's success in Europe was such as no American had yet achieved,
as few Americans since him have achieved. Hume and Voltaire were among
his acquaintances and his professed admirers. In France he was fairly
idolized, and when he died Mirabeau announced, "The genius which has
freed America and poured a flood of light over Europe has retur