this time to say a word
regarding Dr. Franklin, our fellow-townsman, and a journalist who was
the Charles A. Dana of his time.

Franklin's memory will remain green when the names of the millionaires
of to-day are forgotten. Coextensive with the name of E. Rosewater of
the _Omaha Bee_ we will find that of Benjamin Franklin, whose bust sits
above the fireplace of the writer at this moment, while a large Etruscan
hornet is making a phrenological examination of same.

But let us proceed to more fully mark out the life and labors of this
remarkable man.

Benjamin Franklin, formerly of Boston, came very near being an only
child. If seventeen children had not come to bless the home of
Benjamin's parents they would have been childless. Think of getting up
in the morning and picking out your shoes and stockings from among
seventeen pairs of them!

Imagine yourself a child, gentle reader, in a family where you would be
called upon every morning to select your own cud of spruce gum from a
collection of seventeen similar cuds stuck on a window-sill! And yet
Benjamin Franklin never murmured or repined. He desired to go to sea,
and to avoid this he was apprenticed to his brother James, who was a
printer.

It is said that Franklin at once took hold of the great Archimedean
lever, and jerked it early and late in the interests of freedom.

[Illustration: THE PRINTER'S TOWEL.]

It is claimed that Franklin, at this time, invented the deadly weapon
known as the printer's towel. He found that a common crash towel could
be saturated with glue, molasses, antimony, concentrated lye, and
roller-composition, and that after a few years of time and perspiration
it would harden so that "A Constant Reader" or "Veritas" could be
stabbed with it and die soon.

Many believe that Franklin's other scientific experiments were
productive of more lasting benefit to mankind than this, but I do not
agree with them.

His paper was called the _New England Courant_. It was edited jointly by
James and Benjamin Franklin, and was started to supply a long-felt want.

Benjamin edited it a part of the time, and James a part of the time. The
idea of having two editors was not for the purpose of giving volume to
the editorial page, but it was necessary for one to run the paper while
the other was in jail.

In those days you could not sass the king, and then, when the king came
in the office the next day and stopped his paper and took out his ad.,
put it