Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/18

14 that year to be the head of it, and farther was removed into the next class above it in order to go with that into the third at the end of the year. But my father, in the meantime, from a view of the expense of a college education, which having so large a family he could not well afford, and the mean living many so educated were afterwards able to obtain reasons that he gave to his friends in my hearing altered his first intention, took me from the grammar-school, and sent me to a school for writing and arithmetic, kept by a then famous man, Mr. George Brownell, very successful in his profession, generally, and that by mild, encouraging methods. Under him I acquired fair writing pretty soon; but I failed in the arithmetic, and made no progress in it. At ten years old I was taken home to assist my father in his business, which was that of a tallow chandler and sope-boiler.

This is the brief but expressive story of Franklin's own education, and how Harvard came to lose another matriculant and an alumnus whose name would have adorned its long roll. However, in 1753, it conferred on him the honor of Magister Artium, as had Yale in the same year, and William and Mary in 1756. To these degrees higher collegiate honors were bestowed on the man who though not a collegian was the creator of a university, as St. Andrews in 1759 made him Juris Utriusque Doctor, and Oxford in 1762 enrolled him as Juris Civilis Doctor. And yet the child of his own creation never enrolled his name as the possessor of one of its Degrees.

For two years he continued thus employed in his father's