This week on StoryWeb: Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography.

Written over a period of 19 years, Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography tells the story of the Founding Father’s journey from obscurity to his rise as a colonial statesman. Though he played a crucial role in the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, the book goes up only to 1757, so we don’t get to witness his presence at the birth of the United States of America.

Indeed, most of the book focuses on how Franklin became a self-made man, that achievement that was prized so highly in the eighteenth century and that still fascinates us today. How did the “youngest son of the youngest son for five generations back” become a successful businessman and one of the undisputed leaders of the American colonies?

Franklin answers this question with his now-familiar story of hard work. While not quite a rags-to-riches story, Franklin’s tale is nevertheless inspiring. He literally makes himself into the man he wants to be – and does so (he claims) with a chart of thirteen virtues he would like to master. Second to last among them is chastity, a trait we can surely say he never mastered – and last among them, almost as a tongue-in-cheek nod to his larger-than-life personality, is humility. Franklin’s Autobiography is perhaps the first self-help book ever written in America, but I have always wondered how seriously we are to take Franklin’s method of checking off moral qualities on a chart. Maybe he did do this, but then again maybe Franklin is just laughing at the whole eighteenth-century, Age-of-Enlightenment notion that someone can intentionally become the person he wants to be.

Without a doubt, my favorite passage in the book is the one that describes Franklin’s first arrival in Philadelphia as a young man come to seek his fortune. Raised in Boston – the city perhaps most associated with America’s initial settling but now become a staid place of establishment, Franklin runs away from his tyrannical father and brother and heads to Philadelphia, an up-and-coming city emerging as the center of the American colonies.

Franklin’s tale of arriving in Philadelphia is both humorous and poignant, humorous because Franklin pokes fun at the “awkward, ridiculous appearance” he made and poignant because we see this young man who would become the great Founding Father at the very start of his illustrious career.

Ben Franklin’s Autobiography isn’t curl-up-with-a-good-book reading, but if you like history, you just might enjoy this book. You can read the book online or buy an inexpensive hard copy. If you want to learn more about Franklin and the book, check out the C-SPAN American Writers special about Autobiography or Annenberg Learner’s episode on the book. To see the links to these resources, visit www.thestoryweb.com/franklin.

Listen now as I read from Chapter III, “Arrival in Philadelphia.”

I have been the more particular in this description of my journey, and shall be so of my first entry into that city, that you may in your mind compare such unlikely beginnings with the figure I have since made there. I was in my working dress, my best clothes being to come round by sea. I was dirty from my journey; my pockets were stuff'd out with shirts and stockings, and I knew no soul nor where to look for lodging. I was fatigued with traveling, rowing, and want of rest, I was very hungry; and my whole stock of cash consisted of a Dutch dollar, and about a shilling in copper. The latter I gave the people of the boat for my passage, who at first refus'd it, on account of my rowing; but I insisted on their taking it. A man being sometimes more generous when he has but a little money than when he has plenty, perhaps thro' fear of being thought to have but little.

Then I walked up the street, gazing about till near the market-house I met a boy with bread. I had made many a meal on bread, and, inquiring where he got it, I went immediately to the baker's he directed me to, in Second-street, and ask'd for bisket, intending such as we had in Boston; but they, it seems, were not made in Philadelphia. Then I asked for a three-penny loaf, and was told they had none such. So not considering or knowing the difference of money, and the greater cheapness nor the names of his bread, I bade him give me three-penny worth of any sort. He gave me, accordingly, three great puffy rolls. I was surpris'd at the quantity, but took it, and, having no room in my pockets, walk'd off with a roll under each arm, and eating the other. Thus I went up Market-street as far as Fourth-street, passing by the door of Mr. Read, my future wife's father; when she, standing at the door, saw me, and thought I made, as I certainly did, a most awkward, ridiculous appearance. Then I turned and went down Chestnut-street and part of Walnut-street, eating my roll all the way, and, coming round, found myself again at Market-street wharf, near the boat I came in, to which I went for a draught of the river water; and, being filled with one of my rolls, gave the other two to a woman and her child that came down the river in the boat with us, and were waiting to go farther.

Thus refreshed, I walked again up the street, which by this time had many clean-dressed people in it, who were all walking the same way. I joined them, and thereby was led into the great meeting-house of the Quakers near the market. I sat down among them, and, after looking round awhile and hearing nothing said, being very drowsy thro' labour and want of rest the preceding night, I fell fast asleep, and continu'd so till the meeting broke up, when one was kind enough to rouse me. This was, therefore, the first house I was in, or slept in, in Philadelphia.