he was calm, graceful, natural, and attractive, his voice was not loud, but clear and manly. His preaching was remarkable for unction, compactness, and transparency of style, clear and sharply defined ideas, power over the conscience, impressiveness and authority."
There was the trained body forever in condition; and the fresh complexion that always means sound health; while the life of ceaseless activity, largely out-of-doors, kept him ever ready for each demand of his high calling. And how gladly he did his work may be told from the fact that, when they were celebrating the Wesley Centennial in 1891, great stress was laid upon the fact that this little man had almost more than anything else taught the world "the Gospel of Cheerfulness."
FRANKLIN (1706–1790)
This Yankee tallow-chandler's son, born at Boston, 1706; at twelve a printer's devil to his step-brother, and a fair compositor; devouring every book he could find even at that age, including
Locke on the
Human Understanding; contributing both poetry and prose anonymously to his brother's newspaper; quarrelling with, leaving him, and going to Philadelphia without his family's knowledge; a printer there; then proprietor and editor of the
Popular Gazette; at twenty-six author of
Poor Richard's Almanac, which was afterwards published in various languages, and is extant to-day; the same year founding a public library, the first in that city; a few years later starting a fire department; then the first fire-insurance company; assistant postmaster of Philadelphia, sent to Europe for the Pennsylvania Assembly, and doing his work so well that Massachusetts, Maryland, and Georgia appointed him their English agent; at forty-six discovering the identity of electricity with lightning, and introducing lightning-rods; again sent to England by the Assembly; there opposing the
Stamp Act, and examined at the bar of the House of Commons when its repeal was proposed; elected a delegate to Congress in 1775; doing his utmost to have a declaration of independence; arch-rebel throughout the Revolutionary War; in 1776 appointed Minister to France,
