Daily Journal #20

From the very opening of the poem “Autumn” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, it is obvious that it is a definite writing of the Romanticism time period. The “romantics” are known to write a lot about nature and be very descriptive in doing so. Seeing how this is a whole poem describing in a very poetic way.

The opening sentence, “Thou comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain, with banners, by great gales incessant fanned, brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand, and stately oxen harnessed to thy wain!” (Longfellow: Lines 1-4). The way that he talks about autumn makes it seem like autumn is a tangible thing; more of a human being or some kind of spirit rather than just a season.

Longfellow goes on to praise Autumn of how it answers the prayers of the farmers; “Thy steps are by the farmer’s prayers attended” (Longfellow: Line 11). This is also a characteristic of the Romanticism time period because they tended to show the “good” side of nature, the side that nourishes and protects the people and animals of the earth.

Longfellow also compares the sheaves of grain that the farmers have harvested to “flames upon the altar!” (Longfellow: Line 12). This shows how the authors, at least Henry Longfellow, in the Romanticism time period liked to raise up the virtues of hard work that the farmers of America show. The frequent use of the exclamation points shows that the author is very emotional about the subject. This excitedness about nature is a very token characteristic of the romanticism period.

The imagery that Longfellow uses in further personifying autumn in lines five through nine give the reader that Longfellow felt that he had a very close relationship with nature, and how he saw nature during autumn: “Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne, upon thy bridge of gold; thy royal hand outstretched with benedictions o’er the land, blessing the farms through all thy vast domain! Thy shield is the red harvest moon.”

Also, the fact that the speaker of the poem is talking directly to nature makes the reader feel closer to nature because they are able to talk to it, not just talk about it.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. The Complete Poetical Works, ed. by Horace E. Scudder. Boston and New 

York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1893; Bartleby.com, 2011.

Reflection: Pegasus in Pound & Twilight

The two poems that I picked for this reflection blog were “Twilight” and “Pegasus in Pound,” both of which were written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. They were both part of The Seaside and the Fireside. The reason why I picked “Pegasus in Pound” was because I have a liking to Greek mythology, and Pegasus was the famed winged horse made by Poseidon.

At first, “Pegasus in Pound” seems to be talking about an actual winged horse being found astray, chained up to be sold, and later breaking out in the middle of the night. But under closer inspection and by revelation to a deeper meaning, I have found such meaning. I personally believe that the Pegasus in this instance is referring to a poet’s poems and other works. In line 3 and 4, the author says “In the golden prime of morning, strayed the poet’s winged steed” (Longfellow 3-4). When looked at in pair with the later lines about how the Pegasus escaped, and all of the townspeople wondered where it went. It talks of how nobody gave the Pegasus bedding or any other things such as that, and when the Pegasus was gone, there was a spring that flowed forever after that which nourished and calmed the people. The last bit leaves me to think that Longfellow was talking about how most of the time, when poets (and the same could be said for most artists) are alive, they do not get that much attention, but their works they leave behind are enjoyed by the people of the future. It includes many Romanticism characteristics, from the title, to the descriptiveness about nature in the beginning, to the rooster Alectryon, who was also from Greek mythology.


Twilight is talking about how during a storm, a fisherman’s child watches the storm in interest because of how wild the storm is, and how the mother is pacing the house in worry because the same storm that interests the child makes the mother / wife worry about her husband, who is most likely out fishing during the storm. The very descriptive nature and talking of death is very much a characteristic of Romanticism writing style.


One thing that both of these poems both have in common is that they both deal with death. “Pegasus in pound” talks of how it seems that only when a great poet dies, even though his works were out there when he was still living, personified by a Pegasus, do his works become famous and only then do people realize how good and soothing they are, like a “fount unfailing” that “gladdens the whole region round” and “soothes them with its sound” (Longfellow Pegasus 66-70). The theme of death in “Twilight” is very obvious, both in the name, which is often associated with death and other “dark” things and how storms and fisherman usually do not do each other well.


In a short biography of Longfellow, I saw that Longfellow was named after his uncle, who was in the Navy and died on board the Intrepid, and I thought that it may be of some connection to "Twilight" because it is also about a man out at sea, possibly dead, like his uncle (Oaks 2). I also saw that Longfellow learned both Greek and Latin, which might have attributed to his liking of mythology exemplified in "Pegasus in Pound" (Oak 2)



Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. "Pegasus in Pound - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)." Books & Literature Classics. Web. 14 Dec. 2011.



Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. "Twilight - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)."Books &

Literature Classics. Web. 14 Dec. 2011.


Oakes, Elizabeth H. "Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth."American Writers, American Biographies. New York:

Facts On File, Inc., 2004.Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.

Reflection: Old Ironsides

The poem that I chose to analyze for this reflection blog was Oliver Wendell Holmes’ “Old Ironsides.” The reason that I chose this particular poem was because it was a very good example of the new writing style of the Romanticism period. It was also easy to comprehend and short, but even though it is short, it is all that is needed to get the point that Holmes was trying to make across.

First off, the poem “Old Ironsides” is about the Revolutionary War warship the USS Constitution. Even though it was not actually made out of iron, it got the name because “the cannonballs of its heyday tended to bounce off its hardwoods with little effect” (Huff 2). Huff also brings up a good point, which is that “the name for the title of this poem not only served as a reminder of the ship’s service record but also invested the ship with a personality” (Huff 2). This idea of personification is one of the characteristics of the Romanticism period. The poem calls for the ship to be set to sea for a burial rather than it being picked apart for its materials.

Even though this is a very short poem, it has many places where it shows that it is definitely a work of the Romanticism period. The first place is where Holmes says “Beneath it rung the battle shout, and burst the cannon’s roar;—the meteor of the ocean air shall sweep the clouds no more.” This passage is a good example of how much detail they went into in their literary works of the time. Also, I noticed that it is evident that the Rationalism period somewhat influenced this poem because Holmes is not thinking completely emotional because he acknowledges the fact that the USS Constitution is not going to sail any more, instead of just being completely irrational.

Writers of the Romanticism period also wrote about the values of patriotism, which is exemplified in lines 9 through 16; “Her deck, once red with heroes’ blood, where knelt the vanquished foe, when winds were hurrying o’er the flood, and waves were white below, no more shall feel the victor’s tread, or know the conquered knee” ( Holmes 9-16 ). Writers of this time period were also known to include various allusions and references to mythology, which Holmes does when he says “The harpies of the shore shall pluck the eagle of the sea!” and “And give her to the god of storms, the lightning and the gale!” ( Lines 17-18 and 23-24 ).

Holmes was trying to convince people to see the historical and sentimental significance in the ship, and he is doing a very good job of if because the way that he writes it makes people, including myself, get passionate about it, even if they have never heard of it before this poem.

Also, as Huff pointed out in his analysis of the poem, Holmes decides to relate the ship to an eagle in line 18, which is another very patriotic symbol, even to this day.


Holmes, Oliver Wendell. "Old Ironsides, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1885." Ibiblio - The Public's Library and Digital Archive. Web. 14 Dec. 2011.


Huff, Randall. "'Old Ironsides'." The Facts On File Companion to American Poetry, vol. 1. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.

Reflection: Irving

Even though both “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Devil and Tom Walker” were both written by the same person, Washington Irving, they both sound like they could have potentially been written by two different people, just two people in the same writing period. While they were both very descriptive, they seemed to be written by two different authors with different themes they liked to focus on.

“Rip Van Winkle” was mainly about a very likable man living in New York before the Revolutionary War who was always being nagged by his wife because he liked to spend more time helping other people rather than working on his own farm, which was a sad excuse for a farm. It was basically reduced to a small garden due to his neglect. One day, after once again being nagged by his wife, he decided to get away by going out for a hunt. While out in the forest, he meets a stranger carrying a keg of liquor, and after helping him carry it where the man was going, he encounters a group of dwarves bowling. He drinks quite a bit of the liquor, and passes out. When he wakes up and walks back into town, he eventually, after some confusion, discovers that he has been asleep for over twenty years. He is disheartened to find that all of the friends he had in the town are now dead, but then he is relieved at the revelation that his wife is also dead, so he can now live in peace, which is what he goes on to do.

Now there is “The Devil and Tom Walker,” which is a story of a man seeking to make a quick buck who deals with the Devil. The riches that he gains from the Devil goes into his new business, in which he gives out loans with obscenely large interest rates, and when a customer accuses Tom of making a lot of money off of him Tom replies with “The Devil take me if I made a farthing” ( Irving 249 ). At this point, the Devil shows up and takes Tom Walker away.

Some of the similarities between “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Devil and Tom Walker” are that they are both very descriptive, which is a definite characteristic of the Romanticism period, and they both include wives that the husbands were somewhat “happy” to get rid of. One example of the great detail that the Romantic writers go into the following passage from “The Devil and Tom Walker;” 

“They lived in a forlorn looking house that stood alone and had an air of starvation. A few straggling savin trees, emblems of sterility, grew near it; no smoke ever curled from its chimney; no traveller stopped at its door. A miserable horse, whose ribs were as articulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field where a thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of pudding stone, tantalized and balked his hunger.” (Irving 242).

On the subject of “Rip Van Winkle,” I was excited to finally read the full story because I’ve always heard about Rip and how he slept for a very long time. In his criticism/analysis of “Rip Van Winkle,” Don D’Ammassa agrees by saying “Rip Van Winkle is one of those characters whose story is so widely known that many readers feel they have read the story even if they have not.” The longevity of Irving’s story shows how the Romanticism period had a definite impact on American culture to this day.


D'Ammassa, Don. "'Rip Van Winkle'." Encyclopedia of Fantasy and Horror Fiction. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.


Irving, Washington. The Devil and Tom Walker. Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 242-250. Print.



Matthews, Brander, ed. The Short-Story: Specimens Illustrating Its Development. New York: American Book Company, 1907; Bartleby.com, 2000.

Reflection: Thanatopsis

This story is very hard to get my mind around. There seems to be many different things that Bryant is trying to get across. He starts off by talking about how having a “communion” with nature which is a token characteristic of the Romanticism period (Bryant 2). It then moves on to talk about Nature, giving it traits such as having “a voice of gladness, and a smile and eloquence of beauty.” Another trait of the Romanticism is exemplified in the first couple of lines in the poem. Bryant says “she speaks a various language; for his gayer hours she has a voice of gladness, and a smile and eloquence of beauty, and she glides into his darker musings, with a mild and healing sympathy, that steals away their sharpness, ere he is aware” (Bryant 2-8). This passage shows that Bryant thinks that Nature is more of a caring mother than a benevolent force.

The rest of the poem is where the name of the poem, which means “Thoughts on Death,” starts to show itself. Where it starts is when Bryant says

“When thoughts of the last bitter hour come like a blight over thy spirit, and sad images of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, and the breathless darkness, and the narrow house, make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart.” (Bryant 8-13)

This passage starts to turn to the subject of the poem to death and how nature shepherds us into a peaceful slumber. Bryant says that nature is there to soothe your mind when you start to think about death. He goes on to say that it makes him “sick at heart” to think about putting the body of a loved one in a coffin and putting them in their grave, or in a “narrow house” (Bryant 12). Then he goes on to talk about how one’s body becomes part of the Earth. Bryant’s view on that is that the “Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, and, lost each human trace, surrendering up thine individual being, shalt thou go to mix forever with the elements” (Bryant 22-26). He also makes a statement that shows how he holds nature in high regard; he says “To be a brother to the insensible rock, and to the sluggish clod” (Bryant 27-28).

In an analysis of Thanatopsis by Randall Huff, he agrees with me on the point that this poem is trying to show how death is universal, and therefore nothing to fear. Randal says “A turning point in the poem occurs when Nature bgins to list the various stages of man at the time of death. This roll call reinforces the poem’s theme of the universality of death.”

Another way to tell that this poem is showing how death is universal is when it starts talking about how when you die, you are joining everybody else that has died in your grave. “Thou shalt lie down with patriarchs of the infant world,—with kings, the powerful of the earth,—the wise, the good, fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, all in one mighty sepulcher” (Bryant 33-37).


Huff, Randall. "'Thanatopsis'." The Facts On File Companion to American Poetry, vol. 1. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.


Lounsbury, Thomas R., ed. Yale Book of American Verse. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1912; Bartleby.com, 1999.

Daily Journal #19

The cycle of life and death is a very important topic for humans. Peoples of the past have always been fascinated by the idea of death, and I have a feeling that it will continue to interest people for the rest of our existence. Death is one of the only things that we can not research in any way. We can see the physical effects after someone has died, but when a person dies, only they know what death is really like, and by then, it is too late for them to prove or disprove any theory for the people still living. Different religions have tried to predict what happens after a person dies. Christians think that there is a soul and that it goes either to heaven or hell, depending on how the person acted in their life. Then there are religions like Hinduism that teach that the soul of any living thing gets reincarnated into another living being in a cycle until the soul is “good” enough to enter nirvana, their version of heaven. Then of course there are atheists, which believe that nothing happens after you die, there is no soul or any kind of spiritual afterlife. Most atheists are scientists who do not see any proof that there is a soul or afterlife.

In any instance, people are fascinated with the idea of death. Most are scared of it because it presents a situation that we have no control over; it happens to everybody and there is no way to escape it. The fact that nobody knows for sure whether or not there is an afterlife or not also adds to the fear people feel when they think about death.

In my personal opinion, I think that people should not concentrate so much on the differences between their beliefs and just live life to make it better for yourself, everybody else that is currently alive, and for the people that come after us.

Reflection: Fireside Poets

The poets and writers of the Romanticism period in American literature are definitely different in the style in which they write their stories or poems. The Puritan writers during the great awakening focused mostly on how God had done something in their lives or about how God had affected something that had happened in the world, basically no matter how bad or good it was, it was always God’s doing.

Then, when the time came closer to the American Revolutionary War, people like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and Patrick Henry. These new thinkers brought new religious ideas like Deism, and they also brought the writing style of Rationalism into popularity. They focused more upon rational thought and facts rather than religious explanations.

Then the Fireside Poets and their Romantic writing style came along. These poets were smart people like the writers if the Rationalism period, but they were not focused so much on facts and things about learning. They focused more on things like nature and emotions. They wrote about the values that people should have. Most of these values were ones that they took from ordinary people. Values like courage, patriotism, loving nature, working hard and respecting the various members of one’s family. These values were thought to be what people should strive to attain.

The best way, I think, to exemplify the differences between the three writing styles would be to present a situation and show what each style of writer would write about it.

The first situation that would show the differences in the writing styles would be when the United States was going to scrap out the USS Constitution for the iron in its hull. The Puritan would most likely write about how it should be destroyed because of all the lives it took in the Revolutionary War. They might say that God had told them to destroy it for some reason. The Rationalism writer would probably support the idea of scraping the war ship because it would be useful for the country if they could use the iron in the ship because the ship was no longer needed. Then there’s the Romantic writer, Oliver Wendell Holmes, who wrote about the USS Constitution. He said that it should not be scraped in his poem Old Ironsides. He talks of how it was a very good ship and it felt the knee of many “vanquished foes” (Holmes 10). He goes on to say that it would be “better that her shattered hulk should sink beneath the wave” than be scraped for her metal (Holmes 17). This shows that even though there is no more need for the ship, they should not scrap it for the metal because it was such an important war ship and that “her thunders shook the mighty deep, and there should be her grave” (Holmes 19-20). It also says that “The harpies of the shore shall pluck the eagle of the sea!” (Holmes 15-16). This both shows that poets of the Romanticism period included mythology (harpies) and that they disliked the Rationalists by calling them harpies and calling the ship an eagle.

Holmes, Oliver. Old Ironsides. Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 211. Print.

Daily Journal #18

The perfect autumn day would be the best day in the year, better than the best spring day, better than the best summer day, and most definitely better than the best winter day. It would be around seventy degrees outside, but it would feel a little bit colder due to the light breeze sweeping through the forests. This little bit of wind would be enough to kick up the rustling leaves on the ground. You would be able to walk outside and hear the distant sounds of someone using a leaf blower to round up the fluttering leaves into a pile so that his children could play in them. You could smell the distinct smell of a fire burning old logs for a bonfire. You could also smell, mixed in with the light smoke, a stronger smell of a charcoal fire; someone is starting up a family cookout. You could hear dogs barking and children laughing as they played fetch and the children jumping into the piles of leaves that their fathers had made them shortly before. You could hear the rustling of the dead leaves still on the trees as the tops of the trees swayed with the wind. Even with all of the noises and the smells, it still feels calm and serene. You can almost feel the trees preparing for their long slumber through the cold and harsh winter, but they do not seem to resent it nor fight it, they just accept it as the way things go. You can also see, in the trees and on the ground, the various animals who are also preparing for the winter. The squirrels are collecting and hiding their acorns and they are also building their new houses in the trees for their families. The flocks upon flocks are flying south to escape the cold clutches of winters grip, and we are bundling up and watching everything around us happen in quiet attentiveness.

Daily Journal #17

There have many times that I can remember where I bonded with nature. When I was a bit younger, maybe somewhere back in the early 2000’s, I was in the boy scouts. As you probably already know, boy scouts go out all the time to go camping and go hiking and things like that. The main point of doing those things was that we were able to bond with nature and see the beauty in just natual, untoughed nature.

We went camping all the time at different places. I enjoyed camping very much because it gave me a chance to relax and enjoy the simple thing in life. Nature has a very calming effect, and it is hard not to feel bonded to nature when you are sleeping outside. I think that this has to do with people in the modern world connecting sleeping outside or in tents with people who came before us, like the Native Americans. Most people, or at least it seems like most people do this, connect the Native Americans and people like them to having a very deep and spiritual connection with nature. Their religions were based off of nature and they used it for everything they wanted and needed. They tried to be as nice as possible to it because they realized the importance of trying to keep nature as pure as possible. Then the Europeans came along and we started to tear down forests to make way for our cities. Now, when the forests of the world and the untouched wilderness’ dwindling, people are trying to hold on to the last bit of true nature that we still have.

The writers of the romanticism period could see the kind of path that we were going down and they wanted to stop it before it progressed too far, but now it is obvious that it did not go as they had wanted.

Daily Journal #16

There are many different kinds of media available to people in modern society due to the fact that almost everybody now has computers. This fact opens up many different channels through which people can communicate with other people. It used to be that people separated by great distances could not communicate other than letters or a phone call, but now, with the help of computers, there are now many different kinds of long distance communication that greatly improve efficiency.

One of the most popular ways that people communicate now is through text messaging each other. If they have a question they need to ask their research partner, they just text them and they get a response right away. Another very useful tool and one that is increasing in popularity is skype, or any kind of web cam chatting program. This allows people to meet face to face, no matter how far apart they are, as long as they both have computers. They can talk and chat, which allows the exchange of ideas to flow faster, and they can also send each other links to websites that would be helpful with their project or they could send them a document like a powerpoint presentation or a word document so that the other person gets it right away, not just when they check their email next.

I think that advances in technology have expanded the area that people that someone would be able to work with. If there were a person in your research group in England, it would be no problem. You could communicate with them as if they were your next door neighbor. This project on Franklin’s virtues will let us get a taste of what we might have to do once we get into college and we will be prepared and skilled at communicating efficiently with people over a long distance.

Reflection: The Character of Franklin

In the first lines of Henry T. Tuckerman’s “The Character of Benjamin Franklin,” Tuckerman says

“Sixty – six years have elapsed since the mortal remains of Benjamin Franklin were placed beneath a tablet in the Friends’ Cemetery in Philadelphia; the granite obelisk which marks the last resting-place of his parents is a familiar object to all who walk the streets of his native city; but these graves, thus humbly designated, were, until a few days since, the only visible monuments of a name as illustrious as it was endeared.” 

The first phrase of “mortal remains of Benjamin Franklin” gives the sense that Henry T. Tuckerman liked Benjamin Franklin because he the word using the phrase “mortal remains” instead of just saying “Benjamin Franklin was buried.” It gives the reader the sense that Henry Tuckerman thinks that Benjamin Franklin’s body may have been buried, but his ideas, his legacy, lives on. It is also clear that Tuckerman admires Ben Franklin because at the end of the quote he says “a name as illustrious as it was endeared.”
He follows up that passage with

“Its fame, however, had become so thoroughly identified with American institutions and life, that an artistic memorial is far more important as a tribute of gratitude and reverence, than as a method of keeping his example before our minds or his image in our hearts.” 

It sounds to me that this guy Tuckerman has a crush on Franklin. In the very first paragraph of his work, he has already talked about how much of a great example Ben Franklin was; how important and loved he was in American society. It is easy to see why though; Ben Franklin was one of the most influential people of the time period. He had his hands in things from the French helping the Americans in the Revolutionary War, to the writing of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He was like a more popular, more politically important Steve Jobs.

In Franklin’s autobiography, he says tells the story of how a man once wanted his axe as shiny as the edge was, so the blacksmith said he would do it if the man would turn the grinding wheel (Franklin 158). It took a very long time to even start making the axe shiny, and the man was exhausted and when the blacksmith told him to keep going because the axe was only speckled, the man replied “Yes, but I think I like a speckled axe best.” Franklin compared the story to virtues because 

“this may have been the case with many, who, having for want of some such means as I employed found the difficulty of obtaining good and breaking bad habits in other points of vice and virtue, have given up the struggle, and concluded that ‘a speckled axe is best.’" (Franklin 158) 

I think that the main thing that Franklin took away from this was humbleness. He saw that it is very hard to keep a strict moral life, and he says on page 159,

“I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavor, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been, if I had not attempted it.”

Bloom, Harold, ed. "The Character of Franklin." Benjamin Franklin, Classic Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2008. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.


Franklin, Benjamin, and Leonard Woods Labaree. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. New Haven: Yale UP, 1964. Print.

Daily Journal #15

There are many problems that arise when working with people over a long distance. It will be a challenge working with the kids from Farmington for our Franklin virtue project. There is a possibility for many different kinds of communication issues.

There was this one project in my freshman year in introduction to engineering taught by Mr. Andrew Stevenson (I miss him). We were tasked with working with another school, whose name escapes me at the moment, in creating a new kind of locker shelf. We had to discuss different ideas that we thought would work, decide what we wanted to do, and then we had to come up with our final idea. One person in our group had to draw up our final product in Autodesk Inventor and then we had to have a final project where we presented it to our classes. This project is very similar to the one that we are doing now because we have to collaborate with another school over using any kind of media that we could.

Also, let’s be honest, you and I both know that I am turning this blog post in late, and I apologize. One good thing about doing this particular blog late is that I now know what kind of problems that arose during my project. The only real problem that I noticed was that some people did not check their emails that often, so it was hard to stay in touch with them the entire time. One of the best ways that I found to stay in touch with most of my group members was facebook. Whether it is a good thing or not, people tend to check their facebook all the time. If it is somewhere in plain sight, it is usually the best way to communicate with people, which is now facebook or some other kind of social media.

Daily Journal #14

If I were alive during Franklin’s time period, it would be much different than what my life is like now. There was no indoor plumbing, cars, or electricity. If I were to be alive during the time period I would want to be the apprentice of Benjamin Franklin. This is because I am the type of person that likes science, and Benjamin Franklin was a very notable scholar and inventor. He invented many things from a popular stove to lightning rods. He also just seems like a very enjoyable person to be around. From his writing, I can tell that he is not that mean of a person and he has a good sense of humor, which would make it easier to be his apprentice.

My typical day would probably be getting up early (because it seems to me that everybody got up early then, then I would go to school. I think that if Benjamin Franklin were to actually have an apprentice, I would think that he would want one that could read, write, and one that would be good at problem solving as to help Benjamin when he needed some help on something. After getting out of school, I would go help Benjamin Franklin at his printing house for the remainder of my day, except for some time to go home and study what I learned in school today.

It is hard to imagine what life was like back then. To us, it seems very strange, but to them, it seems perfectly normal; they do not know any other life than the one that they were living then. I bet if they came to the future, to our time, they would think it was just as weird as we think theirs is. It is all about the perspective.