“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
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.
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