🪁The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

As far as I read: a life can be worked on like a trade. Franklin treats his own character the way a printer treats a forme of type, as something set by hand, proofed and corrected. He picks thirteen virtues, gives his attention to one a week, marks every lapse in a small ruled book and begins the course again when it ends. He never claims to have arrived, and says plainly that the attempt left him better and happier than he would otherwise have been.

Half a thesis, because half a book is what I read. The mechanism is a feedback loop kept in pencil, and my own conclusion about it is 💎 A scorecard helps until it becomes the goal.

• Started on 26 May, the Monday after Lisbon. Abandoned on 21 June, about halfway, in Mum's garden in Averley. No finish date, because there was no finish.
• Three stars for the half I read. The young printer running away to Philadelphia is good company. The older man listing his civic improvements is a committee report.
• I kept one part: the thirteen virtues and the little book of marks. Notes in 📖 Franklin on the thirteen virtues, and the three weeks I tried it myself are in 🧪 Franklin's chart for one value a week.
• Permission to stop came from Bacon: 💬 Some books are to be tasted. This one was tasted.
• It does not count towards the sixteen. One abandoned book in a year is a healthier number than none. More about the man in 🏛️ Benjamin Franklin.
• Two of his lines are kept as quote notes: 💬 I conceiv'd the bold and arduous project, from the part I read, and 💬 Well done is better than well said, which is from the almanack and not from this book. The note says so.