A Profile Of Ben Franklin - The First American

Benjamin Franklin: City Slicker

Franklin also exhibited psychological skills far beyond any mere country bumpkin’s. Seeking a second term as clerk, for instance, he was opposed by a rich and talented new assembly member who proposed a different candidate for the post. Franklin won the job, but he didn’t like the threat that the member would pose to his pocketbook in the future. Rather than gaining the man’s favor by paying servile respect, however, Franklin wrote a note asking to borrow “a certain very scarce and curious book” that he knew the rich man owned. The man sent the book immediately. Franklin read it and returned it a week later with another note, this one “expressing strongly” his “sense of the favor.” The assemblyman “ever afterwards manifested a readiness” to serve Franklin and remained a lifelong friend. It was another instance, Franklin believed, of the truth that “he that hath once done you a Kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.” Now that’s city slick.