1732 Publishes the first number of "Poor Richard's Almanac" under the pseudonym of "Richard Saunders." The Almanac, which continued for twenty-five years to_contain his witty, worldly-wise sayings, played a very large part in bringing together and molding the American character which was at that time made up of so many diverse and scattered types.

1733 Begins to study French, Italian, Spanish, and Latin.

1736 Chosen clerk of the General Assembly; forms the Union Fire Company of Philadelphia.

1737 Elected to the Assembly; appointed Deputy PostmasterGeneral; plans a city police.

1742 Invents the open, or "Franklin," stove.

1743 Proposes a plan for an Academy, which is adopted 1749 and develops into the University of Pennsylvania.

1744 Establishes the American Philosophical Society.

1746 Publishes a pamphlet, "Plain Truth," on the necessity for disciplined defense, and forms a military company; begins electrical experiments.

1748 Sells out his printing business; is appointed on the Commission of the Peace, chosen to the Common Council, and to the Assembly.

1749 Appointed a Commissioner to trade with the Indians.

1751 Aids in founding a hospital.

1752 Experiments with a kite and discovers that lightning is an electrical discharge.

1753 Awarded the Copley medal for this discovery, and elected a member of the Royal Society; receives the degree of M.A. from Yale and Harvard. Appointed joint Postmaster-General.

1754 Appointed one of the Commissioners from Pennsylvania to the Colonial Congress at Albany; proposes a plan for the union of the colonies.

1755 Pledges his personal property in order that supplies may be raised for Braddock's army; obtains a grant from the Assembly in aid of the Crown Point expedition; carries through a bill establishing a voluntary militia; is appointed Colonel, and takes the field.

1757 Introduces a bill in the Assembly for paving the streets of Philadelphia; publishes his famous "Way to Wealth"; goes to England to plead the cause of the Assembly against the Proprietaries; remains as agent for Pennsylvania; enjoys the friendship of the scientific and literary men of the kingdom.

[HERE THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY BREAKS off)

1760 Secures from the Privy Council, by a compromise, a decision obliging the Proprietary estates to contribute to the public revenue.

1762 Receives the degree of LL.D. from Oxford and Edinburgh; returns to America.

1763 Makes a five months' tour of the northern colonies for the purpose of inspecting the post-offices.

1764 Defeated by the Penn faction for reelection to the Assembly; sent to England as agent for Pennsylvania.

1765 Endeavors to prevent the passage of the Stamp Act. 1766 Examined before the House of Commons relative to the passage of the Stamp Act; appointed agent of Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Georgia; visits Göttingen University.

1767 Travels in France and is presented at court.

1769 Procures a telescope for Harvard College.

1772 Elected Associé Etranger of the French Academy.

1774 Dismissed from the office of Postmaster-General; influences Thomas Paine to emigrate to America.

1775 Returns to America; chosen a delegate to the Second Continental Congress; placed on the committee of secret correspondence; appointed one of the commissioners to secure the cooperation of Canada.

1776 Placed on the committee to draft a Declaration of Independence; chosen president of the Constitutional Committee of Pennsylvania; sent to France as agent of the colonies.

1778 Concludes treaties of defensive alliance, and of amity and commerce; is received at court.

1779 Appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to France.

1780 Appoints Paul Jones commander of the “Alliance."

1782

Signs the preliminary articles of peace.

1783 Signs the definite treaty of peace.

1785 Returns to America; is chosen President of Pennsylvania; reelected 1786.

1787 Reelected President; sent as delegate to the convention for framing a Federal Constitution.

1788 Retires from public life.

1790 April 17, dies. His grave is in the churchyard at Fifth and Arch streets, Philadelphia.

Editor.]

THE JOURNAL OF JOHN WOOLMAN

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

JOHN WOOLMAN was born at Northampton, N. J., in 1720, and died at York, England, in 1772. He was the child of Quaker parents, and from his youth was a zealous member of the Society of Friends. His "Journal," published posthumously in 1774, sufficiently describes his way of life and the spirit in which he did his work; but his extreme humility prevents him from making clear the importance of the part he played in the movement against slaveholding among the Quakers.

During the earlier years of their settlement in America, the Friends took part in the traffic in slaves with apparently as little hesitation as their fellow colonists; but in 1671 George Fox, visiting the Barbados, was struck by the inconsistency of slaveholding with the religious principles of his Society. His protests, along with those of others, led to the growth of an agitation' which spread from section to section. In 1742, Woolman, then a young clerk in the employment of a storekeeper in New Jersey, was asked to make out a bill of sale for a negro woman; and the scruples which then occurred to him were the beginning of a lifelong activity against the traffic. Shortly afterward he began his laborious foot-journeys, pleading everywhere with his co-religionists, and inspiring others to take up the crusade. The result of the agitation was that the various Yearly Meetings one by one decided that emancipation was a religious duty; and within twenty years after Woolman's death the practise of slavery had ceased in the Society of Friends. But his influence did not stop there, for no small part of the enthusiasm of the general emancipation movement is traceable to his labors.

His own words in this "Journal," of an extraordinary simplicity and charm, are the best expression of a personality which in its ardor, purity of motive, breadth of sympathy, and clear spiritual insight, gives Woolman a place among the uncanonized saints of America.