It is said that the career of Benjamin Franklin is full of inspiration for any young man. When he left school for good he was only twelve years of age. At first he did little but read. He soon found， however， that reading， alone， would not make him an educated man， and he proceeded to act upon this discovery at once. At school he had been unable to understand arithmetic. Twice he had given it up as a hopeless puzzle， and finally left school almost hopelessly ignorant upon the subject. But the printer' s boy soon found his ignorance of figures extremely inconvenient. When he was about fourteen he took up for the third time the"Cocker' s Arithmetic， " which had baffled him at school， and ciphered all through it with ease and pleasure. He then mastered a work upon navigation， which included the rudiments of geometry， and thus tasted "the inexhaustible charm of mathematics." He pursued a similar course， we are told， in acquiring the art of composition， in which， at length， he excelled most of the men of his time. When he was but a boy of sixteen， he wrote so well that the pieces which he slyly sent to his brother' s paper were thought to have been written by some of the most learned men in the colony．
The most successful man is he who has triumphed over obstacles， disadvantages and discouragements．
罗得岛州帕特基市的富商和慈善家海泽基亚·科南特回忆说：“50年前，我想离开马萨诸塞州的达德利去开创自己的天空。起初父亲并不同意，可经不住我苦苦哀求。最终，1845年5月的一天清晨，农场里的那匹老马身上多了一辆旧的四轮马车，父亲和我拿出了只有节日才穿的盛装，踏上去往伍斯特市的路途。《伍斯特报》广告中的招聘职位是吸引我前往的主要目的，广告的内容如下：
招募男孩
急招一名男孩，工作地点在报社，要求身体健康，能吃苦耐劳。