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．
羅得島州帕特基市的富商和慈善家海澤基亞·科南特回憶說：“50年前，我想離開馬薩諸塞州的達德利去開創自己的天空。起初父親並不同意，可經不住我苦苦哀求。最終，1845年5月的一天清晨，農場裏的那匹老馬身上多了一輛舊的四輪馬車，父親和我拿出了隻有節日才穿的盛裝，踏上去往伍斯特市的路途。《伍斯特報》廣告中的招聘職位是吸引我前往的主要目的，廣告的內容如下：
招募男孩
急招一名男孩，工作地點在報社，要求身體健康，能吃苦耐勞。