Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

[64] may have been the case with many, who, having for want of some such means as I employed, found the difficulty of obtaining good and breaking bad habits in other points of vice and virtue, have given up the struggle, and concluded that “ a speckled axe is best.” For something, that pretended to be reason, was every now and then suggesting to me, that such extreme nicety as I exacted of myself might be a kind of foppery in morals, which, if it were known, would make me ridiculous; that a perfect character might be attended with the inconvenience of being envied and hated; and that a benevolent man should allow a few faults in himself, to keep his friends in countenance. In truth, I found myself incorrigible with respect to Order; and now I am grown old, and my memory bad, I feel very sensibly the want of it.

It is amusing to notice in this connection that “Order” stands third among the thirteen practical virtues which Franklin early tabulated and set himself to acquire; a whimsical digest of the system of thrifty morality which he perceived to be at the basis of worldly success. Franklin lacked spiritual power — the imaginative grasp of truth which belongs to creative minds. He had, however, what is perhaps the best working substitute for such power, the ability to state homely truths in such effective form as to offer to unimaginative minds a practical rule of living.