The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

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I proceeded in my electrical experiments with great alacrity;

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The libraries were augmented by donations

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yet men primarily considered that their own and their country's interest was united, and did not act from a principle of benevolence.

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...he erected the capacious and very elegant meeting-house that stands in Arch-street.

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his censures proceeded from good-will

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By my rambling digressions I perceive myself to be grown old. I us'd to write more methodically.

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For, if you would inform, a positive and dogmatical manner in advancing your sentiments may provoke contradiction and prevent a candid attention.

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...all appearances to the contrary, such as ... being to his certain knowledge fallacious;

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The settlement of that province had lately been begun, but, instead of being made with hardy, industrious husbandmen, accustomed to labor, the only people fit for such an enterprise, it was with families of broken shop-keepers and other insolvent debtors, many of indolent and idle habits ... who, being set down in the woods, unqualified for clearing land, and unable to endure the hardships of a new settlement, perished in numbers, leaving many helpless children unprovided for.

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obstinately persisted in manacling their deputies with...

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... telling me, that by steady industry and a prudent parsimony I might save enough by the time I was one-and-twenty to set me up;

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my friend M. le Roy, of the Royal Academy of Sciences, took up my cause and refuted him;

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...they had plundered and stripped the inhabitants, totally ruining some poor families, besides insulting, abusing, and confining the people if they remonstrated.

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he was sensible and sagacious

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I did not, however, aim at gaining his favour by paying any servile respect to him, but, after some time, took this other method.

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A wager ensu'd between the two captains, to be decided when there should be sufficient wind.

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This obscure family of ours was early in the Reformation, and continued Protestants through the reign of Queen Mary, when they were sometimes in danger of trouble on account of their zeal against popery.