01.24.06

UIS Spring, 2006 - Understanding US History

Posted in at 11:03 pm by Stephanie

Reading The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin this week. I am amazed at how easy it is to read.

I came across this quote in Part 2, which contains letters to Franklin encouraging him to continue writing his autobiography:

I am earnestly desirous, then, my dear sir, that you should let the world into the traits of your genuine character, as civil broils may tend to disguise or traduce it.¹

Off to the dictionary I go and find out that a broil in this context is not something you do with food but rather, “A rowdy argument; a brawl”² and traduce means, ” To cause humiliation or disgrace to by making malicious and false statements.”³

So people writing under the pretension of civility might offer “rowdy” arguments that will cause humiliation or disgrace to Franklin if he doesn’t write his own story.

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Sources:
¹Letter from Mr. Benjamin Vaughn in The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications). 1996. pp. 58-59
²dictionary.com
³ibid

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