Benjamin Franklin, who lived to the age of 84, began writing his autobiography when he was 65 years old. He worked on it for the rest of his life and yet never considered it finished. In the section you're about to read, Franklin describes his early years of boyhood in a large family of limited means.
My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was put to the grammar-school at eight years of age, my father intending to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the Church. My early readiness in learning to read (which must have been very early, as I do not remember when I could not read), and the opinion of all his friends, that I should certainly make a good scholar, encouraged him in this purpose of his. My uncle Benjamin, too, approved of it, and proposed to give me all his short-hand volumes of sermons, I suppose as a stock to set up with, if I would learn his character. I continued, however, at the grammar-school not quite one year, though in that time I had risen gradually from the middle of the class of that year to be the head of it, and farther was removed into the next class above it, in order to go with that into the third at the end of the year.
Question
Consider the passage above in light of Franklin's later achievements. Why might Franklin be particularly qualified to talk about the American Dream?
