WHEN BENJAMIN FRANKLIN WAS 16 years old, he was a fantastic writer. He worked at his older brother James’s printing shop for the newspaper the New-England Courant. Because his brother wouldn’t print a boy’s story, Ben began writing cultural essays under a pseudonym, Mrs. Silence Dogood, leaving them under the printshop door. James published the letters in short order, and they were, in colonial terms, a smash hit. James and his friends thought a clever peer was writing the essays. The letters became important to both the community and the paper. When
