02483cam a22003613u 450000100060000000300070000600500170001300600020003000700050003200800410003701000130007804000110009104100170010205000070011910000350012624000250016124500160018626400510020230000470025333600260030033700260032633800360035250000310038850801890041952010780060852001630168653400650184965300430191465300390195785600630199685600430205999900190210278663UtSlPG20260610134826.0mcr n260607r20261921utu|||||o|||||||||||||| d  a22018714  aUtSlPG 7aen2iso639-1 4aPZ1 aFranklin, Benjamin,d1706-179010aStory of the whistle14aThe whistle 1aSalt Lake City, UT :bProject Gutenberg,c2026  a1 online resource :bmultiple file formats  atextbtxt2rdacontent  acomputerbc2rdamedia  aonline resourcebcr2rdacarrier  aRelease date is 2026-05-12  aCharlene Taylor, Bob Taylor, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)  aThe whistle by Benjamin Franklin is a brief moral essay, originally an extract from a personal letter, written in the late 18th century. It reflects on prudence and value, using a childhood anecdote to teach the danger of overpaying—whether in money, time, freedom, or character—for things that are not truly worth their cost.

The narrator recalls spending all his small change on a toy whistle as a child, only to be teased for paying far too much. The sting of that lesson becomes a lifelong maxim: “Don’t give too much for the whistle.” He then applies it to adult life, noting people who sacrifice integrity and peace for court favor, neglect their affairs for popularity, hoard wealth at the cost of comfort and friendship, chase sensual pleasures that ruin health and improvement, indulge in showy living that ends in debt and prison, and even enter marriages that bring misery. He concludes that much human unhappiness comes from misjudging the real value of things and paying dearly for hollow satisfactions. (This is an automatically generated summary.)  aBenjamin Franklin describes a childhood incident of buying a whistle that taught him a lesson he never forgot. (This summary is from the Library of Congress.)  pOriginally published:cBoston: Brad Stephens & Company, 1921  aConduct of life -- Juvenile literature  aThriftiness -- Juvenile literature4 uhttps://archive.org/details/whistle00fran/page/n3/mode/2up40uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78663  c119381d119381