000 02483cam a22003613u 4500
001 78663
003 UtSlPG
005 20260610134826.0
006 m
007 cr n
008 260607r20261921utu|||||o|||||||||||||| d
010 _a22018714
040 _aUtSlPG
041 7 _aen
_2iso639-1
050 4 _aPZ
100 1 _aFranklin, Benjamin,
_d1706-1790
240 1 0 _aStory of the whistle
245 1 4 _aThe whistle
264 1 _aSalt Lake City, UT :
_bProject Gutenberg,
_c2026
300 _a1 online resource :
_bmultiple file formats
336 _atext
_btxt
_2rdacontent
337 _acomputer
_bc
_2rdamedia
338 _aonline resource
_bcr
_2rdacarrier
500 _aRelease date is 2026-05-12
508 _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)
520 _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.)
520 _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.)
534 _pOriginally published:
_cBoston: Brad Stephens & Company, 1921
653 _aConduct of life -- Juvenile literature
653 _aThriftiness -- Juvenile literature
856 4 _uhttps://archive.org/details/whistle00fran/page/n3/mode/2up
856 4 0 _uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78663
999 _c119381
_d119381