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better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it; as those who aim at perfect writing by imitating the engraved copies, tho’ they never reach the wished-for excellence of those copies, their hand is mended by the endeavor, and tolerable, while it continues fair and legible.

He ascribed various aspects of his success in life to the endeavor. He credited his good health to Temperance; to Industry and Frugality, his wealth. Sincerity and Justice won him “the confidence of his country” and his position as diplomat. To “the joint influence of the whole mass of the virtues,” he attributed his “evenness of temper” and “cheerfulness in conversation.”

{ Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.}

Well, I can’t give you that kind of lifetime assessment. Franklin had decades of hindsight with which to work. Of course, if you’ve stuck with me this long, I suppose you deserve some sort of postgame wrap-up.

This course began with a survey of my friends and family. It was meant to be a virtuous weigh-in, a starting point from which to assess the success of my journey to Benjamin Franklin’s moral perfection. Now, after the completion of the course, had my quest yielded results? Would my family, friends, and coworkers notice any change? Would my quest to follow Franklin shine through? I decided another survey was in order.

You’ll remember the survey of my mother and father, remembering as well that I am an only child. Well, despite their biased view of me even before I sought moral perfection, I decided to begin with them. Again via email, I asked them to answer my precourse survey, with another admonition to be honest. This was their response:

Can’t say we have seen any changes, how can you improve perfection, ha???

It was certainly comforting to know that I had not diminished in their estimation, but that was hardly helpful as a postcourse debriefing.

I decided to move on to my colleagues. I was not hopeful of any endorsements of Franklin as a life-coach guru from this group. Their feelings about the entire enterprise were decidedly mixed. Perhaps “mixed” might even be a little Pollyannaish. I think they resented, ever so slightly, being part of a social experiment, and who could blame them? Notwithstanding that, I decided I had to be complete in my survey.

For the most part, the answers were what I expected. No real change noticed. No glow of virtue about me. Nothing morally perfect apparent in my character. One answer did, however, shock me.

When I asked one of my coworkers if my attempt to follow Ben had affected her in any way, she said, “Yes, as a matter of fact, it did.”

I tensed. Was she about to say that I had driven her nuts? Or that I was a virtuous hypocrite? With a sense of foreboding, I asked, “How did it affect you?”

With the steely gaze developed over two decades of prosecuting some of our community’s most dangerous people fixed on me, she said, “With all this talk of you trying to be a better person, I decided that I’d try to be a better person, too.”

I was surprised. This was news to me. She had made no grand announcements of following Ben (or me) to moral perfection, so I had no idea I had inspired anyone. I was thrilled. “And you know what?” she continued.

“What?” I asked, cursing myself for an impetuous moment of self-congratulations and sensing the other shoe was about to drop.

“This trying to be a better person is %$#(*&! hard!”

So it is. So it is.

Next on my list of my interviewees were the girls. I had tried to involve them as little as possible in this whole endeavor because of their ages, but honesty is a gift of youth, and so I decided I might at least get some honest answers to questions about my character. Kids, as Art Linkletter reminded us, say the darndest things.

Simplifying the quiz was essential (would you want to ask a young child how good you were at Moderation?), so instead of asking them to rate me on the virtue of Temperance, for instance, I asked