practical..............

 

     One aspect of Franklin's genius was the variety of his interest, from science to government to diplomacy to journalism, all of them approached from a very practical rather than theoretical angle. . . .

     Herman Melville would one day write that Franklin was "everything but a poet."  His father, no romantic, in fact preferred it that way, and he put an end to Benjamin's versifying.  "My father discouraged me by ridiculing my performance and telling me verse-makers were generally beggars; so I escaped being a poet, most probably a bad one."

-Walter Isaacson,  Benjamin Franklin: An American Life