The American Puritan preacher Cotton Mather invited a young Benjamin Franklin over for dinner one night and showed him his library. As they walked through a narrow passage into the library, Mather yelled back at Franklin, “Stoop! Stoop!” Franklin didn’t understand the exhortation until it was too late, bumping his head on a low beam. Mather turned the situation into a sermon. “Let this be a caution to you not always to hold your head so high. Stoop, young man, stoop – as you go through this world – and you’ll miss many hard thumps.”
Many years later, Franklin told Mather’s son that he never forgot that moment. “This advice, thus beat into my head, has frequently been of use to me,” said Franklin. “And I often think of it when I see pride mortified and misfortunes brought upon people by carrying their heads too high.”
Source: Mark Batterson, ‘Chase The Lion’ devotional, day 3, YouVersion Bible app