 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BENJAMIN FRANKLAND, INTRODUCTION. We Americans devour eagerly any piece of writing that purports to tell us the secret of success in life. Yet how often we are disappointed to find nothing but commonplace statements, or recipes that we know by heart, but never follow. Most of the life stories of our famous and successful men fail to inspire us because they lack the human element that makes the story record real, and brings the story within our grasp. While we are searching far and near for some Aladdin's lamp to give coveted fortune, there is, ready at our hand, if we will only reach out and take it, like the charm in Milton's comas, unknown and like esteemed, and dull swain, treads on it daily with his clouted shoon. The interesting, human, and vividly told story of one of the wisest and most useful lives in our history, and perhaps in any history, in Franklin's autobiography, is offered not so much already made formula for success as the companionship of a real flesh-and-blood man of extraordinary mind and quality, whose daily walk and conversation will help us to meet our own difficulties much as does the example of a wise and strong friend. While we are fascinated by the story, we absorb the human experience through which a strong and helpful character is building. The thing that makes Franklin's autobiography different from every other life story of a great and successful man is just this human aspect of the account. Franklin told the story of his life as he himself says for the benefit of his posterity. He wanted to help them by the relation of his own rise from obscurity and poverty to eminence and wealth. He is not unmindful of the importance of his public services and their recognition, yet his accounts of these achievements are given only as a part of the story, and the vanity displayed is incidental and in keeping with the honesty of the recital. There is nothing of the impossible in the method and practice of Franklin as he sets them forth. The youth who reads the fascinating story is astonished to find that Franklin in his early years struggled with the same everyday passions and difficulties that he himself experiences, and he loses the sense of discouragement that comes from a realization of his own shortcomings and inability to attain. There are other reasons why the autobiography should be an intimate friend of American young people. Here they may establish a close relationship with one of the foremost Americans as well as one of the wisest men of his age. The life of Benjamin Franklin is of importance to every American primarily because of the part he played in securing the independence of the United States and in establishing it as a nation. Franklin shares with Washington the honors of the Revolution and the events leading to the birth of the new nation. While Washington was the animating spirit of the struggle in the colonies, Franklin was its ablest champion abroad. To Franklin's cogent reasoning and keen satire we owe the clear and forcible presentation of the American case in England and France. While to his personality and diplomacy as well as his facile pen, we are indebted for the foreign alliance and the funds without which Washington's work must have failed. His patience, fortitude, and practical wisdom coupled with self-sacrificing devotion to the cause of his country are hardly less noticeable than similar qualities displayed by Washington. In fact, Franklin as a public man was much like Washington, especially in the entire disinterestedness of his public service. Franklin is also interesting to us because by his life and teachings he has done more than any other American to advance the material prosperity of his countrymen. It is said that his widely and faithfully read maxims made Philadelphia and Pennsylvania wealthy, while poor Richard's pithy sayings translated into many languages have had a worldwide influence. Franklin is a good type of our American manhood, although not the waltiest or the most powerful, he is undoubtedly in the versatility of his genius and achievements the greatest of our self-made men. The simple yet graphic story in the autobiography of his steady rise from humble boyhood in a tallow chandler shop by industry, economy, and perseverance in self-improvement to eminence is the most remarkable of all the remarkable histories of our self-made men. It is in itself a wonderful illustration of the results possible to be attained in a land of unequaled opportunity by following Franklin's maxims. Franklin's fame, however, was not confined to his own country, although he lived in a century notable for the rapid evolution of scientific and political thought and activity, yet no less a keen judge and critic than Lord Geoffrey, the famous editor of the Edinburgh Review, a century ago, said that, in one point of view, the name of Franklin must be considered as standing higher than any of the others which illustrated the eighteenth century. Distinguished as a statesman, he was equally great as a philosopher, thus uniting in himself a rare degree of excellence in both these pursuits to excel in either of which is deemed the highest praise. Franklin has indeed been aptly called many-sighted. He was eminent in science and public service, in diplomacy and in literature. He was the Edison of his day, turning his scientific discoveries to the benefit of his fellow men. He perceived the identity of lightning and electricity and set up the lightning rod. He invented the Franklin's stove, still widely used, and refused to patent it. He possessed a masterly shrewdness in business and practical affairs. Carlisle called him the father of all the Yankees. He founded a fire company, assisted in founding a hospital, and improved the cleaning and lighting of streets. He developed journalism, established the American Philosophical Society, the Public Library in Philadelphia, and the University of Pennsylvania. He organised a postal system for the colonies, which was the basis of the present United States Post Office. Bancroft, the eminent historian, called him the greatest diplomat of his century. He perfected the Albany Plan of Union for the colonies. He is the only statesman who signed the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the Treaty of Peace with England, and the Constitution. As a writer, he has produced, in his autobiography, and in poor Richard's Almanac, two works that are not surpassed by similar writing. He received honorary degrees from Harvard and Yale, from Oxford and St. Andrews, and was made a fellow of the Royal Society, which awarded him the Copely Gold Medal for improving natural knowledge. He was one of the eight foreign associates of the French Academy of Science. The careful study of the autobiography is also valuable because of the style in which it is written. If Robert Louis Stevenson is right in believing that his remarkable style was acquired by imitation, then the youth who would gain the power to express his ideas clearly, forcibly, and interestingly cannot do better than to study Franklin's method. Franklin's fame in the scientific world was due almost as much to his modest, simple, and sincere manner of presenting his discoveries and to the precision and clearness of the style in which he described his experiments. As to the results, he was able to announce Sir David Humphrey, the celebrated English chemist, himself an excellent literary critic, as well as a great scientist said, a singular felicity guided all Franklin's researches, and by very small means he established very grand truths. The style and manner of his publication on electricity are almost as worthy of admiration as the doctrine it contains. Franklin's place in literature is hard to determine because he was not primarily a literary man. His aim in his writings, as in his life work, was to be helpful to his fellow men. For him writing was never an end in itself, but always means to an end. Yet his success as a scientist, a statesman, and a diplomat, as well as socially, was in no little part due to his ability as a writer. His letters charmed all and made his correspondence eerily sought. His political arguments were the joy of his party and the dread of his opponents. His scientific discoveries were explained in language at once so simple and so clear that ploughboy and exquisite could follow his thought or his experiment to its conclusion. As far as American literature is concerned, Franklin has no contemporaries. Before the autobiography, only one literary work of importance had been produced in this country. Cotton Mathers' Magnalia, a church history of New England, in a ponderous, stiff style. Franklin was the first American author to gain wide and permanent reputation in Europe. The autobiography, poor Richard, Father Abraham's speech, or The Way to Wealth, as well as some of the bagatelles, are as widely known abroad as any American writings. Franklin must also be classed as the first American humorist. English literature of the 18th century was characterized by the development of prose. Periodical literature reached its perfection early in the century in The Tatler and The Spectator of Addison and Steel. Pamphleteer's flurries throughout the period, the homelier prose of Bunyan and Defoe, gradually gave place to the more elegant and artificial language of Samuel Johnson, who set the standard for prose writing from 1745 onward. This century saw the beginnings of the modern novel in Fielding's Tom Jones, Richardson's Clarissa Harlow, Stearn's Tristum Shanty, and Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. Gibbon wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Hume, his History of England, and Adam Smith, the Wealth of Nations. In the simplicity and vigor of his style, Franklin more nearly resembles the earlier group of writers. In his first essay he was not an inferior imitator of Addison. In his numerous parables, moral allegories, and apologies, he showed Bunyan's influence. But Franklin was essentially a journalist. In his swift, terse style, he is most like Defoe, who was the first great English journalist and master of the newspaper narrative. The style of both writers is marked by homely, vigorous expression, satire, burlesque, repartee. Here the comparison must end. Defoe and his contemporaries were authors, their vocation was writing, and their success rests on the imaginative or creative powers they displayed. To authorship Franklin laid no claim. He wrote no work of the imagination. He developed only, incidentally, a style in many respects as remarkable as that of his English contemporaries. He wrote the best autobiography in existence, one of the most widely known collections of maxims, and an unsurpassed series of political and social satires. Because he was a man of unusual scope of power and usefulness, who knew how to tell his fellow men the secrets of that power and usefulness? THE STORY OF THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY The account of how Franklin's autobiography came to be written, and the adventures of the original manuscript, forms in itself an interesting story. The autobiography is Franklin's longest work, and yet it is only a fragment. The first part, written as a letter to his son, William Franklin, was not intended for publication, and the composition is more informal and the narrative more personal than in the second part. From 1730 on, which was written with a view to publication, the entire manuscript shows little evidence of revision. In fact, the expression is so homely and natural that his grandson, William Temple Franklin, in editing the work changed some of the phrases because he thought them inelegant and vulgar. Franklin began the story of his life while on a visit to his friend Bishop Shipley at Twyford in Hampshire, Southern England, in 1771. He took the manuscript, completed to 1731, with him when he returned to Philadelphia in 1775. It was left there with his other papers when he went to France in the following year, and disappeared during the confusion, incident to the revolution. Twenty- three pages of closely written manuscript fell into the hands of Abel James, an old friend who sent a copy to Franklin at Passet near Paris, urging him to complete the story. Franklin took up the work at Passet in 1784 and carried the narrative forward a few months. He changed the plan to meet his new purpose of writing to benefit the younger reader. His work was soon interrupted and was not resumed until 1788, when he was at home in Philadelphia. He was now old, infirm, and suffering, and was still engaged in public service. Under these discouraging conditions, the work progressed slowly. It finally stopped when the narrative reached the year 1757. Copies of the manuscript were sent to friends of Franklin in England and France, among others to mature Le Villard at Paris. The first edition of the autobiography was published in French at Paris in 1791. It was clumsily and carelessly translated and was imperfect and unfinished. Where the translator got the manuscript is not known. Le Villard disclaimed any knowledge of the publication from this faulty French edition, many others were printed, some in Germany, two in England, and another in France, so great was the demand for the work. In the meantime the original manuscript of the autobiography had started on a varied and adventurous career. It was left by Franklin with his other works to his grandson William Temple Franklin, whom Franklin designated as his literary executioner. When Temple Franklin came to publish his grandfather's works in 1817, he sent the original manuscript of the autobiography to the daughter of Leveilleau in exchange for her father's copy, probably thinking the clearer transcript would make better printers copy. The original manuscript thus found its way to the Leveilleau family and connections where it remained until sold in 1867 to Mr. John Bigelow, United States Minister to France. By him it was later sold to Mr. E. Dwight Church of New York and passed with the rest of Mr. Church's library into the possession of Mr. Henry E. Huntington. The original manuscript of Franklin's autobiography now rests in the vault in Mr. Huntington's residence at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, New York City. When Mr. Bigelow came to examine his purchase he was astonished to find what people had been reading for years as the authentic life of Benjamin Franklin by himself was only a garbled and incomplete version of the real autobiography. Temple Franklin had taken unwarranted liberties with the original. Mr. Bigelow says he found more than 1,200 changes in the text. In 1868, therefore, Mr. Bigelow published the standard edition of Franklin's autobiography. It corrected errors in the previous editions and was the first English edition to contain the short fourth part comprising the last few pages of the manuscript written during the last year of Franklin's life. Mr. Bigelow republished the autobiography with additional interesting matter in three volumes in 1875, in 1905, and in 1910. The text in this volume is that of Mr. Bigelow's editions. For the divisions into chapters and the chapter titles, however, the present editor is responsible. The autobiography has been reprinted in the United States many scores of times and translated into all the languages of Europe. It has never lost its popularity and is still in constant demand at circulating libraries. The reason for this popularity is not far to seek, for in this work Franklin told in a remarkable manner the story of a remarkable life. He displayed hard common sense and a practical knowledge of the art of living. He selected and arranged his material, perhaps unconsciously, with an unerring instinct of the journalist for the best effects. His success is not a little due to his plain, clear, vigorous English. He used short sentences and words, homely expressions, apt illustrations, and pointed allusions. Franklin had a most interesting, varied, and unusual life. He was one of the greatest conversationalists of his time. His book is the record of that unusual life told in Franklin's own unexcelled conversational style. It is said that the best parts of Boswell's famous biography of Samuel Johnson are those parts where Boswell permits Johnson to tell his own story. In the autobiography, a no less remarkable man and talker than Samuel Johnson is telling his own story throughout. F. W. P. The Gilman Country School, Baltimore, September 1916. END OF INTRODUCTION the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. CHAPTER I. ANCESTRY AND EARLY YOUTH IN BOSTON. TWIFERD AT THE BISHOP OF ST. ASSOFTS, 1771. BEGIN FOOTNOAT TWIFERD is a small village not far from Winchester, in Hampshire, southern England. There was the county seat of the Bishop of St. Assoff, Dr. Jonathan Shipley, the good bishop as Dr. Franklin used to style him. Their relations were intimate and confidential. In his pulpit, and in the House of Lords as well as in society, the bishop always opposed the harsh measures of the crown towards the colonies. END OF FOOTNOAT Dear son, I have ever had pleasure in obtaining any little anecdotes of my ancestors. You may remember the inquiries I made among the remains of my relations when you were with me in England, and the journey I undertook for that purpose. Imagining it may be equally agreeable to you to know the circumstances of my life, many of which you are yet unacquainted with, and expecting the enjoyment of a week's uninterrupted leisure in my present country retirement, I sit down to write them to you, for which I have besides some other inducements. Having emerged from the poverty and obscurity in which I was born, and bred, to a state of affluence and some degree of reputation in the world, and having gone so far through life with a considerable share of felicity, the conducting means I made use of, which with the blessing of God so well succeeded, my posterity may like to know, as they may find some of them suitable for their own situations, and therefore fit to be imitated. That felicity, when I reflect on it, has induced me sometimes to say, that were it offered to my choice, I would have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in second edition to correct some faults of the first. So I might, besides correcting the faults, change some sinister accidents and events of it for others more favorable. But though this were denied, I should still accept the offer. Since such a reputation is not to be expected, the next thing most like living one's life over again seems to be a recollection of that life, and to make that recollection as durable as possible by putting it down in writing. Hereby too I shall indulge the inclination so natural in old men, to be talking of themselves and their own past actions, and I shall indulge it without being tiresome to others, who, through respect to age, might conceive themselves obliged to give me a hearing, since this may be read or not as anyone pleases. And lastly, I may as well confess it, since my denial of it will be believed by nobody, perhaps I shall a good deal gratify my own vanity. Begin footnote. In this connection Woodrow Wilson says, and yet the surprising and delightful thing about this book is, that take it all in all, it has not the low tone of conceit, but is a staunch man's sober and unaffected assessment of himself, and the circumstances of his career. Gibbon and Hume, the great British historians, who were contemporaries of Franklin, express in their autobiographies the same feeling about the propriety of just self-praise. End footnote. Indeed, I scarce ever heard or saw the introductory words, without vanity, I may say, etc., with some vain thing immediately following. Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves, but I give it fair quarter whenever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive to the good possessor, and to others that are within his sphere of action, and therefore in many cases it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life. And now I speak of thanking God, I desire with all humility to acknowledge that I owe the mentioned happiness of my past life to his kind providence which led me to the means I used and gave them success. My belief of this induces me to hope, though I must not presume, that the same goodness will still be exercised toward me in continuing that happiness, or enabling me to bear a fatal reverse, which I may experience as others have done, the complexion of my future fortune being known to him only in whose power it is to bless to us even our afflictions. The notes one of my uncles, who had the same kind of curiosity in collecting family anecdotes, once put into my hands furnished me with several particulars relating to our ancestors. From these notes I learned that the family had lived in the same village, Ecton, in North Hamptonshire, for three hundred years, and how much longer he knew not, perhaps from the time when the name of Franklin, that before was the name of an order of people, begin footnote, a small landowner into footnote, was assumed by then as a surname when others took surnames all over the kingdom. On a freehold of about thirty acres, aided by the Smith's business, which had continued in the family till his time, the eldest son being always bred to that business, a custom which he and my father followed as to their eldest sons. When I searched the registers at Ecton, I found an account of their births, marriages, and burials from the year fifteen-fifty-five only, and there being no registers kept in that parish at any time preceding. By that register I perceived that I was the youngest son of the youngest son for five generations back. My grandfather Thomas, who was born in fifteen-ninety-eight, lived in Ecton until he grew too old to follow business longer. When he went to live with his son John, a dyer at Branbury in Oxfordshire, and whom my father served as an apprentice. There my grandfather died and lies buried. We saw his gravestone in seventeen-fifty-eight. His eldest son, Thomas, lived in the house at Ecton, and left it, with the land, to his only child, a daughter, who, with her husband, one fisher of Wellingborough, sold it to Mr. Istad, now lord of the manor there. My grandfather had four sons that grew up, V's, Thomas, John, Benjamin, and Josiah. I will give you what account I can of them at this distance from my papers, and if these are not lost in my absence, you will among them find many more particulars. Thomas was bred a smith under his father, but, being ingenious and encouraged in learning, as all my brothers were, by an Esquire Palmer, then the principal gentleman in that parish, he qualified himself for the business of Scrivener, became a considerable man in the county, was a chief mover of all public-spirited undertakings for the county, or town of Northampton, and his own village, of which many instances are related of him, and which taken notice of, and patronized, by the then lord Halifax. He died in 1702, January 6, old style, just four years to the day before I was born. Begin footnote. January 17, new style. This change in the calendar was made in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII, and adopted in England in 1752. Every year whose number in the common reckoning since Christ is not divisible by four, as well as every year whose number is divisible by one hundred, but not by four, shall have three hundred and sixty-five days, and all other years shall have three hundred and sixty-six days. In the eighteenth century there was a difference of eleven days between the old and new style of reckoning, which the English Parliament canceled by making the third of September 1752 the fourteenth. The Julian calendar or old style is still retained in Russia and Greece, whose dates consequently are now thirteen days behind those of other Christian countries. End footnote. The account we received of his life and character from some old people at Ecton, I remember, struck you as something extraordinary, from its similarity to what you knew of mine. Had he died on the same day, you said, one might have supposed a trans migration. John was bred a dire, I believe, of woolens. Benjamin was bred a silk dire, serving an apprenticeship at London. He was an ingenious man. I remember him well, for when I was a boy he came over to my father in Boston, and lived in the house with us some years. He lived to a great age. His grandson, Samuel Franklin, now lives in Boston. He left behind him two quattro-volumes manuscripts of his own poetry consisting of little occasional pieces addressed to his friends and relations of which the following sent me as a specimen. He had formed a shorthand of his own, which he taught me but never practiced. I have now forgot it. I was named after this uncle, there being a particular affection between him and my father. He was very pious, a great attendee of sermons of the best preachers, which he took down in his shorthand, and had with him many volumes of them. He was also much of a politician, too much perhaps for his station. There fell lately into my hands, in London, a collection he made of all the principal pamphlets relating to public affairs from 1641 to 1717. Many of the volumes are wanting as appears by the numbering, but there still remain eight volumes in folio and twenty-four in quattro and in octavo. A dealer in old books met with them, and knowing me by my sometimes buying of him he brought them to me. It seems my uncle must have left them here when he went to America, which was about fifty years since. There are many of his notes in the margins. The obscure family of ours was early in the Reformation, and continued Protestants through the reign of Queen Mary, when they were sometimes in danger of trouble on account of their zeal against popery. They had got an English Bible, and to conceal and secure it, it was fastened open with tapes under and within the cover of a joint stool. When my great-great-grandfather read it to his family, he turned up the joint stool upon his knees, turning over the leaves, then under the tapes. One of the children stood at the door to give notice if he saw the aparatar coming, who was an officer of the spiritual court. In that case the stool was turned down again upon its feet, when the Bible remained concealed under it as before. This anecdote I had from my uncle Benjamin. The family continued all of the Church of England till about the end of Charles II's reign, when some of the ministers had been outed for non-conformity, holding convectacles in North Hampshire, Benjamin, and Joshua adhered to them, and so continued all their lives the rest of the family remained with the Episcopal Church. Convectacles were secret gatherings of dissenters from the established Church. Joshua my father married young and carried his wife and three children into England about 1682. The convectacles having been forbidden by law and frequently disturbed induced some considerable men of his acquaintance to remove to that country, and he was prevailed with them to accompany them thither, where they expected to enjoy their mode of religion with freedom. By the same wife he had four children more born there, and by a second wife ten more, in all seventeen, of which I remember thirteen sitting at one time at his table, who all grew up to be men and women, and married. I was the youngest son, and the youngest child but two, and was born in Boston, New England. My mother, the second wife, was Abeth Folger, daughter of Peter Folger, one of the first settlers of New England, of whom honourable mention is made by Cotton Mather. In his Church history of that country entitled Magnalia Christi Americana, as a godly learned Englishman, if I remember the words rightly, I have heard that he wrote sundry small occasional pieces, but only one of them was printed, which I saw now many years since. It was written in 1675 in the homespun verse of that time and people, and addressed to those then concerned in the government there. It was in favour of liberty of conscience, and in behalf of the Baptists, Quakers, and other sectaries that had been under persecution ascribing the Indian wars and other distresses that had befallen the country to that persecution, as so many judgments of God to punish so heinous and offence, and exhorting a repeal of those uncharitable laws. The whole appeared to me as written with a good deal of decent plainness and manly freedom. The six concluding lines I remember, though I have forgotten the two first of the stanza, but the purport of them was that his censures proceeded from Goodwill, and therefore he would be known to be the author. Because to be a libeler, says he, I hate it with my heart, from sure-burned town, where now I dwell, my name I do put here, without offence your real friend, it is Peter Folger. Franklin was born on Sunday, January 6, old style, 1706, in a house on Milk Street opposite the old South Meeting House, where he was baptized on the day of his birth, during a snowstorm. The house where he was born was burned in 1810, Cotton Mather, 1663 to 1728, Clegeman, author, and scholar, pastor of the North Church Boston. He took an active part in the persecution of witchcraft. My elder brothers were all apprentices to different trades. I was put to the grammar school at eight years of age, my father intending to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the church. My early readiness in learning to read, which must have been very early, as I do not remember when I could not read, and the opinion of all his friends, that I should certainly make a good scholar, encouraged him in this purpose of his. My uncle Benjamin, too, approved of it, and proposed to give me all his shorthand volumes of sermons. I suppose a stock to be set up with, if I would learn his character. I continued, however, at the grammar school, not quite one year. Though in that time I had risen gradually from the middle of the class of that year to be the head of it, and farther was removed to the next class above it, in order to go with that into the third at the end of the year. But my father, in the meantime, from a view of the expense of a college education, which having so large a family, he could not well afford, and the mean living many so educated were afterwards able to obtain, reasons that he gave to his friends in my hearing, altered his first intention, took me from the grammar school, and sent me to a school for writing an arithmetic, kept by a then famous man, Mr. George Browell. Very successful in his profession generally, and by mild, encouraging methods, under him I acquired fair writing pretty soon, but I failed in the arithmetic, and made no progress in it. At ten years old I was taken home to assist my father in his business, which was that of a tallow chandler and soap-boiler. A business he had not bred to, but had assumed on his arrival in New England, and on finding his dying trade would not maintain his family, being in little request. Accordingly I was employed in cutting wick for the candles, filling the dipping mould, and the moulds for cast candles, attending the shop, going of errands, etc. I disliked the trade, and had a strong inclination for the sea, but my father declared against it. However, living near the water, I was much in and about it, learned early to swim well, and to manage boats, and when in a boat or canoe with other boys I was commonly allowed to govern, especially in any case of difficulty, and upon other occasions I was generally a leader among the boys, and sometimes led them into scrapes, of which I will mention one instance, as it shows an early projecting public spirit, though not then justly conducted. There was a salt-marsh that bounded part of the mill-pond on the edge of which, at high water, we used to stand to fish for minnows. By much tramping we had made it a mere quagmire. My proposal was to build a wharf there fit for us to stand upon, and I showed my comrades a large heap of stones, which were intended for a new-house near the marsh, and which would very well suit our purpose. Accordingly in the evening when the workmen were gone, I assembled a number of my play-fellows, and working with them diligently, like so many emits, sometimes two or three to a stone, we brought them all away, and built our little wharf. The next morning the workmen were surprised at missing the stones which were found in our wharf. In quarry was made after the removers we were discovered and complained of. Several of us were corrected by our fathers, and, though I pleaded the usefulness of the work, mine convinced me that nothing was useful which was not honest. I think you may like to know something of his person and character. He had an excellent constitution of body, was of middle stature, but well set, and very strong. He was ingenious, could draw prettily, was skilled a little in music, and had a clear pleasing voice, so that when he played psalm tunes on his violin, and sung with all, as he sometimes did in an evening after the business of the day was over, it was extremely agreeable to hear. He had a mechanical genius, too, and on occasion was very handy in the use of other tradesmen's tools, but his great excellence lay in a sound understanding and solid judgment in prudent matters, both in private and public affairs. In the latter, indeed, he was never employed. The numerous family he had to educate and the straightness of his circumstances kept him close to his trade. But I remember well his being frequently visited by leading people who consulted him for his opinion in affairs of the town or of the church he belonged to, and showed a good deal of respect for his judgment and advice. He was also much consulted by private persons about their affairs when any difficulty occurred, and frequently chosen an arbiter between contending parties. At his table he liked to have, as often as he could, some sensible friend or neighbor to converse with, and always took care to start some ingenious or useful topic for discourse, which might tend to improve the minds of his children. By this means he turned our attention to what was good, just, and prudent in the conduct of life, and little or no notice was ever taken of what related to the victuals on the table. Whether it was well or ill-dressed, in or out of season, of good or bad flavor, preferable or inferior to this or that other thing of the kind, so that was how I was brought up in such a perfect inattention to those matters as to be quite indifferent what kind of food was set before me, and so unobservant of it, that to this day, if I am asked, I can scarce tell a few hours after dinner what I dined upon. This has been a convenience to me in travelling, where my companions have been sometimes very unhappy, for want of a suitable gratification of their more delicate, because better instructed, tastes and appetites. My mother had likewise an excellent constitution. She suckled all her ten children. I never knew whether my father or mother to have any sickness but that of which they died. He at eighty-nine, and she at eighty-five years of age. They lie buried together at Boston. I, some years since, placed a marble over their grave with this inscription. Josiah Franklin and Abeth his wife lie here in turn. They lived lovingly together in wedlock fifty-five years, without an estate or any gainful employment, by constant labour and industry, with God s blessing they maintained a large family comfortably, and brought up thirteen children and seven grandchildren reputably. From this instance, reader, be encouraged to diligence in thy calling, and distrust not providence. He was a pious and prudent man, she a discreet and virtuous woman. Their youngest son, in fifeful regard to their memory, places this stone. J. F. born sixteen fifty-five died seventeen forty-four at eighty-nine. A. F. born sixteen sixty-seven died seventeen fifty-two eighty-five. This marble having decayed the citizens of Boston in eighteen twenty-seven erected in its place a granite obelisk, twenty-one feet high, bearing the original inscription quoted in the text, and another explaining the erection of the monument. By my rambling digressions I perceive myself to be grown old. I used to write more methodically, but one does not dress for private company as for a public ball, to his perhaps only negligence. To return I continued, thus employed in my father's business, for two years, that is, till I was twelve years old, and my brother John, who was bred to that business, having left my father, married and set up for himself at Rhode Island. There was all appearance that I was destined to supply his place and become a tallow chandler. But my dislike to the trade continuing, my father was under apprehensions that if he did not find one for me more agreeable, I should break away and go to sea. As his son Joshua had done, to his great vexation, he therefore sometimes took me to walk with him and see joiners, bricklayers, turners, brazers, et cetera, at their work, that he might observe my inclination and endeavor to fix it on some trade or other, on land. It has ever since been a pleasure to me to see good workmen handle their tools, and it has been useful to me, having learnt so much by it, as to be able to do little jobs myself in my house, when a workman could not readily be God, and to construct little machines for my experiments, while the intention of making the experiment was fresh and warm in my mind. My father at last fixed upon the cutler's trade, and my uncle Benjamin's son Samuel, who was bred to that business in London, being about that time established in Boston, I was sent to be with him some time on liking, but his expectations of a fee with me displeased my father. I was taken home again. CHAPTER II BEGINNING LIFE AS A PRINTER From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the pilgrim's progress, my first collection was of John Bunyan's works in separate little volumes. I afterward sold them to enable me to buy our Burton's historical collections. They were small Chapman's books, and cheap, forty or fifty in all. My father's little library consisted chiefly of books in polemic divinity, most of which I read, and have since often regretted that, at a time when I had such a thirst for knowledge, more proper books had not fallen in my way. Since it was now resolved I should not be a clergyman. Plutarch's Lives there was in which I read abundantly, and I still think that time spent to great advantage. There was also a book of defoes called An Essay on Projects, and another of Dr. Mathers called Essays to Do Good, which perhaps gave me a turn of thinking that had an influence on some of the principal future events of my life. This bookish inclination and length determined my father to make me a printer, though he had already one son, James, of that profession. In 1717 my brother James returned from England with a press and letters to set up his business in Boston. I liked it much better than that of my father, but still had a hankering for the sea. To prevent the apprehended effect of such an inclination my father was impatient to have me bound to my brother. I stood out some time but at last was persuaded and signed the indentures when I was yet but twelve years old. I was to serve as an apprentice till I was twenty-one years of age. Only I was to be allowed journeyman's wages during the last year. In a little time I made great proficiency in the business and became a useful hand to my brother. I now had access to better books, and acquaintance with the apprentice of booksellers enabled me sometimes to borrow a small one, which I was careful to return soon and clean. Often I sat up in my room reading the greatest part of the night, when the book was borrowed in the evening, and to be returned early in the morning, least it should be missed or wanted. After some time an ingenious tradesman, Mr. Matthew Adams, who had a pretty collection of books and who frequented our printing house, took notice of me, invited me to his library, and very kindly lent me such books as I chose to read. I now took a fancy to poetry, and made some little pieces. My brother, thinking it might turn to account, encouraged me, and put me on composing occasional ballads. One was called The Lighthouse Tragedy, and contained an account of the drowning of Captain Worthy Lake. With his two daughters the other was a sailor's song on the taking of Teach, or Blackbeard, The Pirate. They were wretched stuff in the Grubb Street ballad style, and when they were printed he sent me out to the town to sell them. The first sold wonderfully, the event being recent, having made a great noise. This flattered my vanity, but my father discouraged me by ridiculing my performances, and telling me verse-makers were generally beggars. So I escaped being a poet, most probably a very bad one, but as prose writing had been of great use to me in the course of my life, and was a principal means of my advancement, I shall now tell you how in such a situation I acquired what little ability I have in that way. There was another bookish lad in the town, John Collins by name, with whom I was intimately acquainted. We sometimes disputed, and very fond we were of argument, and very desirous of confuting one another, with disputatious turn. By the way is apt to become a very bad habit, making people often extremely disagreeable in company by the contradiction that is necessary to bring it into practice. And hence, besides souring and spoiling the conversation, is productive of disgusts and perhaps enmities where you may have occasion for friendship. I had caught it by reading my father's books of dispute about religion. Persons of good sense, I have sense observed, seldom fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and men of all sorts that have been bred at Edinburgh. A question was once somehow or other started between Collins and me of the propriety of educating the female sex in learning, and their abilities for study. He was of the opinion that it was improper, and that they were naturally unequal to it. I took the contrary side, perhaps a little for the dispute's sake. He was naturally more eloquent, and had already plenty of words, and sometimes, as I thought, bore me down more by his fluency than by the strength of his reasons. As we parted without settling the point, and were not to see one another again for some time, I sat down to put my arguments in writing, which I copied fair, and sent to him. He answered, and I replied. Three or four letters of a side had passed when my father happened to find my papers and read them. Without entering into the discussion he took occasion to talk to me about the manner of my writing. Observed that, though I had the advantage of my antagonist in correct spelling and pointing, which I owed to the printing-house, I fell far short in elegance of expression, in method and in persecutity, of which he convinced me by several instances. I saw the justice of his remarks, and hence grew more attentive to the manner in writing, and determined to endeavor at improvement. About this time I met with an odd volume of the spectator. It was the third I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With this view I took some of the papers, and making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, tried to complete the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any subtle words which should come to hand. Then I compared my spectator with the original, and referred some of my faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses, since the continual occasion for words of the same import, but of different length, to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them into verse, and after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences, and complete the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults, and amended them. But I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method of the language, and this encouraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious. My time for these exercises, and for reading, was at night, after work, or before it began, in the morning. Or on Sundays, when I contrived to be in the printing-house alone, evading as much as I could the common attendance on pulpit worship, which my father used to extract of me when I was under his care, and which, indeed, I still thought a duty, though I could not, as it seemed to me, afford time to practice it. A Daily London Journal comprising satirical essays on social subjects, published by Addison and Steele in 1711 and 1712, the Spectator and its predecessor, the Tatler, 1709, marked the beginning of periodical literature. When about sixteen years of age, I happened to meet with a book, written by one try-on, recommending a vegetable diet. I determined to go into it. My brother, being yet unmarried, did not keep house, but boarded himself and his apprentices in another family. My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an inconvenience, and I was frequently chided for my singularity. I made myself acquainted with Chiron's manner of preparing some of his dishes, such as boiling potatoes or rice, making hasty pudding, and a few others, and then proposed to my brother that if he would give me, weekly, half the money he paid for my board, I would board myself. He instantly agreed to it, and I presently found that I could save half of what he paid me. This was an additional fund for buying books. But I had another advantage in it. My brother and the rest going from the printing-house to their meals, I remained there alone and, dispatching presently my light-repast, which often was no more than a biscuit or a slice of bread, a handful of raisins or a tart from the pastry-cooks and a glass of water, had the rest of the time till their return for study, in which I made the greatest progress, for that greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension which usually attended temperance in eating and drinking. And now it was being on some occasion made ashamed of my ignorance in figures, which I had twice failed in learning when at school I took Crocker's Book of Arithmetic, and went through the hole by myself with great ease. I also read Seller and Schemme's Book of Navigation, and became acquainted with the little geometry they contained, but never proceeded farther in that science. And I read about this time Locke on Human Understanding and the Art of Thinking by Mechur du Pont Royal. John Locke, 1632 to 1704, a celebrated English philosopher, founder of the so-called Common Sense School of Philosophers, he drew up a constitution for the colonists of Carolina, a noted society of scholarly and devout men occupying the abbey of Port Royal near Paris, who published learned books among the one here referred to, better known as the Port Royal Logic. While I was intended on improving my language, I met with an English grammar. I think it was Greenwood's, at the end of which there were two little sketches of the Arts of Rhetoric and Logic, the latter finishing with a specimen of a dispute with the Socratic method, and soon after I procured Xenophon's Memorable Things of Socrates, wherein there are many instances of the same method. I was charmed with it, adopted it, dropped my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer and doubter, and being then from reading Shaftesbury and Collins, become a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine. I found this method safest for myself, and very embarrassing to those against whom I used it. Therefore I took a delight in it, practiced it continually, and grew very artful and expert in drawing people, even of superior knowledge, into concessions, the consequence of which they did not foresee, entangling them in difficulties out of which they could not extricate themselves, and so obtaining victories that neither myself nor my cause always deserved. I continued this method some few years, but gradually left it, retaining only the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence, never using when I advanced anything that may possibly be disputed, the words certainly, undoubtedly, or any others that gave an air of positiveness to an opinion, but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so. It appears to me, or I should think it so or so, for such and such reasons, or I imagine it to be so, or it is so if I am not mistaken. This habit, I believe, has been of great advantage to me when I have had occasion to inculcate my opinions and persuade men into measures that I have been from time to time engaged in promoting, and as the chief ends of conversation are to inform, or to be informed, to please, or to persuade, I wish well-meaning sensible men would not lessen their power of doing good by a positive, assuming manner that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat every one of those purposes for which speech was given to us, to it, giving or receiving information or pleasure. For if you would inform a positive and dogmatical manner, in advancing your sentiments may provoke contradiction and prevent a candid attention. If you wish information and improvement from the knowledge of others, and yet at the same time express yourself as firmly fixed in your present opinion, modest, sensible men who do not love disputation will probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of your error. And by such a manner, you can sell them hope to recommend yourself in pleasing. Pope says judiciously men should be taught as if you taught them not, and things unknown prospered as things forgot. Further recommending to us, to speak though sure with seeming diffidence, and he might have coupled with this line that which he has coupled with another, I think, less properly, for want of modesty is want of sense. If you ask why less properly, I must repeat the lines. Immodest words admit of no defense, for want of modesty is want of sense. Now is not want of sense, wherein a man is so unfortunate as to want it, some apology for his want of modesty, and would not the lines stand more justly thus. Immodest words admit, but this defense, the want of modesty, is want of sense. This, however, I submit to better judgments. Socrates confuted his opponents in an argument by asking questions so skillfully devised that the answers would confirm the questioner's position or show the error of the opponent. Alexander Pope, 1688 to 1744, the greatest English poet of the first half of the eighteenth century. My brother had in 1720 or 1721 begun to print a newspaper. It was the second that appeared in America, and was called the New England Quarant. The only one before it was the Boston Newsletter. I remember his being dissuaded by some of his friends from the undertaking as not likely to succeed, one newspaper being in their judgment enough for America. At this time, 1771, there were not less than five and twenty. He went on, however, with the undertaking, and after having worked in composing the types and printing off the sheets, I was employed to carry the papers through the streets to the customers. Franklin's memory does not serve him correctly here. The Quarant was really the fifth newspaper established in America, although generally called the fourth because the first, Public Occurrences, published in Boston in 1690, was suppressed after the first issue. Following is the order in which the other four papers were published. Boston Newsletter, 1704, Boston Gazette, December 21, 1719, the American Weekly Mercury, Philadelphia, December 22, 1719, the New England Quarant, 1721. He had some ingenious men among his friends who amused themselves by writing little pieces for this paper which gained it credit and made it more in demand, and these gentlemen often visited us. Hearing their conversations and their account of the approbation their papers were received with, I was excited to try my hand among them. But being still a boy and suspecting that my brother would object to printing anything of mine in his paper, if he knew it to be mine, I contrived to disguise my hand, and, writing an anonymous paper, I put it in at night under the door of the printing house. It was found in the morning and communicated to his writing friends when they called in as usual. They read it, commented on it in my hearing, and I had the exquisite pleasure of finding it met with their approbation, and that their different guesses at the author, none were named but men of some character among us for learning and ingenuity. I suppose now that I was rather lucky in my judges, and that perhaps they were not really so very good ones as I then esteemed them. Encouraged, however, by this, I wrote and conveyed in the same way to the press several more papers which were equally approved, and I kept my secret till my small fund of sense for such performances was pretty well exhausted, and then I discovered it, when I began to be considered a little more by my brother's acquaintances, and in a manner that did not quite please him as he thought probably with reason that it tended to make me too vain, and perhaps this might be one occasion of the differences that we began to have about this time. Though a brother he considered himself as my master, and me as his apprentice, and accordingly expected the same services for me as he would from another, while I thought he deemed me too much in some he required of me, who, from a brother, expected more indulgence. Our disputes were often brought before our father, and I fancy I was either generally in the right, or else a better pleader, because the judgment was generally in my favor. But my brother was passionate, and had often beaten me, which I took extremely amiss, and, thinking my apprenticeship very tedious, I was continually wishing for some opportunity of shortening it, which at length offered in a manner unexpected. One of the pieces in our newspaper on some political point which I have now forgotten gave offense to the assembly. He was taken up, censured, and imprisoned for a month by the speaker's warrant. I suppose because he would not discover his author, I too was taken up and examined before the council, but though I did not give them any satisfaction, they contended themselves with admonishing me and dismissed me, considering age, perhaps, as an apprentice, who was bound to keep his master's secrets. During my brother's confinement, which I resented a good deal not withstanding our private differences, I had the management of the paper, and I made bold to give our rulers some rubs in it, which my brother took very kindly, while others began to consider me in an unfavorable light, as a young genius that had a turn for libeling and satire. My brother's discharge was accompanied with an order of the house, a very odd one, that James Franklin could no longer print the paper called the New England Courant. There was a consultation held in our printing-house among his friends what should be done in this case. Some proposed to evade the order by changing the name of the paper, but my brother, seeing inconveniences in that, it was finally concluded on as a better way, to let it be printed for the future under the name of Benjamin Franklin, and to avoid the censure of the assembly that might fall on him as still printing it by his apprentice, the contrivance was that my old indenture should be returned to me with a full discharge on the back of it, to be shown on occasion, but to secure to him the benefits of my service I was to sign new indentures for the remainder of the term, which were to be kept private. A very flimsy scheme it was, however, it was immediately executed, and the paper went on accordingly, under my name for several months. At length a fresh difference arising between my brother and me I took upon me to assert my freedom, presuming that he would not venture to produce the new indentures. It was not fair in me to take this advantage, and this I therefore reckoned one of the first errata of my life, but the unfairness of it weighed little with me, when under the impressions of resentment for the blows his passion too often urged him to be stow upon me, though he was otherwise not an ill-natured man, perhaps I was too saucy and provoking. When he found I would leave him, he took care to prevent my getting employment in any other printing-house of the town. By going round and speaking to every master, who accordingly refused to give me work, I then thought of going to New York as the nearest place where there was a printer, and I was rather inclined to leave Boston when I reflected that I had already made myself a little obnoxious to the governing party, and from the arbitrary proceedings of the assembly in my brother's case. It was likely I might, if I stayed, sooning bring myself into scrapes, and, farther, that my indiscreet disputations about religion began to make me pointed at with horror by good people as an infidel or atheist. I determined on the point, but my father now siding with my brother. I was sensible that if I attempted to go openly, means would be used to prevent me. My friend Collins, therefore, undertook to manage a little for me. He agreed with the captain of a New York sloop for my passage, under the notion of my being a young acquaintance of his. So I sold some of my books to raise a little money, was taken on board privately, and as we had a fair wind, in three days I found myself in New York, near three hundred miles from home, a boy of but seventeen, without the least recommendation to, or knowledge of, any person in the place, and with very little money in my pocket. CHAPTER III. Arrival in Philadelphia. My inclinations for the sea were by this time worn out, or I might now have gratified them. But having a trade, and supposing myself a pretty good workman, I offered my service to the printer in the place, old Mr. William Bradford, who had been the first printer in Pennsylvania, but removed from fence upon the quarrel of George Keith. He could give me no employment, having little to do, and help enough already, but says he, my son at Philadelphia has lately lost his principal hand, Aquila Rose, by death. If you go thither, I believe he may employ you. Philadelphia was a hundred miles further. I set out, however, in a boat for Amboy, leaving my chest and things to follow me round by sea. In crossing the bay, we met with a squall that tore our rotten sails to pieces, letting our getting into the kill, and drove us upon Long Island. In our way, a drunken Dutchman, who was a passenger too, fell overboard. When he was sinking, I reached through the water to his shock-pate, and drew him up, so that we got him in again. His ducking sobered him a little, and he went to sleep, taking first out of his pocket a book, which he desired I would dry for him. It proved to be my old favorite author, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, in Dutch, finally printed on good paper, with copper cuts, a dress better than I had ever seen it wear in its own language. I have since found that it has been translated into most of the languages of Europe, and suppose it has been more generally read than any other book, except perhaps the Bible. Honest John was the first that I know of who mixed narration and dialogue, a method of writing very engaging to the reader, who in the most interesting parts finds himself, as it were, brought into the company, and present at the discourse. Defoe in his Crusoe, his Maul Flanders, religious courtship, family instructor, and other pieces has imitated it with success, and Richardson has done the same in his Pamela, etc. Michael Van Kil, the channel separating Staten Island from New Jersey on the North. Samuel Richardson, the father of the English novel, wrote Pamela, Clarissa Harlow, and The History of Sir Charles Grandison, novels published in the form of letters. When we drew near the island, we found it was at a place where there could be no landing, there being a great surf on the Stony Beach, so we dropped anchor and swung round towards the shore. Some people came down to the water edge and hallowed to us, as we did to them, but the wind was so high and the surf so loud that we could not hear so as to understand each other. There were canoes on the shore, and we made signs, and hallowed, that they should fetch us, but they either did not understand us, or thought it impracticable. So they went away, and night coming on, we had no remedy but to wait till the wind should abate, and, in the meantime, the boatman and I concluded to sleep, if we could, and so crowded into the scuttle with the Dutchman who was still wet, and the spray beating over the head of our boat leaked through to us, so that we were soon almost as wet as he. In this manner we lay all night with very little rest, but the wind abating the next day we made a shift to reach Amboy before night, having been thirty hours on the water without victuals, or any drink but a bottle of filthy rum, the water we'd sailed on being salt. In the evening I found myself very feverish and went to bed, but having read somewhere that cold water drank plentifully was good for a fever, I followed the prescription, sweat plentifully most of the night, my fever left me, and in the morning, crossing the ferry, I proceeded on my journey, on foot, having fifty miles to Burlington, where I was told I could find boats that would carry me the rest of the way to Philadelphia. It rained very hard that day. I was thoroughly soaked, and by noon a good deal tired, so I stopped at a poor inn where I stayed all night, beginning now to wish that I had never left home. I cut so miserable a figure, too, that I found by some questions asked me, I was suspected to be some runaway servant, and in danger of being taken up on that suspicion. However I proceeded the next day, and got in the evening to an inn within eight or ten miles of Burlington, kept by one Dr. Brown. He entered into conversation with me, while I took some refreshment, and, finding I had read a little, became very sociable and friendly. Our acquaintance continued as long as he lived. He had been, I imagine, an itinerant doctor, for there was no town in England, or country in Europe, of which he could not give a very particular account. He had some letters, and was ingenious, but much of an unbeliever, and wickedly undertook, some years after, to travesty the Bible in a dog-roll verse, as Cotton had done Virgil. By this means he set many of the facts in a very ridiculous light, and might have hurt weak minds if his work had been published, but it never was. At his house I lay that night, and the next morning reached Burlington, but had the mortification to find the regular boats were gone a little before my coming, and no other expected to go before Tuesday, this being Saturday, wherefore I returned to an old woman in the town of whom I had brought gingerbread to eat on the water, and asked her advice. She invited me to lodge at her house until a passage by water could offer, and being tired with my foot traveling I accepted the invitation. She understanding I was a printer would have had me stay at that town, and follow my business, being ignorant of the stock necessary to begin with. She was very hospitable, gave me a dinner of ox cheek, and great goodwill, accepting only a pot of ale in return, and I thought myself fixed till Tuesday should come, however walking in the evening by the side of the river a boat came by, which I found was going towards Philadelphia, with several people in her. They took me in, and as there was no wind we rode all the way, and about midnight, not having yet seen the city, some of the company were confident we must have passed it, and would row no further. The others knew not where we were, so we were put toward the shore, got into a creek, landed near an old fence, with the rails of which we made a fire, that night being cold, in October, and there we remained till daylight. Then one of the company knew the place to be Cooper's creek, a little above Philadelphia, which we saw as soon as we got out of the creek, and arrived there about eight or nine o'clock on the Sunday morning, and landed at the Market Street Wharf. I have been the most particular in this description of my journey, and shall be so if my first entry into that city, that you may, in your mind, compare such unlikely beginnings with the future I have since made there. I was in my working dress, my best clothes being to come round by sea. I was dirty from my journey, my pockets were stuffed out with shirts and stockings, and I knew no soul nor where to look for lodging. I was fatigued with traveling, rowing, and want of rest. I was very hungry, and my whole stock of cash consisted of a Dutch dollar and about a shilling in copper. The latter I gave the people of the boat for my passage, who at first refused it on account of my rowing, but I insisted on there taking it, a man being sometimes more generous when he has but a little money than when he has plenty, perhaps, though, fear of being thought of, to have but little. Then I walked up the street, gazing about till near the Market House, I met a boy with bread. I had made many a meal on bread, and, inquiring where he got it, I went immediately to the bakers he directed me to in Second Street, and asked for biscuit, intending such as we had in Boston. But they, it seems, were not made in Philadelphia. Then I asked for a three-penny loaf, and was told they had none such. So not considering or knowing the difference of money, and the greater cheapness nor the names of his bread, I bade him give me three penny worth of any sort. He gave me accordingly three great puffy rolls. I was surprised at the quantity, but took it, and having no room in my pockets walked off with a roll under each arm, and eating the other. Thus I made up Market Street as far as Fourth Street, passing by the door of Mr. Reed, my future wife's father. When she, standing at the door, saw me, and thought I made, as I certainly did, a most awkward, ridiculous appearance. Then I turned and went down Chestnut Street, and part of Walnut Street, eating my roll all the way, and coming round I found myself again a Market Street wharf. Near the boat I came in, to which I went for a draft of river water, and being filled with one of my rolls, gave the other two to a woman and her child that came down the river in the boat with us, and were waiting to go farther. Thus refreshed I walked again up the street, which by this time had many clean-dressed people in it, and who were all walking the same way. I joined them, and thereby was led to the great meeting-house of the Quakers, near the Market. I sat down among them, and, after looking round a while, and hearing nothing said, being very drowsy through labor, and want of rest the preceding night, I fell fast asleep, and continued so till the meeting broke up, when one was kind enough to rouse me. This was therefore the first house I was in, or slept in, in Philadelphia. Walking down again toward the street, and looking in the faces of people, I met a young Quaker man, whose continents I liked, and accosted him, requesting he would tell me where a stranger could get lodging. We were then near the sign of the three mariners. Here says he, is one place that entertains strangers, but it is not a reputable house. If thee wilt walk with me, I'll show thee a better. He brought me to the crooked billet in Water Street, where I got a dinner, and while I was eating it several sly questions were asked me. As it seemed to be suspected from my youth and appearance that I might be some runaway. After dinner my sleepiness returned, and being shone to a bed I lay down without undressing, and slept till six in the evening, was called to supper, went to bed again very early, and slept sound till next morning. Then I made myself as tidy as I could, and went to Andrew Bradford the printers. I found in the shop the old man, his father, whom I had seen in New York, and who, traveling on horseback, had got to Philadelphia before me. He introduced me to his son, who received me civilly, gave me a breakfast, but told me he did not at present want a hand, being lately supplied with one. But there was another printer in town, lately set up, one chimer, who, perhaps, might employ me, if not, I should be welcomed to lodge at his house, and he would give me a little work to do now and then, till fuller business should offer. The old gentleman said he would go with me to the new printer, and when we found him, neighbor, says Bradford, I have brought to see you a young man of your business. Perhaps you may want such a one. He asked me a few questions, put a composing stick in my hand, to see how I worked, and then said he would employ me soon, though he had just then nothing for me to do, and, taking old Bradford, whom he had never seen before, to be one of the town's people that had a good will for him, entered into a conversation on his present undertaking and prospects. While Bradford not discovering that he was the other printer's father, on chimer's saying, he expected soon to get the greatest part of the business into his own hands, drew him on by artful questions, and starting little doubts, to explain all his views, what interest he relied on, and in what manner he intended to proceed. I, who stood by and heard all, saw immediately that one of them was a crafty old sophister, and the other a mere novice. Bradford left me with Chimer, who was greatly surprised when I told him who the old man was. Chimer's printing-house I found consisted of an old shattered press, and one small worn-out font of English which he was using himself, composing an elegy on Aquila Rose, before mentioned, an ingenious young man of excellent character, much respected in the town, clerk of the assembly, and a pretty poet. Chimer made verses too, but very indifferently. He could not be said to write them, for his manner was to compose them in the types directly out of his head. So there being no copy, but one pair of cases, and the elegy likely to require all the letter, no one could help him. I endeavored to put his press, which he had not yet used, and of which he understood nothing, into order fit to be worked with, and promised to come and print off his elegy as soon as he should have got it ready. I returned to Bradford's, who gave me a little job to do for the present, and there I lodged and dieted. A few days after, Chimer sent for me to print off the elegy, and now he had got another pair of cases, and a pamphlet to reprint, on which he set me to work. These two printers I found poorly qualified for their business. Bradford had not been bred to it, and was very illiterate. And Chimer, though, something of a scholar, was a mere compositor, knowing nothing of press work. He had been one of the French prophets, and could act their enthusiastic agitations. At the time he did not profess any particular religion, but something of all on occasion, was very ignorant of the world, and had, as I afterward found, a good deal of the knave in his composition. He did not like my lodging at Bradford's while I worked with him. He had a house, indeed, but without furniture, so he could not lodge me. But he got me a lodging at Mr. Reed's before mentioned, who was the owner of this house, and my chest and clothes being come by this time, I made rather a more respectable appearance in the eyes of Miss Reed than I had done when she first happened to see me eating my roll in the street. Protestants of the south of France who became fanatical under the persecutions of Louis XIV, and though they had the gift of prophecy as they had mothos, no taxes, and liberty of conscience. I began to have some acquaintance among the young people of the town that were lovers of reading, with whom I spent my evenings very pleasantly, and gained money by my industry and frugality. I lived very agreeably, forgetting Boston as much as I could, and not desiring that any there should know where I resided except my friend Collins, who was in my street, and kept it when I wrote to him. At length an incident happened that sent me back again much sooner than I had intended. I had a brother-in-law, Robert Holmes, master of a sloop that traded between Boston and Delaware. He being at Newcastle, forty miles below Philadelphia, heard thereof me and wrote me a letter, mentioning the concerns of my friends in Boston at my abrupt departure, assuring me of their good will to me, and that everything would be accommodated to my mind if I would return, to which he exhorted me very earnestly. I wrote an answer to this letter, thanked him for his advice, but stated that my reasons for quitting Boston fully and in such a light as to convince him I was not so wrong as he had apprehended. CHAPTER 4 First Visit to Boston Sir William Keith, Governor of the Province, was then at Newcastle and Captain Holmes, happening to be in company with him when my letter came to hand, spoke to him of me, and showed him the letter. The Governor read it, and seemed surprised when he was told my age. He said I appeared a young man of promising parts, and therefore should be encouraged. The printers of Philadelphia were wretched ones, and if I could set up there, he made no doubt I should succeed. For his part he would procure me the public business and do me every other service in his power. This my brother-in-law afterwards told me in Boston, but I knew as yet nothing of it when, one day, Chimer and I, being at work together near the window, we saw the Governor and another gentleman, which proved to be Colonel French of Newcastle, finally dressed, come directly across the street to our house, and heard them at the door. Chimer ran down immediately, thinking it a visit to him, but the Governor inquired for me, came up, and with a condescension and politeness I had been quite unused to, made me many compliments, desired to be acquainted with me, blamed me kindly for not having made myself known to him when I first came to the place, and would have me away with him to the tavern where he was going with Colonel French to taste, as he said, some excellent Madeira. I was not a little surprised, and Chimer stared like a pig poisoned. I went, however, with the Governor and Colonel French to a tavern at the corner of Third Street and over the Madeira he proposed my setting up my business, laid before me the probabilities of success, and both he and Colonel French assured me I should have their interest and influence in procuring the public business of both governments. On my doubting whether my father would assist me in it, Sir Williams said he would give me a letter to him, in which he would state the advantages, and he did not doubt of prevailing with him. So it was concluded I should return to Boston in the first vessel, with the Governor's letter recommending me to my father. In the meantime the intention was to keep a secret, and I went on working with Chimer as usual, the Governor sending for me now and then to dine with him, a very great honour I thought it, and conversing with me in the most affable, familiar, and friendly manner imaginable. At the end of April 1724 a little vessel offered for Boston. I took leave of Chimer as going to see my friends. The Governor gave me an ample letter saying many flattering things of me to my father, and strongly recommending the project of my setting up in Philadelphia as a thing that must make my fortune. We struck on a shoal in going down the bay, and sprung a leak. We had a blistering time at sea, and were obliged to pump almost continuously, at which I took my turn. We arrived safe, however, at Boston in about a fortnight. I had been absent seven months, and my friends had heard nothing of me, for my brother Holmes was not yet returned, and had not written about me. My unexpected appearance surprised the family, all were, however, very glad to see me, and made me welcome except my brother. I saw him at his printing-house. I was better dressed than ever while in his service, having a gentile new suit from head to foot, a watch, and my pockets lined with near five pounds sterling in silver. He received me, not very frankly, looked me all over, and turned to his work again. The journeymen were inquisitive where I had been, what sort of a country it was, and how I liked it. I praised it much, the happy life I led in it, expressing strongly my intention of returning to it, and one of them asked what kind of money we had there. I produced a handful of silver, and spread it before them, which was a kind of rary show, a peep-show in a box. They had not been used to, paper money being the money of Boston. Begin footnote, there were no mints in the colonies, so the metal money was of foreign coinage, and not nearly so common as paper money, which was printed in large quantities in America, even in small denominations. End footnote. Then I took the opportunity of letting them see my watch, and lastly, my brother still grumb and sullen, I gave them a piece of eight, Spanish dollar about equivalent to our dollar, to drink, and took my leave. This visit of mine offended him extremely, for when my mother some time after spoke to him of a reconciliation, and of her wishes to see us on good terms together, and that we might live for the future as brothers, he said I had insulted him in such a manner before his people that he could never forget or forgive it. In this, however, he was mistaken. My father received the Governor's letter with some apparent surprise, but said little of it to me for some days. When Captain Holmes returned, he showed it to him and asked him if he knew Keith, and what kind of man he was, adding his opinion that he must be of small discretion to think of setting a boy up in a business who wanted yet three years of being a man's estate. Holmes said what he could in favor of the project, but my father was clear in the impropriety of it, and at last gave a flat denial to it. Then he wrote a civil letter to Sir William, thanking him for the patronage he had so kindly offered me, but declining to assist me as yet in setting up, I being, in his opinion, too young to be trusted with the management of a business so important, and for which the preparation must be so expensive. My friend and companion Collins, who was a clerk in the post office, pleased with the account I gave him of my new country, determined to go thither also, and while I waited for my father's determination, he set out before me by land to Rhode Island, leaving his books, which were a pretty collection of mathematics and natural philosophy, to come with mine and me to New York, where he proposed to wait for me. My father, though, he did not approve Sir William's proposition, was yet pleased that I had been able to obtain so advantageous a character from a person of such note where I had resided, and that I had been so industrious and careful as to equip myself so handsomely in so short a time, therefore seeing no prospect of an accommodation between my brother and me, he gave his consent to my returning again to Philadelphia, advised me to behave respectfully to the people there, endeavouring to obtain the general esteem, and avoid lampooning and libeling, to which he thought I had too much inclination. Telling me that by steady industry and a prudent parsimony I might save enough by the time I was twenty and one to set me up, and that if I came near the matter he would help me out with the rest. This was all I could obtain except some small gifts as tokens of his and my mother's love, when I embarked again for New York, now with their approbation and their blessing. The sloop putting in at Newport Rhode Island I visited my brother, John, who had been married and settled there some years. He received me very affectionately, for he always loved me, a friend of his, one Vernon, having some money do him in Philadelphia, about thirty-five pounds currency, desired that I would receive it for him, and keep it till I had his directions what to remit it in. Accordingly he gave me an order, this afterwards occasioned me a good deal of uneasiness. At Newport we took a number of passengers for New York, among which were two young women, companions and a grave sensible matron-like Quaker woman, with her attendance. I had shown an obliging readiness to do her some little services which impressed her, I suppose, with a degree of goodwill toward me. Therefore, when she saw a daily growing familiarity between me and the two young women, which they appeared to encourage, she took me aside and said, Young man, I am concerned for thee, as thou hast no friend in thee, and seems not to know much of the world, or of the snares youth is exposed to. Depend upon it, those are very bad women. I can see it in all their actions, and if thee art not upon thy guard, they will draw thee into some danger. They are strangers to thee, and I advise thee, in a friendly concern for thy welfare, to have no acquaintance with them. As I seemed at first not to think so ill of them as she did, she mentioned some things she had observed, and heard that had escaped my notice, but now convinced me she was right. I thanked her for her kind advice, and promised to follow it. When we arrived at New York, they told me where they lived, and invited me to come and see them, but I avoided it, and it was well I did, for the next day the captain missed a silver spoon and some other things that had been taken out of his cabin. And knowing that these were a couple of strumpets, he got a warrant to search their lodgings, found the stolen goods, and had the thieves punished. So though we had escaped a sunken rock, which we scraped upon in the passage, I thought this escapade of rather more importance to me. At New York I found my friend Collins, who had arrived there some time before me. We had been intimate from children, and had read the same books together, but he had the advantage of more time for reading and studying, and a wonderful genius for mathematical learning in which he far outstripped me. While I lived in Boston most of my hours of leisure for conversation were spent with him, and he continued as sober as well as an industrious lad, was much respected for his learning by several of the clergy and other gentlemen, and seemed to promise making a good figure in life. But during my absence he had acquired a habit of sorting with Brandy, and I found by his own account, and what I heard from others, that he had been drunk every day since his arrival in New York, and behaved very oddly. He had gained, too, and lost his money, so that I was obliged to discharge his lodgings, and defray his expenses to and at Philadelphia, which proved extremely inconvenient to me. The Governor of New York, Burnett, son of Bishop Burnett, hearing from the captain that a young man, one of his passengers, had a great many books, desired he would bring me to see him, awaited upon him accordingly, and should have taken Collins with me, but that he was not sober. The Governor treated me with great civility, showed me his library, which was a very large one, and we had a good deal of conversation about books and authors. This was the second Governor who had done me the honour to take notice of me, which, to a poor boy like me, was very pleasing. We proceeded to Philadelphia. I received, on the way, Vernon's money, without which we could hardly have finished our journey. Collins wished to be employed in some counting-house, but whether they discovered his drumming by his breath, or by his behaviour, though he had some recommendations, he met with no success in any application, and continued lodging and boarding at the same house with me, and at my expense. Knowing I had that money of Vernon's, he was continually borrowing of me. Still promising repayment, as soon as he should be in business. At length he had got so much of it, that I was distressed to think what I should do in case of being called on to remit it. His drinking continued about which we sometimes quarreled, for when a little intoxicated he was very fractious. Once in a boat on the Delaware with some other young men he refused to row in his turn. I will be rowed home, says he. We will not row for you, says I. You must, or stay all night on the water, says he, just as you please. The others said, let us row. What signifies it? But my mind being soured with his other conduct I continued to refuse. So he swore he would make me row, and throw me overboard, and coming along, stepping on the torch towards me, when he came up and struck at me. I clapped my hand under his crutch, and, rising, pitched him head foremost into the river. I knew he was a good swimmer, and so was under little concern about him. But before he could get round to lay hold of the boat, we had a few strokes pulled her out of his reach, and ever when he drew near the boat, we asked if he would row, striking a few strokes, to slide her away from him. He was ready to die with vexation, and obstinately would not promise to row. However, seeing him at last beginning to tire, we lifted him and brought him home, dripping wet in the evening. We hardly exchanged a civil word afterward, and a West Indian captain, who had a commission to procure a tutor for the sons of a gentleman at Barbados, happening to meet with him, agreed to carry him thither. He left me then, promising to remit the first money he should receive in order to discharge the debt. But I never heard of him after. Breaking into this money of vernance was one of the first great errata of my life, and this affair showed that my father was not much out in his judgment when he supposed me too young to manage business of importance. But Sir William, on reading his letter, said he was too prudent. There was great difference in persons, and discretion did not always accompany years. Nor was youth always without it. And since he will not set you up, says he, I will do it myself. Give me an inventory of the things necessary to be had from England, and I will send for them. You shall repay me when you are able. I am resolved to have a good printer here, and I am sure you must succeed. This was spoken with such an appearance of cordiality that I had not the least doubt of his meaning, and what he said I had hitherto kept the proposition of my setting up a secret in Philadelphia, and I still kept it. Had it been known that I depended on the Governor, probably some friend that knew him better would have advised me not to rely on him. As I afterwards heard it was his known character to be liberal of promises which he never meant to keep. Yet unsolicited as he was by me, how could I think his generous offer insincere? I believed him one of the best men of the world. I presented him an inventory of a little print house amounting to my computing to about one hundred pounds sterling. He liked it, but asked me, if my being on the spot in England, to choose the types and see that everything was good of the kind might not be of some advantage. Then says he, when there you may make acquaintances and establish correspondence in the book-selling and stationary way. I agreed that this might be advantageous. Then says he, get yourself ready to go with Annus, which was the annual ship, and the only one at that time usually passing between London and Philadelphia. But it would be some months before Annus sailed, so I continued working with Chimer. Fretting about the money Collins had got from me, and in daily apprehension of being called upon by Vernon, which, however, did not happen for some years after. I believe I have omitted mentioning that in my first voyage from Boston being becalmed off Block Island, our people set about catching cod and hauled up a great many. Hitherto I had stuck to my resolution of not eating animal food, and on this occasion I considered it with my master Tyrone the taking every fish as a kind of unprovoked murder, since none of them had, or ever could, do us any injury that might justify the slaughter. All this seemed to be reasonable, but I had formerly been a great lover of fish, and when this came hot out of the frying pan it smelt admirably well. I balanced some time between principle and inclination till I reckoned that when the fish were opened I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs. Then thought I, if you eat one another I don't see why we may not eat you. So I dined upon cod very heartily, and continued to eat with other people, returning now only and then occasionally to a vegetable diet. So convenient a thing is it to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do. CHAPTER V. CHIMER AND I LIVED ON A PRETTY GOOD FAMILIAR FOOTING, AND AGREED TOLERABLY WELL, FOR HE SUSPECTED NOTHING OF MY SETTING UP. HE RETAINED A GREAT DEAL OF HIS OLD ENTHUSIASMS AND LOVED ARGUMENTATION. WE, THEREFORE, HAD MANY DISPUTATIONS. I USED TO WORK HIM SO WITH MY SOCRATIC METHOD, AND I HAD TRIPPENED HIM SO OFFEN BY QUESTIONS APPARENTLY SO DISTANT FROM ANY POINT HE HAD IN HAND, AND YET BY DEGREES LED TO THE POINT AND BROUGHT HIM INTO DIFFICULTES AND CONTRADITIONS. That at last he grew ridiculously cautious, and would hardly answer me the most common question, without asking you first, what do you intend to make from that? However, it gave him so high an opinion of my abilities in the computing way, that he seriously proposed my being his colleague in the project he had of setting up a new sect. He was to preach the doctrines, and I was to confound all opponents. When he came to explain with me upon the doctrines, I found several conundrums which I objected to, unless I might have my way a little too, and introduce some of mine. Chimer wore his beard at full length, because somewhere in the mosaic law it is said, Thou shalt not mar the corners of thy beard. Likewise kept the seventh-day Sabbath, and these two points were essential to him. I disliked both, but agreed to admit them upon condition of his adopting the doctrine of using no animal food. I doubt, said he, my constitution will not bear that. I assured him it would, and that he would be better for it. He was usually a great glutton, and I promised myself some diversion in half-starving him. He agreed to try the practice, if I would keep him company. I did so, and we held it for three months. We had our victuals dressed and brought to us regularly, by a woman in the neighborhood, who had from me a list of forty dishes to be prepared for us at different times. In all which there were neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, the whim suited me the better at this time from the cheapness of it, not costing us above eighteen pence sterling each week. I have since kept several lents, most strictly, leaving the common diet for that, and that for the common, abruptly, without the least inconvenience, so that I think there is a little in the advice of making those changes by easy gradations. I went on pleasantly, but poor Kimer suffered grievously, tired of the project, longed for the flesh-pots of Egypt, and ordered a roast-pig. He invited me and two women friends to dine with him, but it being brought too soon upon table, he could not resist the temptation and ate the whole before we came. I made some courtship during this time to misread. I had a great respect and affection for her, and had some reason to believe she had the same for me. But as I was about to take a long voyage, and we were both very young, only a little above eighteen, it was thought most prudent by her mother to prevent our going too far at present, as a marriage, if it was to take place, would be more convenient after my return, when I should be, as I expected, set up in my business. Perhaps too she thought my expectations not so well founded, as I imagined them to be. My chief acquaintances at this time were Charles Osborne, Joseph Watson, and James Ralph, all lovers of reading. The two first were clerks in an eminent scrivener, or convenancer, in the town, Charles Brockton. The other was clerked to a merchant. Watson was a pious, sensible young man of great integrity. The others rather more lax in their principles of religion, particularly Ralph, who, as well as Collins, had been unsettled by me, for which they both made me suffer. Osborne was sensible, candid, frank, sincere, and affectionate to his friends. But, in literary matters, too fond of criticising. Ralph was ingenious, genteel in his manners, and extremely eloquent. I think I never knew a prettier talker. Both of them were great admirers of poetry, and began to try their hands in little pieces. Many pleasant walks we forehad together on Sundays into the woods near Shookill, where we read to one another, and conferred on what we read. Ralph was inclined to pursue the study of poetry, not doubting, but he might become eminent in it, and make his fortune by it, alleging that the best poets must, when they first begin to write, make as many faults as he did. Osborne dissuaded him, assured him he had no genius for poetry, and advised him to think of nothing beyond the business he was bred to, that, in the mercantile way, though he had no stock, he might by his diligence and punctuality recommend himself to employment as a factor, and in time acquire wherewith to trade on his own account. I approved the amusing one's self with poetry now and then, so far as to improve one's language, but no farther. On this it was proposed that we should each of us, at our next meeting, produce a piece of our own composing, in order to improve by our mutual observations, criticisms, and corrections. As language and expression were what we had in view, we excluded all considerations of invention by agreeing that the task should be a version of the eighteenth Psalm, which describes the descent of a deity. When the time of our meeting drew nigh, Ralph called on me first, and let me know his piece was ready. I told him I had been busy, and having little inclination had done nothing. He then showed me his piece for my opinion, and I much approved it, as it appeared to me to have great merit. Now says he, Osborne never will allow the least merit in anything of mine, but makes one thousand criticisms out of mere envy. He is not so jealous of you. I wish, therefore, you would take this piece and produce it as yours. I will pretend not to have had time, and so produce nothing. We shall then see what he will say to it. It was agreed, and I immediately transcribed it, that it might appear to be in my own hand. We met. Watson's performance was red. There was some beauties in it, but many defects. Osborne's was red. It was much better. Ralph did it justice. Remarked some faults, but applauded the beauties. He himself had nothing to produce. I was backward, seemed desirous of being excused, and had not sufficient time to correct, etc. But no excuse could be admitted. Produce I must. I was red and repeated. Watson and Osborne gave up the contest, and joined in applauding it. Ralph only made some criticism and proposed some amendments, but I defended my text. Osborne was against Ralph, and told him he was no better a critic than poet. So he dropped the argument. As they two went home together, Osborne expressed himself still more strongly in favor of what he thought my production. Having restrained himself before, as he said, least I should think it flattery. But who would have imagined, said he, that Franklin had been capable of such a performance, such panting, such force, such fire? He has even improved the original. In his common conversation he seems to have no choice of words. He hesitates in blunders, and yet, good God, how he writes, when we next met Ralph discovered the trick we had played on him, and Osborne was a little laughed at. This transaction fixed Ralph in his resolution of becoming a poet. I did all that I could to dissuade him from it, but he continued scribbling verses till Pope cured him. Again footnote. In one of the later editions of the Duncanade occur the following lines. Archie Wolves, where Ralph to Cynthia Howells, and makes night hideous, answer him Ye Howells. To this the poet adds the following note. James Ralph, a name inserted after the first editions, not known until he writ a swearing piece called Sweeney, very abusive of Dr. Swift, Mr. Gay, and myself. End footnote. He became, however, a pretty good prose-writer. More of him hereafter. But as I may not have occasioned again to mention the other two, I shall just remark here, that Watson died in my arms a few years after, much lamented to being of the best of our set. Osborne went to the West Indies, where he became an imminent lawyer, and made money, but died young. He and I made a serious agreement, that the one who happened first to die should, if possible, make a friendly visit to the other, and acquaint him of how he found things in that separate state. But he never fulfilled his promise. End of Chapter 5