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 re­ceipts that we know by heart but never fol­low. Most of the life stor­ies of our fam­ous and suc­cess­ful men fail to in­spire be­cause they lack the hu­man ele­ment that makes the 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 Comus,

“Unknown, and like es­teemed, and the 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 own his­tory, and per­haps in any his­tory. In Frank­lin’s Auto­bi­o­graphy is offered not so much a ready-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 of 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 to 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 wealth­i­est 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 Jef­frey, 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-sided.” 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 stove, still widely used, and re­fused to pat­ent it. He pos­sessed a mas­terly shrewd­ness in busi­ness and prac­tical af­fairs. Carlyle 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 or­gan­ized 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 dip­lo­mat­ist 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 Copley 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 Humphry Davy, 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 a 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 eagerly 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 plow­boy and ex­quis­ite could fol­low his thought or his ex­per­i­ment to its con­clu­sion.”1

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 Mather’s Mag­nalia, a church his­tory of New Eng­land in a pon­der­ous, stiff style. Frank­lin was the first Amer­ican au­thor to gain a 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 eight­eenth 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 Steele. Pamph­let­eers flour­ished 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 Har­lowe, Sterne’s Tris­tram Shandy, 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 es­says he was not an in­ferior im­it­ator of Ad­dison. In his nu­mer­ous par­ables, moral al­leg­or­ies, and apo­logues 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 power 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 that use­ful­ness.

The Story of the Autobiography

The ac­count of how Frank­lin’s Auto­bi­o­graphy came to be writ­ten and of 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 Passy, near Paris, ur­ging him to com­plete the story. Frank­lin took up the work at Passy in 1784 and car­ried the nar­rat­ive for­ward a few months. He changed the plan to meet his new pur­pose of writ­ing to be­ne­fit the young 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 Mon­sieur Le Veil­lard 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 Veil­lard 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 ex­ecutor. When Temple Frank­lin came to pub­lish his grand­father’s works in 1817, he sent the ori­ginal ma­nu­script of the Auto­bi­o­graphy to the daugh­ter of Le Veil­lard in ex­change for her father’s copy, prob­ably think­ing the clearer tran­script would make bet­ter printer’s copy. The ori­ginal ma­nu­script thus found its way to the Le Veil­lard 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 Fifty-sev­enth Street, New York City.

When Mr. Bi­gelow came to ex­am­ine his pur­chase, he was as­ton­ished to find that 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 twelve hun­dred 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.2

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 the 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.

Frank Wood­worth Pine

The Gil­man Coun­try School,

Bal­timore, Septem­ber, 1916.

“I was born in Bo­ston, New Eng­land, and owe my first in­struc­tions in lit­er­at­ure to the free gram­mar-schools es­tab­lished there. I there­fore give one hun­dred pounds ster­ling to my ex­ecut­ors, to be by them … paid over to the man­agers or dir­ect­ors of the free schools in my nat­ive town of Bo­ston, to be by them … put out to in­terest, and so con­tin­ued at in­terest forever, which in­terest an­nu­ally shall be laid out in sil­ver medals, and given as hon­or­ary re­wards an­nu­ally by the dir­ect­ors of the said free schools be­long­ing to the said town, in such man­ner as to the dis­cre­tion of the se­lect­men of the said town shall seem meet.”

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

I Ancestry and Early Youth in Boston

Twy­ford,3 at the Bishop of St. As­aph’s, 1771.

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 for you. To 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 con­du­cing 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 to their own situ­ations, and there­fore fit to be im­it­ated.

That fe­li­city, when I re­flec­ted on it, has in­duced me some­times to say, that were it offered to my choice, I should have no ob­jec­tion to a re­pe­ti­tion of the same life from its be­gin­ning, only ask­ing the ad­vant­ages au­thors have in a 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 fa­vour­able. But though this were denied, I should still ac­cept the of­fer. Since such a re­pe­ti­tion 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.4 Indeed, I scarce ever heard or saw the in­tro­duct­ory words, “Without van­ity I may say,” etc., but some vain thing im­me­di­ately fol­lowed. Most people dis­like van­ity in oth­ers, whatever share they have of it them­selves; but I give it fair quarter wherever I meet with it, be­ing per­suaded that it is of­ten pro­duct­ive of good to the 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 lead 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 Northamp­ton­shire,5 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,6 was as­sumed by them 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 1555 only, 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 1598, lived at Ec­ton till he grew too old to fol­low busi­ness longer, when he went to live with his son John, a dyer at Ban­bury, in Ox­ford­shire, with whom my father served an ap­pren­tice­ship. There my grand­father died and lies bur­ied. We saw his grave­stone in 1758. 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. Is­ted, now lord of the manor there. My grand­father had four sons that grew up, viz.: 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 were re­lated of him; and much taken no­tice of and pat­ron­ized by the then Lord Hal­i­fax. He died in 1702, Janu­ary 6, old style,7 just four years to a day be­fore I was born. 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 trans­mi­gra­tion.”

John was bred a dyer, I be­lieve of wool­lens, Ben­jamin was bred a silk dyer, 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 quarto volumes, MS, of his own po­etry, con­sist­ing of little oc­ca­sional pieces ad­dressed to his friends and re­la­tions, of which the fol­low­ing, sent to me, is a spe­ci­men.8 He had formed a short­hand of his own, which he taught me, but, never prac­tising it, 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 at­tender 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 had 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 quarto 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.

This 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 ap­par­itor 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 the Se­cond’s reign, when some of the min­is­ters that had been outed for non­con­form­ity, hold­ing con­venticles9 in Northamp­ton­shire, Ben­jamin and Jo­siah ad­hered to them, and so con­tin­ued all their lives: the rest of the fam­ily re­mained with the Epis­copal Church.

Jo­siah, my father, mar­ried young, and car­ried his wife with three chil­dren into New Eng­land, about 1682. The con­venticles 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 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.10 My mother, the second wife, was Abiah Fol­ger, daugh­ter of Peter Fol­ger, one of the first set­tlers of New Eng­land, of whom hon­or­able men­tion is made by Cot­ton Mather,11 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 an of­fense, 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 li­beller (says he)
I hate it with my heart;
From Sherburne town,12 where now I dwell
My name I do put here;
Without of­fense your real friend,
It is Peter Fol­gier.”

My elder broth­ers were all put ap­pren­tices to dif­fer­ent trades. I was put to the gram­mar-school at eight years of age, my father in­tend­ing to de­vote me, as the tithe13 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 as a stock to set up with, if I would learn his char­ac­ter.14 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 into 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 and arith­metic, kept by a then fam­ous man, Mr. Ge­orge Brownell, very suc­cess­ful in his pro­fes­sion gen­er­ally, and that 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 was not bred to, but had as­sumed on his ar­rival in New Eng­land, and on find­ing his dye­ing 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 mill­pond, on the edge of which, at high wa­ter, we used to stand to fish for min­nows. By much tramp­ling, 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 play­fel­lows, and work­ing with them di­li­gently like so many em­mets, 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. In­quiry 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 withal, 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 pruden­tial mat­ters, both in private and pub­lic af­fairs. In the lat­ter, in­deed, he was never em­ployed, the nu­mer­ous fam­ily he had to edu­cate and the strait­ness of his cir­cum­stances keep­ing 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 ar­bit­rator 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 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 trav­el­ing, 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 either 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, where I some years since placed a marble over their grave,15 with this in­scrip­tion:

Jo­siah Frank­lin,
and
Abiah his wife,
lie here in­terred.
They lived lov­ingly to­gether in wed­lock
fifty-five years.
Without an es­tate, or any gain­ful em­ploy­ment,
By con­stant labor 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 fi­lial re­gard to their memory,
Places this stone.
J. F. born 1655, died 1744, Ætat 89.
A. F. born 1667, died 1752, ——— 85.

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. ’Tis 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 get to sea, as his son Jo­siah had done, to his great vex­a­tion. He there­fore some­times took me to walk with him, and see join­ers, brick­lay­ers, turn­ers, bra­zi­ers, etc., 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 learned so much by it as to be able to do little jobs my­self in my house when a work­man could not read­ily be got, 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 dis­pleas­ing my father, I was taken home again.

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 R. Bur­ton’s His­tor­ical Col­lec­tions; they were small chap­men’s books,16 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 DeFoe’s, called an Es­say on Pro­jects, and an­other of Dr. Mather’s, 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 at 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. An ac­quaint­ance with the ap­pren­tices 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, lest it should be missed or wanted.

And 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 Wor­thil­ake, 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 Grub-street-bal­lad style;17 and when they were prin­ted he sent me about 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 has been of great use to me in the course of my life, and was a prin­cipal means of my ad­vance­ment, I shall 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, which 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 thence, 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 since ob­served, sel­dom fall into it, ex­cept law­yers, uni­ver­sity men, and men of all sorts that have been bred at Ed­in­bor­ough.

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 opin­ion that it was im­proper, and that they were nat­ur­ally un­equal to it. I took the con­trary side, per­haps a little for dis­pute’s sake. He was nat­ur­ally more elo­quent, had a ready 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 per­spicu­ity, of which he con­vinced me by sev­eral in­stances. I saw the justice of his re­marks, and thence 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.18 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 suit­able words that should come to hand. Then I com­pared my Spec­tator with the ori­ginal, dis­covered 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 pub­lic wor­ship which my father used to ex­act of me when I was un­der his care, and which in­deed I still thought a duty, thought I could not, as it seemed to me, af­ford time to prac­tise it.

When about six­teen years of age I happened to meet with a book, writ­ten by one Tryon, 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 in­con­veni­ency, and I was fre­quently chid for my sin­gu­lar­ity. I made my­self ac­quain­ted with Tryon’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 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-cook’s, and a glass of wa­ter, had the rest of the time till their re­turn for study, in which I made the greater pro­gress, from that greater clear­ness of head and quicker ap­pre­hen­sion which usu­ally at­tend tem­per­ance in eat­ing and drink­ing.

And now it was that, be­ing on some oc­ca­sion made ashamed of my ig­nor­ance in fig­ures, which I had twice failed in learn­ing when at school, I took Cocker’s book of Arith­metic, and went through the whole by my­self with great ease. I also read Seller’s and Shermy’s books of Nav­ig­a­tion, and be­came ac­quain­ted with the little geo­metry they con­tain; but never pro­ceeded far in that sci­ence. And I read about this time Locke On Hu­man Under­stand­ing,19 and the Art of Think­ing, by Messrs. du Port Royal.20

While I was in­tent 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 in the So­cratic21 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, prac­tised it con­tinu­ally, and grew very art­ful and ex­pert in draw­ing people, even of su­per­ior know­ledge, into con­ces­sions, the con­sequences 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 give the 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 wit, 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 opin­ions, 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 sel­dom hope to re­com­mend your­self in pleas­ing your hear­ers, or to per­suade those whose con­cur­rence you de­sire. Pope22 says, ju­di­ciously:

“Men should be taught as if you taught them not,
And things un­known pro­posed as things for­got;”

farther 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 (where 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,
That want of mod­esty is want of sense.”

This, how­ever, I should sub­mit to bet­ter judg­ments.

My brother had, in 1720 or 1721, be­gun to print a news­pa­per. It was the second that ap­peared in Amer­ica,23 and was called the New Eng­land Cour­ant. The only one be­fore it was the Bo­ston News-Let­ter. 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 are 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.

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 ac­counts 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, in 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 dis­covered24 it, when I began to be con­sidered a little more by my brother’s ac­quaint­ance, 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 from me as he would from an­other, while I thought he de­meaned 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 con­ten­ted them­selves with ad­mon­ish­ing me, and dis­missed me, con­sid­er­ing me, per­haps, as an ap­pren­tice, who was bound to keep his mas­ter’s secrets.

Dur­ing my brother’s con­fine­ment, which I re­sen­ted a good deal, not­with­stand­ing 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 satyr. My brother’s dis­charge was ac­com­pan­ied with an or­der of the House (a very odd one), that “James Frank­lin should no longer print the pa­per called the New Eng­land Cour­ant.”

There was a con­sulta­tion held in our print­ing-house among his friends, what he should do 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 be­ne­fit 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 reckon 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 be­stow 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, soon 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.

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 thence 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, Aquilla 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, pre­ven­ted our get­ting into the Kill,25 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, finely 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. De Foe in his Cruso, his Moll Flanders, Re­li­gious Court­ship, Fam­ily In­structor, and other pieces, has im­it­ated it with suc­cess; and Richard­son26 has done the same in his Pamela, etc.

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 hal­loed 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 hal­loed 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, and the wa­ter we sailed on be­ing salt.

In the even­ing I found my­self very fe­ver­ish, and went in 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 should find boats that would carry me the rest of the way to Phil­adelphia.

It rained very hard all the 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 the 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 dog­grel 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 that 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 bought ginger­bread to eat on the wa­ter, and asked her ad­vice. She in­vited me to lodge at her house till a pas­sage by wa­ter should 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 with great good will, ac­cept­ing only of 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 rowed 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 farther; the oth­ers knew not where we were; so we put to­ward the shore, got into a creek, landed near an old fence, with the rails of which we made a fire, the 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 more par­tic­u­lar in this de­scrip­tion of my jour­ney, and shall be so of my first entry into that city, that you may in your mind com­pare such un­likely be­gin­nings with the fig­ure 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 their tak­ing it. A man be­ing some­times more gen­er­ous when he has but a little money than when he has plenty, per­haps through fear of be­ing thought 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 baker’s 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 three­penny 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 three­penny 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 went up Mar­ket-street as far as Fourth-street, passing by the door of Mr. Read, 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, found my­self again at Mar­ket-street wharf, near the boat I came in, to which I went for a draught of the 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, who were all walk­ing the same way. I joined them, and thereby was led into the great meet­ing­house of the Quakers near the mar­ket. I sat down among them, and, after look­ing round awhile and hear­ing noth­ing said, be­ing very drowsy through la­bour 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 river, and, look­ing in the faces of people, I met a young Quaker man, whose coun­ten­ance I liked, and, ac­cost­ing him, re­ques­ted 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. Here 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 shown 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 soundly till next morn­ing. Then I made my­self as tidy as I could, and went to Andrew Brad­ford the printer’s. I found in the shop the old man his father, whom I had seen at 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 Keimer, who, per­haps, might em­ploy me; if not, I should be wel­come 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, “Neigh­bour,” 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 Keimer’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 Keimer, who was greatly sur­prised when I told him who the old man was.

Keimer’s print­ing-house, I found, con­sisted of an old shattered press, and one small, worn-out font of Eng­lish, which he was then us­ing him­self, com­pos­ing an Elegy on Aquilla Rose, be­fore men­tioned, an in­geni­ous young man, of ex­cel­lent char­ac­ter, much re­spec­ted in the town, clerk of the Assembly, and a pretty poet. Keimer 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,27 but one pair of cases, and the Elegy likely to re­quire all the let­ter, no one could help him. I en­deav­oured to put his press (which he had not yet used, and of which he un­der­stood noth­ing) into or­der fit to be worked with; and, prom­ising 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, Keimer sent for me to print off the Elegy. And now he had got an­other pair of cases,28 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 Keimer, though some­thing of a scholar, was a mere com­pos­itor, know­ing noth­ing of press­work. He had been one of the French proph­ets,29 and could act their en­thu­si­astic agit­a­tions. At this 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. Read’s be­fore men­tioned, who was the owner of his house; and, my chest and clothes be­ing come by this time, I made rather a more re­spect­able ap­pear­ance in the eyes of Miss Read than I had done when she first happened to see me eat­ing my roll in the street.

I began now 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 gain­ing 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 secret, 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 there of me, and wrote me a let­ter men­tion­ing the con­cern 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 his let­ter, thanked him for his ad­vice, but stated my reas­ons for quit­ting Bo­ston fully and in such a light as to con­vince him I was not so wrong as he had ap­pre­hen­ded.

IV 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 at Phil­adelphia were wretched ones; and, if I would 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, Keimer and I be­ing at work to­gether near the win­dow, we saw the gov­ernor and an­other gen­tle­man (which proved to be Co­l­onel French, of New­castle), finely dressed, come dir­ectly across the street to our house, and heard them at the door.

Keimer 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 Keimer stared like a pig poisoned.30 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.31 On my doubt­ing whether my father would as­sist me in it, Sir Wil­liam 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 be kept a secret, and I went on work­ing with Keimer 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.

About the end of April, 1724, a little ves­sel offered for Bo­ston. I took leave of Keimer 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 at 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 blus­ter­ing time at sea, and were ob­liged to pump al­most con­tinu­ally, 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 went to see him at his print­ing-house. I was bet­ter dressed than ever while in his ser­vice, hav­ing a gen­teel 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, and the happy life I led in it, ex­press­ing strongly my in­ten­tion of re­turn­ing to it; and, one of them ask­ing what kind of money we had there, I pro­duced a hand­ful of sil­ver, and spread it be­fore them, which was a kind of raree-show32 they had not been used to, pa­per be­ing the money of Bo­ston.33 Then I took an op­por­tun­ity of let­ting them see my watch; and, lastly (my brother still grum and sul­len), I gave them a piece of eight34 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 Capt. Holmes re­turn­ing he showed it to him, 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 busi­ness who wanted yet three years of be­ing at man’s es­tate. Holmes said what he could in fa­vour 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, en­deav­our 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 one-and-twenty 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 due to him in Pennsylvania, about thirty-five pounds cur­rency, de­sired 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 in a num­ber of pas­sen­gers for New York, among which were two young wo­men, com­pan­ions, and a grave, sens­ible, mat­ron­like Quaker wo­man, with her at­tend­ants. I had shown an ob­li­ging read­i­ness to do her some little ser­vices, which im­pressed her I sup­pose with a de­gree of good will 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 with 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 es­cape 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 out­stript me. While I lived in Bo­ston, most of my hours of leis­ure for con­ver­sa­tion were spent with him, and he con­tin­ued a 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 sot­ting 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 at New York, and be­haved very oddly. He had gamed, 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 then gov­ernor of New York, Bur­net (son of Bishop Bur­net), 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. I waited 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 count­ing­house; but, whether they dis­covered his dram­ming 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 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, or throw me over­board; and com­ing along, step­ping on the thwarts, to­ward 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 with 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 in and brought him home drip­ping wet in the even­ing. We hardly ex­changed a civil word af­ter­wards, and a West In­dia 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 me the first money he should re­ceive in or­der to dis­charge the debt; but I never heard of him after.

The break­ing into this money of Vernon’s 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 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 as 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 of­fers in­sin­cere? I be­lieved him one of the best men in the world.

I presen­ted him an in­vent­ory of a little print-house, amount­ing by my com­pu­ta­tion 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 cor­res­pond­ences in the book­selling and sta­tion­ery way.” I agreed that this might be ad­vant­age­ous. “Then,” says he, “get your­self ready to go with An­nis;” 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 An­nis sailed, so I con­tin­ued work­ing with Keimer, fret­ting about the money Collins had got from me, and in daily ap­pre­hen­sions 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, with my mas­ter Tryon, 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 very 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 re­col­lec­ted 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 mayn’t eat you.” So I dined upon cod very heart­ily, and con­tin­ued to eat with other people, re­turn­ing only now 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.

V Early Friends in Philadelphia

Keimer 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 had tre­panned him so of­ten by ques­tions ap­par­ently so dis­tant from any point we had in hand, and yet by de­grees led to the point, and brought him into dif­fi­culties and con­tra­dic­tions, that at last he grew ri­dicu­lously cau­tious, and would hardly an­swer me the most com­mon ques­tion, without ask­ing first, “What do you in­tend to in­fer from that?” However, it gave him so high an opin­ion of my abil­it­ies in the con­fut­ing way, that he ser­i­ously pro­posed my be­ing his col­league in a 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.

Keimer wore his beard at full length, be­cause some­where in the Mo­saic law it is said, “Thou shalt not mar the corners of thy beard.” He like­wise kept the Seventh day, Sab­bath; and these two points were es­sen­tials with 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 the 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 was neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, and the whim suited me the bet­ter at this time from the cheapness of it, not cost­ing us above eight­een­pence ster­ling each per 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 little in the ad­vice of mak­ing those changes by easy grad­a­tions. I went on pleas­antly, but poor Keimer 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 had made some court­ship dur­ing this time to Miss Read. 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 to an em­in­ent scrivener or con­vey­an­cer in the town, Charles Brock­den; the other was clerk 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 cri­ti­ciz­ing. 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 four had to­gether on Sundays into the woods, near Schuylkill, 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 began 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 a 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 in my own hand.

We met; Wat­son’s per­form­ance was read; there were some beau­ties in it, but many de­fects. Os­borne’s was read; 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; had not had suf­fi­cient time to cor­rect, etc.; but no ex­cuse could be ad­mit­ted; pro­duce I must. It was read and re­peated; Wat­son and Os­borne gave up the con­test, and joined in ap­plaud­ing it. Ralph only made some cri­ti­cisms, 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, lest I should think it flat­tery. “But who would have ima­gined,” said he, “that Frank­lin had been cap­able of such a per­form­ance; such paint­ing, such force, such fire! He has even im­proved the ori­ginal. In his com­mon con­ver­sa­tion he seems to have no choice of words; he hes­it­ates and blun­ders; and yet, good God! how he writes!” When we next met, Ralph dis­covered the trick we had played him, and Os­borne was a little laughed at.

This trans­ac­tion fixed Ralph in his res­ol­u­tion of be­com­ing a poet. I did all I could to dis­suade him from it, but he con­tin­ued scrib­bling verses till Pope cured him.35 He be­came, how­ever, a pretty good prose writer. More of him here­after. But, as I may not have oc­ca­sion again to men­tion the other two, I shall just re­mark here, that Wat­son died in my arms a few years after, much lamen­ted, be­ing the best of our set. Os­borne went to the West In­dies, where he be­came an em­in­ent law­yer and made money, but died young. He and I had 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 how he found things in that sep­ar­ate state. But he never ful­filled his prom­ise.

VI First Visit to London

The gov­ernor, seem­ing to like my com­pany, had me fre­quently to his house, and his set­ting me up was al­ways men­tioned as a fixed thing. I was to take with me let­ters re­com­mend­at­ory to a num­ber of his friends, be­sides the let­ter of credit to fur­nish me with the ne­ces­sary money for pur­chas­ing the press and types, pa­per, etc. For these let­ters I was ap­poin­ted to call at dif­fer­ent times, when they were to be ready; but a fu­ture time was still named. Thus he went on till the ship, whose de­par­ture too had been sev­eral times post­poned, was on the point of sail­ing. Then, when I called to take my leave and re­ceive the let­ters, his sec­ret­ary, Dr. Bard, came out to me and said the gov­ernor was ex­tremely busy in writ­ing, but would be down at New­castle, be­fore the ship, and there the let­ters would be de­livered to me.

Ralph, though mar­ried, and hav­ing one child, had de­term­ined to ac­com­pany me in this voy­age. It was thought he in­ten­ded to es­tab­lish a cor­res­pond­ence, and ob­tain goods to sell on com­mis­sion; but I found af­ter­wards, that, through some dis­con­tent with his wife’s re­la­tions, he pur­posed to leave her on their hands, and never re­turn again. Hav­ing taken leave of my friends, and in­ter­changed some prom­ises with Miss Read, I left Phil­adelphia in the ship, which anchored at New­castle. The gov­ernor was there; but when I went to his lodging, the sec­ret­ary came to me from him with the civillest mes­sage in the world, that he could not then see me, be­ing en­gaged in busi­ness of the ut­most im­port­ance, but should send the let­ters to me on board, wished me heart­ily a good voy­age and a speedy re­turn, etc. I re­turned on board a little puzzled, but still not doubt­ing.

Mr. Andrew Hamilton, a fam­ous law­yer of Phil­adelphia, had taken pas­sage in the same ship for him­self and son, and with Mr. Den­ham, a Quaker mer­chant, and Messrs. Onion and Rus­sel, mas­ters of an iron work in Mary­land, had en­gaged the great cabin; so that Ralph and I were forced to take up with a berth in the steer­age, and none on board know­ing us, were con­sidered as or­din­ary per­sons. But Mr. Hamilton and his son (it was James, since gov­ernor) re­turned from New­castle to Phil­adelphia, the father be­ing re­called by a great fee to plead for a seized ship; and, just be­fore we sailed, Co­l­onel French com­ing on board, and show­ing me great re­spect, I was more taken no­tice of, and, with my friend Ralph, in­vited by the other gen­tle­men to come into the cabin, there be­ing now room. Ac­cord­ingly, we re­moved thither.

Under­stand­ing that Co­l­onel French had brought on board the gov­ernor’s des­patches, I asked the cap­tain for those let­ters that were to be un­der my care. He said all were put into the bag to­gether and he could not then come at them; but, be­fore we landed in Eng­land, I should have an op­por­tun­ity of pick­ing them out; so I was sat­is­fied for the present, and we pro­ceeded on our voy­age. We had a so­ci­able com­pany in the cabin, and lived un­com­monly well, hav­ing the ad­di­tion of all Mr. Hamilton’s stores, who had laid in plen­ti­fully. In this pas­sage Mr. Den­ham con­trac­ted a friend­ship for me that con­tin­ued dur­ing his life. The voy­age was oth­er­wise not a pleas­ant one, as we had a great deal of bad weather.

When we came into the Chan­nel, the cap­tain kept his word with me, and gave me an op­por­tun­ity of ex­amin­ing the bag for the gov­ernor’s let­ters. I found none upon which my name was put as un­der my care. I picked out six or seven, that, by the hand­writ­ing, I thought might be the prom­ised let­ters, es­pe­cially as one of them was dir­ec­ted to Bas­ket, the king’s printer, and an­other to some sta­tioner. We ar­rived in Lon­don the 24th of Decem­ber, 1724. I waited upon the sta­tioner, who came first in my way, de­liv­er­ing the let­ter as from Governor Keith. “I don’t know such a per­son,” says he; but, open­ing the let­ter, “O! this is from Riddles­den. I have lately found him to be a com­plete ras­cal, and I will have noth­ing to do with him, nor re­ceive any let­ters from him.” So, put­ting the let­ter into my hand, he turned on his heel and left me to serve some cus­tomer. I was sur­prised to find these were not the gov­ernor’s let­ters; and, after re­col­lect­ing and com­par­ing cir­cum­stances, I began to doubt his sin­cer­ity. I found my friend Den­ham, and opened the whole af­fair to him. He let me into Keith’s char­ac­ter; told me there was not the least prob­ab­il­ity that he had writ­ten any let­ters for me; that no one, who knew him, had the smal­lest de­pend­ence on him; and he laughed at the no­tion of the gov­ernor’s giv­ing me a let­ter of credit, hav­ing, as he said, no credit to give. On my ex­press­ing some con­cern about what I should do, he ad­vised me to en­deav­our get­ting some em­ploy­ment in the way of my busi­ness. “Among the print­ers here,” said he, “you will im­prove your­self, and when you re­turn to Amer­ica, you will set up to greater ad­vant­age.”

We both of us happened to know, as well as the sta­tioner, that Riddles­den, the at­tor­ney, was a very knave. He had half ruined Miss Read’s father by per­suad­ing him to be bound for him. By this let­ter it ap­peared there was a secret scheme on foot to the pre­ju­dice of Hamilton (sup­posed to be then com­ing over with us); and that Keith was con­cerned in it with Riddles­den. Den­ham, who was a friend of Hamilton’s, thought he ought to be ac­quain­ted with it; so, when he ar­rived in Eng­land, which was soon after, partly from re­sent­ment and ill-will to Keith and Riddles­den, and partly from good­will to him, I waited on him, and gave him the let­ter. He thanked me cor­di­ally, the in­form­a­tion be­ing of im­port­ance to him; and from that time he be­came my friend, greatly to my ad­vant­age af­ter­wards on many oc­ca­sions.

But what shall we think of a gov­ernor’s play­ing such pi­ti­ful tricks, and im­pos­ing so grossly on a poor ig­nor­ant boy! It was a habit he had ac­quired. He wished to please every­body; and, hav­ing little to give, he gave ex­pect­a­tions. He was oth­er­wise an in­geni­ous, sens­ible man, a pretty good writer, and a good gov­ernor for the people, though not for his con­stitu­ents, the pro­pri­et­ar­ies, whose in­struc­tions he some­times dis­reg­arded. Several of our best laws were of his plan­ning and passed dur­ing his ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Ralph and I were in­sep­ar­able com­pan­ions. We took lodgings to­gether in Little Bri­tain36 at three shil­lings and six­pence a week—as much as we could then af­ford. He found some re­la­tions, but they were poor, and un­able to as­sist him. He now let me know his in­ten­tions of re­main­ing in Lon­don, and that he never meant to re­turn to Phil­adelphia. He had brought no money with him, the whole he could muster hav­ing been ex­pen­ded in pay­ing his pas­sage. I had fif­teen pis­toles;37 so he bor­rowed oc­ca­sion­ally of me to sub­sist, while he was look­ing out for busi­ness. He first en­deav­oured to get into the play­house, be­liev­ing him­self qual­i­fied for an actor; but Wilkes,38 to whom he ap­plied, ad­vised him can­didly not to think of that em­ploy­ment, as it was im­possible he should suc­ceed in it. Then he pro­posed to Roberts, a pub­lisher in Pater­noster Row,39 to write for him a weekly pa­per like the Spec­tator, on cer­tain con­di­tions, which Roberts did not ap­prove. Then he en­deav­oured to get em­ploy­ment as a hack­ney writer, to copy for the sta­tion­ers and law­yers about the Temple,40 but could find no va­cancy.

I im­me­di­ately got into work at Palmer’s, then a fam­ous print­ing-house in Bartho­lomew Close, and here I con­tin­ued near a year. I was pretty di­li­gent, but spent with Ralph a good deal of my earn­ings in go­ing to plays and other places of amuse­ment. We had to­gether con­sumed all my pis­toles, and now just rubbed on from hand to mouth. He seemed quite to for­get his wife and child, and I, by de­grees, my en­gage­ments with Miss Read, to whom I never wrote more than one let­ter, and that was to let her know I was not likely soon to re­turn. This was an­other of the great er­rata of my life, which I should wish to cor­rect if I were to live it over again. In fact, by our ex­penses, I was con­stantly kept un­able to pay my pas­sage.

At Palmer’s I was em­ployed in com­pos­ing for the second edi­tion of Wol­la­ston’s Re­li­gion of Nature. Some of his reas­on­ings not ap­pear­ing to me well foun­ded, I wrote a little meta­phys­ical piece in which I made re­marks on them. It was en­titled “A Dis­ser­ta­tion on Liberty and Ne­ces­sity, Pleas­ure and Pain.” I in­scribed it to my friend Ralph; I prin­ted a small num­ber. It oc­ca­sioned my be­ing more con­sidered by Mr. Palmer as a young man of some in­genu­ity, though he ser­i­ously ex­pos­tu­lated with me upon the prin­ciples of my pamph­let, which to him ap­peared ab­om­in­able. My print­ing this pamph­let was an­other er­ratum.

While I lodged in Little Bri­tain, I made an ac­quaint­ance with one Wil­cox, a book­seller, whose shop was at the next door. He had an im­mense col­lec­tion of second­hand books. Cir­cu­lat­ing lib­rar­ies were not then in use; but we agreed that, on cer­tain reas­on­able terms, which I have now for­got­ten, I might take, read, and re­turn any of his books. This I es­teemed a great ad­vant­age, and I made as much use of it as I could.

My pamph­let by some means fall­ing into the hands of one Ly­ons, a sur­geon, au­thor of a book en­titled The In­fal­lib­il­ity of Hu­man Judg­ment, it oc­ca­sioned an ac­quaint­ance between us. He took great no­tice of me, called on me of­ten to con­verse on those sub­jects, car­ried me to the Horns, a pale ale­house in ——— Lane, Cheapside, and in­tro­duced me to Dr. Mandev­ille, au­thor of the Fable of the Bees, who had a club there, of which he was the soul, be­ing a most fa­cetious, en­ter­tain­ing com­pan­ion. Ly­ons, too, in­tro­duced me to Dr. Pem­ber­ton, at Bat­son’s Cof­fee­house, who prom­ised to give me an op­por­tun­ity, some­time or other, of see­ing Sir Isaac New­ton, of which I was ex­tremely de­sirous; but this never happened.

I had brought over a few curi­os­it­ies, among which the prin­cipal was a purse made of the as­bes­tos, which pur­i­fies by fire. Sir Hans Sloane heard of it, came to see me, and in­vited me to his house in Blooms­bury Square, where he showed me all his curi­os­it­ies, and per­suaded me to let him add that to the num­ber, for which he paid me hand­somely.

In our house there lodged a young wo­man, a mil­liner, who, I think, had a shop in the Cloisters. She had been gen­teelly bred, was sens­ible and lively, and of most pleas­ing con­ver­sa­tion. Ralph read plays to her in the even­ings, they grew in­tim­ate, she took an­other lodging, and he fol­lowed her. They lived to­gether some time; but, he be­ing still out of busi­ness, and her in­come not suf­fi­cient to main­tain them with her child, he took a res­ol­u­tion of go­ing from Lon­don, to try for a coun­try school, which he thought him­self well qual­i­fied to un­der­take, as he wrote an ex­cel­lent hand, and was a mas­ter of arith­metic and ac­counts. This, how­ever, he deemed a busi­ness be­low him, and con­fid­ent of fu­ture bet­ter for­tune, when he should be un­will­ing to have it known that he once was so meanly em­ployed, he changed his name, and did me the hon­our to as­sume mine; for I soon after had a let­ter from him, ac­quaint­ing me that he was settled in a small vil­lage (in Berkshire, I think it was, where he taught read­ing and writ­ing to ten or a dozen boys, at six­pence each per week), re­com­mend­ing Mrs. T—— to my care, and de­sir­ing me to write to him, dir­ect­ing for Mr. Frank­lin, school­mas­ter, at such a place.

He con­tin­ued to write fre­quently, send­ing me large spe­ci­mens of an epic poem which he was then com­pos­ing, and de­sir­ing my re­marks and cor­rec­tions. These I gave him from time to time, but en­deavored rather to dis­cour­age his pro­ceed­ing. One of Young’s Satires41 was then just pub­lished. I copied and sent him a great part of it, which set in a strong light the folly of pur­su­ing the Muses with any hope of ad­vance­ment by them. All was in vain; sheets of the poem con­tin­ued to come by every post. In the mean­time, Mrs. T——, hav­ing on his ac­count lost her friends and busi­ness, was of­ten in dis­tresses, and used to send for me and bor­row what I could spare to help her out of them. I grew fond of her com­pany, and, be­ing at that time un­der no re­li­gious re­straint, and pre­sum­ing upon my im­port­ance to her, I at­temp­ted fa­mili­ar­it­ies (an­other er­ratum) which she re­pulsed with a proper re­sent­ment, and ac­quain­ted him with my be­ha­viour. This made a breach between us; and, when he re­turned again to Lon­don, he let me know he thought I had can­celled all the ob­lig­a­tions he had been un­der to me. So I found I was never to ex­pect his re­pay­ing me what I lent to him or ad­vanced for him. This, how­ever, was not then of much con­sequence, as he was totally un­able; and in the loss of his friend­ship I found my­self re­lieved from a bur­den. I now began to think of get­ting a little money be­fore­hand, and, ex­pect­ing bet­ter work, I left Palmer’s to work at Watts’s, near Lin­coln’s Inn Fields, a still greater print­ing-house.42 Here I con­tin­ued all the rest of my stay in Lon­don.

At my first ad­mis­sion into this print­ing-house I took to work­ing at press, ima­gin­ing I felt a want of the bod­ily ex­er­cise I had been used to in Amer­ica, where press­work is mixed with com­pos­ing. I drank only wa­ter; the other work­men, near fifty in num­ber, were great guzz­lers of beer. On oc­ca­sion, I car­ried up and down stairs a large form of types in each hand, when oth­ers car­ried but one in both hands. They wondered to see, from this and sev­eral in­stances, that the “Water-Amer­ican,” as they called me, was stronger than them­selves, who drank strong beer! We had an ale­house boy who at­ten­ded al­ways in the house to sup­ply the work­men. My com­pan­ion at the press drank every day a pint be­fore break­fast, a pint at break­fast with his bread and cheese, a pint between break­fast and din­ner, a pint at din­ner, a pint in the af­ter­noon about six o’clock, and an­other when he had done his day’s work. I thought it a de­test­able cus­tom; but it was ne­ces­sary, he sup­posed, to drink strong beer, that he might be strong to la­bour. I en­deav­oured to con­vince him that the bod­ily strength af­forded by beer could only be in pro­por­tion to the grain or flour of the bar­ley dis­solved in the wa­ter of which it was made; that there was more flour in a penny­worth of bread; and there­fore, if he would eat that with a pint of wa­ter, it would give him more strength than a quart of beer. He drank on, how­ever, and had four or five shil­lings to pay out of his wages every Saturday night for that mud­dling li­quor; an ex­pense I was free from. And thus these poor dev­ils keep them­selves al­ways un­der.

Watts, after some weeks, de­sir­ing to have me in the com­pos­ing-room,43 I left the press­men; a new bien venu or sum for drink, be­ing five shil­lings, was de­man­ded of me by the com­pos­it­ors. I thought it an im­pos­i­tion, as I had paid be­low; the mas­ter thought so too, and for­bade my pay­ing it. I stood out two or three weeks, was ac­cord­ingly con­sidered as an ex­com­mu­nic­ate, and had so many little pieces of private mis­chief done me, by mix­ing my sorts, trans­pos­ing my pages, break­ing my mat­ter, etc., etc., if I were ever so little out of the room, and all ascribed to the chapel ghost, which they said ever haunted those not reg­u­larly ad­mit­ted, that, not­with­stand­ing the mas­ter’s pro­tec­tion, I found my­self ob­liged to com­ply and pay the money, con­vinced of the folly of be­ing on ill terms with those one is to live with con­tinu­ally.

I was now on a fair foot­ing with them, and soon ac­quired con­sid­er­able in­flu­ence. I pro­posed some reas­on­able al­ter­a­tions in their chapel laws,44 and car­ried them against all op­pos­i­tion. From my ex­ample, a great part of them left their mud­dling break­fast of beer, and bread, and cheese, find­ing they could with me be sup­plied from a neigh­bour­ing house with a large por­rin­ger of hot wa­ter-gruel, sprinkled with pep­per, crumbed with bread, and a bit of but­ter in it, for the price of a pint of beer, viz., three half­pence. This was a more com­fort­able as well as cheaper break­fast, and keep their heads clearer. Those who con­tin­ued sot­ting with beer all day, were of­ten, by not pay­ing, out of credit at the ale­house, and used to make in­terest with me to get beer; their “light,” as they phrased it, “be­ing out.” I watched the pay-table on Saturday night, and col­lec­ted what I stood en­gaged for them, hav­ing to pay some­times near thirty shil­lings a week on their ac­counts. This, and my be­ing es­teemed a pretty good rig­gite, that is, a joc­u­lar verbal sat­ir­ist, sup­por­ted my con­sequence in the so­ci­ety. My con­stant at­tend­ance (I never mak­ing a St. Monday)45 re­com­men­ded me to the mas­ter; and my un­com­mon quick­ness at com­pos­ing oc­ca­sioned my be­ing put upon all work of dis­patch, which was gen­er­ally bet­ter paid. So I went on now very agree­ably.

My lodging in Little Bri­tain be­ing too re­mote, I found an­other in Duke-street, op­pos­ite to the Rom­ish Chapel. It was two pair of stairs back­wards, at an Italian ware­house. A widow lady kept the house; she had a daugh­ter, and a maid ser­vant, and a jour­ney­man who at­ten­ded the ware­house, but lodged abroad. After send­ing to in­quire my char­ac­ter at the house where I last lodged she agreed to take me in at the same rate, 3s. 6d. per week; cheaper, as she said, from the pro­tec­tion she ex­pec­ted in hav­ing a man lodge in the house. She was a widow, an eld­erly wo­man; had been bred a Prot­est­ant, be­ing a cler­gy­man’s daugh­ter, but was con­ver­ted to the Cath­olic re­li­gion by her hus­band, whose memory she much revered; had lived much among people of dis­tinc­tion, and knew a thou­sand an­ec­dotes of them as far back as the times of Charles the Se­cond. She was lame in her knees with the gout, and, there­fore, sel­dom stirred out of her room, so some­times wanted com­pany; and hers was so highly amus­ing to me, that I was sure to spend an even­ing with her whenever she de­sired it. Our sup­per was only half an an­chovy each, on a very little strip of bread and but­ter, and half a pint of ale between us; but the en­ter­tain­ment was in her con­ver­sa­tion. My al­ways keep­ing good hours, and giv­ing little trouble in the fam­ily, made her un­will­ing to part with me, so that, when I talked of a lodging I had heard of, nearer my busi­ness, for two shil­lings a week, which, in­tent as I now was on sav­ing money, made some dif­fer­ence, she bid me not think of it, for she would abate me two shil­lings a week for the fu­ture; so I re­mained with her at one shil­ling and six­pence as long as I stayed in Lon­don.

In a gar­ret of her house there lived a maiden lady of sev­enty, in the most re­tired man­ner, of whom my land­lady gave me this ac­count: that she was a Ro­man Cath­olic, had been sent abroad when young, and lodged in a nun­nery with an in­tent of be­com­ing a nun; but, the coun­try not agree­ing with her, she re­turned to Eng­land, where, there be­ing no nun­nery, she had vowed to lead the life of a nun, as near as might be done in those cir­cum­stances. Ac­cord­ingly, she had given all her es­tate to char­it­able uses, re­serving only twelve pounds a year to live on, and out of this sum she still gave a great deal in char­ity, liv­ing her­self on wa­ter-gruel only, and us­ing no fire but to boil it. She had lived many years in that gar­ret, be­ing per­mit­ted to re­main there gratis by suc­cess­ive Cath­olic ten­ants of the house be­low, as they deemed it a bless­ing to have her there. A priest vis­ited her to con­fess her every day. “I have asked her,” says my land­lady, “how she, as she lived, could pos­sibly find so much em­ploy­ment for a con­fessor?” “Oh,” said she, “it is im­possible to avoid vain thoughts.” I was per­mit­ted once to visit her. She was cheer­ful and po­lite, and con­versed pleas­antly. The room was clean, but had no other fur­niture than a mat­tress, a table with a cru­ci­fix and book, a stool which she gave me to sit on, and a pic­ture over the chim­ney of Saint Veron­ica dis­play­ing her handker­chief, with the mi­ra­cu­lous fig­ure of Christ’s bleed­ing face on it,46 which she ex­plained to me with great ser­i­ous­ness. She looked pale, but was never sick; and I give it as an­other in­stance on how small an in­come, life and health may be sup­por­ted.

At Watts’s print­ing-house I con­trac­ted an ac­quaint­ance with an in­geni­ous young man, one Wy­g­ate, who, hav­ing wealthy re­la­tions, had been bet­ter edu­cated than most print­ers; was a tol­er­able Lat­in­ist, spoke French, and loved read­ing. I taught him and a friend of his to swim at twice go­ing into the river, and they soon be­came good swim­mers. They in­tro­duced me to some gen­tle­men from the coun­try, who went to Chelsea by wa­ter to see the Col­lege and Don Sal­tero’s curi­os­it­ies.47 In our re­turn, at the re­quest of the com­pany, whose curi­os­ity Wy­g­ate had ex­cited, I stripped and leaped into the river, and swam from near Chelsea to Black­friar’s,48 per­form­ing on the way many feats of activ­ity, both upon and un­der wa­ter, that sur­prised and pleased those to whom they were nov­el­ties.

I had from a child been ever de­lighted with this ex­er­cise, had stud­ied and prac­tised all Thevenot’s mo­tions and po­s­i­tions, ad­ded some of my own, aim­ing at the grace­ful and easy as well as the use­ful. All these I took this oc­ca­sion of ex­hib­it­ing to the com­pany, and was much flattered by their ad­mir­a­tion; and Wy­g­ate, who was de­sirous of be­com­ing a mas­ter, grew more and more at­tached to me on that ac­count, as well as from the sim­il­ar­ity of our stud­ies. He at length pro­posed to me trav­el­ing all over Europe to­gether, sup­port­ing ourselves every­where by work­ing at our busi­ness. I was once in­clined to it; but, men­tion­ing it to my good friend Mr. Den­ham, with whom I of­ten spent an hour when I had leis­ure, he dis­suaded me from it, ad­vising me to think only of re­turn­ing to Pennsylvania, which he was now about to do.

I must re­cord one trait of this good man’s char­ac­ter. He had formerly been in busi­ness at Bris­tol, but failed in debt to a num­ber of people, com­poun­ded and went to Amer­ica. There, by a close ap­plic­a­tion to busi­ness as a mer­chant, he ac­quired a plen­ti­ful for­tune in a few years. Return­ing to Eng­land in the ship with me, he in­vited his old cred­it­ors to an en­ter­tain­ment, at which he thanked them for the easy com­pos­i­tion they had fa­voured him with, and, when they ex­pec­ted noth­ing but the treat, every man at the first re­move found un­der his plate an or­der on a banker for the full amount of the un­paid re­mainder with in­terest.

He now told me he was about to re­turn to Phil­adelphia, and should carry over a great quant­ity of goods in or­der to open a store there. He pro­posed to take me over as his clerk, to keep his books, in which he would in­struct me, copy his let­ters, and at­tend the store. He ad­ded, that, as soon as I should be ac­quain­ted with mer­cant­ile busi­ness, he would pro­mote me by send­ing me with a cargo of flour and bread, etc., to the West In­dies, and pro­cure me com­mis­sions from oth­ers which would be prof­it­able; and, if I man­aged well, would es­tab­lish me hand­somely. The thing pleased me; for I was grown tired of Lon­don, re­membered with pleas­ure the happy months I had spent in Pennsylvania, and wished again to see it; there­fore I im­me­di­ately agreed on the terms of fifty pounds a year,49 Pennsylvania money; less, in­deed, than my present get­tings as a com­pos­itor, but af­ford­ing a bet­ter pro­spect.

I now took leave of print­ing, as I thought, forever, and was daily em­ployed in my new busi­ness, go­ing about with Mr. Den­ham among the trades­men to pur­chase vari­ous art­icles, and see­ing them packed up, do­ing er­rands, call­ing upon work­men to dis­patch, etc.; and, when all was on board, I had a few days’ leis­ure. On one of these days, I was, to my sur­prise, sent for by a great man I knew only by name, a Sir Wil­liam Wyndham, and I waited upon him. He had heard by some means or other of my swim­ming from Chelsea to Black­fri­ars, and of my teach­ing Wy­g­ate and an­other young man to swim in a few hours. He had two sons, about to set out on their travels; he wished to have them first taught swim­ming, and pro­posed to grat­ify me hand­somely if I would teach them. They were not yet come to town, and my stay was un­cer­tain, so I could not un­der­take it; but, from this in­cid­ent, I thought it likely that, if I were to re­main in Eng­land and open a swim­ming-school, I might get a good deal of money; and it struck me so strongly, that, had the over­ture been sooner made me, prob­ably I should not so soon have re­turned to Amer­ica. After many years, you and I had some­thing of more im­port­ance to do with one of these sons of Sir Wil­liam Wyndham, be­come Earl of Egre­mont, which I shall men­tion in its place.

Thus I spent about eight­een months in Lon­don; most part of the time I worked hard at my busi­ness, and spent but little upon my­self ex­cept in see­ing plays and in books. My friend Ralph had kept me poor; he owed me about twenty-seven pounds, which I was now never likely to re­ceive; a great sum out of my small earn­ings! I loved him, not­with­stand­ing, for he had many ami­able qual­it­ies. I had by no means im­proved my for­tune; but I had picked up some very in­geni­ous ac­quaint­ance, whose con­ver­sa­tion was of great ad­vant­age to me; and I had read con­sid­er­ably.