nies, he bought a copy of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. He read this till he had learned it almost by heart. Then he sold it, and with the money, and a little more that he had saved, he bought forty or fifty small cheap histories.

A BOY PRINTER IN BOSTON

Because of this love for books, his father finally put Benjamin, when he was twelve years old, to work with his brother James, who was a printer. Now there was more chance for the boy to read. He shrewdly made many friends among the apprentices of book sellers, and persuaded them to lend him books from their masters' shelves. By the light of a farthing candle, made in his father's shop, he often read one of these books through the night and far into the morning hours, that it might be returned to its place before the shops were opened.

Reading soon led to Benjamin's writing short poems, which his brother sent him to peddle in the streets of Boston; but his father put a stop to it by telling him plainly that poets were always beggars. About this time, there came into his hands a copy of the Spectator, an English paper that was soon to be famous. It was written by two men named Addison and Steele. He read it as he had read Plutarch's Lives; he patiently rewrote its essays in his own words, and then compared them with the Spectator and corrected them. In this way he tried to learn to write clearly and well. At the same time he trained his mind by studying navigation, arithmetic and grammar.

To save money to buy the books he loved, he asked his brother to give him half of what it cost to board him, and let him provide his own food. After that a visitor

to Franklin's shop, during the noon hour, would have found Benjamin, all alone, eagerly studying his books, while he munched a biscuit or a piece of bread, and a handful of raisins or a tart from the pastry shop-a poor meal that he washed down with a glass of water. He saved half the amount given him for food and collected quite a library.

Ambitious to see something of his own printed in his brother's paper, The New England Courant, he slipped some pages that he had written under the door of the printing house. To his great joy they were printed and, after several such successes, he confessed that he had written them.

SEEKING HIS FORTUNE

James Franklin always acted toward his brother like a tyrant. He was harsh and hot tempered and I often beat the boy. This treatment gave Benjamin a hatred of power unfairly used, and this hatred he never lost throughout his long life. Even as a boy he rebelled, and left his brother's shep. James prevented 'his finding work with any printer in Boston. So the resolute lad sold many of the books that had cost him so much in self-denial and saving, and secretly took passage for New York. Finding no work there, he set out for Philadelphia by boat. On this voyage he was nearly shipwrecked and, after many adventures crossing New Jersey fifty miles on foot, he took a rowboat down the Delaware to Philadelphia.

Weary, hungry, wet and dirty, the pockets of his working clothes stuffed out with shirts and stockings, his whole capital a Dutch dollar and a few pennies in copper, he landed at Market Street Wharf, Philadelphia, alone in a strange city.

He walked up the little unpaved street gazing curiously about him, till he met a boy with bread. He asked him the way to the baker's, hurried there and bought for three pence three great puffy rolls. He tucked one under each arm, and walked up Market Street devouring the third. Deborah Read, a young girl out on her father's door step, laughed heartily at his comical appearance, little dreaming that she would one day become his wife. Still eating, Franklin wandered about till he found himself again at the wharf, where he took a drink of the river water, and gave his other two rolls to a woman and her child who were there waiting for a boat.

These are his own words, that tell what else he did that first Sunday in Philadelphia, and how he wandered into one of the silent religious meetings of the Quakers: "Thus refreshed I walked again up the street, which by this time had many clean dressed people in it, all walking the same way. I joined them and was thereby led into the great meeting house of the Quakers near the market. I sat down among them, and after looking around for a while and hearing nothing said, being very drowsy through labor and want of rest the preceding night, I fell fast asleep and continued so until the meeting broke up, when one was kind enough to rouse me. 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. He brought me to the 'Crooked Billet' in Water Street. Here I got 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."

The boy quickly found work in Philadelphia with

a printer named Keimer. By chance the Governor of Pennsylvania, Gov. Keith, saw some of Benjamin's writing and thought it very clever. By way of helping so promising a young fellow, the Governor sent him home to Boston, with a letter advising his father to furnish the money to set up this lad of seventeen as an independent printer in Philadelphia.

This is how Franklin describes his visit home: "My unexpected appearance surprised the family; all were however, 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;"-about $25 in our money-"he received me not very frankly, looked me all over and turned to his work again."

Benjamin's father did not think it wise to establish so young a man in business. Gov. Keith, when he heard this, offered to do it himself, because, as he said, Philadelphia needed a good printer. With false promises of letters and of money to buy an outfit in London, the faithless Governor sent the poor lad to England. Landing there on Christmas Eve, 1724, Franklin learned he had been deceived. He was bitterly disappointed, but, having to shift for himself, he wasted. no time in regrets. At once he found work in London with a printer, and in this English shop, as he set the type, he preached temperance to his fellow workmen, who were great drinkers of beer. They were astonished to see that the "Water American" was stronger than they were, who drank "strong beer."

After two years Franklin tired of London life and resolved to return to America, for the best that England now offered him seemed only a poor chance to a

young man of his ability and ambition. He had great
skill in sports as well as strength of body, and his
expert swimming had brought him the opportunity of
opening a fashionable swimming school. He declined
the offer, though he so greatly enjoyed this favorite
exercise that on the voyage home, he one day leaped
overboard and swam round the ship in the open ocean.

Soon after arriving in Philadelphia to take a position
with an English merchant, he became very sick and,
as he lay near death, he wrote the following lines for
his tombstone, because he thought they would be suit-
able for the grave of a printer:

The Body of

B. Franklin, Printer,

(Like the Cover of an old Book
Its Contents torn out

And stript of its Lettering & Gilding,)
Lies here, Food for Worms.

But the Work shall not be lost;

For it will, (as he believed) appear once more,
In a new and more elegant Edition
Revised and corrected.
By the Author.

FINDING HIS FORTUNE

But Franklin was only at the beginning of a long
life of usefulness. As soon as he was well again, he
found work at good wages with his former master,
Keimer. Once more in the old shop, Franklin sus-
pected that he was to be dismissed as soon as he had
taught Keimer's green hands how to set type and work
the printing presses. For this reason he lost no time
in going into partnership with a fellow workman,
whose father supplied the needed money. Later, with