The Project Gutenberg EBook of Benjamin Franklin, by Robin McKown This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: Benjamin Franklin Author: Robin McKown Release Date: August 19, 2020 [EBook #62974] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BENJAMIN FRANKLIN *** Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net Benjamin Franklin BENJAMIN FRANKLIN by Robin McKown Publisher logo G. P. Putnam’s Sons New York To Rosalie Quine Third Impression 1. A Boyhood in Boston 2. A Young Man on His Own 3. The Birth of Poor Richard 4. The Civic-Minded Citizen 5. The Thunder Giant 6. A Brief Military Career 7. The Battle with the Penns 8. The White Christian Savages 9. The Stamp Act 10. Friendships in England 11. The Terrible Hutchinson Letters 12. Beginning of a Long War 13. The Splendid Word Independence 14. France Falls in Love with an American 15. America’s First Ambassador 16. A Glorious Old Age 17. The Closing Years Suggested Reading Index 5 7 9 © 1963 by Robin McKown All rights reserved Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 63-9688 Manufactured in the United States of America Published simultaneously in the Dominion of Canada by Longmans Canada Limited, Toronto 10216 CONTENTS 9 18 28 38 49 61 73 84 91 100 111 123 132 143 155 165 177 188 189 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 1 A BOYHOOD IN BOSTON The Franklins of Boston were poor, numerous, lively and intelligent. There were seventeen children in all, seven by their father’s first wife, who had died after Josiah Franklin brought her from England to America; and ten by his second wife, Abiah, Benjamin’s mother. Benjamin, born on January 6 (January 17, new style), 1706, was the youngest son, though he had two younger sisters, Jane, who was always his favorite, and Lydia. They lived on Milk Street across from the Old South Church until he was six, when they took a larger house on Hanover Street. A blue ball hung over the door, serving to identify the house in lieu of street numbers. In June 1713, a firm of slave traders advertised “three able Negro men and three Negro women ... to be seen at the house of Mr. Josiah Franklin at the Blue Ball.” Josiah kept no 10 11 slaves himself but had a shed in which he allowed these captives to be housed. Boston was then a busy seaport town, with some 12,000 population, next largest to Philadelphia in the American colonies. Its harbor was filled with sailing vessels; merchant ships from the Barbados or faraway England unloaded their goods at the Long Wharf. Streets were unpaved and unlighted, but there was plenty of activity in the coffeehouses and taverns. The town boasted of at least six book stores. Benjamin could not remember when he learned to read. According to his sister Jane, he was reading the Bible at five and composing verses at seven. The verse writing was inspired by his father’s brother, Uncle Benjamin, a versifier himself, who appeared at varying intervals, usually staying as long as his welcome lasted. At a very young age, Benjamin devoured his father’s religious tracts and sermons, but soon found boring their tirades against infidels and Catholics. Pilgrim’s Progress, in contrast, was an absorbing adventure story, and Plutarch’s Lives opened up a new and exciting world. His official schooling began at eight and lasted just two years. After that he worked in his father’s soap and candle making shop, doing errands, dipping molds, cutting wick for candles. With so many mouths to feed, higher education, such as that offered at nearby Harvard University, was out of reach for any of the Franklin children. To improve their minds, Josiah often invited men of learning to dinner, encouraging them to discuss worthwhile matters. Though his trade was lowly, he was one of the town’s most respected citizens. Leading Bostonians often consulted him about public affairs, or asked him to arbitrate disputes. He was a man of many skills, was handy with tools, played the violin, and sang hymns in a pleasing voice. Benjamin’s love of music began in his childhood. The values of obedience and industry were implanted in all of them. “Seest thou a man diligent in his calling,” Josiah would quote from Solomon, “he shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean men.” Nothing then seemed more unlikely than that he, Benjamin Franklin, would ever stand before a king. He was a sturdy, squarely built youngster, with a broad friendly face, light brown hair, and bright mischievous eyes. Among boys of his own age he was the leader—and sometimes led them into scrapes. Once they were fishing for minnows in the salt marsh. Benjamin suggested they build a wharf so as not to get their feet wet. For the purpose, they appropriated a pile of stones belonging to some workmen who were using them to build a house. The wharf was a success but there were repercussions when the men found their stones missing. “Nothing is useful which is not honest,” Josiah told his erring son. As a youth, he learned to handle boats, to swim, to dive, and to perform all manner of water stunts. One day he resolved to try swimming and flying his kite simultaneously. To his delight, he found that if he floated on his back while holding the kite’s string, he was effortlessly drawn across the pond. Another time he carved himself two oval slabs of wood, shaped like a painter’s palette, bored a hole for his thumb, and used them like oars to propel himself along. In this way he could easily outswim his comrades, though his wrists soon tired. He tried similar devices for his feet with less success. For this invention he might be called the 12 13 14 first frog man. He had no enthusiasm for cutting candle wicks and often dreamed of going to sea as an older brother had done. Josiah Franklin, sensing his discontent, told him he could take his pick of other trades. In turn, he took his son to watch the work of joiners, bricklayers, turners, and braziers. Young Benjamin admired the way they handled their tools but did not find these trades to his taste either. Wisely, his father did not press him. His brother James had returned from England in 1717 with equipment to set up a printing shop at the corner of Queen Street and Dasset Alley. Since Benjamin liked to read, what would he think of being a printer—a trade that deals with pamphlets, books, everything made with words? The idea appealed to Benjamin, though he balked when he learned he would be apprenticed to his brother until he was twenty. His father insisted; the apprenticeship, legal as a slave contract, would assure him against losing a second son to the dangerous sea. When Benjamin finally signed the papers which bound him to his brother’s service, he was twelve years old. Everyone agreed he was exceptionally bright for his age. James Franklin was one of Boston’s young intellectuals, belonging to what the pious Cotton Mather called the “Hell Fire Club,” made up of clever young men like himself. He had reason to be pleased with how quickly his little brother mastered the techniques of a printer’s trade. As Benjamin’s skill began to surpass his own, his attitude changed to resentment and jealousy. He found excuses to scold Benjamin, and sometimes gave him blows. The shop handled pamphlets and advertisements and such odd jobs. As a sideline they printed patterns on linen, calico, and silk “in good figures, very lively and durable colours.” In the second year of Benjamin’s apprenticeship, their fortunes improved with a substantial contract to print the Boston Gazette for 40 weeks. The Gazette was one of Boston’s two newspapers, both insufferably dull. When his contract came to an end, James decided to publish his own newspaper. His friends scoffed, saying that America had no need of still another newspaper! The first issue of James Franklin’s New England Courant appeared August 7, 1721, during a smallpox epidemic—and was devoted to opposing the new “doubtful and dangerous practice” of smallpox inoculation. There is no evidence that young Benjamin took any stand—either for or against—in the controversy. The great advantage of working for his brother was that he had access to books. Several apprentices to booksellers with whom he made friends obligingly “loaned” him volumes from their masters’ shelves. So they could be returned early in the morning before they were missed, he often sat up all night reading. There was also a tradesman named Matthew Adams with his own library, who took a fancy to Benjamin and let him borrow what he chose. From reading he turned his hand to writing, composing a ballad called The Lighthouse Tragedy, the account of the drowning of a ship’s captain and his two daughters. James saw possibilities in this effort, printed it for Benjamin, then sent him out on the streets to sell it. (The story of young Benjamin Franklin hawking his ballads on the streets of Boston would much later bring tears to the eyes of his aristocratic French friends.) The Lighthouse Tragedy was wonderfully popular, but his second ballad, a sailor’s song about a pirate, was such a dismal failure that he allowed his father to discourage him from trying others. “Verse-makers are usually beggars,” Josiah Franklin had commented. 15 16 Prose was Benjamin’s next effort. His inspiration was a volume of the London Spectator, with essays by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, leading prose stylists of the eighteenth century. He made notes on their subject matter, laid the notes aside a few days, tried to reconstruct the original. He changed the essays into verse, endeavored to put them back to prose. Thus he strove to correct his own writing faults, on occasion having the thrill of finding he had in a phrase or expression improved the original. Both reading and writing were done on his own time, before the shop opened in the morning, at night, and on Sundays when his conscience let him miss church. And still there were never enough hours in the day for all the learning he sought. When he was sixteen he came under the influence of a book by a man named Tryon, who preached on the evils of eating “fish or flesh.” He had been taking his dinners with James and the workmen at a boardinghouse run by a Mrs. Peabody. Would his brother agree to giving him half what he paid Mrs. Peabody and let him buy his own dinner? Benjamin proposed. James jumped at such a bargain. Henceforth the young apprentice dined on dried raisins and bread instead of roasts and legs of mutton. He even had money left over for books, and two extra hours in the empty shop to peruse them as he ate. One of the volumes he purchased at this time influenced him even more than Tryon and his vegetarianism. This was Xenophon’s Memorabilia, which told of Socrates and his philosophy. Hitherto when Benjamin had an opinion, he stated it, as so many do, unequivocally as a fact. It had been a mystery to him why people so often took offense and set to arguing the opposite side of the question. Instead of saying outright what he had in mind, Socrates asked questions—and indirectly led people to his own opinion. From that time on, Benjamin used rarely such words as “certainly” or “undoubtedly,” but expressed his own ideas with seeming diffidence and modesty. Rather than saying, “This is so,” he substituted, “In my opinion, this might be so.” He retained this habit of speech the rest of his life. Outwardly more humble, he was inwardly gaining self-confidence. It seemed to him that the things which James and his literary friends wrote for the Courant were no better than he could do himself, but he was too smart to risk asking his brother to let him have an opportunity to try. One morning a letter was slipped under the door of the shop before any of the staff arrived. It was signed by a “Mrs. Silence Dogood.” Mrs. Dogood claimed to have been born on a ship bringing her parents from London to New England. Her father, so she said, was standing on the deck rejoicing at her birth when “a merciless wave” carried him to his death. In America, as soon as she was old enough, her hard-pressed mother had apprenticed her to a young country parson, whom the young girl later married. Now she was a widow with three children. James printed Mrs. Dogood’s first letter, as well as subsequent ones in which she expressed herself, wittily and clearly, on such varied subjects as the folly of fashionable dress, the character of the so-called weaker sex, the ill effects of liquor, the inferior quality of New England poetry, the need of insurance for widows and old maids, the hypocrisy of certain “pretenders to religion,” and the uselessness of sending dullards to Harvard simply because their fathers could afford to pay their way. Not until her column had become the most controversial and the most popular in the paper, did James Franklin learn that his 17 18 apprentice-brother was Mrs. Dogood’s creator. In the meantime James was having his own troubles. Because of an editorial attack by one of his contributors on the Massachusetts governor, James was summoned before the City Council, sent to jail for a month, and released only when he agreed to make an abject apology. The City Council then forbade him to print or publish the Courant. In desperation, James and his friends hit on the scheme of making Benjamin, in name only, the Courant publisher. So it would be legal, James burned his brother’s apprenticeship papers, although privately a new set was drawn up. “Mrs. Dogood” added her voice to the indignation aroused at James Franklin’s persecution. From the London Journal, she quoted an article: “Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as public liberty without Freedom of Speech.” (Capitalization of nouns was then held part of elegant writing, a practice which Benjamin Franklin always followed carefully.) He had a freer hand now and composed many articles for the Courant. At seventeen, he was without doubt the best writer in Boston, with a mind inferior to none. It is small wonder that his brother felt it his moral duty to exert his authority over him. There were arguments. There were more blows on the part of James. Benjamin, by his own admission, was “perhaps ... too saucy and provoking.” One day he told his brother he was quitting. A runaway apprentice was subject to the same penalties as a runaway slave, but Benjamin’s case was slightly different. James could not make public the secret apprenticeship papers without getting himself in trouble. He took out his fury by visiting other Boston printing shops to warn them not to employ his arrogant younger brother. Benjamin resolved to go to New York. His only confidant was a young friend named Collins. Collins persuaded the captain of a New York sloop to give him passage, telling a fantastic yarn about Benjamin being pursued by a young woman who wanted to marry him. The captain would not have carried a runaway apprentice but goodnaturedly agreed to help the young “ne’er-do-well” elude the female sex. New York, where Benjamin arrived after a three-day journey, had only 7,000 inhabitants but was suffused with an atmosphere of luxury unknown in Boston. Streets, paved with cobblestones, were filled with elegantly attired English officials and wealthy businessmen. Houses were mostly of brick with stairstep roofs in the Dutch style. Though the English had captured it from the Netherlands in 1674, Dutch customs still prevailed. Benjamin called at once on William Bradford, New York’s only printer. Bradford told him he needed no help—privately he thought the Boston youth unstable—but advised him to go to Philadelphia and see his son, Andrew Bradford, also a printer. He could guarantee nothing but at least there was no harm trying. In history, William Bradford, a worthy man in his own way, has two indirect claims to fame. One was that a former apprentice of his named Peter Zenger braved official censure and served a prison sentence for the principle of freedom of the press. The other—that he refused a job to Benjamin Franklin. 2 19 20 A YOUNG MAN ON HIS OWN No one could have looked sadder or funnier than Benjamin Franklin when he walked down Philadelphia’s Market Street for the first time. At the Fourth Street intersection, a rosy-cheeked buxom young girl, standing in a doorway, burst out laughing at the sight of him. It was understandable. His traveling suit was wet, shrunken and shapeless. His pockets were bulging with spare socks and shirts. He was hugging a large puffy white roll tightly under each arm and simultaneously eating a third. The journey from New York had been a series of mishaps. His ship nearly foundered in a squall off the Long Island coast and was becalmed near Block Island. Fresh water ran low. They would have gone hungry had not some of the passengers hauled in a batch of codfish. Benjamin found the aroma of frying fish so tempting that he there and then renounced Mr. Tryon’s vegetarian regime, never returning to it except for lack of funds. Thirty hours later they landed at Amboy, where a leaky ferry took him across to Perth Amboy. From there he walked some fifty miles to Burlington, a two-day hike in pouring rain, then caught a boat going down the Delaware. The captain was short a hand and Benjamin helped with the rowing. By the time they reached Philadelphia, his entire fortune was a Dutch dollar and a shilling in copper. The captain told him he had earned his passage, but he insisted on paying the shilling. It was a matter of pride: “A man being sometimes more generous when he has but a little money than when he has plenty, perhaps thro’ fear of being thought to have but little.” A three-penny piece had procured him the three enormous rolls. One of them satisfied his hunger. He gave the other two to a woman and child who had been on the boat with him. That night he slept at the Crooked Billet Tavern, to which a friendly Quaker directed him. The next morning he made himself as presentable as he could and went to see Andrew Bradford, the printer. Young Bradford had no work but hospitably invited him to lodge with his family. The same day Benjamin called on another printer, Samuel Keimer, who promptly hired him. Thus within twenty-four hours of his inopportune arrival, he had a place to stay and a job. Keimer was an eccentric little man with a long black beard who had but recently come from France. He was somewhat of a knave as Benjamin would learn later, and he knew little about his trade. His press was old and in disrepair with only one small and worn- out font (set of type). But the pay was good, or so it seemed to a youth who had never had a salary before. He soon had Keimer befuddled with admiration by quoting Socrates to him. His employer was nervous about Benjamin living with a rival printer and in a few weeks arranged for him to lodge with a family named Read. His chest of clothes which he had shipped from New York had now arrived. When Keimer took him to his new landlady, Ben was dressed in his best, a handsome, husky well- mannered young man, about five feet ten inches, with a wide mouth and a humorous light in his brown eyes. He was introduced to the daughter of the house, Deborah Read. Both young people started in surprise. She was the same lass who had laughed at him as he walked down Market Street eating his roll. Debby was a warmhearted outspoken young lady, cheerful and quite pretty. Although, unlike himself, she had little interest in 21 22 improving her mind, he enjoyed her company. There was shortly some talk of marriage between them. Her parents discouraged the idea, saying they were both too young. Nor was Benjamin overly ardent in his courtship. He was not yet eighteen, and far too pleased to be free of family discipline to think of settling down as a married man. Philadelphia was largely a Quaker town, with a sprinkling of Swedes and Finns and a large contingent of German immigrants. The rich farms surrounding it were cut into deep forests where Indians lingered. Bears and wolves were still shot at the city’s gates. This “City of Brotherly Love” had been planned by William Penn, the noble Quaker to whom King Charles II had made a grant of the some forty thousand square miles of land that made up the province of Pennsylvania. In contrast to the royal colonies, like New York and Massachusetts, Pennsylvania was known as a “proprietary” colony. At William Penn’s death, his sons inherited the proprietorship. There was already some resentment because of the vast tracts which the Penns held tax-free. In Philadelphia, Benjamin soon found friends of his own age and of kindred interests. There were three with whom he spent many social evenings: a pious young man named Watson, an argumentative one named Osborne, and James Ralph, who fancied himself a poet. They exchanged ideas on a multitude of subjects and read each other things they had written. Franklin was not overworked on his job and had leisure for reading. His needs were few and he saved some money. Certainly he missed his family but he dared not let them know where he was for fear of being dragged back to Boston. He did not realize that in the small and intimate world of the colonies news of a stranger was likely to get around. He had a brother-in-law, Robert Holmes, who was a sloop owner living in New Castle, forty miles from Philadelphia. Somehow Holmes learned of his whereabouts and wrote to tell him the worry he had caused his parents. Benjamin answered in considerable detail, explaining the reasons for his departure. Soon afterwards two distinguished gentlemen knocked at Keimer’s shop. Keimer spied them from an upstairs window. “Sir William Keith!” he gasped in awe, and rushed down the steps to open the door, bowing and scraping. Keith was governor of the province of Pennsylvania! With him was another important citizen, one Colonel French. No doubt Keimer expected some important commission. The governor, however, brushed him aside and demanded to see Mr. Benjamin Franklin. “How do you do, sir,” he said when Benjamin appeared. “I must reproach you for not making yourself known to me when you first arrived. I have heard fine things about you, very fine things indeed. The colonel and I are headed to the tavern across the way which serves an excellent Madeira. Would you care to join us?” “I would be delighted, your honor,” Benjamin told him, removing the leather apron which was a symbol of his trade. His face was as impassive as if it were an everyday occurrence to have a governor invite him for a glass of wine. Keimer, mouth open, stared at them with the look of a “poisoned pig.” Over the Madeira, Benjamin learned that Keith knew Robert Holmes, his brother-in-law, and had seen his letter. Keith, a man of some literary pretensions himself, had been deeply impressed with his skill at expressing himself. 23 24 “The printers of Philadelphia are a wretched lot,” Keith asserted. “From what your brother-in-law says, Mr. Franklin, I am convinced that you would succeed in your own shop. I will do all in my power to aid you.” As Benjamin basked in this heady tribute, the governor and Colonel French launched into ways and means of setting him up in the printing business. All that was needed was capital. Would not Benjamin’s father provide the necessary backing? It was very unlikely, Benjamin commented. “I will tell you what I will do,” said the governor. “I will write to your father myself to tell him how much faith I have in your ability.” Dazzled, Benjamin agreed to make a trip home to deliver the governor’s letter personally. He took a leave of absence a few weeks later, telling Keimer only that he was visiting his family. A year before he had quit Boston, a near penniless runaway. He returned in triumph, wearing a new suit, carrying a watch, and jingling some five pounds of sterling in his pocket. His mother and father were overjoyed to see him, and his sisters crowded around him delightedly. He could not resist going to the printing shop of his brother James. No doubt he strutted somewhat and bragged about his success. He showed the admiring workmen his silver money, a novelty in Boston where paper money was used, and handed each a piece of eight to buy a drink. Only James refused to be impressed. He grew increasingly glum during Benjamin’s visit. Later he said Benjamin had gone out of his way to insult him and he would never forgive him. That night Benjamin showed his father the letter from Sir William Keith. Josiah Franklin was pleased as any parent that such an important personage had taken an interest in his son but did not approve of Keith’s proposal. In his opinion Benjamin was too young to have the responsibility of his own shop, he wrote in his politely worded reply. “I see your father is a prudent man,” Keith said later in Philadelphia when Benjamin came to make his report. He added that he had found there was a great difference in persons and that discretion did not always accompany years. Since Josiah Franklin did not recognize his son’s unusual abilities, he, the governor, would sponsor him. He had Benjamin regularly to his fine house for dinner the next weeks. Gradually he unfolded his plan. Benjamin must take his savings and go to England. There he could pick out for himself his own press, type fonts, paper, and whatever else he needed for a printing shop. The governor would provide him with letters of introduction and letters of credit to cover everything. Who could have refused such a splendid opportunity? Toward the end of 1724, after quitting his employment with Keimer, Benjamin set sail for his first visit to the Old World. There had been a touching farewell to Deborah Read, to whom he promised to write often. James Ralph, his poet friend, went with him, having decided to try his fortune in England. Since the governor was busy with pressing affairs, Colonel French saw him off. He did not have the letters Keith had promised, but assured Benjamin they were safe in the captain’s mailbag. He had a pleasant trip and made one good friend—an elderly Quaker merchant named Thomas Denham. Not until they reached the English Channel did the ship captain sort out his mail. That was when Benjamin learned that there were no letters of credit, no letters of introduction, nothing at all from Governor Keith. He was 25 26 stranded in London, with only twelve pounds to his name. In his bewilderment, he confided his plight to Denham. “There is not the least probability that he wrote any letters for you,” the Quaker told him. “No one who knows the governor would depend on him. As for his giving you any letters of credit— that is a sad joke. He has no credit to give.” “But why?” Benjamin asked. “Why would he play such a trick on me?” “Do not think too harshly of him,” Denham said charitably. “Keith wants to please everyone. Having little to give, he gives expectations.” It was a bitter lesson. He stayed in London nearly eighteen months. It turned out to be as easy for him to find a job here as in Philadelphia. Part of the time he worked for a printer named Palmer and after that for a Mr. Watt. Under the tutelage of experienced workmen, he perfected his printing skills. He also attempted to improve his colleagues by urging them to drink water instead of beer for breakfast. The “Water American,” they dubbed him, but a few of them followed his advice. Not that he was a prude. London had much to offer a young man who was curious and alert and full of fun. There were operas in French or Italian, plays by William Shakespeare at the Drury Lane Theatre, scientific lectures, and the lure of dance halls. He wrote a pamphlet called “A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain,” which brought him some acclaim among London’s young intellectuals. He presented an American curiosity, a purse of stone asbestos, to Sir Hans Sloane, secretary of the Royal Society, and almost met Sir Isaac Newton. James Ralph borrowed money from him and then split up with him without paying him back, in a quarrel over a pretty milliner. He sent off one letter to Deborah Read, but never got around to writing another. He could not have missed observing the squalor of the slums and the contrasting elegance of the great lords with their postilions and liveried coachmen. That no such vast difference existed between rich and poor in America may have struck him, but he drew no moral lesson. He was not yet a crusader and his heart was set on having as good a time as his means allowed. On occasion he went swimming in the Thames with a co-worker named Wygate, and once on an excursion to Chelsea he dazzled Wygate and his other companions with a display of the water exercises which he had invented in his childhood. A certain Sir William Wyndham, a friend of the great Jonathan Swift, heard of his prowess and invited him to teach swimming to his sons. About the same time, Wygate proposed that the two of them travel through Europe, earning their way as journeymen printers. Both suggestions tempted Benjamin but he rejected them. His Quaker friend Thomas Denham had offered him a position in his Philadelphia importing company. Denham had made one fortune as a merchant and was set on making another. With the crying need of America’s growing population for goods from abroad, there was no reason why he should not succeed. The salary was less than Franklin earned as a printer, but there would be handsome commissions, travel to foreign lands, and, so he believed, an assured future. He set sail on July 23, 1726, on the Berkshire. It was October 11 before they reached Philadelphia. Franklin, now twenty, kept a journal on this long voyage. He had time to think, to observe 27 28 nature, to philosophize. An eclipse of the sun and one of the moon were notable events of the trip, duly recorded in his journal. The passengers fished for dolphins. He noted their glorious appearance in the water, their bodies “of a bright green, mixed with a silver colour, and their tails of a shining golden yellow,” and wondered at the “vulgar error of the painters, who always represent this fish monstrously crooked and deformed.” From the Gulf Stream he fished out several branches of gulfweed and spent long hours studying a growth which he called “vegetable animals,” resembling shellfish and yet seeming part of the weed. Noting a small crab of the same yellowish color as the weed, he deduced—erroneously but with logic—that the crab came from the “vegetable animals” as a butterfly comes from a cocoon. The idiosyncrasies of his fellow passengers also came under his scrutiny. From watching the men play drafts he concluded that “if two persons equal in judgment play for a considerable sum, he that loves money will lose; his anxiety for the success of the game confounds him.” One of the passengers was caught cheating and would not pay a fine. The others refused to eat, drink or talk with him. The cheat soon paid up. “Man is a sociable being,” young Franklin wrote in his journal, “and it is, for aught I know, one of the worst of punishments to be excluded from society.” He discovered that there was nothing like a contrary wind to bring out the worst in mankind: “... we grow sullen, silent, and reserved, and fret at each other upon every little occasion.” At the sight of a ship from Dublin bound from New York, on the contrary, he commented: “There is something strangely cheering to the spirits in the meeting of a ship at sea ... after we had been long separated and excommunicated as it were from the rest of mankind.” Interesting as the trip was, there was no moment equal to that when one of the mess cried “Land! Land!” In less than an hour they perceived the tufts of trees. “I could not discern it so soon as the rest; my eyes were dimmed with the suffusion of two small drops of joy.” He had set out to conquer Philadelphia three years before and had not succeeded. Now he was to have another try. 3 THE BIRTH OF POOR RICHARD Deborah Read was married. This bit of news which greeted his return came as a shock, though he had only himself to blame. A luscious young woman like Debby could hardly be expected to nourish her affection on one letter in a year and a half. He had, it seemed to him, three major causes for self-reproach in his past: the grief he had caused his parents by running away from Boston; the wrong he had done his brother James; and his long neglect of Debby. He resolved that henceforth his life would be conducted differently. Printing was behind him now, or so he thought. Under Thomas Denham he set himself to learning the intricacies of merchandising. He lived with Denham; their relationship was that of father and 29 30 31 son. It lasted only a few months. In February 1727, the good Quaker fell ill and did not recover. His executors took over his store, and Franklin was out of a job. Swallowing his pride, he went back to Samuel Keimer. To his surprise his former employer welcomed him with open arms and even gave him a raise. He soon found out why. Keimer had hired half a dozen men at very low pay. The trouble was they knew nothing about printing. He needed Franklin to teach them their trade. Obligingly, Franklin went to great pains to show the men everything he knew himself. He did considerably more than he was paid to do. When types wore out, instead of sending an order to England for more, he devised a copper mold to cast new type, the first time this had been done in America. He made their ink, and he started a sideline of engraving. All the techniques he had learned from the London experts, he now put to use. Knowing Keimer, he did not expect gratitude nor did he get it. As business improved and as the workmen mastered their trade, the employer grew increasingly uncivil and quarrelsome. He complained that he was paying Franklin too much and nagged him incessantly. Matters soon came to a climax. One day Franklin heard a loud noise outside the shop and dashed to the window to see what was happening. He never did find out. Keimer was standing in the street below and, on seeing Franklin’s face at the window, he bawled him out in such violent and insulting terms that everyone in the neighborhood could hear. No job was worth that much. Franklin took his hat and walked out, never to come back. That night a fellow journeyman named Hugh Meredith came to see him. Meredith, who had been a farmer and taken up printing only recently, was fed up with Keimer. He proposed that the two of them should go into partnership as soon as his period of service was up a few months hence. His father admired Franklin and was willing to finance them. Mr. Meredith senior soon confirmed the offer, privately telling Franklin he felt he would be a good influence on his son, who drank too much. During the next months Franklin did odd jobs and, in his spare time, organized a club called the Junto. There were twelve members in all, including Hugh and two other printers, a shoemaker, a joiner, a scrivener, and others in modest trades. “The Leather Apron Club,” the town’s wealthier citizens nicknamed the Junto, because of the humble working class background of its membership. The Junto met each Friday. Franklin provided them with a list of “queries” to be discussed. “Have you lately observed any encroachment on the just liberties of the people?” Already he was beginning to think in terms of civil rights. “Do you know of any deserving young beginner lately set up whom it lies in the power of the Junto any way to encourage?” He knew from personal experience how much it meant to a young man to have friends to give him support and advice. “Which is best: to make a friend of a wise and good man that is poor or of a rich man that is neither wise nor good?” His brief tussle with earning a living had convinced him that wisdom was preferable to riches. “Whence comes the dew that stands on the outside of a tankard that has cold water in it in the summertime?” The latter was one of many scientific “queries” he suggested to the Junto, in line with his own curiosity about the mysteries of life. To improve themselves, to cultivate ethical virtues, to lend a hand 32 to their neighbors—all were included in the Junto’s lofty aims. They composed essays on various subjects. If a member read something of interest in “history, morality, Poetry, physic, travels, mechanic arts,” he shared his new knowledge with his fellow members. They were not always serious. Sometimes they met for outdoor sports. They held banquets, composed and sang songs, made jokes, told stories, often had riotous times together. The friendships they formed were firm, lasting as long as they lived. Occasionally Franklin caught sight of Sir William Keith on the street, The former governor would look uncomfortable and slink away. His fortune had deteriorated. Before very long, he fled to England, leaving his wife and daughter penniless; he died in a London debtors’ prison. In the spring of 1728, when Franklin was twenty-two, he and Hugh Meredith were ready to open their own printing shop in a house on High Street. Their first customer was a farmer who gave them five shillings to print an advertisement. No sum ever loomed so large. Customers were few and far between those first months. It was not due to Franklin’s partner that they survived at all. He was rarely sober enough to do a day’s labor. His father had been optimistic in hoping that Franklin could change him. Eventually Hugh admitted that he would never make a printer. “I was bred a farmer, Benjamin. ’Twas folly for me to come to town and apprentice myself to learn a new trade.” They talked the matter over and came to an agreement. Franklin would pay back Hugh’s father the hundred pounds he had advanced for their printing equipment, pay Hugh’s personal debts and give him thirty pounds and a new saddle. Two of his Junto friends loaned him the money he needed. Hugh took off for his farm, leaving Franklin, at twenty-three, the sole owner of the printing shop. The common people of Pennsylvania at this time were pleading for paper money, such as was used in Massachusetts and other colonies, but the wealthier citizens opposed it. Franklin, siding with the people, wrote a pamphlet on “The Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency,” which he printed himself, and which swayed the Pennsylvania Assembly to pass a bill to issue such paper currency. For his contribution, Franklin was awarded the contract to print the money. Soon afterward, Philadelphia’s most esteemed lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, arranged for him to print the laws and votes of the government. Business was beginning to prosper. With all orders he took infinite pains. He kept his equipment in excellent shape, cleaning the type himself. He used very white paper and very black inks and sometimes made decorative woodcuts to illustrate advertisements. He hired a workman and took an apprentice, but outworked them both, staying in the shop from dawn to near midnight. His rival, Andrew Bradford, printed an address from the Pennsylvania Assembly to the governor in a slipshod manner. Franklin reprinted the same address elegantly, sending a copy to every Assembly member. The next year he was voted official printer for the Assembly. He started a stationer’s shop to sell paper, booklets, and miscellaneous items. Perhaps to impress the citizens of Philadelphia with his industry, he carted his supplies from the wharf in a wheelbarrow, wearing his leather apron. 33 34 35 Philadelphia boasted only one newspaper, a dreary and conservative sheet which Bradford published. Franklin talked over with his friends his own desire to start a livelier paper. One of them betrayed him to Keimer, his other rival, who promptly put out a newspaper with the ambitious title, The Universal Instructor in All Arts and Science, and Pennsylvania Gazette. That poor illiterate Keimer running a paper? It lasted only until September 1729 when Keimer, head over heels in debt, sold it to Franklin for a pittance and departed to the Barbados, never to return. The Pennsylvania Gazette, as he called it, became Franklin’s newspaper to run as he wished. That winter he performed his first scientific experiment, designed to find out if the heat of the sun was absorbed more readily by colored objects than by white ones. The experiment was so simple any child could do it; the wonder was no one had thought of it before. He took some tailor’s samples—small squares of cloth in black, blue, green, purple, red, yellow, and white—and laid them out on the snow a bright sunny morning. In a few hours, the black square, which the sun had warmed most, had sunk low into the snow; the dark blue was almost as low; the other colors had sunk less deeply; while the white sample remained on the surface of the snow. Franklin thought in terms of the practical value of this discovery: white clothes would be more suitable than black ones in a hot climate; summer hats should be white to repel the heat and prevent sunstroke; fruit walls, if painted black, could absorb enough of the sun’s heat to stay warm at night, thereby helping to preserve the fruit from frost. A glazier’s family named Godfrey had been sharing his High Street house. He was lonely when they moved. Even his close friends of the Junto could not ease his longing to have a family of his own. On occasion he visited the Read family. Deborah’s marriage had turned out tragically. Her husband, a good workman but irresponsible, had, like Keimer, taken off to the West Indies to escape debts. Even worse, it turned out that he had a wife still living in England. Debby, who had come home to live with her mother, was so pale and sad Franklin was filled with pity for her. Perhaps first out of a desire to do good, Franklin did his best to cheer her up, and it pleased him no end to see the color gradually come back to her cheeks as her normally high spirits returned. No woman had ever appealed to him more than she. In time she responded to his affection. They were married on September 1, 1730. Theirs was not the most romantic attachment in the world, but it endured. “She proved a good and faithful helpmate,” he wrote some years later in his Autobiography, “... we throve together, and have ever mutually endeavor’d to make each other happy.” Indeed Debby proved the ideal wife for an ambitious young man. She helped him in his printing orders, by folding and stitching pamphlets or purchasing old linen rags for the paper makers, and she ran their stationer’s shop. Since he preached the need of economy, she obligingly served him plain and simple fare and contented herself with the cheapest furniture. Nor did she complain when he went every Friday night to the meetings of the Junto. The little club had now hired a hall for its weekly gatherings. As there was no good bookshop in Philadelphia, the members pooled their own books and loaned them to each other. This practice of communal sharing gave them so much pleasure that, at Franklin’s suggestion, they commenced a public library. Every subscriber, Junto member or not, paid a sum down to buy books from