Franklin, accustomed only to small, provincial, transatlantic towns, lived for a year and a half in the capital of his world in one of its brilliant ages. At peace with France, England had
PHILADELPHIA Journeyman : j /
grown rich and was growing richer. The Hanoverian succession was established, though the Old Pretender plotted futilely in Rome. Men of trade and money challenged the power of the landowning aristocracy. Walpole, canny and corrupt, held the reins of many offices. It was an age of luxury, fashion, and wit. The elegant Stanhope became Lord Chesterfield while Franklin was in London, and Voltaire took refuge there from his enemies in Paris. It was an age of intellect. Newton towered over British science. Bentley, England's greatest classical scholar, wrangled at Cambridge. Hogarth had set up on his own account and had published his first engraving. Fielding, fresh from Eton, was having his fling in London, where Samuel Richardson was a rising printer. Jonathan Wild was hanged in 1725, and Defoe, Grub Street's genius, wrote the rascal's life. Swift in 1726 came back for the first time from his Irish exile. He and Pope and Gay put their heads together in the war against dullness which they carried out in Gulliver''s Travels, The Dmicictd, and Fables.
It was a brilliant age—and Franklin was little closer to it at first hand than if he had been in Boston or Philadelphia. He read and heard of great men, barely saw or talked with them. But the unknown journeyman made friends any way he could. Setting type, at Palmer's, for William WoUaston's earnest treatise The Religion of Nature Delineated, the printer disagreed with the writer and composed A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pai?i which he printed himself in 1725, apparently during his first half-year in London. WoUaston, in answer to the deists, had attempted to prove with geometrical rigour that even if there had never been a divine revelation there would still be support and reason in nature itself for all the essential beliefs of orthodox religion. Some acts of men, he claimed to prove, are naturally good, some naturally bad, some naturallv indifferent. Franklin, who at fifteen in Boston had been turned to a logical deism by reading the arguments against it, now was turned to an indulgent pantheism.
Since God was all-wise, all-good, all-powerful, and yet permitted the world to be what it was, therefore there could be no such things as natural virtues and vices. Men had no free-will, did what they must, and could not be blamed or praised for their behaviour. What moved them to action was the desire to avoid
^2 : BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
pain and experience pleasure. "I might here observe, how necessary a thing in the order and design of the universe this pain or uneasiness is, and how beautiful in its place! Let us but suppose it just now banished the world entirely, and consider the consequence of it: all the animal creation would immediately stand stock-still, exactly in the posture they were in the moment uneasiness departed: not a limb, not a finger would henceforth move; we should all be reduced to the condition of statues, dull and unactive; here I should continue to sit motionless with the pen in my hand thus—and neither leave my seat nor write one letter more." But pleasure and pain were exactly equal to one another. "The monarch is not more happy than the slave, nor the beggar more miserable than Croesus. Suppose A, B, and C three distinct beings: A and B animate, capable of pleasure and pain, C an inanimate piece of matter, insensible of either. A receives ten degrees of pain, which are necessarily succeeded by ten degrees of pleasure; B receives fifteen of pain, and the consequent equal number of pleasure; C all the while lies unconcerned, and as he has not suffered the former, has no right to the latter. What can be more equal and more just than this?" Since there is no inequality of pain and pleasure in this life, there is no need to imagine another, better life to come. Even though the immaterial soul should somehow persist, it "must then necessarily cease to think or act, having nothing left to think or act upon. . . . And to cease to think is but little different from ceasing to be."^'*
"The order and course of things will not be affected by reasoning of this kind,""^ Franklin broke off to say in the middle of his demonstration. He did not value metaphysics. He was a young Bostonian trying to find reasons for doing as he liked in London. If there were no such things as right and wrong, and no eternal rewards or punishments, what he might do would not matter. He could make himself as free as Ralph already was. The pamphlet was dedicated to Ralph. But the order and course of Franklin's own life cannot have been much affected. He worked hard for long hours every day. He read books from the bookseller's next door to the house in Little Britain. He was too temperate to drink, too economical to gamble. Since the more splendid vices were out of his reach, "foolish intrigues with low
PHILADELPHIA Journeyman : J5
women"-'*' must have been his only dissipations. And it is not certain, though it is likely, that they began in London.
His employer thought Franklin's principles abominable, but he could not help noticing a journeyman who could and would write a book. Franklin printed a hundred copies, gave a few of them to friends, and later burned the rest, "conceiving it might have an ill tendency."-^ One copy reached a surgeon named William Lyons, who often called on Franklin to talk with him, and who introduced him to men of similar opinions. At the Horns, an alehouse in Cheapside, he met Bernard 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. [Henry] Pemberton, at Batson's coffee house, who promised to give me an opportunity, some time or other, of seeing Sir Isaac Newton, of which I was extremely desirous; but this never happened."-^
By his own initiative Franklin met Sir Hans Sloane, who had been secretary of the Royal Society and after Newton's death was to become president. To him Franklin wrote the earliest of his surviving letters, on 2 June 1725. "Sir: Having lately been in the no[r]thern parts of America, I have brought from thence a purse made of the stone asbestos, a piece of the stone, and a piece of wood, the pithy part of which is of the same nature, and called by the inhabitants salamander cotton. As you are noted to be a lover of curiosities, I have informed you of these; and if you have any inclination to purchase them, or see 'em, let me know your pleasure by a line directed for me at the Golden Fan in Little Britain, and I will wait upon you with them." He added what was perhaps a strategic postscript: "I expect to be out of town in two or three days, and therefore beg an immediate an-swer."^^ Sloane called on Franklin, invited him to Bloomsbury Square to see his treasures, and bought the North American curiosities.
Late in 1725 Franklin, now rid of Ralph, left Palmer's for James Watts's larger printing-house in Wild's Court near Lincoln's Inn Fields. Here, though there were nearly fifty printers, he was soon distinguished by his strength and speed. The others carried one large form of types up and down the stairs; he car-
54 : BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
ried two, "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."^*^ There was no more strength in a quart of beer, Franklin argued, than in a pennyworth of bread. Let his companion eat that and save his money.
The pressmen, among whom Franklin first worked at Watts's because he wanted exercise, kept on drinking, and he was transferred to the composing room. There the compositors demanded that he pay a kind of initiation fee of five shillings for liquor for all of them. He had already paid for his welcome by the pressmen, and refused to pay again. Though he held out two or three weeks, he suffered from so many "little pieces of private mischief" that he yielded, "convinced of the folly of being on ill terms with those one is to live with continually."^^ At once he became popular and influential. "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 kept their heads clearer."^^ Some of them continued to drink beer, exhausted their credit at the alehouse before the end of the week, and had to depend on Franklin. He claimed what was due him every Saturday night, sometimes as high as thirty shillings, his week's wages. This impressed them, and they enjoyed his satirical tongue. His master, because Franklin was always at work, never late on Monday, and very fast, gave him special jobs and often special pay.
He left his lodgings in Little Britain for a house in Duke Street. His landlady "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. Shg was lame in her knees with the gout, and therefore seldom stirred out of her room, so she sometimes wanted company; and she was so highly amusing 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."'^'^ When he heard of lodgings nearer his work for two shillings a week, instead of the three and six he paid her, she let him stay for one and six, and he did not scruple to accept her offer. He was saving money to take him back to Philadelphia.
He made friends at the printing-house with a young man named Wygate, who was better educated than most printers. Franklin taught him and a friend of his to swim "at twice going into the river." They introduced him to some gentlemen from the country, and all of them went one day by water to Chelsea, in the late spring or early summer of 1726. "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 Blackfriars, 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 Theve-not's motions and positions, added some of my own, aiming at the graceful and easy as well as the useful. All these I took occasion of exhibiting to the company, and was much flattered by their admiration."^^ Sir William Wyndham, friend of Swift and Bolingbroke, heard of the feat, sent for Franklin, and asked him to teach Wyndham's two young sons to swim. Wygate, drawn to Franklin by his skill in the water as well as by his intellectual interests, proposed that they travel throughout Europe as journeymen printers. Both schemes tempted Franklin, but he had grown tired of London and remembered Pennsylvania. And now Denham, the merchant with whom he had crossed the Atlantic, suggested how he might return.
Denham, who had already made one fortune in America, intended to make another, by starting a store in Philadelphia. Franklin could be his clerk at fifty pounds a year, and, as soon
^6 : BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
as he learned the business, could go with a shipload of goods to the West Indies and earn handsome commissions. Though this meant that Franklin would have to give up, as he then thought, the trade in which he was expert, and to work at first for lower wages than a London compositor's, it also meant better prospects. He immediately agreed, and Denham advanced him ten pounds for his passage home. They sailed from Gravesend on the Berkshire 23 July 1726.
IV
(So far in this history, Franklin, speaking of himself in his own words, has almost always spoken in the words of the Autobiography which he wrote forty-five years after the departure from Gravesend, when he was sage and famous, and writing for his son, the governor of New Jersey. Perhaps then he tempered the account of his youth, saw his course as straighter than it was, left out or had forgotten his ranker appetites, remembered too clearly the mind and will which had outlasted the lost years. But now he speaks as he wrote at twenty in the journal he kept of his summer voyage.^^)
''''Friday, July 22, /72<^.—Yesterday in the afternoon we left London and came to anchor off Gravesend about eleven at night. I lay ashore all night, and this morning took a walk up to the Windmill Hill, from which I had an agreeable prospect of the country for above twenty miles round, and two or three reaches of the river, with ships and boats sailing both up and down, and Tilbury Fort on the other side, which commands the river and passage to London, This Gravesend is a cursed biting place; the chief dependence of the people being the advantage they make of imposing upon strangers. If you buy anything of them, and give half what they ask, you pay twice as much as the thing is worth. Thank God, we shall leave it tomorrow.
''''Saturday, July 25.—This day we weighed anchor and fell down with the tide, there being little or no wind. In the afternoon we had a fresh, gale that brought us down to Margate, where we shall lie at anchor this night. Most of the passengers are very sick. Saw several porpoises, etc.
'^Sunday, July 2^.—This morning we weighed anchor, and coming to the Downs, we set our pilot ashore at Deal, and passed through. And now, whilst I write this, sitting upon the quarterdeck, I have methinks one of the pleasantest scenes in the world before me. 'Tis a fine, clear day, and we are going away before the wind with an easy, pleasant gale. We have near fifteen sail of ships in sight, and I may say in company. On the left hand appears the coast of France at a distance, and on the right is the town and castle of Dover, with the green hills and chalky cliffs of England, to which we must now bid farewell. Albion, farewell!"
Fitful winds brought them on Wednesday to Spithead, where Denham and Franklin went ashore. Franklin, describing Portsmouth, commented on stories he had heard of a former Heuten-ant-governor. "It is a common maxim that without severe discipline 'tis impossible to govern the licentious rabble of soldiery. I own, indeed, that if a commander finds he has not those qualities in him that will make him beloved by his people, he ought by all means to make use of such methods as will make them fear him, since one or the other (or both) is absolutely necessary; but Alexander and Caesar, those renowned generals, received more faithful service, and performed greater actions, by means of the love their soldiers bore them, than they could possibly have done if, instead of being beloved and respected, they had been hated and feared by those they commanded."
From Cowes the ship was to sail early Friday morning, but the wind was adverse, and Franklin with other restless or curious passengers went ashore to see Newport, the "metropolis" of the Isle of Wight, and Carisbrooke Castle, "which King Charles the First was confined in." About Charles and his fate Franklin said nothing. His eyes were for living sights, "I think Newport is chiefly remarkable for oysters, which they send to London and other places, where they are very much esteemed, being thought the best in England. The oyster merchants fetch them, as I am informed, from other places, and lay them upon certain beds in the river (the water of which is it seems excellently adapted for that purpose) a-fattening; and when they have lain a suitable time they are taken up again, and made fit for sale."
Franklin noticed that the monuments on the island were all
^8 : BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
cut from soft stone and that the inscriptions are none of them legible. At the castle: "The floors are several of them of plaster of Paris, the art of making which, the woman told us, was now lost. . . . There are several breaches in the ruinous walls, which are never repaired (I suppose they are purposely neglected). . . . There is a well in the middle of the Coop which they called the bottomless well, because of its great depth; but it is now half filled up with stones and rubbish, and is covered with two or three loose planks; yet a stone, as we tried, is near a quarter of a minute in falling before you hear it strike. But the well that supplies the inhabitants at present with water is in the lower castle, and is thirty fathoms deep. They draw their water with a great wheel, and with a bucket that holds near a barrel. It makes a great sound if you speak in it, and echoed the flute which we played over it very sweetly."
The young realist was a moralist. When he was told of a former governor of the island who had seemed a saint and yet turned out to be a villain: "What surprised me was that the silly old fellow, the keeper of the castle, who remembered him governor, should have so true a notion of his character as I perceived he had. In short, I believe it is impossible for a man, though he has all the cunning of a devil, to live and die a villain, and yet conceal it so well as to carry the name of an honest fellow to his grave with him, but some one, by some accident or other, shall discover him. Truth and sincerity have a certain distinguishing native lustre about them which cannot be perfectly counterfeited; they are like fire and flame, that cannot be painted."
The young moralist reflected about everything, even about the game of draughts (checkers) which he played all that Friday afternoon after they had come back to the ship. "It is a game I much delight in; but it requires a clear head, and undisturbed; and the persons playing, if they would play well, ought not much to regard the consequence of the game, for that diverts and withdraws the attention of the mind from the game itself, and makes the player liable to make many false moves; and I will venture to lay it down for an infaUible rule, that if two persons equal in judgment play for a considerable sum, he that loves money most shall lose; his anxiety for the success of the game confounds him. Courage is almost as requisite for the good conduct of this game
PHILADELPHIA Joumeyman : ^p
as in a real battle; for if the player imagines himself opposed by one that is much his superior in skill, his mind is so intent on the defensive part that an advantage passes unobserved."
Saturday the ship got as far as Yarmouth, still on the Isle of Wight, and several passengers went ashore to dine. All but three of them sat drinking after dinner. The three, including Franklin, went further inland, headed a creek and came down on the other side, and at dark found themselves cut off from Yarmouth by the stream. "We were told that it was our best way to go straight down to the mouth of the creek, and that there was a ferry boy that would carry us over to the town. But when we came to the house the lazy whelp was in bed and refused to rise and put us over; upon which we went down to the water-side, with a design to take his boat and go over by ourselves. Wg found it very difficult to get the boat, it being fastened to a stake, and the tide risen near fifty yards beyond it; I stripped all to my shirt to wade up to it; but missing the causeway, which was under water, I got up to my middle in mud. At last I came to the stake; but, to my great disappointment, found she was locked and chained. I endeavoured to draw the staple with one of the thole-pins, but in vain; I tried to pull up the stake, but to no purpose; so that, after an hour's fatigue and trouble in the wet and mud, I was forced to return without the boat.
"We had no money in our pockets, and therefore began to conclude to pass the night in some haystack, though the wind blew very cold and very hard. In the midst of these troubles one of us recollected that he had a horse-shoe in his pocket, which he found in his walk, and asked me if I could not wrench the staple out with that. I took it, went, tried, and succeeded, and brought the boat ashore to them. Now we rejoiced and all got in, and, when I had dressed myself, we put off. But the worst of our troubles was to come yet; for, it being high water and the tide over all the banks, though it was moonlight we could not discern the channel of the creek; but, rowing heedlessly straight forward, when we were got about half-way over, we found ourselves aground on a mud bank; and, striving to row her off by putting our oars in the mud, we broke one and there stuck fast, not having four inches of water. We were now in the utmost perplexity, not knowing what in the world to do; we could not
60 : BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
tell whether the tide was rising or falling; but at length we plainly perceived it was ebb, and we could feel no deeper water within the reach of our oar.
"It was hard to lie in an open boat all night exposed to the wind and weather; but it was worse to think how foolish we should look in the morning, when the owner of the boat should catch us in that condition, where we must be exposed to the view of all the town. After we had strove and struggled for half an hour and more, we gave all over, and sat down with our hands before us, despairing to get off; for, if the tide had left us, we had been never the nearer; we must have sat in the boat, as the mud was too deep for us to walk ashore through it, being up to our necks. At last we bethought ourselves of some means of escaping, and two of us stripped and got out, and, thereby lightening the boat, we drew her upon our knees near fifty yards into deeper water; and then with much ado, having but one oar, we got safe ashore under the fort; and, having dressed ourselves and tied the man's boat, we went with great joy to the Queen's Head, where we left our companions, whom we found waiting for us, though it was very late. Our boat being gone on board, we were obliged to lie ashore all night; and thus ended our walk."
For six days the ship waited for favourable wind at Yarmouth or Cowes, and not until 5 August did they get away into the Channel. The next day: "In the afternoon I leaped overboard and swam round the ship to wash myself." On the 8th they saw the Lizard, and on the 9th took their leave of the land. Then for nine days there was nothing more remarkable than that "four dolphins followed the ship for some hours; we struck at them with the fizgig, but took none. . . .
'"''Friday, August I^.— . . . Yesterday, complaints being made
that Mr. G n, one of the passengers, had with a fraudulent
design marked the cards, a court of justice was called immediately, and he was brought to his trial in form. A Dutchman, who could speak no English, deposed by his interpreter that, when our mess was on shore at Cowes, the prisoner at the bar marked all the court cards on the back with a pen.
"I have sometimes observed that we are apt to fancy the person that cannot speak intelligibly to us, proportionably stupid in
PHILADELPHIA Joumeywan : 6i
understanding, and when we speak two or three words of English to a foreigner, it is louder than ordinary, as if we thought him deaf and that he had lost the use of his ears as well as his tongue. Something like this I imagine might be the case of Mr.
G n; he fancied the Dutchman could not see what he was
about, because he could not understand English, and therefore boldly did it before his face.
"The evidence was plain and positive; the prisoner could not deny the fact, but replied in his defence that the cards he marked were not those we commonly played with, but an imperfect pack, which he afterwards gave to the cabin boy. The attorney-general observed to the court that it was not likely he should take pains to mark the cards without some ill design, or some further intention than just to give them to the boy when he had done, who understood nothing at all of cards. But another evidence, being called, deposed that he saw the prisoner in the main-top one day, when he thought himself unobserved, marking a pack of cards on the backs, some with the print of a dirty thumb, others with the top of his finger, etc. Now, there being but two packs on board, and the prisoner having just confessed the marking of one, the court perceived the case was plain. In fine the jury brought him in guilty, and he was condemned to be carried up to the round-top, and made fast there in view of the ship's company during the space of three hours, that being the place where the act was committed, and to pay a fine of two bottles of brandy. But the prisoner resisting authority and refusing to submit to punishment, one of the sailors stepped aloft and let down a rope to us, which we with much struggling made fast about his middle, and hoisted him up into the air, sprawling, by main force. AVe let him hang, cursing and swearing, for near a quarter of an hour; but at length, he crying out 'Murder!' and looking black in the face, the rope being overtort about his middle, we thought proper to let him down again; and our mess have excommunicated him till he pays his fine, refusing either to play, eat, drink, or converse with him. . . .
"'Thursday, August 2j.—Our excommunicated shipmate thinking proper to comply with the sentence the court passed upon him, and expressing himself willing to pay the fine, we have this
62 : BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
morning received him into unity again. A4an is a sociable being, and it is, for aught I know, one of the worst punishments to be excluded from society. I have read abundance of fine things on the subject of solitude, and I know 'tis a common boast in the mouths of those that affect to be thought wise, that they are never less alone than when alone. I acknowledge solitude an agreeable refreshment to a busy mind; but were these thinking people obliged to be always alone, I am apt to think they would quickly find their very being insupportable to them. . . . One of the philosophers, I think it was Plato, used to say that he had rather be the veriest stupid block in nature than the possessor of all knowledge without some intelligent being to communicate it to.
"What I have said may in a measure account for some particulars in my present way of living here on board. Our company is in general very unsuitably mixed, to keep up the pleasure and spirit of conversation; and, if there are one or two pair of us that can sometimes entertain one another for half an hour agreeably, yet perhaps we are seldom in the humour for it together. I rise in the morning and read for an hour or two perhaps, and then reading grows tiresome. Want of exercise occasions want of appetite, so that eating and drinking afford but little pleasure. I tire myself with playing at draughts, then I go to cards; nay, there is no play so trifling or childish but we fly to it for entertainment. A contrary wind, I know not how, puts us all out of good humour; we grow sullen, silent, and reserved, and fret at each other upon every little occasion. 'Tis a common opinion among the ladies that if a man is illnatured he infallibly discovers it when he is in liquor. But I, who have known many instances to the contrary, will teach them a more effectual method to discover the natural temper and disposition of their humble servants. Let the ladies make one long sea voyage with them, and if they have the least spark of ill-nature in them and conceal it to the end of the voyage, I will forfeit all my pretensions to their favour."
For the rest of the voyage, as if he had learned whatever there was to know about his human companions. Franklin gave more attention in his journal to nature than to man.
''Tuesday, August 50.—Contrary wind still. This evening, the
PHILADELPHIA journeyman : 6^
moon being near full as she rose after eight o'clock, there appeared a rainbow in a western cloud, to windward of us. The first time I ever saw a rainbow in the night, caused by the moon. . . .
''Friday, Sept[eniber] 2.—This morning the wind changed; a little fair. We caught a couple of dolphins and fried them for dinner. They eat indifferent well. These fish make a glorious appearance in the water; their bodies are of a bright green, mixed with a silver colour, and their tails of a shining golden yellow; but all this vanishes presently after they are taken out of their element, and they change all over to a light grey. I observed that, cutting off pieces of a just-caught, living dolphin for baits, those pieces did not lose their lustre and fine colours when the dolphin died, but retained them perfectly. Everyone takes notice of that vulgar error of the painters, who always represent this fish monstrously crooked and deformed, when it is in reality as beautiful as any fish that swims. . . .
"'Wedyiesday, Sept[ei}iher] z^.—This afternoon, about two o'clock, it being fair weather and almost calm, as we sat playing draughts upon deck we were surprised with a sudden and unusual darkness of the sun, which, as we could perceive, was only covered with a small, thin cloud; when that was passed by we discovered that that glorious luminary laboured under a very great eclipse. At lease ten parts out of twelve of him were hid from our eyes, and we were apprehensive he would have been totally darkened. . . .
''Wednesday, Sept[ember] 2/.— This morning our steward was brought to the gears and whipped, for making an extravagant use of flour in the puddings, and for several other misdemeanours. It has been perfectly calm all this day, and very hot. I was determined to wash myself in the sea today, and should have done so had not the appearance of a shark, that mortal enemy to swimmers, deterred me; he seemed to be about five foot long, moves around the ship at some distance, in a slow, majestic manner, attended by near a dozen of those they call pilot fish, of different sizes; the largest of them is not so big as a small mackerel, and the smallest not bigger than my little finger. Two of these diminutive pilots keep just before his nose, and he
6^ : BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
seems to govern himself in his motions by their direction; while the rest surround him on every side indifferently. A shark is never seen without a retinue of these, who are his purveyors, discovering and distinguishing his prey for him; while he in turn gratefully protects them from the ravenous, hungry dolphin.
''Friday, September 25.—This morning we spied a sail to windward on us about two leagues. We showed our jack upon the ensign-staff and shortened sail for them till about noon, when she came up to us. She was a snow [brig] from Dublin, bound for New York, having upwards of fifty servants on board of both sexes; they all appeared upon deck, and seemed very much pleased at the sight of us. There is something strangely cheering to the spirits in the meeting of a ship at sea, containing a society of creatures of the same species and in the same circumstances with ourselves, after we had been long separated and excommunicated as it were from the rest of mankind. My heart fluttered in my breast with joy, when I saw so many human countenances, and I could scarce refrain from that kind of laughter which proceeds from some degree of inward pleasure. When we have been for a considerable time tossing on the vast waters, far from the sight of any land or ships, or any mortal creature but ourselves (except a few fish and sea birds), the whole world, for aught we know, may be under a second deluge, and we, like Noah and his company in the ark, the only surviving remnant of the human race. . . .
"I find our messmates in a better humour and more pleased with their present condition than they have been since they came out; which I take to proceed from the contemplation of the miserable circumstances of the passengers on board our neighbour, and making the comparison. We reckon ourselves in a kind of paradise, when we consider how they live, confined and stifled up with such a lousy, stinking rabble, in this hot sultry latitude."
The Berkshire, with only twenty-one on board, and the crowded snow "ran on very lovingly together" for a week, except when the wind separated them at night, and twice the snow's captain came on board the ship. On 25 September: "All our discourse now is of Philadelphia, and we begin to fancy our-
PHILADELPHIA Joumeymafi : 6$
selves ashore already." On the 27th: "I have laid a bowl of punch that we are in Philadelphia next Saturday se'ennight; for we reckon ourselves not above one hundred and fifty leagues from land." (Franklin was too hopeful by three days.)
''''Wednesday, Sept[eviber] zS.—VJt had very variable winds and weather last night, accompanied with abundance of rain; and now the wind is come about westerly again, but we must bear it with patience. This afternoon we took up several branches of gulf-weed (with which the sea is spread all over, from the Western Isles to the coast of America); but one of these branches had something peculiar in it. In common with the rest, it had a leaf about three-quarters of an inch long, indented like a saw, and a small yellow berry, filled with nothing but wind; besides which it bore a fruit of the animal kind, very surprising to see. It was a small shell-fish like a heart, the stalk by which it proceeded from the branch being partly of a gristly kind. Upon this one branch of the weed there were near forty of these vegetable animals; the smallest of them, near the end, containing a substance somewhat like an oyster, but the larger were visibly animated, opening their shells every moment, and thrusting out a set of uniformed claws, not unlike those of a crab; but the inner part was still a kind of soft jelly. Observing the weed more narrowly, I spied a very small crab crawling among it, about as big as the head of a ten-penny nail, and of a yellowish colour, like the weed itself. This gave me some reason to think that he was a native of the branch; that he had not long since been in the same condition with the rest of those little embryos that appeared in the shells, this being the method of their generation; and that, consequently, all the rest of this odd kind of fruit might be crabs in due time. To strengthen my conjecture I have resolved to keep the weed in salt water, renewing it every day till we come on shore, by this experiment to see whether any more crabs will be produced or not in this manner. . . . The various changes that silkworms, butterflies, and several other insects go through, make such alterations and metamorphoses not improbable.
""Thursday, Sept[emher] 25).—Upon shifting the water in which I had put the weed yesterday, I found another crab, much smaller than the former, who seemed to have newly left his habi-
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tation. But the weed begins to wither, and the rest of the embryos are dead. This new-comer fully convinces me that at least this sort of crabs are generated in this manner.
''Friday, Sept[ember] 50.—I sat up last night to observe an eclipse of the moon, which the calendar, calculated for London, informed us would happen at five o'clock in the morning. . . , It began with us about eleven last night, and continued till near two this morning, darkening her body about six digits, or one half; the middle of it being about half an hour after twelve, by which we may discover that we are in a meridian of about four hours and a half from London, or 67 V2 degrees of longitude, and consequently have not much above one hundred leagues to run. This is the second eclipse we have had within these fifteen days."
The bored shipmates had again something to talk about: their distance from Philadelphia. On 2 October: "I cannot help fancying the water is changed a little, as is usual when a ship comes within soundings, but 'tis probable I am mistaken; for there is but one besides myself of my opinion, and we are very apt to believe what we wish to be true." The next day: "The water is now very visibly changed to the eyes of all except the captain and mate, and they will by no means allow it; I suppose because they did not see it first. . . .
''Tuesday, October ^.—Last night we struck a dolphin, and this morning we found a flying-fish dead under the windlass. He is about the bigness of a small mackerel, a sharp head, a small mouth, and a tail forked somewhat like a dolphin, but the lowest branch much larger and longer than the other, and tinged with yellow. His back and sides of a darkish blue, his belly white, and his skin very thick. His wings are of a finny substance, about a span long, reaching when close to his body from an inch below his gills to an inch above his tail. When they fly it is straight forward (for they cannot readily turn) a yard or two above the water; and perhaps fifty yards is the furthest before they dip into the water again, for they cannot support themselves in the air any longer than while their wings continue wet. These flying-fish are the common prey of the dolphin, who is their mortal enemy. When he pur-sues them, they rise and fly; and he keeps close under them till they drop, and then snaps them up immediately. They generally fly in flocks, four or five, or perhaps a
dozen together, and a dolphin is seldom caught without one or more in his belly."
Now Franklin's curiosity was all for signs that the ship was nearing home. On 4 October: "This afternoon we have seen abundance of grampuses, which are seldom far from land; but towards evening we had a more evident token, to wit, a little tired bird, something like a lark, came on board us, who certainly is an American, and 'tis likely was ashore this day." On 5 October: "This morning we saw a heron, who had lodged aboard last night. 'Tis a long-legged, long-necked bird, having, as they say, but one gut. They live upon fish, and will swallow a Hving eel thrice, sometimes, before it will remain in their body." On 7 October (gloomily): "For my part I know not what to think of it; we have run all this day at a great rate, and now night is come on we have no soundings. Sure the American continent is not all sunk under water since we left it." But on 9 October: "After dinner one of our mess went aloft to look out, and presently pronounced the long wished-for sound: LAND! LAND! In less than an hour we could descry it from the deck, appearing like 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.
""Monday, October /o.—This morning we stood in again for land; and we that had been here before all agreed that it was Cape Henlopen; about noon we were come very near, and to our great joy saw the pilot-boat come off to us, which was exceeding welcome. He brought on board about a peck of apples with him; they seemed the most delicious I ever tasted in my life; the salt provisions we had been used to gave them a relish. We had extraordinary fair wind all the afternoon, and ran above a hundred miles up the Delaware before ten at night. The country appears very pleasant to the eye, being covered with woods, except here and there a house and plantation. We cast anchor when the tide turned, about two miles below New Castle, and there lay till the morning tide.
''^Tuesday, October //.—This morning we weighed anchor with a gentle breeze and passed by New Castle, whence they hailed us and bade us welcome. It is extreme fine weather. The sun enlivens our stiff limbs with his glorious rays of warmth and brightness. The sky looks gay, with here and there a silver cloud.
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The fresh breezes from the woods refresh us; the immediate prospect of hberty, after so long and irksome confinement, ravishes us. In short, all things conspire to make this the most joyful day I ever knew. As we passed by Chester, some of the company went on shore, impatient once more to tread on terra firina, and designing for Philadelphia by land. Four of us remained on board, not caring for the fatigue of travel when we knew the voyage had much weakened us. About eight at night, the wind failing us, we cast anchor at Redbank, six miles from Philadelphia, and thought we must be obliged to lie on board that night; but some young Philadelphians happening to be out upon their pleasure in a boat, they came on board, and offered to take us up with them; we accepted of their kind proposal, and about ten o'clock landed at Philadelphia, heartily congratulating each other upon our having happily completed so tedious and dangerous a voyage. Thank God!"
Master
DURING the voyage home Frankhn drew up a plan by which he was to regulate his future conduct, and which he says he followed, on the whole, "quite through to old age." The original plan is missing from his journal. What resolutions he had made must now be guessed at, though they were possibly the ones printed long afterwards from a manuscript now apparently lost. "Those who write of the art of poetry teach us that if we would write what may be worth reading we ought always, before we begin, to form a regular plan and design of our piece; otherwise we shall be in danger of incongruity. I am apt to think it is the same as to life. I have never fixed a regular design as to life, by which means it has been a confused variety of different scenes. I am now entering upon a new one; let me therefore make some resolutions, and form some scheme of action, that henceforth I may live in all respects like a rational creature, i. It is necessary for me to be extremely frugal for some time, till I have paid what I owe. 2. To endeavour to speak truth in every instance, to give nobody expectations that are not likely to be answered, but aim at sincerity in every word and action: the most amiable excellence in a rational being. 3. To apply myself industriously to whatever business I take in hand, and not divert my mind from my business by any foolish project of growing suddenly rich; for industry and patience are the surest means of plenty. 4. I resolve
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to speak ill of no man whatever, not even in a matter of truth; but rather by some means excuse the faults I hear charged upon others, and upon proper occasions speak all the good I know of everybody."^
Franklin's life for this first year in Philadelphia was not as he had planned. For four or five months he was busy in his new employment. Denham set up a general store in Water Street with the stock which he had brought from England, taught Franklin to keep accounts and to sell goods, and gave him affectionate counsel. They lived together like father and son. Franklin, who missed his own father, celebrated his twenty-first birthday by a high-sounding letter to his youngest and favourite sister Jane, then not yet fifteen but to be married the following July. He had heard, he said, that she had become a beauty and wanted to send her a present. "I had almost determined on a tea table; but when I considered that the character of a good housewife was far preferable to that of being only a pretty gentlewoman, I concluded to send you a spinning-wheel." He sent a moral reflection too. "Sister, farewell, and remember that modesty, as it makes the most homely virgin amiable and charming, so the want of it in-falhbly renders the most perfect beauty disagreeable and odious. But when that brightest of female virtues shines among other perfections of body and mind in the same person, it makes the woman more lovely than an angel. Excuse this freedom, and use the same with me."
Within a month after this letter both Denham and Franklin were taken seriously ill. "My distemper was a pleurisy, which very nearly carried me off. I suffered a great deal, gave up the point in my own mind, and was rather disappointed when I found myself recovering, regretting, in some degree, that I must now some time or other have all that disagreeable work to do over again."- Denham's ledger^ shows that Franklin must have come home nearly penniless, for during his twenty weeks' work he had to be advanced cash and goods to the amount of three shillings and five-pence more than the six pounds which his wages came to. Denham, dying after a long sickness, forgave Franklin the unpaid balance and the ten pounds' passage money —or as Franklin says: "he left me a small legacy in a noncupa-
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tive will." The journeyman who had left his trade went back to it.
Once more a printer, working for Keimer again, Franklin now lived only partly as he had before in Philadelphia. He had no secret patron. Keith had been removed from his post as governor and was shortly to leave the province. "I met him walking the streets as a common citizen. He seemed a little ashamed at seeing me, but passed without saying anything." Deborah Read, with her one letter from London, had lost hope of Franklin and had married a potter named Rogers, a good workman but a worthless man, with whom she had never been happy and from whom she was soon parted, after she heard he already had a wife. Franklin renewed his friendship with his former companions in poetry, but Watson died and Osborne went to the West Indies, At the printing-house Franklin was more than foreman. It did not take him long to understand that Keimer had hired him at high wages to be, in effect, teacher to the "raw, cheap hands" at work there, and to be dismissed when they had learned their trade. Franklin was as cheerful as he was skilful with his random crew. Three of them were young Pennsylvania farmers who had ambitiously come to Philadelphia: David Harry who later became Franklin's competitor, Hugh Meredith who became his partner, and Stephen Potts, his lifelong friend. Two of them were indentured servants: John, a wild Irishman who ran away, and George Webb, who had deserted Oxford after a year, gone to London to become an actor, spent all his money, and bound himself for his passage to be a servant in America, where Keimer had bought his time for four years from the captain of the ship. Franklin, besides instructing and disciplining them, took other responsibilities. "There was no letter-founder in America; I had seen types cast at James's in London, but without much attention to the manner; however, I now contrived a mould, made use of the letters we had as puncheons, struck the matrices in lead, and thus supplied in a pretty tolerable way all deficiencies. I also engraved several things on occasion; I made the ink; I was warehouseman, and everything."^
Serviceable as Franklin was, Keimer, short-tempered, shortsighted, after six months began looking for an excuse to let his
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foreman go, now that the shop had been put in order. "A trifle snapped our connexions; for, a great noise happening near the courthouse, I put my head out of the window to see what was the matter. Keimer, being in the street, looked up and saw me, called out to me in a loud voice and angry tone to mind my business, adding some reproachful words that nettled me the more for their publicity, all the neighbours who were looking out on the same occasion being witnesses how I was treated."^ Keimer came indoors, the quarrel grew furious, and Franklin, waiving the quarter's notice that was due him, caught up his hat and left without the rest of his belongings.
Hugh Meredith brought them to Franklin that evening, and they talked over what was to be done. Franklin had begun to think of going back to Boston. Meredith, anxious not to lose so good and able a friend, urged him to stay in Philadelphia, wait for Keimer's certain failure, and succeed him. Though Franklin had no capital, iMeredith's father had a high opinion of the young foreman, and might set the two up in business as equal partners, Franklin's skill counting for as much as Meredith's money. The father was just then in town and approved of the scheme, partly because his son had stopped drinking under his friend's influence Frankhn furnished the elder Meredith an inventory of what would be needed, and the order was sent off to London. It would of course be several months before the types and press could arrive. For a few days Franklin was idle. Then Keimer, "on a prospect of being employed to print some paper money in New Jersey, which would require cuts and various types that I only could supply, and apprehending Bradford might engage me and get the job from him,"*^ civilly, if interestedly, asked Franklin to forget the quarrel and return to work. jMeredith strongly urged this, for his time with Keimer would not be up till the following spring, and he felt the need of more instruction. Franklin yielded in his friendly manner, which was both natural and astute. He contrived the first copperplate press in the country, and cut ornaments for the bills. With Keimer he went to Burlington, where he did the printing to the full satisfaction of the Assembly.
Keimer made money enough in Burlington to keep him going for a year or so more. Franklin made friends for a lifetime. The
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members of the committee who watched the printing to see that no unauthorized bills were struck off liked Franklin and felt his irresistible young charm. The\' asked him, not Keimer, to their houses and introduced him to others. At the end of three months he was on the best of terms with the secretary and the surveyor-general of the province and several members of the legislature. One shrewd old man, who knew nothing of Franklin's plans, prophesied that he would sooner or later take Keimer's business away from him and make a fortune. Not long after the printers were back in Philadelphia, early in 1728, the new equipment came. Meredith and Franklin, without telling Keimer they were to be his rivals, settled with him and left with his consent. They took a house in lower Market Street for twenty-four pounds a year, let a part of it to Thomas Godfrey, a mathematical glazier with whose family they ^vere to board, and opened the new shop. Their first customer was a farmer M^ho had been wandering through the streets looking for a printer and had been brought in by one of their friends. "This countryman's five shillings, being our first fruits, and coming so seasonably, gave me more pleasure than any crown I have since earned."'
II
No single thread of narrative can give a true account of Franklin's life during the years 1726-32, for he was leading three lives and—most of the time—something of a stealthy fourth, each distinct enough to call for a separate record and yet all of them closely involved in his total nature. There was his public life, beginning with his friendships in the club he organized in 1727, and continuing with larger and larger affairs as long as he lived. There was his inner life, which was at first much taken up with reflections on his own behaviour, and, after he had more or less settled that in his mind and habit, grew to an embracing curiosity about the whole moral and physical world. There was his life as workman—already told—and business man, which greatly occupied him and was to occupy him until, after twenty vears in Philadelphia, he was able to retire from an activity he had never
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valued for itself. In time all three were to be fused in the spacious character of a sage in action, but in 1726-32 they were still distinct if not discrepant.
In business Franklin was extremely alert to the main chance, adaptable, resolute, crafty though not petty, and ruthless on occasion. But he had too ranging a mind to be taken up with his private concerns alone, and he genuinely desired the pubhc welfare. Having neither wealth nor influence, he began where he could, using the tools he had. In the fall of 1727, about the time of his trouble with Keimer, he brought together the group called the Junto. Three besides Franklin—Hugh Meredith, Stephen Potts, and George Webb—were from Keimer's shop. Meredith was "a Welsh Pennsylvanian, thirty years of age, bred to country work; honest, sensible, had a great deal of solid observation, was something of a reader but given to drink. . . . Potts, a young countryman of full age, bred to the same, of uncommon natural parts, and great wit and humour, but a little idle. . . . Webb, an Oxford scholar . . . lively, witty, good-natured, and a pleasant companion, but idle, thoughtless, and imprudent to the last degree."^
With these were joined: "Joseph Breintnal, a copier of deeds for the scriveners, a good-natured, friendly, middle-aged man, a great lover of poetry, reading all he could meet with and writing some that was tolerable; very ingenious in many little knick-knackeries and of sensible conversation. Thomas Godfrey, a self-taught mathematician, great in his way, and afterward inventor of what is now called Hadley's quadrant. But he knew little out of his way, and was not a pleasing companion; as, like most great mathematicians I have met with, he expected universal precision in everything said, and was for ever denying or distinguishing upon trifles, to the disturbance of all conversation. He soon left us. Nicholas Scull, a surveyor, afterwards surveyor-general, who loved books and sometimes made a few verses. William Parsons, bred a shoemaker, but, loving reading, had acquired a considerable share of mathematics, which he first studied with a view to astrology, but he afterwards laughed at it. He also became a surveyor-general. William Maugridge, a joiner, a most exquisite mechanic, and a solid, sensible man. . . . Robert Grace, a young gentleman of some fortune, generous, lively, and witty; a lover of
punning and of his friends. And AVilliam Coleman, then a merchant's clerk, about my age, who had the coolest, clearest head, the best heart, and the exactest morals of almost any man I ever met with. He became afterwards a merchant of great note, and one of our provincial judges."'*
These solid, sensible, good-natured, ingenious—and inconspicuous—men were friends with whom Frankhn already liked to talk, and it was a kind of economy to meet with them all at once at a tavern every Friday evening. There can be no doubt whose club it was. Franklin gave it form and direction. Many of the topics discussed were raised by him. The Junto was his benevolent lobby for the benefit of Philadelphia, and now and then for the advantage of Benjamin Franklin.
Somewhat unexpectedly, he seems to have borrowed the scheme of the Junto in part from Cotton Mather, who in Boston had originated neighbourhood benefit societies, one for every church, and had belonged to twenty of them. Mather had drawn up a set of ten questions to be read at each meeting, "with due pauses," as a guide to discussion.^"^ Franklin, in his Rules for the Junto adopted in 1728, followed Mather. Some of the questions were much the same. Mather had asked: "Is there any matter to be humbly moved unto the legislative power, to be enacted into a law for public benefit?" Franklin asked: "Have you lately observed any defect in the law s of your country of which it would be proper to move the legislature for an amendment? Or do you know of any beneficial law that is wanting?" Mather: "Is there any particular person whose disorderly behaviour may be so scandalous and so notorious that we may do well to send unto the said person our charitable admonitions?" Franklin: "Do you know of a fellow-citizen who has lately done a worthy action, deserving praise or imitation; or who has lately committed an error proper for us to be warned against and avoid?" Mather: "Does there appear any instance of oppression or fraudulence in the dealings of any sort of people that may call for our essays to get it rectified?" Franklin: "Have you lately observed any encroachment on the just liberties of the people?" But Franklin has nothing like Mather's: "Can any further methods be devised that ignorance and wickedness may be chased from our people in general, and that household piety in particular may flourish
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among them?" And Mather has nothing hke most of FrankUn's twenty-four humane, secular, practical inquiries:
"i. Have you met with anything in the author you last read, remarkable or suitable to be communicated to the Junto, particularly in history, morality, poetry, physic, travels, mechanic arts, or other parts of knowledge? 2. What new story have you lately heard agreeable for telling in conversation? 3. Hath any citizen in your knowledge failed in his business lately, and what have you heard of the cause? 4. Have you lately heard of any citizen's thriving well, and by what means? ... 7. What unhappy effects of intemperance have you lately observed or heard; of imprudence, of passion, or of any other vice or folly? 8. What happy effects of temperance, of prudence, of moderation, or of any other virtue? 9. Have you or any of your acquaintance been lately sick or wounded? If so, what remedies were used, and what were their effects? 10. Whom do you know that are shortly going voyages or journeys, if one should have occasion to send by them? ... 12. Hath any deserving stranger arrived in town since last meeting that you have heard of? And what have you heard or observed of his character or merits? And whether, think you, it lies in the power of the Junto to oblige him, or encourage him as he deserves? 13. Do you know of any deserving young beginner lately set up, whom it lies in the power of the Junto any way to encourage? ... 16. Hath anybody attacked your reputation lately? And what can the Junto do towards securing it? 17. Is there any man whose friendship you want, and which the Junto, or any of them, can procure for you 18. Have you lately heard any member's character attacked, and how have you defended it? 19. Hath any man injured you, from whom it is in the power of the Junto to procure redress? 20. In what manner can the Junto, or any of them, assist you in any of your honourable designs? . . .""
These questions were the Junto's weekly ritual. The members met first in a tavern, later in a room hired in a house belonging to Grace. Between questions there were, as in Boston, due pauses— in Philadelphia long enough to drink a glass of wine. The rules further required that "every member, in his turn, should produce one or more queries on any point of morals, politics, or natural philosophy, to be discussed by the company; and once in three
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months produce and read an essay of his own writing, on any subject he pleased. Our debates were to be under the direction of a president, and to be conducted in the sincere spirit of inquiry after truth, without fondness for dispute or desire of victory; and, to prevent warmth, all expressions of positiveness in opinions, or direct contradiction, were after some time made contraband, and prohibited under small pecuniary penalties."^"
Franklin in his own queries asked the Junto things he was asking himself. "How shall we judge of the goodness of a writing? Or what qualities should a writing have to be good and perfect in its kind?" (He wrote out his own answer, and summed up: "It should be smooth, clear, and short.") "Can a man arrive at perfection in this life, as some believe, or is it impossible, as others believe?" "Wherein consists the happiness of a rational creature?" "What is wisdom?" ("The knowledge of what will be best for us on all occasions, and the best ways of attaining it.") "Is any man wise at all times and in all things?" ("No, but some are more frequently wise than others.") "Whether those meats and drinks are not the best that contain nothing in their natural taste, nor have anything added by art, so pleasing as to induce us to eat or drink when we are not thirsty or hungry, or after thirst and hunger are satisfied; water, for instance, for drink, and bread or the like for meat?" "Is there any difference between knowledge and prudence? If there is any, which of the two is most eligible?" "Is it justifiable to put private men to death, for the sake of public safety or tranquillity, who have committed no crime? As, in the case of the plague, to stop infection; or as in the case of the Welshmen here executed?" "If the sovereign power attempts to deprive a subject of his right (or, which is the same thing, of what he thinks his right), is it justifiable in him to resist, if he is able?" "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?" "Does it not, in a general way, require great study and intense application for a poor man to become rich and powerful, if he would do it without the forfeiture of honesty?" "Does it not require as much pains, study, and application to become truly wise and strictly virtuous as to become rich?" "Whence comes the dew that stands on the outside of a tankard that has cold water in it in the summer time? "^^
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Many young men have organized clubs for talk and friendship, but only Franklin ever kept one alive for thirty years. He did not lose interest as most young men do, or tire of leadership. The Junto was his life enlarged and extended. It was convivial as well as philosophical. Once a month in the pleasant seasons the debaters met across the river for outdoor exercise. Once a year they had an anniversary dinner, with songs and healths. The Junto was practical as well as convivial. Perhaps, in the long run, the help the members gave each other had as much to do as anything with making it last. It was a secret brotherhood. New members had to stand up with their hands on their breasts and say they loved mankind in general and truth for truth's sake. But in the ritual questions many of the issues were more immediate. Strangers in Philadelphia were to be welcomed if they deserved it, young beginners in trade or business encouraged, reputations defended, friendships furthered, grievances redressed, useful information exchanged. Franklin himself was benefited. Breintnal brought the new printing-house its first large order. Grace and Coleman lent Franklin money to buy Meredith out. The Junto, commonly known at first as the Leather Apron, became the club of young, poor, enterprising men, as distinguished from the Merchants' Every Night, which was for the respectable and established, and the Bachelors, who were gay and suspected of being wicked. (Grace was a member of the Bachelors, and Webb, who wrote a poem called Batchelors-Hall which Franklin published.)
In time the Junto had so many applications for membership that it was at a loss to know how to limit itself to the twelve originally planned. Franklin, who preferred the convenient apostolic number, suggested that the Junto be kept as it was and that each member organize a subordinate club, "with the same rules respecting queries, etc., and without informing them of the connexion with the Junto. The advantages proposed were the improvement of so many more young citizens by the use of our institutions; our better acquaintance with the general sentiments of the inhabitants on any occasion, as the Junto member might propose what queries we should desire, and was to report to the Junto what passed in his separate club; the promotion of our particular interests in business by more extensive recommendation, and the increase of our influence in public affairs, and our power
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of doing good by spreading through the several clubs the sentiments of the Junto."^^ Only five or six of these subordinate clubs were founded.
The benevolent imperialism of the Junto did not go beyond these little clubs of artisans and tradesmen in Philadelphia, but Franklin for a few enthusiastic months had world-wide schemes. On 19 May 173 i, about the time he became a Mason, he set down, in the library of the Junto which was also the room where the club held its meetings, his observations on his reading of history. The affairs of the world, he had observed, are carried on by parties. These parties act in their own interest or what they think their interest. Their different interests cause natural confusion. Within each party each man has his own private interest. As soon as a party has gained its general point, each man puts forth his special claim, and the party comes to confusion within itself. Few men act for the good of their country except when they can believe that their country's good is also theirs. Fewer men still act for the good of mankind. Consequently: "There seems to me at present to be great occasion for raising a United Party for Virtue, by forming the virtuous and good men of all nations into a regular body, to be governed by suitable good and wise rules, which good and wise men may probably be more unanimous in their obedience to, than common people are to common laws."^^
The new sect was, much like the Junto, to be begun and spread by young single men joined in a secret society, each of whom should find other worthy members. "The members should engage to afford their advice, support, and assistance to each other in promoting one another's interests, business, and advancement in life. . . . For distinction, we should be called the Society of the Free and Easy: free, as being, by the general habit and practice of the virtues, free from the dominion of vice; and particularly, by the practice of industrv and frugality, free from debt, which exposes a man to confinement and a species of slavery to his creditors."^'' Franklin was himself to write a kind of gospel for these free and easy saints, a book to be called The Art of Virtue which would not merely exhort to goodness but would show the precise means of achieving it. Almost thirty years later he was still hoping to write the book, which he told Lord Kames
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would be "adapted for universal use."^^ About his sect he did nothing but propose it to two young men who felt his enthusiasm. Then pressing matters intervened, and the Party for Virtue had to wait. Yet at eighty-two Franklin could say: "I am still of opinion that it was a practicable scheme, and might have been very useful, by forming a great number of good citizens; and I was not discouraged by the seeming magnitude of the undertaking, as I have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he first forms a good plan and . . . makes the execution of that same plan his sole study and business."^^
III
Remembering FrankUn when he was old and canny, men forget that he was once young and passionate, romantic about the schemes which he realistically carried out, troubled by the conflict of many ideas in his fruitful mind, and ardently cherishing those he thought true and good. In London he had justified his looser impulses by arguing, against Wollaston, that men are machines driven by necessity and that there are no virtues and no vices in nature. But on his voyage home and during his first year or two in Philadelphia he decided that this argument was at fault. The freethinkers he had known best—Collins, Keith, Ralph—had all injured him, and he while a freethinker had behaved badly to his brother James, to Deborah Read, to Ralph's milliner, and to Vernon. There were in practice, perhaps in nature itself, such things as right and wrong. "Revelation had indeed no weight with me, as such; but I entertained an opinion that, though certain actions might not be bad because they were forbidden by it, or good because it commanded them, yet probably these actions might be forbidden because they were bad for us, or commanded because they were beneficial to us, in their own natures, all the circumstances of things considered."^^ His mind was too free to let him retreat to any contemporary sect, and he remained a deist. But neither was he able to be satisfied with a dry and niggling rationalism. Like Wollaston, he seems to have felt the need of some kind of ritual of worship. On 20 No-
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vember 1728, the year Franklin formulated the Junto's rules, he settled upon his Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion^^ which served as his creed—though he later simplified that—and his private religious ceremony.
Believing that there is one Supreme Being, "Author and Father of the Gods themselves," he still held in 1728, again with Wol-laston, that there are many lesser Gods, each in his system like a sun. To the God of his own system Franklin raised his "praise and adoration. ... I conceive for many reasons that He is a good Being, and as I should be happy to have so wise, good, and powerful a Being my friend, let me consider in what manner I shall make myself most acceptable to Him. Next to the praise resulting from and due to His wisdom, I believe He is pleased and delights in the happiness of those He has created; and since without virtue man can have no happiness in this world, I firmly believe He delights to see me virtuous, because He is pleased when He sees me happy. And since He has created many things which seem purely designed for the delight of man, I believe He is not offended when He sees his children solace themselves in any manner of pleasant exercises and innocent delights; and I think no pleasure innocent that is to man hurtful. I love Him therefore for His Goodness, and I adore Him for His Wisdom."
After this statement of First Principles, the form of Adoration. "Being mindful that before I address the Deity my soul ought to be calm and serene, free from passion and perturbation, or otherwise elevated with rational joy and pleasure, I ought to use a countenance that expresses a filial respect, mixed with a kind of smiling that signifies inward joy and satisfaction and admiration. . . . O Creator, O Father! I believe that Thou art good and that Thou art pleased with the pleasure of Thy children.—Praised be Thy name for ever. By Thy power hast Thou made the glorious sun, with his attending worlds; from the energy of Thy mighty will they first received their prodigious motion, and by Thy wisdom hast Thou prescribed the wondrous laws by which they move.—Praised be Thy name for ever. . . . Thou abhorrest in Thy creatures treachery, deceit, malice, revenge, intemperance, and every other hurtful vice; but Thou art a lover of justice and sincerity, of friendship and benevolence, and every virtue. Thou art my friend, my father, and my benefactor.—Praised
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be Thy name, O God, for ever! Amen!" The Adoration concluded with "Milton's Hymn to the Creator" from Paradise Lost-^ and "the reading of some book, or part of a book, discoursing on and exciting to moral virtue."
Then the Petition and Thanks which completely reveal what the inner Franklin valued and desired.
"That I may be preserved from atheism and infidelity, impiety and profaneness, and in my addresses to Thee carefully avoid irreverence and ostentation, formality and odious hypocrisy,— Help me, O Father!
"That I may be loyal to my prince and faithful to my country, careful for its good, valiant in its defence, and obedient to its laws, abhorring treason as much as tyranny,—Help me, O Father!
"That I may to those above me be dutiful, humble, and submissive; avoiding pride, disrespect, and contumacy,—Help me, O Father!
"That I may to those below me be gracious, condescending, and forgiving, using clemency, protecting innocent distress, avoiding cruelty, harshness, and oppression, insolence, and unreasonable severity,—Help me, O Father!
"That I may refrain from censure, calumny, and detraction; that I may avoid and abhor deceit and envy, fraud, flattery, and hatred, malice, lying, and ingratitude,—Help me, O Father!
"That I may be sincere in friendship, faithful in trust, and impartial in judgment, watchful against pride and against anger (that momentary madness),—Help me, O Father!
"That I may be just in all my dealings, temperate in my pleasures, full of candour and ingenuity, humanity, and benevolence, —Help me, O Father!
"That I may be grateful to my benefactors, and generous to my friends, exercising charity and liberality to the poor and pity to the miserable,—Help me, O Father!
"That I may avoid avarice and ambition, jealousy and intemperance, falsehood, luxury, and lasciviousness,—Help me, O Father!
"That I may possess integrity and evenness of mind, resolution in difficulties, and fortitude under affliction; that I may be punctual in performing my promises, peaceable and prudent in my behaviour,—Help me, O Father!
"That I may have tenderness for the weak and reverent respect for the ancient; that I ma\' be kind to my neighbours, good-natured to my companions, and hospitable to strangers,—Help me, O Father!
"That I may be averse to talebearing, backbiting, detraction, slander and craft and overreaching, abhor extortion, perjury, and every kind of wickedness,—Help me, O Father!
"That I may be honest and open-hearted, gentle, merciful, and good, cheerful in spirit, rejoicing in the good of others,—Help me, O Father!
"That I may have a constant regard to honour and probity, that I may possess a perfect innocence and a good conscience, and at length become truly virtuous and magnanimous,—Help me, good God; help me, O Father!
"And forasmuch as ingratitude is one of the most odious of vices, let me be not unmindful gratefully to ackno\\'ledge the favours I receive from Heaven. . . .
"For peace and liberty, for food and raiment, for corn and wine and milk, and every kind of healthful nourishment,—Good God, I thank Thee!
"For the common benefits of air and light; for useful fire and delicious water,—Good God, I thank Thee!
"For knowledge and literature and every useful art, for my friends and their prosperity, and for the fewness of my enemies, —Good God, I thank Thee!
"For all Thy innumerable benefits; for life and reason and the use of speech; for health and joy and every pleasant hour,—My good God, I thank Thee!"
Though Franklin before he was twenty-three had so wide and serene a view of human behaviour, he had not yet resolved in himself the conflict between his instinct toward pleasure and his faith in reasonable virtue. He argued the matter out, some time in 1730, in two Socratic dialogues—suggested by The Moralists in Shaftesbury's Characteristics—\\\\\c\\ he read before the Junto and published in his newspaper.'- The speakers were Philocles and Horatio, really two dramatic halves of Franklin. Misfortune had sent Horatio, the man of pleasure, to philosophy for relief, and Philocles, the man of reason, told his friend that he had given more for pleasure than it was worth.
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''Hor[atio]. That depends all upon opinion. Who shall judge what the pleasure is worth? Supposing a pleasing form of the fair kind strikes me so much that I can enjoy nothing without the enjoyment of that one object. Or, that pleasure in general is so favourite a mistress that I will take her as men do their wives, for better or worse; mind no consequences, nor regarding what's to come. Why should I not do it?
'Thil[ocles]. Suppose, Horatio, that a friend of yours entered into the world about two-and-twenty, with a healthful vigorous body, and a fair plentiful estate of about five hundred pounds a year; and yet, before he had reached thirty, should, by following his pleasures and not, as you say, duly regarding consequences, have run out of his estate and disabled his body to that degree that he had neither the means nor capacity of enjoyment left, nor anything else to do but wisely shoot himself through the head to be at rest; what would you say to this unfortunate man's conduct? . . . Does that miserable son of pleasure appear as reasonable and lovely a being in your eyes as the man who, by prudently and rightly gratifying his natural passions, had preserved his body in full health, and his estate entire, and enjoyed both to a good old age, and then died with a thankful heart for the good things he had received . . . ? Say, Horatio, are these men equally wise and happy? And is everything to be measured by mere fancy and opinion, without considering whether that fancy or opinion be right?
"Her. Hardly so neither, I think; yet sure the wise and good Author of Nature could never make us to plague us. He could never give us passions, on purpose to subdue and conquer 'em; nor produce this self of mine, or any other self, only that it may be denied; for that is denying the works of the great Creator Himself. Self-denial, then, which is what I suppose you mean by prudence, seems to me not only absurd but very dishonourable to that supreme Wisdom and Goodness. . . . Are we created sick, only to be commanded to be sound? Are we born under one law, our passions, and yet bound to another, that of reason? Answer me, Philocles, for I am warmly concerned for the honour of Nature, the mother of us all. . . .
"Phil. This, my dear Horatio, I have to say: that what you find fault with and clamour against, as the most terrible evil in the
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world, self-denial, is really the greatest good and the highest self-gratification. If, indeed, you use the word in the sense of some weak sour moralists, and much weaker divines, you'll have just reason to laugh at it. But if you take it as understood by philosophers and men of sense, you will presently see her charms, and fly to her embraces, notwithstanding her demure looks, as absolutely necessary to produce even your own darling sole good, pleasure; for self-denial is never a duty, or a reasonable action, but as 'tis a natural means of procuring more pleasure than you can taste without it. . . .
""Hor. . . . I'm impatient, and all on fire. Explain, therefore, in your beautiful, natural, easy way of reasoning, what I'm to understand by this grave lady of yours, with so forbidding, downcast looks, and yet so absolutely necessary to my pleasures. I stand ready to embrace her; for, you kno^\', pleasure I court under all shapes and forms.
''Fhil. . . . No created being can be all-wise, all-good, and all-powerful, because his powers and capacities are finite and limited; consequently, whatever is created must, in its own nature, be subject to error, irregularity, excess, and disorder. All intelligent, rational agents find in themselves a power of judging what kind of beings they are; what actions are proper to preserve 'em and what consequences will generally attend them, what pleasures they are formed for and to what degree their natures are capable of receiving them. All we have to do then, Horatio, is to consider, when we are surprised with a new object and passionately desire to enjoy it, whether the gratifying that passion be consistent with the gratifying other passions and appetites equal if not more necessary to us. And whether it consists with our happiness tomorrow, next week, or next year; for, as we all wish to live, we are obliged by reason to take as much care for our future as our present happiness and not build one upon the ruins of t'other. ... So that this philosophical self-denial is only refusing to do an action which you strongly desire, because 'tis inconsistent with your health, fortunes, or circumstances in the world; or, in other words, because 'twould cost you more than 'twas worth. You would lose by it, as a man of pleasure."
So far in the first dialogue. In the second Philocles and Horatio had met again in the "delightful, awe-inspiring fields" after
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three or four months. Horatio, now convinced that self-denial is a pleasure, wanted further to be told what was the "constant, durable good" which he had heard Philocles speak of. "Pray explain what you mean; for I am not much used to this abstract way of reasoning." Philocles explained that the good of man is not natural and sensual, but rational and moral.
"'Phil. Natural or sensual pleasure continues no longer than the action itself, but this divine or moral pleasure [doing good to others] continues when the action is over, and swells and grows upon your hand by reflection. The one is inconstant, unsatisfying, of short duration, and attended with numberless ills; the other is constant, yields full satisfactions, is durable, and no evils preceding, accompanying, or following it. But, if you inquire further into the cause of this difference, and would know why the moral pleasures are greater than the sensual; perhaps the reason is the same in all other creatures; that their happiness or chief good consists in acting up to their chief faculty, or that faculty which distinguishes them from all creatures of a different species. The chief faculty in a man is his reason, and consequently his chief good; or that which may be justly called his good consists not merely in action, but in reasonable action. By reasonable actions we understand those actions which are preservative of the human kind and naturally tend to produce real and unmixed happiness; and these actions, by way of distinction, we call actions morally good.
""Hor. . . . Pray tell me what is the real difference between natural good and ill, and moral good and ill. For I know several people who use the terms without ideas.
''Fhil. That may be. The difference lies only in this: that natural good and ill is pleasure and pain; moral good and ill is pleasure or pain produced with intention and design; for 'tis the intention only that makes the agent morally good or bad.
"Hor. But may not a man, with a very good intention, do an ill action?
'Thil. Yes, but then he errs in his judgment, though his design be good. If his error is inevitable, or such as, all things considered, he could not help, he is inculpable; but if it arose through want of diligence in forming his judgment about the nature of human actions, he is immoral and culpable.
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'"''Hor. I find, then, that in order to please ourselves rightly, or to do good to others morally, we should take great care of our opinions.
"'Phil. Nothing concerns you more; for, as the happiness or real good of men consists in right action, and right action cannot be produced without right opinion, it behoves us, above all things in this world, to take care that our opinions of things be according to the nature of things. The foundation of all virtue and happiness is thinking rightly."
In this "beautiful, natural, easy way of reasoning" FrankHn in Philadelphia answered his London arguments. There w^as more than reasoning in his dialogues; a zest for reason, a hunger for goodness, a passion for wisdom. "x\bout this time [but perhaps a year or so later] I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. I Mished to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into. As I knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other. But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I had imagined. While my care was employed in guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by another; habit took the advantage of inattention; inclination was sometimes too strong for reason. I concluded, at length, that the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous was not sufficient to prevent our slipping; and that the contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired and established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of con-duct."23
(Franklin had told the Junto that he supposed "the perfection of anything to be only the greatest the nature of the thing is capable of. Different things have different degrees of perfection, and the same things at different times. Thus, a horse is more perfect than an oyster, yet the oyster may be a perfect oyster as well as the horse a perfect horse." People might properly insist that "a man in this life cannot be so perfect as an angel"; for "an angel, by being incorporeal, is allowed some perfections we are at present incapable of, and less liable to some imperfections than we are liable to. If they mean a man is not capable of being as perfect
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here as he is capable of being in heaven, that may be true likewise. But that a man is not capable of being so perfect here as he is capable of being here is not sense. "^■*)
Like a scientist undertaking an experiment in a laboratory, Franklin worked out a scheme of desirable virtues and "annexed to each a short precept which fully expressed the extent I gave to its meaning. . . . i. Teviperance: Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. 2. Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. 3. Order: Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time. 4. Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. 5. Frugality: Makes no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing. 6. Industry: Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions. 7. Si?icerity: Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly. 8. Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty. 9. Moderation: Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve. 10. Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation. 11. Tranquillity: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable. 12. Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation. 13. Himiility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates."^^
Franklin arranged his virtues in this order because he thought he would have to take them up one at a time and that success in one ought to help him with the next. "Teinperafice first, as it tends to procure that coolness and clearness of head which is so necessary where constant vigilance is to be kept up. . . . This being acquired and established. Silence would be more easy; and my desire being to gain knowledge at the same time that I improved in virtue, and considering that in conversation it was obtained rather by the use of the ears than of the tongue, and therefore wishing to break a habit I was getting into of prattling, punning, and joking, which only made me acceptable to trifling company, I gave Silence the second place. This and the next. Order, I expected would allow me more time for attending to my project and my studies. Resolution, once become habitual, would
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keep me firm in my endeavours to obtain all the subsequent virtues; Frugality and hidustry, freeing me from my remaining debt and producing affluence and independence, would make more easy the practice of Sincerity and Justice, etc."-*' (What other moralist since the Greeks has ever so cheerfully taken it for granted that affluence might make it easier to practise sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquillity, chastity, and humility?)
Like a scientist in a laboratory, Franklin took careful notes of his experiment. "I made a little book, in which I allotted a page for each of the virtues. ... I determined to give a week's strict attention to each of the virtues successively. Thus, in the first week, my great guard w^as to avoid every the least offence against Tevipera?ice, leaving the other virtues to their ordinary chance, only marking every evening the faults of the day. . . . Proceeding thus to the last, I could go through a course complete in thirteen weeks, and four courses in a year. And like him who, having a garden to weed, does not attempt to eradicate all the bad herbs at once, but works on one of the beds at a time, and, having accomplished the first, proceeds to a second, so I should have, I hoped, the encouraging pleasure of seeing on my pages the progress I made in virtue . . . till in the end, by a number of courses, I should be happy in viewing a clean book."^^
He was surprised to find he had more faults than he had imagined, but pleased to see them diminish before he lost interest in his experiment in perfection and gradually gave it up. It was in respect to Order that he was most incorrigible. In business he had many interruptions, and with his "exceeding good memory" he found it easier to remember where things might be than to watch that they were kept where they belonged. But he did make a systematic programme for his usual day. He got up at five, washed, said his prayer to Powerful Goodness, planned the day's work, studied, and had breakfast till eight. From eight to twelve he worked at his business. From twelve to two he read, looked after his accounts, and dined. From two till six he worked again. From six to ten: "Put things in their place. Supper. Music or diversion, or conversation. Examination of the day."-^ Then he slept from ten to five again. He carried out this program as well as he could. Perhaps he was most successful with Humility. He
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had not included it on his Hst at first: "but a Quaker friend having kindly informed me that I was generally thought proud; that my pride showed itself frequently in conversation; that I was not content with being in the right when discussing any point but was overbearing and rather insolent, of which he convinced me by mentioning several instances; I determined endeavouring to cure myself, if I could, of this vice or folly among the rest. . . . I cannot boast of much success in acquiring the reality of this virtue, but I had a good deal with regard to the appearance of it. I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradiction of the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. ... I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engaged in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I proposed my opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction; I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong; and I more easily prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right. "^^
Many of Franklin's friends might have wondered if they had known what were the virtues he so much desired. They would have supposed he already had enough temperance, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquillity for any man, and would not have supposed he set any such value as this on silence, chastity, humility. All of his friends in the Junto must have wondered when they heard that their amiable companion had even thought of reaching austere perfection. For, moving in the familiar, fallible world, he showed few signs of the inner life which ran incessantly through his studious days and nights, and from which his influence and charm rose to pour over Philadelphia.
IV
Franklin was not all mind and will. There was also his warm, indocile flesh. No certain early likeness of him survives, but what he outwardly was when he returned to Philadelphia may be imagined backwards from later portraits and various chance notes on his personal appearance. Strongly built, rounded like a swim-
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mer or a wrestler, not angular like a runner, he was five feet nine or ten inches tall, with-a large head and square, deft hands. His hair was blond or light brow^n, his eyes grey, full, and steady, his mouth wide and humorous with a pointed upper lip. His clothing was as clean as it was plain. Though he and others say he was hesitant in speech, he was prompt in action. On that bored voyage home he had been among those who tied the rope around the cheat and hoisted him up, and the one who by himself did the hard, wet work of commandeering the boat. Now back among old friends, and making new ones, he was restless with vitality.
Again as in London the chief impulse he could or did not regulate was sexual. He told his illegitimate son all that is known about whatever excesses there were "through this dangerous time of youth, and the hazardous situations I was sometimes in among strangers, remote from the eye and advice of my father. . . . That hard-to-be-governed passion of youth hurried me frequently into intrigues with low women that fell in my way, which were attended with some expense and great inconvenience, besides a continual risk to my health by a distemper which of all things I dreaded, though by great good luck I escaped it."""^ In his morning litany he could pray to be kept from lasciviousness, but when night came lust might come with it. Phrases of gallantry appear in his writings. Even Philocles speaks of even self-denial as a charming and desirable mistress. Franklin was then not a gallant and he seems not to have fallen in love. He went to women hungrily, secretly, and briefly.
But one of them bore him a son, in 1730 or early in 173 i (Franklin referred to him as nineteen in April 1750^^^). None of the scandal-hunters of that day could find out who the mother was, though an anonymous political enemy in 1764 alleged she was a maid named Barbara who had served in the Franklin household, for ten pounds a year, till her death "lately" and had been buried in an unmarked grave.'^- Subsequent antiquarians have not cleared up the mystery, which is still obscure when it is argued that the mother may have been Deborah Read, before or after she began to call herself Deborah Franklin.
Franklin had been gradually convinced that it was better to marry than to burn—or, as he later put it, that "a single man re-
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sembles the odd half of a pair of scissors," In his search for a wife he had begun near home, at first without intention. "I had hitherto continued to board with Godfrey"—the disputative member of the Junto—"who lived in part of my house with his wife and children, and had one side of the shop for his glazier's business, though he worked little, being always absorbed in his mathematics. Airs. Godfrey projected a match for me with a relation's daughter, took opportunities of bringing us often together, till a serious courtship on my part ensued, the girl being in herself very deserving. The old folks encouraged me by continual invitations to supper, and by leaving us together, till at length it was time to explain. Mrs. Godfrey managed our little treaty. I let her know that I expected as much money with their daughter as would pay off my remaining debt for the printing-house, which I believe was not then above a hundred pounds. She brought me word they had no such sum to spare; I said they might mortgage their house in the loan office. The answer to this, after some days, was that they did not approve the match; that, on inquiry of Bradford, they had been informed the business was not a profitable one . . . and, therefore, I was forbidden the house and the daughter shut up."^^
The business-like suitor did not feel sure that there had been a change of sentiment in the business-like parents. Perhaps they thought he could not do without the girl and might elope with her and so forfeit any claim he had on them. He was not so far gone, and he gave up his suit. "Mrs. Godfrey brought me afterwards some more favourable account of their disposition, and would have drawn me on again; but I declared absolutely my resolution to have nothing more to do with that family. This was resented by the Godfreys; we differed, and they removed, leaving me the whole house, and I resolved to take no more inmates. . . .
"But this affair having turned my thoughts to marriage, I looked round me and made overtures of acquaintance in other places; but soon found that, the business of a printer being generally thought a poor one, I was not to expect money with a wife, unless with such a one as I should not otherwise think agreeable. ... A friendly correspondence as neighbours and old acquaintances had continued between me and Mrs. Read's
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family, who all had a regard for me from the time of my first lodging in their house, I was often invited there and consulted in their aifairs, wherein I sometimes was of service. I pitied poor Miss Read's unfortunate situation, who was generally dejected, seldom cheerful, and avoided company. I considered my giddiness and inconstancy when in London as in a great degree the cause of her unhappiness, though the mother was good enough to think the fault more her own than mine, as she had prevented our marrying before I went thither, and persuaded the other match in my absence. Our mutual affection was revived, but there were now great objections to our union. The match was indeed looked upon as invalid, a preceding wife being said to be living in England; but this could not be easily proved, because of the distance; and though there was a report of his death"—Rogers had run away from his creditors to the West Indies—"it was not certain. Then, though it should be true, he had left many debts, which his successor might be called upon to pay. We ventured, however, over all these difficulties, and I took her to wife September I St, 17 30."■''■*
This is the philosopher's bland version, written at the country seat of the Bishop of St. Asaph's in 1771. In August 1730, just after Franklin had published his dialogues concerning pleasure, he must have been more troubled. By that time he could have known that Barbara, or whoever it was, had had or was to have a child of his. To scurry into marriage with Deborah was to risk her understandable anger when she should find out. Or if matters were otherwise, and it was she who was to have his child, the situation was still troubling. Suppose Rogers were alive. For Deborah Rogers to have a child by another man would be at least as bad as bigamy. There was bound to be scandal. But of course it would be less if the child appeared to be Franklin's and an unknown mother's. The lusty philospher could take all the blame. He did take it. The child, born to whatever mother, lived in the new household as William Franklin, supposed to be illegitimate but acknowledged and cherished. Deborah may have had reason to be grateful, or she may have been merely forgiving. It is now impossible to say which. Because the couple could not be sure that Rogers was dead, they were married at common law, without a ceremony or any record at Christ Church, which she at-
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tended. The young widow, if she was that, came to the house near the market as Franklin's wife, and no more minded the irregularity than he did, or her mother who lived with them, or any of their friends. Deborah Franklin was a sturdy, handsome, high-coloured woman, untaught and sometimes turbulent, little interested in her husband's studies or speculations but devoted to him, economical and sensible. "She proved a good and faithful helpmate, assisted me much by attending the shop; we throve together, and have ever mutually endeavoured to make each other happy."^^
The most unreasonable of Franklin's impulses had now been quieted by this most reasonable of marriages, and he was free to turn his whole mind and will to work.
V
Nothing in the history of Philadelphia gave Franklin a right to expect that the printer's trade would there be a way to wealth. Compared with Boston, the town was backward as to books. Few were sold, almost none printed except theological pamphlets and almanacs. Keimer, though FrankUn ridiculed him, was enterprising. His folio history of the Quakers (1728), by William Sewel, was the most important book yet published in Pennsylvania, and his Epictetus (1729) the first translation of a classic writer published in x\merica. He printed paper money in Burlington and he started a newspaper in Philadelphia. But when Franklin and Meredith left him in the spring of 1728, Keimer was shaky. He was not able to compete with Andrew Bradford, who as postmaster could use the carriers to distribute his newspaper, and who as printer for the government was given profitable work on the laws, minutes, proclamations, addresses, and ballots issued by authority. If there was little room in Philadelphia for a second printer, there must have seemed none for a third.
The third was Benjamin Franklin, who was more than a printer. He was the best writer in America. He had the Junto for sworn friends and backers. He was bringing to his first business a powerful and ambitious mind which had in it none of Keimer's
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eccentricity or Bradford's unadventurous security. From the outset Franklin aimed to pass, or to undo, his rivals.
For three years Keimer had been working on the Sewel, and the Quakers were impatient. Breintnal of the Junto, Franklin says, "procured us from the Quakers the printing forty sheets of their history, the rest being to be done by Kreimer."^*' Breintnal may have thought of this himself, or he may have been acting on a hint from Franklin, The speed of the new printers was an argument against Keimer. "I composed ... a sheet a day, and Aieredith worked it off at press; it was often eleven at night, and sometimes later, before I finished my distribution for the next day's work, for the little jobs sent in by our other friends now and then put us back. But so determined I was to continue doing a sheet a day of the folio that one night when, having imposed my forms, I thought my day's work over, one of them by accident was broken and two pages reduced to pie, I immediately distributed it and composed it over again before I went to bed; and this industry, visible to our neighbours, began to give us character and credit."^' The merchants at the Every Night Club talked about the promising young tradesmen.
Franklin, who had worked on the first lively newspaper in Boston, planned to begin one in Philadelphia, in competition with Bradford's American Weekly Mercury. In this scheme a member of the Junto did Franklin harm. Webb, "who had found a female friend that lent him wherewith to purchase his time of Keimer,"^^ came to Franklin and Aderedith looking for employment as a journeyman. They could not then afford one, but Franklin thought they might later—and let out his secret. Webb took the secret to Keimer, who, to get ahead of Franklin, promptly announced a newspaper of his own, in October 1728, and in December published the first number of The Universal Instructor in All Arts and Sciences: and Pennsylvania Gazette. As Instructor he set out to reprint Chambers's Cyclopcedia, fresh from London. As Gazette he had an address from the legislature of New Jersey to their governor and his reply, some news paragraphs, and one paid advertisement. He ran on for thirty-nine numbers, with his Cyclopaedia, Defoe's Religious Courtship, news and advertisements, and various lighter matters, in prose
^6 : BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
and verse, which made his paper more interesting than Bradford's had been.
But not as interesting as the Mercury became in February, when Frankhn wrote every week as the Busy-Body, and twice more in March before he gave the series over to Breintnal. Franklin wrote to tease Keimer, who answered with sputtering abuse, and to keep readers away from him, even if they were "fixed on" the Mercury. The Busy-Body was easy and humorous, praising virtue and good temper. On 18 February he advised "Cretico, thou sour philosopher, thou cunning statesman," to "neglect those musty authors; let them be covered with dust and moulder on their proper shelves; and do thou apply thyself to a study much more profitable, the knowledge of mankind and of thyself." The Busy-Body approved Cato, "who appeared in the plainest country garb; his greatcoat was coarse and looked old and threadbare; his linen was homespun; his beard perhaps of seven days' growth; his shoes thick and heavy"—yet who was greeted with respect by every person in the room when recently he came to town, to a house where "were met men of the most note in this place. ... A mixture of innocence and wisdom makes him ever seriously cheerful. His generous hospitality to strangers, according to his ability; his goodness, his charity, his courage in the cause of the oppressed, his fidelity in friendship, his humility, his honesty and sincerity, his moderation, and his loyalty to the government; his piety, his temperance, his love to mankind, his magnanimity, his public-spiritedness, and, in fine, his consummate virtue, make him justly deserve to be esteemed the glory of his country."^^
The Busy-Body observed little incidents of the common Hfe in Philadelphia which plenty of readers must have recognized though they were seeing them in print for the first time. There was the letter on 25 February from the imagined Patience, a single woman who kept a shop and was pestered by the visits of a friend who came too often and stayed too long. "She has two children that are just big enough to run about and do pretty mischief; these are continually along with Mamma, either in my room or shop, if I have ever so many customers or people with me about business. Sometimes they pull the books off my low shelves down to the ground, and perhaps where one of them has
Portrait of Deborah Read Franklm by Benjanmi Wilson, cij^S. In his Autobiography Fra?ikli?i called his ivife "^ good and faithful helpmate J' Courtesy, American Philosophical Society.
Folloiving pages: frontispiece, title page a?id selected pages of text from an i Soj English editioji of Fratikli?i''s The Way to Wealth. Written as the introduction to the ijj8 edition of Poor Richard Improved, The Way to Wealth became one of Franklin's most frequently reprinted works. Courtesy, Yale University Library.
^O^TISPI^^,^
WAY TO WEALTH;
OR,
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LONDON: PRINTED AND SOLD BY W. AND T. DARTON,
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1 807. Price Sixpence,
THE WAY TO WEALTH.
' "Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labour wears, while the used key-is always bright/' as Poor Richard says.—" But, dost thou love life? then do not squander time, for that is the
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THE WAY TO WEALTH,
11
that *' the sleeping fox catches no poultry, and that there will be sleeping enough in the grave/^ as Poor Richard says.
" If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be," as Poor Richard says, " the greatest prodigality;^^ since, as he elsewhere tells lis, " Lost time is never found again; and what we call tune enough, aivxays
Engraving ]rom An Account of the New-Invented Pennsyl-vanian Fire-Places, 1144. Franklin "wrote a?id published the account to promote sales of his Peji?7syIrania?i fireplace, now kjiown as the Franklin stove. Courtesy, Yale University Library.
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PHILADELPHIA Master : p'j
just been making water. My friend takes up the stuff and cries: 'Eh, thou Httle wicked mischievous rogue! But, however, it has done no great damage; 'tis only wet a little'; and so puts it up upon the shelf again. Sometimes they get to my cask of nails behind the counter and divert themselves, to my great vexation, with mixing my ten-penny and eight-penny and four-penny together. I endeavour to conceal my uneasiness as much as possible, and with a grave look go to sorting them out. She cries: 'Don't thee trouble thyself, neighbour; let them play a little; I'll put all to rights myself before I go.' But things are never so put to rights but that I find a great deal of work to do after they are gone. Thus, Sir, I have all the trouble and pesterment of children without the pleasure of—calling them my own."^*^
The Busy-Body on 27 March prudently ridiculed what seemed to the son of Josiah Franklin a grotesque folly: "There are among us great numbers of honest artificers and labouring people who, fed with a vain hope of growing suddenly rich, neglect their business, almost to the ruining of themselves and families, and voluntarily endure abundance of fatigue in a fruitless search after imaginary hidden treasure. They wander through the woods and bushes by day, to discover the marks and signs; at midnight they repair to the hopeful spot with spades and pickaxes; full of expectation, they labour violently, trembling at the same time in every joint through fear of certain malicious demons who are said to haunt and guard such places. At length a mighty hole is dug, and perhaps several cartloads of earth thrown out; but, alas, no cag or iron pot is found! No seaman's chest crammed with Spanish pistoles or weighty pieces of eight! Then they conclude that, through some mistake in the procedure, some rash word spoke, or some rule of art neglected, the guardian spirit had power to sink it deeper into the earth and convey it out of their reach. . . .
"This odd humour of digging for money, through a belief that much has been hid by pirates formerly frequenting the river, has for several years been mighty prevalent among us; insomuch that you can hardly walk half a mile out of town on any side without observing several pits dug with that design, and perhaps some lately opened. Men otherwise of very good sense have been drawn into this practice through an overweening desire of
^8 : BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
sudden wealth and an easy credulity of what they so earnestly wished might be true; while the rational and almost certain methods of acquiring riches by industry and frugality are neglected or forgotten. There seems to be some peculiar charm in the conceit of finding money; and if the sands of Schuylkill were so much mixed with small grains of gold that a man might in a day's time, with care and application, get together to the value of half a crown, I make no question but we should find several people employed there that can with ease earn five shillings a day at their proper trades. . . .
"Let honest Peter Buckram, who has long without success been a searcher after hidden money, reflect . . . and be reclaimed from this unaccountable folly. Let him consider that every stitch he takes, when he is on his shopboard, is picking up part of a grain of gold, that will in a few days' time amount to a pistole; and let Faber think the same of every nail he drives or every stroke with his plane. Such thoughts may make them industrious, and of consequence in time they may be wealthy. But how absurd it is to neglect a certain profit for such a ridiculous whimsy; to spend whole days at the George, in company with an idle pretender to astrology, contriving schemes to discover what was never hidden, and forget how carelessly business is managed at home in their absence; to leave their wives and a warm bed at midnight (no matter if it rain, hail, snow, or blow a hurricane, provided that be the critical hour), and fatigue themselves with the violent exercise of digging for what they shall never find, and perhaps getting a cold that may cost their lives, or at least disordering themselves so as to be fit for no business beside for some days after. Surely this is nothing less than the most egregious folly and madness.
"I shall conclude with the words of my discreet friend Agric-ola, of Chester County, when he give his son a good plantation. 'My son,' says he, 'I give thee now a valuable parcel of land; I assure thee I have found a considerable quantity of gold by digging there; thee may'st do the same. But thee must carefully observe this: Never to dig more than plough-deep.' "'*^
Keimer could not write as well as Franklin, any more than any other American then could. But what drove Keimer out of Philadelphia was less his new rival than his own incompetence
PHILADELPHIA Master : ^^
and bad management. He got deeper and deeper into debt. His creditors pressed him, anH he loudly called it persecution. Epic-tetus could not save him. He was obliged to sell his newspaper to Franklin, and his printing-house to his former apprentice David Harry, whom Franklin had taught their trade. "I was at first apprehensive of a powerful rival in Harry, as his friends were very able and had a good deal of interest. I therefore proposed a partnership to him which he, fortunately for me, rejected with scorn. He was very proud, dressed like a gentleman, lived expensively, took much diversion and pleasure abroad, ran in debt, and neglected his business; upon which, all business left him, and, finding nothing to do, he followed Keimer to Barbados, taking the printing-house with him."^-
On 2 October 1729 Franklin began to issue the newspaper with the simpler title The remisylvanht Gazette. He dropped the encyclopaedia and Defoe from its columns, limited it more strictly to the actual concerns of Pennsylvanians, wrote much for it himself, in time enormously increased the advertisements, and printed it with skill and some taste. "To publish a good newspaper," he said in his first preface, "is not so easy an undertaking as many people imagine it to be. The author of a gazette (in the opinion of the learned) ought to be qualified with an extensive acquaintance with languages, a great easiness and command of writing and relating things clearly and intelligibly, and in few words; he should be able to speak of war both by land and sea; be well acquainted with geography, with the history of the time, with the several interests of princes and states, the secrets of courts, and the manners and customs of all nations. Men thus accomplished are very rare in this remote part of the world."*^ Franklin hoped he might have all possible assistance from his friends.
But for many issues of the Gazette he was writer as well as printer. He wrote or rewrote the foreign and domestic news. He wrote letters to himself as editor and answered them. He wrote humorous squibs and advertisements. Both his former experience with the Neiv Eiighmd Coiirant and his maturing temper kept him discreet in what he said about the civil authorities. The clergy could not complain of A Witch Trial at Mount Holly in the Gazette for 22 October 1730.^^ Such actions were as ridic-
100 : BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
ulous as this broad report of them. In matters of religion the Gazette was neither scoffing nor partisan. Yet FrankHn was always insistent on the freedom of the press, and in An Apology for Printers on lo June 1731^^ he made his position clear. Men have many opinions, he said, and printers print them as a part of their business. They are "educated in the belief that when men differ in opinion, both sides ought equally to have the advantage of being heard by the public; and that when truth and error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter. Hence they cheerfully serve all contending writers that pay them well, without regarding on which side they are of the question in dispute. ... If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed." And there are more bad and foohsh things left unprinted than are ever printed.
With Keimer out of the way, Franklin had only Andrew Bradford for a rival. Bradford was postmaster and he ordered his carriers not to take the Gazette to its subscribers. Franklin bribed them to carry it secretly. Bradford did all the government printing and made money by it. Franklin and Meredith in the first month of the Gazette voluntarily printed an address from the Assembly to the governor, which had been officially printed by Bradford, and sent it to every member. Their work was so much better than Bradford's that the members "were sensible of the difference; it strengthened the hands of our friends in the House; and they voted us their printer"^^ for 1730. From that time on Franklin was the printer for Pennsylvania. This was less than two years after Franklin and jMeredith had set up their uncertain business.
Meredith had been little help. He was a poor workman and had gone back to drinking. His father, who was to have advanced two hundred pounds, had paid only half of it to the merchant who had imported their equipment from London and who now brought suit for the rest. In this trouble Franklin was heartened by his Junto friends Grace and Coleman, who each separately came to him and offered to let him have the money, but hoped he could get rid of Hugh Meredith, "who, as they said, was often seen drunk in the streets, and playing at low games in alehouses, much to our discredit."^' Franklin could
PHILADELPHIA Master : loi
hardly suggest this to Aderedith. For once Meredith helped. He said he could see he would never be a printer, and he wanted to go back to farming. If Franklin would repay the hundred pounds to the elder Meredith, assume the firm's debts and settle Hugh Meredith's personal debts, and give him thirty pounds and a new saddle on which to ride away to North Carolina where land was cheap, he would turn over the whole business to his partner, Franklin borrowed half of what was needed, and had been offered, from Grace and half from Coleman, and the partnership was quietly dissolved 14 July 1730.
To the public eye of Philadelphia Franklin now became the complete tradesman, "In order to secure my credit and character ... I took care not only to be in reality industrious and frugal but to avoid all appearances to the contrary. I dressed plainly; I was seen at no places of idle diversion. I never went out a-fishing or shooting; a book, indeed, sometimes debauched me from my work, but that was seldom, snug, and gave no scandal; and, to show that I was not above my business, I sometimes brought home the paper I purchased at the stores through the streets on a wheelbarrow."^^
This is the first of the roles that Franklin strategically assumed, as he was to assume others later. For his character was never of one single piece, like, for example, Washington's. Franklin's was rich, flexible, dramatic. Personally ambitious, he was no less truly eager for the general good. i\ble to aim at moral perfection for himself, he was not in the least ascetic and he did not desire to isolate himself from the common life. He could be metaphysical when he cared to. In the very year he got rid of his partner Franklin wrote a speculative essay on prayer, though he did not print it. "The great uncertainty I found in metaphysical reasonings disgusted me, and I quitted that kind of reading and study for others more satisfactory."^'' But he remained a moralist, loving goodness and wisdom. He was not satisfied to think them out. He wanted to act and see them acted out. Desirable ends do not come of themselves. Men must conceive them, believe in them, further them, and execute them. Franklin was perfectly willing to bring touches of drama into his undertakings—even when, as at first, his end was only his reputation as a tradesman in a provincial town.
102 : BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
However wholly Franklin gave himself to his business he did not give up the Junto, which was his business too. During the winter of 1728-29 the members debated the question of paper money, which all the province was talking about. The balance of transatlantic trade was against Pennsylvania, and gold and silver were steadily drawn to England, leaving money scarce and prices and interest high. Six years earlier the currency shortage had been relieved by a small issue of paper money, which was now to be called in. People who had money were opposed to the issue of further paper, for fear of inflation, which had taken place in New England and South Carolina. Debtors, traders, and workmen were in favour of a still larger issue. Franklin—debtor, trader, and workman—took his stand with them and broke off the Busy-Body papers to write A Modest Ejiqiiiry into the Nature a7id Necessity of a Paper Currency ,^^ which, dated 3 April 1729, was probably the first publication of the new firm. Unlike conservative economists, he saw that gold and silver were in themselves commodities, bought and sold like any other. "The riches of a country are to be valued by the quantity of labour its inhabitants are able to purchase, and not by the quantity of silver and gold they possess. . . . Trade in general being nothing else but the exchange of labour for labour, the value of things is . . . most justly measured by labour." Pennsylvania had little gold and silver as security for paper, but it had land. "As bills issued upon money security are money, so bills issued upon land are, in effect, coined land." With this basic principle and this happy phrase—"coined land"—Franklin adroitly argued for the need of a more plentiful medium of exchange to benefit land, labour, and trade. As he had read moralists and metaphysicians, so had he, at twenty-three, read economists: particularly, it seems. Sir William Petty. But he had made his own observations and he wrote out of a local experience which his readers understood. "It was well received by the common people in general; but the rich men disliked it, for it increased and strengthened the clamour for more money, and they happening to have no writers among them that were able to answer it, their opposition slackened, and the point was carried by a majority in the House. My friends there, who conceived I had been of some service.
PHILADELPHIA Master : /05
thought fit to reward rne by employing me in printing the money: a very profitable job and a great help to me. This was another advantage gained by my being able to write."^^ In the summer of 173 i he had planned to go to Boston, he told his sister, but "printing the paper money here has hindered me near two months."""
Frankhn, with or without iMeredith, was never an adventurous publisher of books. In his first year he published Isaac Watts's Psalms, which, he noted, did not sell as fast as Robin Hood's Songs by another printer. Franklin's German hymn book—the first printed in America—was aimed at the Germans in Pennsylvania, for whom in May 1732 he started the first German-American newspaper, the Fhiladelphische Zeitimg edited by Louis Timothee, "language master," and short-lived. The Batchelors-Hall of George A^'ebb in 1731 and the single-sheet Ahnanacs of Thomas Godfrey in 1729, 1730, 1731 (each for the following year) were by Junto members. On the whole Franklin published books chiefly for profit or for friendship, sometimes both at once. James Logan, the most eminent of the Quakers and the best scholar in Pennsylvania, had at first suspected the Junto and had written to Penn that the Leather Apron men were tools of Sir William Keith. Franklin soon made friends with Logan, and pubhshed his translations of Cato^s Moral Distichs (1735) and of Cato Major (1744), which Franklin thought his masterpiece in the printer's art. The Consti-tutiojis of the Free-Masons (1734)— the first Masonic book printed in America—was for the members of the order, of which he became grand master in that same year. Every Maji His Oivn Doctor (1734) and The GeJitlevian's Farrier (1735) were for profit and were profitable. Cadwallader Colden's An Explication of the First Causes of Motion in Matter (1745, with the actual imprint of Franklin's partner in New York) was partly for friendship, as was Aquila Rose's Poems on Several Occasions (1740), edited by Joseph Rose, who was Franklin's apprentice. Jonathan Edwards's Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (1742), Increase Mather's Soul-Saving Gospel Truths (1743), and The New England Psalter (1744) were acts of piety for what Franklin called his native country.
10^ : BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Defoe's Faviily Instructor (1740) and Richardson's Pamela (1744)—this the first novel pubhshed in America—were, though profitable too, tributes from Frankhn to another projector and another printer. Nine-tenths of what Franklin printed, outside his official printing of legislative records, laws, treaties, his newspaper, and his almanacs, was theological and ephemeral. The most memorable books bearing his imprint (or Franklin and Hall's) now seem to be the folio Indian treaties, rich documents of a vanished age.
But he imported many books to sell in his shop. "If Mr. War-burton," Franklin wrote in 1744 to his friend William Strahan in London, "publishes a new edition of Pope, please send it me as soon as it is out, 6 sets. That poet has many admirers here, and the reflection he somewhere casts on the plantations [colonies] as if they had a relish for such writers as Ward only, is injurious. Your authors know but little of the fame they have on this side of the ocean. We are a kind of posterity in respect to them. We read their works with perfect impartiality, being at too great a distance to be biased by the factions, parties, and prejudices that prevail among you. We know nothing of their personal failings; the blemishes in their character never reach us, and therefore the bright and amiable part strikes us with its full force. They have never offended us or any of our friends, and we have no competitions with them; therefore we praise and admire them without restraint. Whatever Thomson writes send me a dozen copies of. I had read no poetry for several years, and almost lost the relish of it, till I met with his Seasons. That charming poet has brought more tears of pleasure into my eyes than all I ever read before. I wish it were in my power to return him any part of the joy he has given me."^^ The same year Franklin issued a catalogue of "near 600 volumes" which he would sell "for ready money only" at the post office. They were books of divinity, history, law, mathematics, philosophy, physic, and poetry, in various languages, in folio, quarto, and octavo, and the titles represent the whole literature of the age.
Though Franklin in his earliest years as a tradesman might read in a way that was "snug, and gave no scandal," he was actually an avid, powerful reader of many books. There were always books in his inner life, books in his business, books in
PHILADELPHIA Master : /05
his friendships. At the Junto in 1730 he made a suggestion: "that, since our books were often referred to in our disquisitions upon the queries, it might be convenient to us to have them all together where we met, that upon occasion they might be consulted; and by thus clubbing our books to a common library, we should, while we liked to keep them together, have each of us the advantage of using the books of all the other members, which would be nearly as beneficial as if each owned the whole. It was liked and agreed to, and we filled one end of the room with such books as we could best spare. The number was not so great as we expected; and though they had been of great use, yet some inconveniences occurring for want of due care of them, the collection, after about a year, was separated and each took his books home again. "^^
Franklin had a better plan. Why should the Junto not organize a subscription library for its own members and any other citizens of Philadelphia who might care to join with them? The Junto agreed. Franklin worked out the details of the scheme, Charles Brockden the scrivener put them in form, and the Instrument of Association was signed i July 1731. There were fifty subscribers who each paid in forty shillings and promised to pay ten shillings a year. Franklin's name stood first on the board of directors, who held their initial meeting at Nicholas Scull's house 8 November 173 i. At the meeting of 29 March 1732 Thomas Godfrey reported that James Logan would be glad to give advice in the selection of their books. Two days later they had the list and forty-five pounds, which they sent off to Peter Collinson, a Quaker mercer in London who had friends in Philadelphia and was interested in American affairs.
The books came in October. On this or the second list were Pufendorf on jurisprudence, Hayes on fluxions, Keill on astronomy, Sidney on government, L'Hospital on conic sections, Gravesande on natural philosophy; Palladio, Evelyn, Addison, Xenophon's Memorabilia, Defoe's Compleat English Trades7Jian, Gulliver's Travels, the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Dry den's Virgil, Bayle's Critical Dictionary; and Collinson's gifts: Newton's Principia and a dictionary of gardening. Franklin gave Montaigne's Essays and a black-letter reprint of the Magna Charta. They were installed in the Junto's
106 : BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
quarters in Jones's Alley (or Pewter Platter Alley, now Church Street), where Louis Timothee was the Junto's fellow-tenant. He was chosen to be librarian, in attendance from two to three every Wednesday, and from ten to four on Saturdays. Any "civil gentlemen" might read the books, but only subscribers could take them out—and James Logan. Franklin on 11 December offered to print catalogues and present them to the members. The next year he was librarian for three months. The library had its headquarters at Grace's house, then William Parsons's, till April 1740 when it was moved to a room in the State House on a petition drawn up by Franklin, now clerk of the Assembly. He was its agent in London 1760-65. Absorbing the rival libraries in Philadelphia in 1769, the Library Company became a permanent memorial to the club of artisans and tradesmen who founded it, and to their leader who was not content to use and enjoy his books alone.
On II May 1732 the Gazette appeared for the first time as published by B. Franklin, not by Franklin and Meredith. The firm had so far not seemed secure enough to risk making it known that the venture was wholly in the hands of one young man without capital. Now the young man, now twenty-six, had paid or saw his way clear to paying all his debts: to Vernon (whose thirty-five pounds had haunted FrankHn since 1724), to the elder Meredith, to Grace and Coleman. Throughout his life Franklin acutely dreaded debt, as a form of slavery. Yet he had had a shorter experience of it than most men. Only four years after he set up in business he was his own master.
VI
For Franklin 1732 was a busy and crucial year. His Gazette was profitable, and he had a hand in other Gazettes in South Carohna and Rhode Island. He was printer to Pennsylvania and printer on his own account. Besides the Junto there was the new library. Through the library and the Masons he was widening his acquaintance among Philadelphians more prominent than his Leather Apron friends. At home he had a shop in part of his
house, where his wife helped him sell books and stationery and his mother-in-law sold the'salves and ointments which she made. On 20 October his son Francis Folger was born. But all these were not enough, nor the letters which Franklin wrote for the Gazette that summer as from Anthony Afterwit, Celia Single, Alice Addertongue.^^ He wanted another outlet and another income, and, perhaps without realizing it, another character to play. He found them in the almanac which he published for the first time in December, in the character of Poor Richard.
Books might sell, almanacs were sure to. Many households in the colonies had no printed matter besides an almanac, but almost every one of them had that. An almanac had been the first thing printed in Pennsylvania, by William Bradford for Daniel Leeds. Almanacs, pocket-size and paper-bound, calculated the tides and the changes of the moon, and claimed to forecast the weather. Almanacs were calendars. They furnished astrology for those who believed in it. There were sometimes recipes in almanacs, and jokes and poems and maxims and odd facts of many sorts. The skimpy margins of the calendar pages were a diary. Children might learn to read from almanacs. The printer of a successful almanac could make money, and the compiler of it a reputation. Andrew Bradford had long issued the annual American Alvianac of Titan Leeds. Another son of Daniel Leeds, Felix Leeds, was an almanac-maker too. Keimer had undertaken almanacs. And Franklin himself had published not only Thomas Godfrey's almanac for three years but also John Jer-man's for 17 31 and 1732.
Almanacs usually appeared in October or November for the following year. Franklin was late with his Foor Richard, /y^^. The Gazette announced it as just published 19 December 1732 at five-pence a copy. Within three weeks there had had to be three impressions, and Richard Saunders quickly passed all his rival philomaths. The imaginary astrologer probably took his full name from an actual English Richard Saunders, compiler of the Apollo Anglica7nis, though Denham's account book lists a Philadelphia Richard Saunders as one of the firm's customers. The suggestion of the more common name Poor Richard may have come from the Foor Robin almanac which James Franklin
108 : BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
was issuing at Newport. The prophecy in the first Poor Richard that Titan Leeds would die 17 October 17 3 3 is a dehberate echo of Swift's hoax on John Partridge twenty-five years before— Swift's hoax brought to Pennsylvania and persisted in by Franklin for years. But the essence of Poor Richard, his humorous, homely character, was Franklin's own creation. Here are Richard's opening words: "I might in this place attempt to gain thy favour by declaring that I write almanacs with no other view than that of the public good; but in that I should not be sincere, and men are now-a-days too wise to be deceived by pretences how specious soever. The plain truth of the matter is, I am excessive poor, and my wife, good woman, is, I tell her, excessive proud; she cannot bear, she says, to sit spinning in her shift of tow while I do nothing but gaze at the stars; and has threatened more than once to burn all my books and rattling-traps (as she calls my instruments) if I do not make some profitable use of them for the good of my family. The printer has offered me some considerable share of the profits, and I have thus begun to comply with my dame's desire."^^
The next year Poor Richard was grateful for the profits he had made. "My wife has been enabled to get a pot of her own, and is no longer obliged to borrow one from a neighbour; nor have we ever since been without something of our own to put in it. She has also got a pair of shoes, two new shifts, and a new warm petticoat; and, for my part, I have bought a second-hand coat, so good that I am now not ashamed to go to town or be seen there. These things have rendered her temper so much more pacific than it used to be that I may say I have slept more, and more quietly, within this last year than in the three foregoing years put together."^^ His verses on feminine idleness in his almanac for 1733 were answered by her verses on masculine worthlessness in the almanac for 1734. The little tiff was kept up between them. In Poor Richard for 1738 the preface appeared as by Bridget Saunders, who had scratched out what Richard had written. "Cannot I have a little fault or two but all the country must see it in print? "^^ She had gone through the whole almanac in his absence and had put in better weather "for the goodwomen to dry their clothes in." Nor did she hke some
PHILADELPHIA Master : lop
of his verses. He himself, he admitted in 1747, did not think too highly of them. "I know as well as thee that I am no poet born; and it is a trade I never learnt, nor indeed could learn.""^ He did not claim infaUibihty in his weather forecasts, "We modestly desire only the favourable allowance of a day or two before and a day or two after the precise day against which the weather is set."*'*' Poor Richard was resentful toward people who said there was no such man as he. "This is not civil treatment, to endeavour to deprive me of my very being and reduce me to a nonentity in the opinion of the public. But so long as I know myself to walk about, eat, drink, and sleep, I am satisfied that there is really such a man as I am."*'^ People who began to say, after half a dozen years, that he must have grown rich were equally wrong. His printer "runs away with the greatest part of the profit."*'^ He suffered from the jealousy of rival philomaths, and was for ever pestered by persons who wanted private astrological advice from him. "The perpetual teasing of both neighbours and strangers to calculate nativities, give judgments on schemes, erect figures, discover thieves, detect horse-stealers, describe the route of runaways and strayed cattle; the crowd of visitors with a thousand trifling questions: Will my ship return safe? Will my mare win the race? Will her next colt be a pacer? When will my wife die? Who shall be my husband, and how long first? When is the best time to cut hair, trim cocks, or sow salad? These and the like impertinences I have now neither taste nor leisure for. I have had enough of 'em."*'^ He preferred to live quietly in the country, telling no one where.
The almanac for 1748 and afterwards was called Poor Richard bnproved, and was larger than before. It had become an institution. It sold ten thousand copies a year. Franklin in 1757, writing his preface for 1758, skimmed his almanacs for twenty-five years to make up a single harangue which Poor Richard said he had heard an old man deliver at an auction. This is The Way to Wealth, which stands with the Autobiography as the best and farthest known of all Franklin's writings, and which has been taken for the essence of his wisdom.
It is not that, and it gives only one aspect of the younger Franklin. Father Abraham at the auction is an old man talking
no : BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
about economy. He has chosen from Poor Richard the sayings which specially prove his point, and left out the rest. Having the last word, he has had almost the only word. The Way to Wealth has been endlessly reprinted, while the original almanacs were most of them worn out and thrown away, and the few that have survived are guarded hke the bullion they are worth. Everybody knows the Poor Richard that has been saved in Father Abraham's speech. Nobody knows Poor Richard as he was in the racy years which made him known to his contemporaries. Franklin, remembering, said he had filled "all the little spaces" with "proverbial sentences, chiefly such as inculcated industry and frugality, as the means of procuring wealth and thereby securing virtue."*^* Poor Richard for 1739 had put the matter differently. "Be not thou disturbed, O grave and sober reader, if among the many serious sentences in my book thou findest me trifling now and then, and talking idly. In all the dishes I have hitherto cooked for thee, there is solid meat enough for thy money. There are scraps from the table of wisdom that will, if well digested, yield strong nourishment to thy mind. But squeamish stomachs cannot eat without pickles; which, 'tis true, are good for nothing else, but they provoke an appetite."^^
The earlier Poor Richard was by no means always on the side of calculating prudence. "Never spare the parson's wine nor the baker's pudding" (1733). "Innocence is its own defence" (1733). "As charms are nonsense, nonsense is a charm" (1734). "What one relishes, nourishes" (1734). "He does not possess wealth; it possesses him" (1734). "Avarice and happiness never saw each other. How then should they become acquainted?" (1734). "Poverty wants some things, luxury many things, avarice all things" (1735). "There's more old drunkards than old doctors" (1736). "Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it" (1736). "He that can take rest is greater than he that can take cities" (1737). "Hast thou virtue? Acquire also the graces and beauties of virtue" (1738).
Poor Richard could say: "Nothing but money is sweeter than honey" (1735), but he spoke of many things besides. "Kings and bears often worry their keepers" (1733). "Hunger never saw bad bread" (1733). "Eat to live, and not live to eat" (1733). "Men and melons are hard to know" (1733). "There is no little
PHILADELPHIA Master : / / /
enemy" (1733). "He's a fool that makes his doctor his heir" (1733). "The heart of the fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of the wise man is in his heart" (1733). "He that drinks fast pays slow" (1733). "Do good to thy friend to keep him, to thy enemy to gain him" (1734). "Where there's marriage without love there will be love without marriage" (1734). "He that is rich need not live sparingly, and he that can live sparingly need not be rich" (1734). "Approve not of him who commends all you say" (1735). "The family of fools is ancient" (1735). "Look before or you'll find yourself behind" (1735). "A lie stands on one leg, truth on two" (1735). "Sloth and silence are a fool's virtues" (1735). "Deny self for self's sake" (1735). "Opportunity is the great bawd" (1735). "An old young man will be a young old man" (1735). "He is no clown that drives the plough, but he that doth clownish things" (1736), "Now I have a sheep and a cow, everybody bids me good morrow" (1736). "The rotten apple spoils his companions" (1736). "Fish and visitors smell in three days" (1736). "He that has neither fools nor beggars among his kindred is the son of thunder-gust" (1736). "Admiration [wonder] is the daughter of ignorance" (1736). "Bargaining has neither friends nor relations" (1736). "He that can have patience can have what he will" (1736). "None preaches better than the ant, and she says nothing" (1736). "The absent are never without fault, nor the present without excuse" (1736). "Poverty, poetry, and new titles of honour make men ridiculous" (1736). "A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats" (1737). "Love and lordship hate companions" (1737). "There are no ugly loves nor handsome prisons" (1737). "The worst wheel of the cart makes the most noise" (1737). "Write with the learned, pronounce with the vulgar" (1738). "If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading or do things worth the writing" (1738). "Defer not thy well doing; be not like St. George, who is always a-horseback and never rides on" (1738). "As we must account for every idle word, so we must for every idle silence" (1738), "Fly pleasures and they'll follow you" (1738). "Time is an herb that cures all diseases" (1738). "He that would have a short Lent, let him borrow money to be repaid at Easter"