been sent for from London arrived; and, settling with Keimer, he and his partner took a house, and commenced business. 'We had scarce opened our letters,' says he, ‘and put our press in order, before George House, an acquaintance of mine, brought a countryman to us, whom he had met in the street, inquiring for a printer. All our cash was now expended in the variety of particulars we had been obliged to procure, and this countryman's five shillings, being our firstfruits, and coming so seasonably, gave me more pleasure than any crown I have since earned; and, from the gratitude I felt towards House, has made me often more ready than perhaps I otherwise should have been, to assist young beginners.' He had, in the autumn of the preceding year, suggested to a number of his acquaintances a scheme for forming themselves into a club for mutual improvement; and they had accordingly been in the habit of meeting every Friday evening under the name of the Junto. All the members of this association exerted themselves in procuring business for him; and one of them, named Breinthal, obtained from the Quakers the printing of forty sheets of a history of that sect of religionists, then preparing at the expense of the body. 'Upon these,' says Franklin, 'we worked exceeding hard, for the price was low. It was a folio. I composed a sheet a day, and Meredith worked it off at press. It was often eleven at night, and sometimes later, before I had 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 was I 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 (the half of the day's work)

reduced to pie, I immediately distributed 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 consequence was that business, and even offers of credit, came to them from all hands.

They soon found themselves in a condition to think of establishing a newspaper; but Franklin having inadvertently mentioned this scheme to a person who came to him wanting employment, that individual carried the secret to their old master, Keimer, with whom he, as well as themselves, had formerly worked; and he immediately determined to anticipate them by issuing proposals for a paper of his own. The manner in which Franklin met and defeated this treachery is exceedingly characteristic. There was another paper published in the place, which had been in existence for some years; but it was altogether a wretched affair, and owed what success it had merely to the absence of all competition. For this print, however, Franklin, not being able to commence his own paper immediately, in conjunction with a friend, set about writing a series of amusing communications under the title of the Busy Body, which the publisher printed, of course, very gladly. By this means,' says he, 'the attention of the public was fixed on that paper; and Keimer's proposals, which we burlesqued and ridiculed, were disregarded. He began his paper, however; and before carrying it on threequarters of a year, with at most only ninety subscribers, he offered it me for a trifle; and I, having been ready some time to go on with it, took it in hand directly, and it proved in a few years extremely profitable to me.' The paper, indeed, had no sooner got into Franklin's hands than its success equalled his most sanguine expectations. Some observations

which he wrote and printed in it on a colonial subject, then much talked of, excited so much attention among the leading people of the place, that it obtained the proprietors many friends in the House of Assembly, and they were, on the first opportunity, appointed printers to the House. Fortunately, too, certain events occurred about this time which ended in the dissolution of Franklin's connection with Meredith, who was an idle, drunken fellow, and had all along been a mere incumbrance upon the concern. His father failing to advance the capital which had been agreed upon, when payment was demanded at the usual time by their paper merchant and other creditors, he proposed to Franklin to relinquish the partnership and leave the whole in his hands, if the latter would take upon him the debts of the company, return to his father what he had advanced on their commencing business, pay his little personal debts, and give him thirty pounds and a new saddle. By the kindness of two friends, who, unknown to each other, came forward unasked to tender their assistance, Franklin was enabled to accept of this proposal; and thus, about the year 1729, when he was yet only in the twenty-fourth year of his age, he found himself, after all his disappointments and vicissitudes, with nothing, indeed, to depend upon but his own skill and industry for gaining a livelihood, and from extricating himself from debt, but yet in one sense fairly established in life, and with at least a prospect of well-doing before him.

Having followed his course thus far with so minute an observance of the several steps by which he arrived at the point to which we have now brought him, we shall not attempt to pursue the remainder of his career with the same His subsequent efforts in the pursuit of particularity.

fortune and independence were, as is well known, eminently successful; and we find in his whole history, even to its close, a display of the same spirit of intelligence and love of knowledge, and the same active, self-denying, and intrepid virtues, which so greatly distinguished its commencement. The publication of a pamphlet, soon after Meredith had left him, in recommendation of a paper currency, a subject then much debated in the province, obtained him such popularity that he was employed by the Government in printing the notes after they had resolved upon issuing them. Other profitable business of the same kind succeeded. He then opened a stationer's shop, began gradually to pay off his debts, and soon after married. By this time his old rival, Keimer, had gone to ruin; and he was (with the exception of an old man, who was rich, and did not care about business) the only printer in the place. We now find him taking a leading part as a citizen. He established a circulating library, the first ever known in America, which, although it commenced with only fifty subscribers, became in course of time a large and valuable collection, the proprietors of which were eventually incorporated by royal charter. While yet in its infancy, however, it afforded its founder facilities of improvement of which he did not fail to avail himself, setting apart, as he tells us, an hour or two every day for study, which was the only amusement he allowed himself. In 1732, he first published his celebrated Almanac, under the name of Richard Saunders, but which was commonly known by the name of Poor Richard's Almanack. He continued this publication annually for twenty-five years. The proverbs and pithy sentences scattered up and down in the different numbers of it, were afterwards thrown together into a

connected discourse under the title of The Way to Wealth, a production which has become so extensively popular that many of our readers are probably familiar with it.

We shall quote, in his own words, the account he gives us of the manner in which he pursued one branch of his studies:

:

'I had begun,' says he, 'in 1733 to study languages. I soon made myself so much a master of the French, as to be able to read the books in that language with ease. I then undertook the Italian. An acquaintance, who was also learning it, used often to tempt me to play chess with him. Finding this took up too much of the time I had to spare for study, I at length refused to play any more, unless on this condition, that the victor in every game should have a right to impose a task, either of parts of the grammar to be got by heart, or in translations, etc., which tasks the vanquished was to perform upon honour before our next meeting. As we played pretty equally, we thus beat one another into that language. I afterwards, with a little painstaking, acquired as much of the Spanish as to read their books also. I have already mentioned that I had had only one year's instruction in a Latin school, and that when very young, after which I neglected that language entirely. But when I had attained an acquaintance with the French, Italian, and Spanish, I was surprised to find, on looking over a Latin Testament, that I understood more of that language than I had imagined, which encouraged me to apply myself again to the study of it; and I met with the more success, as those preceding languages had greatly smoothed my way.'

In 1736 he was chosen clerk of the General Assembly, and being soon after appointed deputy-postmaster for the