R&
EDWARD EGGLESTON
make him a printer. So Benjamin was apprenticed to his older brother, James Franklin , who already had a print ing office . Benjamin liked this trade , and learned very fast . As he was often sent to bookstores , he got a chance to borrow books . He sometimes sat up all night to read one of these , taking great care to keep the books clean and to return them soon .
Benjamin took a fancy to write poetry about this time . His brother printed this " wretched stuff, " as Franklin after wards called it , and sent the boy around the town to ped dle it . Ben was very proud of his poetry until his father made fun of it , and told him that " verse - makers were generally beggars .
Franklin had a notion as a boy that it was wrong to eat meat , so he told his brother that if he would give him half of what his board cost , he would board himself. After this , Benjamin made his dinner on biscuit or a tart from the baker's . In this way he saved some of his board money to buy books, and used the time while the other printers were at dinner to study.
James Franklin , Benjamin's brother, printed a little newspaper. Franklin was printer's boy and paper carrier , for after he had worked at printing the papers , he car ried them around to the houses of the subscribers . But he also wanted to write for the paper. He did not dare propose so bold a thing to his brother, so he wrote some articles and put them under the printing - office door at night. They were printed , and even Benjamin's brother did not suspect that they were written by the boy.
The two brothers did not get on well together. The younger brother was rather saucy, and the older brother, who was high-tempered , sometimes gave him a whipping.
James Franklin once printed something in his news paper which offended the government of the colony . He was arrested and put into prison for a month ; for the press was not free in that day . Benjamin published the paper while his brother was in prison , and put in the sharpest things he dared to say about the government. After James got out of prison he was forbidden to print a newspaper any longer. So he made up his mind to print it in the name of his brother Benjamin . In order to do this he was obliged to release Benjamin Franklin from his apprenticeship , though it was agreed that Ben was to re main at work for his brother, as though still an apprentice , till he was twenty- one years old . But Benjamin soon got into another quarrel with his brother James , and , now that he was no longer bound , he left him . This was not fair on his part , and he was afterwards sorry for it .
Wharf [hworf] , a place for boats to land ; in the text, a bank of stones reaching out into the water like a wharf . Mill pond , the water gathered by a milldam . Salt marsh , grass land over which the sea water flows when the tide is high . Apprenticed [ ap-pren '- tist ] , bound for a number of years to learn a trade .
Tell-How Franklin and his friends built a wharf. About Franklin's father, and how Franklin came to learn the . printing business . How Franklin managed to get books , and time to read them . Of Franklin's first writings. Of Franklin's brother, and his imprisonment . Of Franklin's quarrels with his brother.
FRANKLIN , THE PRINTER. XVI. Franklin , the Printer .
WHEN Ben Franklin left his brother he tried in vain to get a place in one of the other printing offices in Boston . But James Franklin had sent word to the other printers not to take Benjamin into their employ. There was no other town nearer than New York large enough to sup port a printing office . Franklin , who was now but seven teen years old , sold some of his books , and secretly got aboard a sloop ready to sail to New York. In New York he could find no work , but was recommended to try in Philadelphia .
The modes of travel in that time were very rough . The easiest way of getting from Boston to New York was by sailing vessels . To get to Philadelphia , Franklin had first to take a sailboat to Amboy, in New Jersey. On the way a squall of wind tore the sails and drove the boat to anchor near the Long Island shore , where our runaway boy lay all night in the little hold of the boat , with the waves beating over the deck and the water leaking down on him . When at last he landed at Amboy, he had been thirty hours without anything to eat or any water to drink. Having but little money in his pocket , he had to walk from Amboy to Burlington ; and when , soaked with rain , he stopped at an inn , he cut such a figure that the people came near arresting him for a runaway bond servant , of whom there were many at that time . He thought he might better have stayed at home.