Chapter 24

The religion in Benjamin's pamphlet, and that in Lyons' book, was well suited to a "pale-ale house." It was so _pale_ as scarcely to be discernible in either book or pamphlet--almost entirely faded out. That was why Benjamin's pamphlet pleased Lyons so much--the religion in it was not too much for a "pale-ale house."

Doctor Lyons introduced him, also, to one Doctor Pemberton, "at Batson's Coffee-house," a kindred spirit, whose coffee was stronger than his religion--a quick-witted, lively sort of a man. He was very familiar with Benjamin.

"Glad to know that your mind is interested in subjects of so grave importance," he said. "In a youth of your age it is evidence of a strong mind and expanding intellect."

"Most of my friends do not regard my views with the favor you express; they see evidence, rather, of mental weakness and distortion," said Benjamin in reply.

"It is because they do not investigate for themselves. They are content to receive opinions secondhand, labelled and fixed. How would you like to number Sir Isaac Newton among your friends?" Doctor Pemberton spoke as a man of authority.

"I should feel myself highly honored," answered Benjamin. "Do you know him?"

"I have the honor of his acquaintance; and I will give you an introduction at some future time."

"I shall accept your favor with thanks"; and Benjamin waited and waited for the opportunity, but it never came, probably because Newton could never be found in "an ale-house."

This was the outcome of Benjamin's literary venture; and the pleasantest part of the whole was that he lived to see the folly of his effort, especially its non-religious character. He became satisfied that Mr. Watts was right when he declared the principles of his Dissertation "abominable."

At another time, while Benjamin worked at Watts', Sir Hans Sloane called upon him,--another notable London character of that day. Benjamin was taken aback when he met him,--he could scarcely divine what this titled Englishman could want of him.

"I have heard of you, Mr. Franklin, as recently from America, and I have called to make your acquaintance," he said.

"Glad to meet you, Sir Hans," replied Benjamin, fully equal to the occasion. "I am at your service."

"You are the author of a pamphlet called," and he gave the title, "are you?"

"I am."

"I have not read it; but I have heard it discussed, and I concluded that a youth of your age must possess a strong mind to undertake such a treatise. And I understand that you brought many curiosities with you to this country." Now, Sir Hans was getting to the subject that was near to his heart; for he was a curiosity-hunter.

"A few only--very few," replied Benjamin.

"You have a purse, I understand, made of the _asbestos_, which purifies by fire?"

"Yes, sir, I have."

"I should be delighted to have you call upon me in Bloomsbury Square, and bring the purse; and I will show you _my_ great collection of curiosities. I think you can spend a pleasant and profitable evening in that way."

"I will do it with the greatest pleasure, and be obliged for the opportunity," Benjamin answered.

And he did. The first opportunity he improved to take the asbestos purse to Bloomsbury Square, where he had a splendid time examining the best collection of curiosities he had ever dreamed of, and where he discussed various topics of interest with the entertaining Sir Hans.

"Now," said the host, as Benjamin was about to leave, "I should be glad to add the asbestos purse to my collection, and I will pay you well for it," naming the amount.

"I will accommodate you and leave it." Benjamin was happy to add to Sir Hans' collection, in the circumstances.

Benjamin felt the need of more physical exercise, so that when he entered the printing house, he "took to working at press." He drank water only; all other employees, about fifty of them, drank strong beer. He was really a curiosity to them.

"Beer-guzzling is a detestable habit," he said to a fellow-workman, "and it is a very expensive one, too, for a poor fellow like you."

"I could not do a decent day's work without beer. I drink it for strength."

"So much the worse for you; beer strength is the worst sort of weakness," continued Benjamin. "Just stop a moment and think what a beer-barrel you make of yourself; a pint before breakfast, a pint at breakfast, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner, a pint in the afternoon, a pint at six o'clock, and a pint when you have done work--almost a gallon each day! Why, I could not hold half as much as that; I should run over."

"Then you don't believe a man can do more work for drinking strong beer?"

"Of course I don't. I can do more work than any man in the establishment, and I can lift more than any other man here; and I drink nothing but water. If beer imparts the strength you imagine, any one of you ought to do more work and lift more than I can; isn't that so?"

The workmen had good reason to believe this; for Benjamin had kept his eyes and ears open from the time he entered the printing house, and he had learned just what the men thought about beer, why they drank it, how much work they did, and how much they could lift. Without saying a word about it, he took special pains to turn off a large amount of work, and to lift more than his fellow-workmen. For example, he would carry two forms of type, one in each hand, up and down stairs, while the other workmen carried but one with both hands. Therefore, Watts (the name of the workman) knew that every thing Benjamin claimed about strength was true.

"Are all Americans like you?" inquired the workman.

"No; too many of them are like you, I am sorry to say; they drink beer and other intoxicants, that disqualify them for business. If more of them would drink water, as I do, they would be far better off physically and pecuniarily."

"Some of our best doctors claim that there is much nutriment in beer," he suggested.

"And every one of them knows that there is more nutriment in a pennyworth of bread than there is in a whole gallon of beer. Therefore, if you eat the bread and drink the water, you get more strength."

The printer acknowledged that there was something in that.

"You see," continued Benjamin, "that all the nutriment there is in the barley is destroyed to convert it into beer. Your beer is very dirty water made bitter with malt, out of which nearly every particle of nutriment has been squeezed. There is as much nourishment in dishwater as there is in that stuff."

"Here, Jake, where are you?" called out another workman. "Bring on the beer."

Jake was the ale-boy, whose business it was to supply the men with beer from the ale-house.

"Another nuisance required by your beer business," exclaimed Benjamin. "Better by far pay a boy double price to bring water from the well, instead of bringing that stuff to absorb your money and sodden your brain."

"A _Water-American_, indeed!" said Mr. Watts, who heard much of the conversation. "But will you not allow some comfort to hard-working men?"

"Certainly; that is what I am after. There is more comfort in one glass of pure water than there is in a whole barrel of beer. Here is Watts, paying out four or five shillings every week for beer, when water would cost him nothing, and he would have that amount to spend for genuine comforts. Besides, beer unfits him to get real comfort out of any thing, even out of his home."

"You are about right on that," replied Watts; "beer does make a class of men most miserable. But must I discard it because some men use it to their injury?"

"Of course you must," Benjamin answered quickly and triumphantly. "There is where duty and right come in. The strong must bear the infirmities of the weak, or they won't amount to much in the world."

"Many of them won't amount to much any way, beer or no beer," responded Watts.

"Any of them will amount to more with water than they will with beer," retorted Benjamin, who felt competent to support his side of the question. He went on:

"Look here: I am supplied with a large porringer of hot-water gruel, sprinkled with pepper, crumbled with bread, and a bit of butter in it, for just the price of a pint of beer, three half-pence. Now, honestly, is not this much better for me, or for yourself, than the same amount of filthy beer?"

"Possibly; it is a new view of the case to me," was all that Mr. Watts could say, evidently conceding that Benjamin was about right.

Benjamin exchanged the press-room for the composing-room, after a few weeks.

"A treat now, Ben; that is the condition of admission here," said the men.

"I guess not; I fulfilled that condition in the press-room," answered Benjamin. "Once will do in this establishment."

"But you _will_," retorted a fellow-worker, enforced by a dozen voices. "The rule is irrevocable."

"We will see about that," replied Benjamin, with coolness, but determination.

"Yes, we _will_ see," chimed in a resolute voice.

"And after all your seeing and blustering I shall not do it," added Benjamin, in a tone that indicated he meant what he said.

"Ben is right," interrupted Mr. Watts, who had listened to the colloquy; "he has met that condition once in the press-room, and he will not be required to repeat it. I forbid his doing it."

"It is a very foolish custom any way," said Benjamin, "and the sooner it is abandoned in England or anywhere else the better."

After all he did not carry his point. His own words about the affair were as follows:

"I stood out two or three weeks, was accordingly considered as an excommunicate, and had so many little pieces of private malice practised on me, by mixing my sorts, transposing and breaking my matter, etc., etc., if ever I stepped out of the room,--and all ascribed to the _chapel ghost_, which they said ever haunted those not regularly admitted,--that, notwithstanding the master's protection, I found myself obliged to comply and pay the money; convinced of the folly of being on ill terms with those one is to live with continually."

Benjamin kept up the fight against beer-drinking until he fairly conquered. One after another yielded to his example and arguments, and abandoned the old habit of swilling down beer, until a thorough reformation was wrought in the printing office. The strength, health, tact, and enterprise of the "_water-drinker_" convinced them that he was right. The title, "_Our Water-drinker_" bandied about the printing house, came to be really an appellation of esteem.

The printing press, on which Benjamin worked at Watts' printing house, is now in the Patent Office at Washington, where many visitors go to see it. Forty years after he worked on it, Franklin was in London, where his fame was greater than that of any other man, and he called at the old printing house, and going up to the familiar press, he said to the employees:

"It is just forty years since I worked at this press, as you are working now."

The announcement rather startled them. That a public man of so much fame should ever have even served in a printing office as they were serving, was almost too much for them to believe.

The publisher of this volume has in his possession _fac-simile_ letters from different gentlemen in England, fully verifying the press the engraving of which appears above.

XXVIII.

AT HOME AGAIN.

We have seen that James Ralph and Benjamin parted company. Ralph had more brains than heart. His intellectual powers were greater than his principles. The reader may ask what became of him. After continuing poor and unsuccessful, engaging in several literary ventures that did little more than aggravate his poverty, and changing from one kind of work to another, good fortune seemed to become his portion. Mr. Parton says:

"As a political writer, pamphleteer, and compiler of booksellers' history, he flourished long. Four ministers thought his pen worth purchasing: Sir Robert Walpole, Mr. Pelham, Lord Bute, and the Duke of Bedford. The nobleman last named evidently held him in high esteem, and furnished the money for one of Ralph's political periodicals. Lord Bute, it is said, settled upon him an annuity of six hundred pounds. Fox praises the fairness, and Hallam the diligence, displayed in his two huge folios of the 'History of William III.' His works may be examined by the curious in the library of Harvard University and in the Philadelphia city library. In estimating the career of this erring man, we should not forget that many of the noblemen and statesmen with whom he associated, and for whose advancement he toiled, had less principle than he, and had not his excuse."[3]

"Swimming is one of the fine arts, I think," said Benjamin to Wygate, a printer with whom he was on the most intimate terms. "I feel about as much at home in the water as I do on the land."

"Well, I should go to the bottom pretty quick if I should venture where the water is over my head, for I can't swim any more than this printing-press can," answered Wygate.

"Why don't you learn? It might be of great use to you sometime."

"I should like to know how, but I never tried to learn."

"And that is a good reason for not knowing how to swim. You can't expect to know any thing without learning. I can teach you without any trouble."

"I accept your offer, and will try my best to learn; and Hall will try with me, I think. You can teach two as well as one, can't you?"

"Yes, a dozen, so far as that goes; the more the merrier."

"When will you go?"

"Just when you please. You and Hall fix the time, and I will be on hand."

The result was that Benjamin was in the water with his two pupils within a few days, and he taught both of them to swim well in two lessons. At the same time, he gave them an exhibition of what an expert swimmer can do in the water, performing different feats on and under the water, that filled his two companions with surprise.

"You are a water-American in more senses than one," remarked Wygate, in admiration of Benjamin's pranks in the water. "You could live in the water about as well as on the land."

"That is not strange," responded Hall; "he believes in water, inside and outside; he only practises what he preaches, and that is what he ought to do."

"Some people can't practise what they preach if they try ever so hard, in business or in morals," rejoined Wygate.

Wygate was the son of a wealthy man, who educated him quite thoroughly. He could read Latin and French about as well as he could English, and he could write very entertaining articles. He was fond of reading, too, and loved to discuss important questions. Such a young man was not often found in a printing office, and he just suited Benjamin in his literary tastes, so that they became boon companions. Their mutual attachment was strengthened by this experience in the art of swimming.

Not long after Wygate learned to swim, and while the feats that Benjamin performed in the water were still a subject of remark, some gentlemen proposed an excursion by water to Chelsea, several miles from London.

"Wouldn't you like to go, Ben?"

"Of course I would, if you are going."

"I will go if you go. I will call round with some of the party and introduce you to them."

This was done in due time, and Benjamin learned from them that they were going to Chelsea "to see the college and Don Saltero's curiosities," which object of the excursion more than doubled his interest.

On the trip Wygate talked much with some of the party about Benjamin's feats in the water as almost too wonderful to be believed. On returning, one of the gentlemen said:

"Franklin, why can you not give us an exhibition of your antics in the water?"

"Yes, Ben, do; let them see that what I have told them is literally true," entreated Wygate.

"Come, Ben, do it," added Hall; "it will put Saltero's curiosities into the shade. These gentlemen will be so interested in your performances that they will forget all other curiosities."

"Well, I am always ready to accommodate," replied Benjamin, "and it will not cross my disposition to have a little frolic in the water, so I will consent."

So saying, he took off his clothing and leaped into the river, and was soon as much at home there as a water-fowl. Sometimes he was under the water, and sometimes on it; it did not seem to make much difference to him which. He swam from Chelsea to Blackfriars, four miles, entertaining the company with many manoeuvres all the way. Then he got on board, arrayed himself in his apparel to hear such words of praise as these:

"Wonderful! I had no idea that any man could attain to such skill in the water."

"No one in London who can do that!"

"Nor in all England and Wales."

"Couldn't drown you, Franklin, if you were left in the middle of the Atlantic ocean."

"You could make a fortune, if you chose to exhibit your skill."

As this brief experience, together with his teaching Wygate and Hall to swim, won him quite a reputation on this line, we may state here, that after Benjamin had decided to return to Philadelphia and arranged therefor, he received a note from Sir William Wyndham, a noted public man, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Bolingbroke administration, inviting him to pay him a visit. Benjamin was again perplexed to know what this great man could want of him; but he went to see him.

"I am happy to see you, Mr. Franklin, and I hope it has been no inconvenience to you to call at this time."

"None at all," answered Benjamin. "On the other hand, I consider myself highly honored by your invitation to call; and I have gladly embraced the first opportunity to do so."

"I have heard of your great skill in the art of swimming," continued Sir Wyndham; "and how quickly you taught two young printers to swim."

"Yes," modestly answered Benjamin, "I have some skill in the water, and I did teach two of my companions the art of swimming, so that they are excellent swimmers now."

"That is what I heard; and I have two sons who are soon to start upon extensive travels, and I want they should learn to swim before they go. It may be of great service to them."

"I have no doubt it would prove a benefit to them," responded Benjamin. "I should not want to part with my skill for any consideration whatever."

"Can you teach my two sons the art at once?"

"I regret to say that I can not, for the reason that I am soon to leave London and return to America."

"Sorry for that, very sorry indeed. Allow me to suggest that, if you could prolong your stay here, you might make a real pecuniary success of establishing a swimming school. I should be willing to pay almost any price for the instruction of my two sons." Sir Wyndham was very earnest in his counsel, and made this suggestion sincerely.

"I really feel under great obligations for your interest and good opinions," Benjamin answered; "but I have already accepted an invitation to engage in business in Philadelphia, my home, and may leave within a few days."

"That settles the matter, of course; but I am sorry that it is so," added Sir Wyndham. "I trust that you may prosper wherever you are."

Benjamin thanked him heartily for his complimentary words and good wishes, and left him, almost wishing that he could cancel his engagement with Mr. Denham and open a swimming school. Wygate and Hall assured him that he could do well in that business.

Soon after the excursion to Chelsea, Wygate made known to Benjamin a scheme that was in his mind.

"I want to travel extensively over Europe," he said, "and I have decided to do it if you will become my traveling companion. We can stop as necessity requires, from time to time, and work at our business, so as to pay our way."

"I should like nothing better than to travel all over Europe," answered Benjamin. "I have a desire to see more than I have seen of this part of the world."

"Well, what do you think of the plan?"

"I should say that it is practicable, although the suggestion is entirely new to me. Could we get work at our business?"

"I took it for granted that we could," replied Wygate. "I have no more means of knowing than you have."

"I should take it for granted that we could, too," said Benjamin; "still I shall want to consider it; it is quite an enterprise to undertake."

"Somewhat of a scheme; but a very interesting and instructive one if successfully prosecuted."

"That is so, and I think favorably of it. I will consult my good friend, Denham, about it. He has seen more of the world than we have."

Benjamin was evidently favorably impressed with the proposition; for he embraced the first opportunity to lay the subject before Mr. Denham.

"It does not strike me favorably," said Mr. Denham.

"We could both see and learn a great deal," remarked Benjamin.

"That is true; but other things are to be considered, which are of equal importance. What might do for Wygate, whose home is here, might not do for you, whose home is in America."

"That may be." Benjamin's brief reply indicated that he was not quite certain on that point.

"It appears to me," continued Mr. Denham, "that your first thoughts should be concerned about returning to Philadelphia, that you may set up business for yourself there."

"I do not see much prospect of that at present. Of course I should be glad to return home; for there is no place I prefer to Philadelphia."

"So far as prospects of which you speak are concerned, we can not always judge; unexpected opportunities sometimes offer; and you do not want to put yourself where you can not accept and use them."

"Of course not," Benjamin answered, evidently disappointed that his friend did not endorse the scheme.

"I should recommend decidedly that you abandon the project entirely, and think no more about it. Then you can continue your work with the intention of returning to America whenever a favorable opportunity occurs."

Benjamin accepted the advice of Mr. Denham, and reported to Wygate, to the no small disappointment of the latter; and both discarded the scheme and devoted themselves to honest labor.

Benjamin heard of a place where he could get boarded at two shillings a week, when he was paying three shillings and sixpence a week in Duke Street.

"I think I shall be under the necessity of changing," he said to the widow with whom he was boarding. "I want to save all the money I can, so as to return to America."

"I shall be very sorry to have you leave, Mr. Franklin, if I can possibly arrange with you to remain."

"I have no desire to leave, except to save a little in my expenses, that I may return to America sooner: that is all."

"Rather than have you go, I will deduct two shillings a week from what you are paying me now."

"That is, you propose to board me for one shilling and sixpence a week?"

"Yes, that is it, and it is a bargain if you say so."

"It is a bargain, then." And Benjamin continued to board there as long as he remained in London.

Before this woman received him for a boarder in the first place, she sent to the printing house to inquire about his character. The report was so favorable that she took him to board. And now she had tried him, and was a greater admirer of his character than ever.

It is one of the things to be said in Benjamin's favor, that, with all his faults, he always pleased and satisfied his employers and boarding-house keepers.

Benjamin records the following interesting incident respecting his friend Denham, of whom we have spoken, and to whom we shall refer again: