Brave Men and Women: Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs

by Osgood E. Fuller

I will begin with the first pecuniary transaction in which he is known to have been concerned, and this shall be given in his own words:

"When I was a child of seven years old my friends, on a holiday, filled my pockets with coppers. I went directly to a shop where they sold toys for children, and, being charmed with the sound of a whistle, that I met by the way in the hands of another boy, I voluntarily offered and gave all my money for one."

That was certainly not the act of a stingy, calculating boy.

His next purchase, of which we have any knowledge was made when he was about eleven years old; and this time, I confess, he made a much better bargain. The first book he could ever call his own was a copy of Pilgrim's Progress, which he read and re-read until he got from it all so young a person could understand. But being exceedingly fond of reading, he exchanged his Pilgrim's Progress for a set of little books, then much sold by peddlers, called "Burton's Historical Collections," in forty paper-covered volumes, containing history, travels, tales, wonders, and curiosities, just the thing for a boy. As we do not know the market value of his Pilgrim's Progress, we can not tell whether the poor peddler did well by him or the contrary. But it strikes me that that is not the kind of barter in which a mean, grasping boy usually engages.

His father being a poor soap-and-candle maker, with a dozen children or more to support or assist, and Benjamin being a printer's apprentice, he was more and more puzzled to gratify his love of knowledge. But one day he hit upon an expedient that brought in a little cash. By reading a vegetarian book this hard, calculating Yankee lad had been led to think that people could live better without meat than with it, and that killing innocent animals for food was cruel and wicked. So he abstained from meat altogether for about two years. As this led to some inconvenience at his boarding-house, he made this cunning proposition to his master:

"Give me one-half the money you pay for my board and I will board myself."

The master consenting, the apprentice lived entirely on such things as hominy, bread, rice, and potatoes, and found that he could actually live upon half of the half. What did the calculating wretch do with the money? Put it into his money-box? No; he laid it out in the improvement of his mind.

When at the age of seventeen, he landed in Philadelphia, a runaway apprentice, he had one silver dollar and one shilling in copper coin. It was a fine Sunday morning, as probably the reader remembers, and he knew not a soul in the place. He asked the boatmen upon whose boat he had come down the Delaware how much he had to pay. They answered, Nothing, because he had helped them row. Franklin, however, insisted upon their taking his shilling's worth of coppers, and forced the money upon them. An hour after, having bought three rolls for his breakfast, he ate one and gave the other two to a poor woman and her child who had been his fellow-passengers. These were small things, you may say; but remember he was a poor, ragged, dirty runaway in a strange town, four hundred miles from a friend, with three pence gone out of the only dollar he had in the world.

Next year when he went home to see his parents, with his pocket full of money, a new suit of clothes and a watch, one of his oldest Boston friends was so much pleased with Franklin's account of Philadelphia that he determined to go back with him. On the journey Franklin discovered that his friend had become a slave to drink. He was sorely plagued and disgraced by him, and at last the young drunkard had spent all his money and had no way of getting on except by Franklin's aid. This hard, calculating, mercenary youth, did he seize the chance of shaking off a most troublesome and injurious traveling companion? Strange to relate, he stuck to his old friend, shared his purse with him till it was empty, and then began on some money which he had been intrusted with for another, and so got him to Philadelphia, where he still assisted him. It was seven years before Franklin was able to pay all the debt incurred by him to aid this old friend, for abandoning whom few would have blamed him.

A year after he was in still worse difficulty from a similar cause. He went to London to buy types and a press with which to establish himself in business at Philadelphia, the governor of Pennsylvania having promised to furnish the money. One of the passengers on the ship was a young friend of Franklin's named James Ralph, with whom he had often studied, and of whom he was exceedingly fond. Ralph gave out that he, too, was going to London to make arrangements for going into business for himself at Philadelphia. The young friends arrived. Franklin nineteen and Ralph a married man with two children. On reaching London Franklin learned, to his amazement and dismay, that the governor had deceived him, that no money was to be expected from him, and that he must go to work and earn his living at his trade. No sooner had he learned this than James Ralph gave him another piece of stunning intelligence; namely, that he had run away from his family and meant to settle in London as a poet and author.