Our hero was not obliged to wait so long as he expected, after all; for that evening as he chanced to be walking along the shore of the river, a small vessel came by on its way to Philadelphia, and on his applying to the boatmen for a passage they agreed to take him on board. He accordingly embarked, and the vessel proceeded down the river. There was no wind, and the men spent the night in rowing. Franklin himself worked with the rest. Toward morning they began to be afraid that they had passed the city in the dark, and so they hauled their vessel up to the shore and landed. When daylight appeared they found that they were about five miles above the city. When they arrived at the city Franklin paid the boatmen a shilling for his passage. They were at first unwilling to receive it, on account of his having helped them to row, but he insisted that they should. He then counted up the money which he had left, and found that it amounted to just one dollar.
The first thing that he did was to go to a baker’s to buy something to eat. He asked for three-pence worth of bread. The baker gave him three good sized rolls for that money. His pockets were full of clothes and other such things, which he had put into them, and so he walked off up the street, holding one of his rolls under each arm and eating the third. It is a singular circumstance that while he was walking through the streets in this way, he passed by the house where the young woman resided who was destined in subsequent years to become his wife, and that she actually saw him as he passed, and took particular notice of him on account of the ridiculous appearance which he made.
Franklin went on in this manner up Market-street to Fourth-street, then down through Chestnut-street and apart of Walnut-street, until he came back to the river again at the place where the vessel lay. He came thus to the shore again in order to get a drink of water from the river, for he was thirsty.
In fact the situation in which our young adventurer found himself at this time must have been extremely discouraging. He was in a strange town, hundreds of miles from home, without friends, without money, without even a place to lay his head, and scarcely knowing what to do or where to go. It is not strange, therefore, that, after taking his short walk around the streets of the town, he should find himself returning again toward the vessel that had brought him; since this vessel alone contained objects and faces in the least degree familiar to his eye.
It happened that among the passengers that had come down the river on board the vessel, there was a poor woman, who was traveling with her child, a boy of six or eight years of age. When Franklin came down to the wharf he found this woman sitting there with her child, both looking quite weary and forlorn; and, as he had already satisfied his hunger with eating only one of his rolls, he gave the other two to them. They received his charity very thankfully. It seems that they were waiting there for the vessel to sail again, as they were not intending to stop at Philadelphia, but were going farther down the river.
The way it happened that our young hero had provided himself with so much more bread than he needed, notwithstanding that his funds were so low, was this. When he went into the baker’s he asked first for biscuits, meaning such as he had been accustomed to buy in Boston. The baker told him that they did not make such biscuits in Philadelphia. He then asked for a three-penny loaf. The baker said they had no three-penny loaves. Franklin then asked him for three-penny worth of bread of any sort, and the baker gave him the three penny rolls. Franklin was surprised to find how much bread he got for his money, but he took the rolls, though he knew it was more than he would need, and so after eating one he had no very ready way of disposing of the other two. His giving them therefore to the poor woman and her boy was not quite as great a deed of benevolence as it might at first seem. It was, however, in this respect like other charitable acts, performed in this world, which will seldom bear any very rigid scrutiny.
It ought, however, to be added in justice to our hero, that instances frequently occurred during this period of his life in which he made real sacrifices for the comfort and welfare of others, and thus gave unquestionable evidence that he possessed a truly benevolent heart. In fact, his readiness to aid and assist others, whenever it was in his power to do so, constituted one of the most conspicuous traits in the philosopher’s character.