"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."
[Illustration: FRANKLIN'S LONDON PRINTING PRESS]
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.