On his long voyage home he had had time for reflection, and resolved to turn over a new leaf, and become more frugal and respectable.  He would not give up his social pleasures, but would stick to his business, and employ his leisure time in profitable reading.  This, Mr. Parton calls his “regeneration.”  Others might view it as the completion of “sowing his wild oats.”  He certainly made himself very useful to the old visionary Keimer, who printed banknotes for New Jersey, by making improvements on the copper plate; but he soon left this employment and set up for himself, in partnership with another young man.

The young printers started fairly, and hired the lower part of a house in Market Street, most of which they sublet.  Their first job brought them but five shillings.  Soon after, they were employed to print a voluminous history of the Quakers, at a very small profit; but the work was so well done that it led to a great increase of business.

The idea then occurred to Franklin to print a newspaper, there being but one in the colony, and that miserably dull.  His old employer Keimer, hearing of his purpose accidentally, stole the march on him, and started a newspaper on his own account, but was soon obliged to sell out to Franklin and Meredith, not being able to manage the undertaking.  “The Pennsylvania Gazette” proved a great success, and was remarkable for its brilliant and original articles, which brought the editor, then but twenty-three years old, into immediate notice.  He had become frugal and industrious, but had not as yet renounced his hilarious habits, and could scarcely be called moral, for about this time a son was born to him of a woman whose name was never publicly known.  This son was educated by Franklin, and became in later years the royal governor of New Jersey.

Franklin was unfortunate in his business partner, who fell into drinking habits, so that he was obliged to dissolve the partnership.  In connection with his printing-office, he opened a small stationer’s-shop, and sold blanks, paper, ink, and pedler’s wares.  His business increased so much that he took an apprentice, and hired a journeyman from London.  He now gave up fishing and shooting, and convivial habits, and devoted himself to money-making; but not exclusively, since at this time he organized a club of twelve members, called the “Junto,”—­a sort of debating and reading society.  This club contrived to purchase about fifty books, which were lent round, and formed the nucleus of a circulating library, which grew into the famous Franklin Library, one of the prominent institutions of Philadelphia.  In 1730, at the age of twenty-four, he married Deborah Reid, a pretty, kind-hearted, and frugal woman, with whom he lived happily for forty-four years.  She was a true helpmeet, who stitched his pamphlets, folded his newspapers, waited on customers at the shop, and nursed and tended his illegitimate child.