BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
(1706-1790).

109.  Growth of Philadelphia; what a young printer was doing for it.—­By the year 1733, when the people of Savannah[1] were building their first log cabins, Philadelphia[2] had grown to be the largest city in this country,—­though it would take more than seventy such cities to make one as great as Philadelphia now is.

Next to William Penn,[3] the person who did the most for Philadelphia was a young man who had gone from Boston to make his home among the Quakers.  He lived in a small house near the market.  On a board over the door he had painted his name and business; here it is: 

[Illustration:  “BENJAMIN FRANKLIN PRINTER” BUSINESS SIGN.]

[Footnote 1:  See paragraph 104.]

[Footnote 2:  See paragraph 99.]

[Footnote 3:  See paragraph 96.]

110.  Franklin’s newspaper and almanac;[4] how he worked; standing before kings.—­Franklin was then publishing a small newspaper, called the Pennsylvania Gazette.[5] To-day we print newspapers by steam at the rate of two or three hundred a minute; but Franklin, standing in his shirtsleeves at a little press, printed his with his own hands.  It was hard work, as you could see by the drops of sweat that stood on his forehead; and it was slow as well as hard.  The young man not only wrote himself most of what he printed in his paper, but he often made his own ink; sometimes he even made his own type.[6] When he got out of paper he would take a wheelbarrow, go out and buy a load, and wheel it home.  To-day there are more than three hundred newspapers printed in Philadelphia; then there were only two, and Franklin’s was the better of those two.

[Illustration:  FRANKLIN AT A PRINTING PRESS.]

[Illustration:  A TYPE. (The Letter B.)]

[Illustration:  FRANKLIN WHEELING A LOAD OF PAPER.]

Besides this paper he published an almanac, which thousands of people bought.  In it he printed such sayings as these:  “He who would thrive[7] must rise at five,” and “If you want a thing well done, do it yourself.” But Franklin was not contented with simply printing these sayings, for he practised them as well.

Sometimes his friends would ask him why he began work so early in the morning, and kept at it so many hours.  He would laugh, and tell them that his father used to repeat to him this saying of Solomon’s:  “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men."[8]

At that time the young printer never actually expected to stand in the presence of a king, but years later he met with five; and one of them, his friend the king of France, gave him his picture set round with diamonds.

[Footnote 4:  Almanac (al’ma-nak).]

[Footnote 5:  Gazette (ga-zet’):  a newspaper.]

[Footnote 6:  Type:  the raised metal letters used in printing are made by melting lead and some other metals together and pouring the mixture into molds.]