113.  Franklin’s Sunday walk in Philadelphia; the rolls; Miss Read; the Quaker meeting-house.—­Franklin landed in Philadelphia on Sunday morning (1723).  He was tired and hungry; he had but a single dollar in the world.  As he walked along, he saw a bake-shop open.  He went in and bought three great, puffy rolls for a penny[11] each.  Then he started up Market Street, where he was one day to have his newspaper office.  He had a roll like a small loaf of bread tucked under each arm, and he was eating the other as though it tasted good to him.  As he passed a house, he noticed a nice-looking young woman at the door.  She seemed to want to laugh; and well she might, for Franklin appeared like a youthful tramp who had been robbing a baker’s shop.  The young woman was Miss Deborah[12] Read.  A number of years later Franklin married her.  He always said that he could not have got a better wife.

[Illustration:  Map of Franklin’s route from Boston to Philadelphia.]

Franklin kept on in his walk until he came to the Delaware.  He took a hearty drink of river water to settle his breakfast, and then gave away the two rolls he had under his arm to a poor woman with a child.  On his way back from the river he followed a number of people to a Quaker meeting-house.  At the meeting no one spoke.  Franklin was tired out, and, not having any preacher to keep him awake, he soon fell asleep, and slept till the meeting was over.  He says, “This was the first house I was in, or slept in, in Philadelphia.”

[Footnote 11:  Penny:  an English coin worth two cents.]

[Footnote 12:  Deborah (Deb’o-rah).]

114.  Franklin finds work; he goes back to Boston on a visit; he learns to stoop.—­The next day the young man found some work in a printing-office.  Six months afterward he decided to go back to Boston to see his friends.  He started on his journey with a good suit of clothes, a silver watch, and a well-filled purse.

While in Boston, Franklin went to call on a minister who had written a little book[13] which he had been very fond of reading.  As he was coming away from the minister’s house, he had to go through a low passage-way under a large beam.  “Stoop!  Stoop!” cried out the gentleman; but Franklin did not understand him, and so hit his head a sharp knock against the beam.  “Ah,” said his friend, as he saw him rubbing his head, “you are young, and have the world before you; stoop as you go through it, and you will miss many hard thumps.”  Franklin says that this sensible advice, which was thus beat into his head, was of great use afterward; in fact, he learned then how to stoop to conquer.

[Illustration:  FRANKLIN LEARNING TO STOOP.]

[Footnote 13:  The name of this book, written by the Rev. Cotton Mather, was Essays to do Good.]

115.  Franklin returns to Philadelphia; he goes to London; water against beer.—­Franklin soon went back to Philadelphia.  The governor of Pennsylvania then persuaded him to go to London, telling him that he would help him to get a printing-press and type to start a newspaper in Philadelphia.