Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/21

Rh scenes of that day, and the tale is told us as freshly as if written at the time.

On Monday morning he reported bright and early at Andrew Bradford's, and he tells us he there "found in the shop the old man, his father, whom I had seen at New York, and who, traveling on horseback, had got to Philadelphia before me. He introduced me to his son, who received me civilly, gave me a breakfast, but told me he did not at present want a hand." William Bradford undertook to introduce him to the "new printer, lately set up, one Keimer" who "not discovering that he was the other printer's father," babbled about his plans and said "he expected soon to get the greatest part of the business into his own hands," whereat Bradford "drew him on by artful questions and starting little doubts" to tell more of his plans, and Franklin "who stood by and heard all, saw immediately that one of them was a crafty old sophister, and the other a mere novice." He lodged at Bradford's the while helping Keimer and doing small jobs for the former. But this first interview laid the seeds of the distrust between him and that family which was fostered in subsequent years by his successful opposition and intensified by later political controversies.

By promises from Sir William Keith, whose duplicit character he had yet to find out, he engaged to go to England to purchase printing apparatus wherewith to furnish a great establishment in Philadelphia; and in November 1724 he sailed thither, only to find the Governor's promises utterly worthless; he remained in London, working as best he might at his trade, and by October 1726 he was again in Philadelphia. For a young man who had not yet attained his majority, this was an education which not alone developed his self reliance but also added knowledge as well as experience to his stock of weapons wherewith to continue his battle with life.

In the year following he tells us he "form'd most of my ingenious acquaintances into a club of mutual improvement, which we called the ." These were Joseph Brientnal,