Page:Works of the Late Doctor Benjamin Franklin (1793).djvu/70

60 where the printers work alternately as compoſitors and at the preſſ. I drank nothing but water. The other workmen, to the number of about fifty, were great drinkers of beer. I carried occaſionally a large form of letters in each hand, up and down ſtairs, while the reſt employed both hands to carry one. They were ſurprized to ſee, by this and many other examples, that the American Aquatic, as they uſed to call me, was ſtronger than thoſe who drank porter. The beer-boy had ſufficient employment during the whole day in ſerving that houſe alone. My fellow-preſſman drank every day a pint of beer before breakfaſt, a pint with bread and cheeſe for breakfaſt, one between breakfaſt and dinner, one at dinner, one again about ſix o'clock in the afternoon, and another after he had finiſhed his day's work. This cuſtom appeared to me abominable; but he had need, he ſaid, of all this beer, in order to acquire ſtrength to work.

I endeavoured to convince him that the bodily ſtrength furniſhed by the beer, could only be in proportion to the ſolid part of the barley diſſolved in the water of which the beer was compoſed; that there was a larger portion of flour in a penny loaf, and that conſequently if he eat this loaf, and drank a pint of water with it, he would derive more ſtrength from it than from a pint of beer. This reaſoning, however, did not prevent him from drinking his accuſtomed quantity of beer, and paying every Saturday night a ſcore of four or five ſhillings a week for this curſed beverage; an expence from which I was wholly exempt. Thus do theſe poor devils continue all their lives in a ſtate of voluntary wretchedneſs and poverty.

At the end of a few weeks, Watts having occaſion for me above ſtairs as a compoſitor, I