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est. For instance, my breakfast was, for a long time, bread and milk (no tea), and I ate it out of a twopenny earthen porringer, with a pewter spoon: but mark how luxury will enter families, and make a progress in spite of principle; being called one morning to breakfast, I found it in a china bowl, with a spoon of silver. They had been bought for me without my knowledge by my wife, and had cost her the enormous sum of three-and-twenty shillings; for which she had no other excuse or apology to make, but that she thought her husband deserved a silver spoon and china bowl as well as any of his neighbors. This was the first appearance of plate and china in our house, which afterward, in a course of years, as our wealth increased, augmented gradually to several hundred pounds in value."

It was but a few months after his marriage, while still living in this lowly and frugal manner, still wearing his leathern apron, still wheeling home his purchases of stationery, still making his lampblack and mixing his ink, still battling with the difficulties attending the establishment of a new business, that he set on foot the measures which resulted in the founding of what may be truly styled the most useful library that ever existed.

When the Junto was first formed, its meetings were held (as the custom of clubs was in that clubbing age) in a tavern; and in a tavern of such humble pretensions as to be called by Franklin an ale-house. But the leathern-aproned philosophers soon removed to a room of their own, lent them by one of their members, Robert Grace. It often happened that a member would bring a book or two to the Junto, for the purpose of illustrating the subject of debate, and this led Franklin to propose that all the members should keep their books in the Junto room, as well for reference while debating as for the use of members during the week. The suggestion being approved, one end of their little apartment was soon filled with books; and there they remained for the common benefit a year. But some books having been injured, their owners became dissatisfied, and the books were all taken home. Books were then scarce, high-priced, and of great bulk. Folios were still common, and a book of less magnitude than quarto was deemed insignificant. If any Philadelphian of the present day should venture to take from the library James Ralph's two folios on the reign of William III., he could scarcely carry them home

without assistance. Few books of much importance were published at less than two guineas. Such prices as four guineas, five guineas, and six guineas were not uncommon.

Deprived of the advantage of the Junto collection, Franklin conceived the idea of a subscription library. Early in 1731 he drew up a plan, the substance of which was, that each subscriber should contribute two pounds sterling for the first purchase of books, and ten shillings a year for the increase of the library. As few of the inhabitants of Philadelphia had money to spare, and still fewer cared for reading, he found very great difficulty in procuring a sufficient number of subscribers. He says: "I put myself as much as I could out of sight, and stated it as a scheme of a number of friends, who had requested me to go about and propose it to such as they thought lovers of reading. In this way my affairs went on more smoothly, and I ever after practiced it on such occasions, and from my frequent successes can heartily recommend it." Yet it was not until November, 1731, at least five months after the project was started, that fifty names were obtained; and not till March, 1732, that the money was collected. After consulting James Logan, "the best judge of books in these parts," the first list of books was made out, a draft upon London of forty-five pounds was purchased, and both were placed in the hands of one of the directors who was going to England. Peter Collinson undertook the purchase, and added to it presents of Newton's "Principia," and "Gardener's Dictionary." All the business of the library Mr. Collinson continued to transact for thirty years, and always swelled the annual parcel of books by gifts of valuable works. In those days getting a parcel from London was a tedious affair indeed. All the summer of 1732, the subscribers were waiting for the coming of the books, as for an event of the greatest interest. Among Franklin's Junto memoranda at this time the following sentence occurs, which was probably presented to the Junto as a resolution: "When the books of the library come, every member shall undertake some author, that he may not be without observations to communicate."

In October the books arrived, and were placed, at first, in the room of the Junto. A librarian was appointed, and the library was opened once a week for giving out the books. The second year Franklin himself served as librarian. For many years the secre

tary to the directors was Joseph Breintnal, by whose zeal and diligence the interests of the library were greatly promoted. Franklin printed a catalogue soon after the arrival of the books, for which, and for other printing, he was exempted from paying his annual ten shillings for two years.

The success of this library, thus begun by a few mechanics and clerks, was great in every sense of the word. Valuable donations of books, money, and curiosities were frequently made to it. The number of subscribers slowly, but steadily increased. Libraries of similar character sprung up all over the country, and many were started even in Philadelphia. Kalm, who was in Philadelphia in 1748, says that then the parent library had given rise to "many little libraries," on the same plan as itself. He also says that nonsubscribers were then allowed to take books out of the library, by leaving a pledge for the value of the book, and paying for a folio eight pence a week, for a quarto six pence, and for all others four pence. "The subscribers," he says, were so kind to me as to order the librarian, during my stay here, to lend me every book I should want, without requiring any payment of me." In 1764, the shares had risen in value to nearly twenty pounds, and the collection was considered to be worth seventeen hundred pounds. In 1785, the number of volumes was 5,487; in 1807, 14,457; in 1861, 70,000. The institution is one of the few in America that has held on its way, unchanged in any essential principle, for a century and a quarter, always on the increase, always faithfully administered, always doing well its appointed work. There is every reason to believe that it will do so for centuries to come.

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The prosperity of the Philadelphia Library was owing to the original excellence of the plan, the good sense embodied in the rules, the care with which its affairs were conducted, and the vigilance of Franklin and his friends in turning to account passing events. Thomas Penn, for example, visited Philadelphia a year or two after the library was founded; when the directors of the library waited upon him with a dutiful address, and received, in return, a gift of books and apparatus.

It were difficult to over-estimate the value to the colonies of the libraries that grew out of Franklin's original conception. They were among the chief means of educating the colonies up to Independence. "Reading became fashionable," says Franklin; "and

our people having no public amusements to divert their attention from study, became better acquainted with books, and in a few years were observed by strangers, to be better instructed and more intelligent than people of the same rank generally are in other countries." Mrs. John Adams, in one of her letters from England, in 1785, says: "You can scarcely form an idea how much superior our common people, as they are termed, are to those of the same rank in this country." The entire mass of revolutionary documents and correspondence is an eternal record of the genuine culture and elevation of mind that prevailed among the leading men of colonial America. What the Philadelphia Library did for Franklin himself, the libraries, doubtless, did for many others. It made him a daily student for twenty years. He set apart an hour or two every day for study, and thus acquired the substance of all the most valuable knowledge then possessed by mankind.

Whether Franklin was the originator of subscription libraries, and of the idea of permitting books to be taken to the homes of subscribers, I cannot positively assert. But I can discover no trace of either of those two fruitful conceptions before his time. Libraries are nearly as ancient as books, but all the old libraries appear to have been like the old-fashioned wells, to which every one had to go who wanted water: a lending library is a Croton Aqueduct, with pipes laid in every house that chooses to pay for them. The universal diffusion of knowledge, for which civilization waits, had been forever impossible without permanent, self-sustaining town and village libraries, on a plan similar to that of the library founded in Philadelphia, in 1732.

Before resuming our narrative of Franklin's career as a man of business, it may conduce to the better understanding of the subject if we give a few particulars respecting the importance and resources of Philadelphia at the time when he was making his fortune there. Perhaps, too, a few words respecting the appearance of the place, and the ways of its inhabitants, may not be unacceptable to some readers.

Letters of Mrs. John Adams," ii., 108.

CHAPTER III.

OLD PHILADELPHIA.

"O, PENNSYLVANIA," wrote William Penn, in 1704, sixteen years after the settlement of the province, "what hast thou not cost me! Above thirty thousand pounds more than I ever got by it; two hazardous and most fatiguing voyages, and my son's soul almost."* He was actually detained in London at one time for lack of money with which to pay his passage to Philadelphia.

William Penn died in 1718. Twenty-five years after his death, when Franklin was in the midst of his business career, Pennsylvania contained a population of a hundred thousand; Philadelphia was a city of ten thousand inhabitants; the sons of William Penn drew from the province an annual revenue of twenty thousand pounds, and valued their American estate at ten millions sterling. The nearest large town to Philadelphia being New York (Baltimore, founded in 1729, contained but fifty houses in 1765), the capital of Pennsylvania served as chief city and market-town to a great part of New Jersey, and to the settlements in Delaware. Perhaps, in 1750, Philadelphia was the business center for a population of one hundred and fifty thousand. There were then living persons who remembered when the site of the city was a forest; the first-born of Philadelphia was a man of sixty-two; bears, wolves, and wild turkeys were shot within eight miles of the StateHouse.

The chief cause of Pennsylvania's rapid growth was not the pleasantness of the climate, nor the fertility of the soil, nor the convenience of the situation, though these were causes of its prosperity. Pennsylvania throve because William Penn had been just. He placed all the religious sects upon an equality before the law, claiming for his own no exclusive advantage, dearly as he loved it. It was this that made Philadelphia the desire of persecuted Protestants in Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland. The perfect peace with the Indians, which the colony enjoyed for more than fifty

A son of William Penn became exceedingly dissipated while his father was absent in America.-Janney's Life of William Penn, p. 471.

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