THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY 115 



grating to America in order to enjoy their way of 

 religion with freedom. 



Benjamin, born at Boston, twenty-one years after 

 his father's emigration, was the youngest of ten sons, 

 all of whom were eventually apprenticed to trades. 

 The father was a man of sound judgment who encour- 

 aged sensible conversation in his home. Uncle Benja- 

 min, who did not emigrate till much later, showed 

 interest in his precocious namesake. Both he and the 

 maternal grandfather expressed in verse dislike of 

 war and intolerance, the one with considerable liter- 

 ary skill, the other with a good deal of decent plain- 

 ness and manly freedom, as his grandson said. 



Benjamin was intended as a tithe to the Church, 

 but the plan was abandoned because of lack of means 

 to send him to college. After one year at the Latin 

 Grammar School, and one year at an arithmetic and 

 writing school, for better or worse, his education of 

 that sort ceased; and at the age of ten he began to 

 assist in his father's occupation, now that of tallow- 

 chandler and soap-boiler. He wished to go to sea, and 

 gave indications of leadership and enterprise. His 

 father took him to visit the shops of joiners, brick- 

 layers, turners, braziers, cutlers, and other artisans, 

 thus stimulating in him a delight in handicraft. Fi- 

 nally, because of a bookish turn he had been exhibit- 

 ing, the boy was bound apprentice to his brother 

 James, who about 1720 began to publish the New 

 England Courant, the fourth newspaper to be estab- 

 lished in America. 



Among the books early read by Benjamin Frank- 

 lin were The Pilgrim's Progress, certain historical 

 collections, a book on navigation, works of Protestant 



