BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 17 



clean dressed people in it, who were all walking the same 

 way. I joined them, and thereby was led into the great 

 meeting-house of the Quakers, near the market. I sat down 

 among them; and after looking round a while, and hearing 

 nothing said, being very drowsy, through labour and want of 

 rest the preceding night, I fell fast asleep, and continued so 

 till the meeting broke up, when some one was kind enough 

 to rouse me. This, therefore, was the first house I was in, or 

 slept in, in Philadelphia,' 



Refreshed by his brief sojourn in this cheap place of 

 repose, he then set out in quest of a lodging for the night. 

 Next morning he found the person to whom he had been 

 directed, who was not, however, able to give him any employ- 

 ment ; but upon applying to another printer in the place, oi 

 the name of Keimer, he was a little more fortunate, being se'c 

 by him, in the first instance, to put an old press to rights, 

 and afterwards taken into regular work He had been some 

 months at Philadelphia, his relations in Boston knowing 

 nothing of what had become of him, when a brother-in-law, 

 who was the master of a trading sloop, happening to hear of 

 him in one of his voyages, wrote to him in very earnest terms 

 to entreat him to return home. The letter which he sent in 

 reply to this application reaching his brother-in-law when he 

 chanced to be in company with Sir William Keith, the 

 Governor of the Province, it was shown to that gentleman, 

 who expressed considerable surprise on being told the age 

 of the writer ; and immediately said that he appeared to be 

 a young man of promising parts, and that if he would set 

 up on his own account in Philadelphia, where the printers 

 were wretched ones, he had no doubt he would succeed : for 

 his part, he would procure him the public business, and do 



