From Boyhood to Manhood: Life of Benjamin Franklin Part 47

"Yes, sir, I have."

"I should be delighted to have you call upon me in Bloomsbury Square, and bring the purse; and I will show you _my_ great collection of curiosities. I think you can spend a pleasant and profitable evening in that way."

"I will do it with the greatest pleasure, and be obliged for the opportunity," Benjamin answered.

And he did. The first opportunity he improved to take the asbestos purse to Bloomsbury Square, where he had a splendid time examining the best collection of curiosities he had ever dreamed of, and where he discussed various topics of interest with the entertaining Sir Hans.

"Now," said the host, as Benjamin was about to leave, "I should be glad to add the asbestos purse to my collection, and I will pay you well for it," naming the amount.

"I will accommodate you and leave it." Benjamin was happy to add to Sir Hans' collection, in the circ.u.mstances.

Benjamin felt the need of more physical exercise, so that when he entered the printing house, he "took to working at press." He drank water only; all other employees, about fifty of them, drank strong beer. He was really a curiosity to them.

"Beer-guzzling is a detestable habit," he said to a fellow-workman, "and it is a very expensive one, too, for a poor fellow like you."

"I could not do a decent day's work without beer. I drink it for strength."

"So much the worse for you; beer strength is the worst sort of weakness," continued Benjamin. "Just stop a moment and think what a beer-barrel you make of yourself; a pint before breakfast, a pint at breakfast, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner, a pint in the afternoon, a pint at six o'clock, and a pint when you have done work--almost a gallon each day! Why, I could not hold half as much as that; I should run over."

"Then you don't believe a man can do more work for drinking strong beer?"

"Of course I don't. I can do more work than any man in the establishment, and I can lift more than any other man here; and I drink nothing but water. If beer imparts the strength you imagine, any one of you ought to do more work and lift more than I can; isn't that so?"

The workmen had good reason to believe this; for Benjamin had kept his eyes and ears open from the time he entered the printing house, and he had learned just what the men thought about beer, why they drank it, how much work they did, and how much they could lift. Without saying a word about it, he took special pains to turn off a large amount of work, and to lift more than his fellow-workmen. For example, he would carry two forms of type, one in each hand, up and down stairs, while the other workmen carried but one with both hands. Therefore, Watts (the name of the workman) knew that every thing Benjamin claimed about strength was true.

"Are all Americans like you?" inquired the workman.

"No; too many of them are like you, I am sorry to say; they drink beer and other intoxicants, that disqualify them for business. If more of them would drink water, as I do, they would be far better off physically and pecuniarily."

"Some of our best doctors claim that there is much nutriment in beer,"

he suggested.

"And every one of them knows that there is more nutriment in a pennyworth of bread than there is in a whole gallon of beer.

Therefore, if you eat the bread and drink the water, you get more strength."

The printer acknowledged that there was something in that.

"You see," continued Benjamin, "that all the nutriment there is in the barley is destroyed to convert it into beer. Your beer is very dirty water made bitter with malt, out of which nearly every particle of nutriment has been squeezed. There is as much nourishment in dishwater as there is in that stuff."

"Here, Jake, where are you?" called out another workman. "Bring on the beer."

Jake was the ale-boy, whose business it was to supply the men with beer from the ale-house.

"Another nuisance required by your beer business," exclaimed Benjamin.

"Better by far pay a boy double price to bring water from the well, instead of bringing that stuff to absorb your money and sodden your brain."

"A _Water-American_, indeed!" said Mr. Watts, who heard much of the conversation. "But will you not allow some comfort to hard-working men?"

"Certainly; that is what I am after. There is more comfort in one gla.s.s of pure water than there is in a whole barrel of beer. Here is Watts, paying out four or five shillings every week for beer, when water would cost him nothing, and he would have that amount to spend for genuine comforts. Besides, beer unfits him to get real comfort out of any thing, even out of his home."

"You are about right on that," replied Watts; "beer does make a cla.s.s of men most miserable. But must I discard it because some men use it to their injury?"

"Of course you must," Benjamin answered quickly and triumphantly.

"There is where duty and right come in. The strong must bear the infirmities of the weak, or they won't amount to much in the world."

"Many of them won't amount to much any way, beer or no beer,"

responded Watts.

"Any of them will amount to more with water than they will with beer,"

retorted Benjamin, who felt competent to support his side of the question. He went on:

"Look here: I am supplied with a large porringer of hot-water gruel, sprinkled with pepper, crumbled with bread, and a bit of b.u.t.ter in it, for just the price of a pint of beer, three half-pence. Now, honestly, is not this much better for me, or for yourself, than the same amount of filthy beer?"

"Possibly; it is a new view of the case to me," was all that Mr. Watts could say, evidently conceding that Benjamin was about right.

Benjamin exchanged the press-room for the composing-room, after a few weeks.

"A treat now, Ben; that is the condition of admission here," said the men.

"I guess not; I fulfilled that condition in the press-room," answered Benjamin. "Once will do in this establishment."

"But you _will_," retorted a fellow-worker, enforced by a dozen voices. "The rule is irrevocable."

"We will see about that," replied Benjamin, with coolness, but determination.

"Yes, we _will_ see," chimed in a resolute voice.

"And after all your seeing and bl.u.s.tering I shall not do it," added Benjamin, in a tone that indicated he meant what he said.

"Ben is right," interrupted Mr. Watts, who had listened to the colloquy; "he has met that condition once in the press-room, and he will not be required to repeat it. I forbid his doing it."

"It is a very foolish custom any way," said Benjamin, "and the sooner it is abandoned in England or anywhere else the better."

After all he did not carry his point. His own words about the affair were as follows:

"I stood out two or three weeks, was accordingly considered as an excommunicate, and had so many little pieces of private malice practised on me, by mixing my sorts, transposing and breaking my matter, etc., etc., if ever I stepped out of the room,--and all ascribed to the _chapel ghost_, which they said ever haunted those not regularly admitted,--that, notwithstanding the master's protection, I found myself obliged to comply and pay the money; convinced of the folly of being on ill terms with those one is to live with continually."

Benjamin kept up the fight against beer-drinking until he fairly conquered. One after another yielded to his example and arguments, and abandoned the old habit of swilling down beer, until a thorough reformation was wrought in the printing office. The strength, health, tact, and enterprise of the "_water-drinker_" convinced them that he was right. The t.i.tle, "_Our Water-drinker_" bandied about the printing house, came to be really an appellation of esteem.

The printing press, on which Benjamin worked at Watts' printing house, is now in the Patent Office at Washington, where many visitors go to see it. Forty years after he worked on it, Franklin was in London, where his fame was greater than that of any other man, and he called at the old printing house, and going up to the familiar press, he said to the employees:

"It is just forty years since I worked at this press, as you are working now."

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRANKLIN'S LONDON PRINTING PRESS]

The announcement rather startled them. That a public man of so much fame should ever have even served in a printing office as they were serving, was almost too much for them to believe.

The publisher of this volume has in his possession _fac-simile_ letters from different gentlemen in England, fully verifying the press the engraving of which appears above.