provided their improvement in the typographical art should merit it. This future increase of wages was the bait he made use of to ensnare them. Meredith was to work at the press, and Potts to bind books, which he had engaged to teach them, though he understood neither himself. John Savage, an Irishman, who had been brought up to no trade, and whose service, for a period of four years, Keimer had purchased of the captain of a ship. He was also to be a pressman. George Webb, an Oxford scholar, whose time he had in like manner bought for four years, intending him for a compositor. I shall speak more of him presently. Lastly, David Harry, a country lad, who was apprenticed to him. I soon perceived that Keimer's intention, in engaging me at a price so much above what he was accustomed to give, was, that I might form all these raw journeymen and apprentices, who scarcely cost him any thing, and who, being indentured, would as soon as they should be sufficiently instructed, enable him to do without me. I nevertheless adhered to my agreement. I put the office in order, which was in the utmost confusion, and brought his people by degrees, to pay attention to their work, and to execute it in a more masterly manner. It was singular to see an Oxford scholar in the condition of a purchased servant. He was not more than eighteen years of age; and the following are the particulars he gave me of himself. Born at Gloucester, he had been educated at a grammar school, and had distinguished himself among the scholars by his superior style of acting, when they represented dramatic performances. He was member of a literary club in the town; and some pieces of his composition, in prose as well as in verse, had been inserted in the Gloucester papers. From hence he was sent to Oxford, where he remained about a year but he was not contented, and wished above all things to see London, and become an actor. At length having received fifteen guineas to pay his quarter's board, he decamped with the money from Oxford, hid his gown in a hedge, and travelled to London. There, having no friend to direct him, he fell into bad. company, soon squandered his fifteen guineas, could find no way of being introduced to the actors, became contemptible, pawned his clothes, and was in want of bread. As he was walking along the streets, almost famished with hunger, and not knowing what to do, a recruiting bill was put into his hand, which offered an immediate treat and bounty-money to whoever was disposed to serve in America. He instantly repaired to the house of rendezvous, inlisted himself, was put on board a ship and conveyed to America, without ever writing to inform his parents what was become of him. His mental vivacity, and good natural disposition, made him an excellent companion; but he was indolent, thoughtless, and to the last degree imprudent. John, the Irishman, soon ran away. I began to live very agreeably with the rest. They respected me, and the more so as they found Keimer incapable of instructing them, and as they learned something from me every day. We never worked on a Saturday, it being Keimer's sabbath; so that I had two days a week for reading. I increased my acquaintance with persons of knowledge and information in the town. Keimer himself treated me with great civility, and apparent esteem; and I had nothing to give me uneasiness but my debt to Vernon, which I was unable to pay, my savings as yet being very little. He had the goodness, however, not to ask me for the money. Our press was frequently in want of the necessary quantity of letter; and there was no such trade as that of letter-founder in America. I had seen the practice of this art at the house of James, in London; but had at the same time paid it very little attention. I how ever contrived to fabricate a mould. I made use of such letters as we had for punches, founded new letters of lead in matrices of clay, and thus supplied in a tolerable manner, the wants that were most pressing. I also, upon occasion, engraved various ornaments, made ink, gave an eye to the shop; in short, I was in every respect the factotum. But useful as I made myself, I perceived that my services became every day of less importance, in proportion as the other men improved; and when Keimer paid me my second quarter's wages, he gave me to understand that they were too heavy, and that he thought I ought to make an abatement. He became by degrees less civil, and assumed more the tone of master. He frequently found fault, was difficult to please, and seemed always on the point of coming to an open quarrel with me. I continued, however, to bear it patiently, conceiv ing that his ill humour was partly occasioned by the derangement and embarrassment of his affairs. At last a slight incident broke our connection. Hearing a noise in the neighbourhood, I put my head out of the window to see what was the matter. Keimer being in the street observed me, and in a loud and angry tone told me to mind my work; adding some reproachful words, which piqued me the more as they were uttered in the street, and the neighbours, whom the same noise had attracted to the windows, were witnesses of the manner in which I was treated. He immediately came up to the printing-room, and continued to exclaim against me. The quarrel became warm on both sides, and he gave me notice to quit him at the expiration of three months, as had been agreed between us; regretting that he was obliged to give me so long a term. I told him that his regret was superfluous, as I was ready to quit him instantly; I took my hat and came out of the house, begging Meredith to take care of some things which I left, and bring them to my lodgings. Meredith came to me in the evening. We talked for some time upon the quarrel that had taken place. several of the Smiths, all members of the assembly, and Isaac Deacon, inspector-general. The last was a shrewd and subtle old man. He told me, that, when a boy, his first employment bad been that of carrying clay to brick-makers? that he did not learn to write till he was some what advanced in life; that he was afterwards employed as an underling to a surveyor, who taught him his trade, and that by industry he had at last acquired a competent fortune. "I foresee," said he one day to me, "that you will soon supplant this man." speaking of Keimer, " and get a for. tune in the business at Philadelphia." He was totally ignorant at the time of my intention of establishing myself there, or any where else. These friends were very serviceable to me in the end, as was I also upon occasion to some of them; and they have continued ever since their esteem for me. Before I relate the particulars of my entrance into bu siness, it may be proper to inform you what was at that time the state of my mind as to moral principles, that you may see the degree of influence they had upon the subsequent events of my life. My parents had given me betimes religious impressions; and I received from my infancy a pious education in the principles of Calvanism. But scarcely was I arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as I found them combated in the different books that I read, I began to doubt of revelation itself. Some volumes against deism fell into my hands. They were said to be the substance of sermons preached at Boyle's Lecture. It happened that they produced on me an effect precisely the reverse of what was intended by the writers; for the arguments of the deists, which were cited in order to be refuted, appeared to me much more forci. ble than the refutation itself. In a word, I soon became a perfect deist: My arguments perverted some other young persons; particularly Collins and Ralph. But in the sequel, when I recollected that they had both used me extremely ill, without the smallest re morse; when I considered the behaviour of Keith, another freethinker, and my own conduct towards Vernon and Miss Reed, which at times gave me much uneasiness, I was led to suspect that this doctrine, though it might be true, was not very useful. I began to entertain a less favourable opinion of my London pamphlet, to which I had prefixed, as a motto, the following lines of Dryden ; Whatever is, is right; tho' purblind man, and of which the object was to prove, from the attributes of God, his goodness, wisdom, and power, that there could be no such thing as evil in the world; that vice and virtue did not in reality exist and were nothing more than vain distinctions. I no longer regarded it as so blameless a work as I had formerly imagined; and I suspected that some error must have imperceptibly glided into my argument, as all the inferences I had drawn from it had been affected, as frequently happens, in metaphysical reasonings. In a word, I was at last convinced that truth, probity, and sincerity, in transactions between man and man, were of the utmost importance to the happiness of life: and I resolved from that moment, and wrote the resolution in my journal, to practice them as long as I lived. Revelation indeed, as such, had no influence on my mind; but I was of opinion that, though certain actions could not be bad merely because revelation prohibited them, or good because it enjoined them, yet it was probable that those actions were prohibited because they were bad for us, or enjoined because advantageons in their nature, all things considered. The persuasion, divine Providence, or some guardian angel, and perhaps concurrence of favourable circumstances co-operating, preserved me from all immorality, or gross and voluntary injustice, to which my want of religion |