He had conceived a great veneration for me, and was sorry I should quit the house while he remained in it. He dissuaded me from returning to my native country, as I began to think of doing. He reminded me that Keimer owed more than he possessed; that his creditors began to be alarmed; that he kept his shop in a wretched state, often selling things at prime cost for the sake of ready money, and continually giving credit without keeping any accounts; that of consequence he must very soon fail, which would occasion a vacancy from which I might derive advantage. I objected my want of money. Upon which he informed me that his father had a very high opinion of me, and, from a conversation that had passed between them, he was sure that he would advance whatever might be necessary to establish us, if I was willing to enter into partnership with him. "My time with Keimer," added he, "will be at an end next spring. In the mean time we may send to London for our press and types. I know that I am no workman; but if you agree to the proposal, your skill in the business will be balanced by the capital I will furnish, and we will share the profits equally." His proposal was reasonable, and I fell in with it. His father who was then in the town, approved of it. He knew that I had some ascendency over his son, as I had been able to prevail on him to abstain a long time from drinking brandy; and he hoped, that when more closely connected with him, I should cure him entirely of this unfortunate habit.

I gave the father a list of what would be necessary to import from London. He took it to a merchant, and the order was given. We agreed to keep the secret till the arrival of the materials, and I was in the mean time to procure work if possible, in another printing-house; but there was no place vacant, and I remained idle. After some days, Keimer having the expectation of being employed to print some New Jersey money-bills, that would require types and engravings which I only could furnish, and fearful that Bradford by engaging me, might deprive him of the

undertaking, sent me a very civil message, telling me that old friends ought not to be disunited on account of a few words, which were the effect only of a momentary passion, and invited me to return to him. Meredith persuaded me to comply with the invitation, particularly as it would afford him more opportunities of improving himself in the business by means of my instructions. I did so, and we lived upon better terms than before our separation.

He obtained the New-Jersey business; and in order to execute it, I constructed a copper-plate printingpress; the first that had been seen in the country. I engraved various ornaments and vignettes for the bills; and we repaired to Burlington together, where I executed the whole to the general satisfaction; and he received a sum of money for this work, which enabled him to keep his head above water for a considerable time longer.

At Burlington I formed acquaintance with the principal personages of the province; many of whom were commissioned by the assembly to superintend the press, and to see that no more bills were printed than the law had prescribed. Accordingly they were constantly with us, each in his turn; and he that came commonly brought with him a friend or two to bear him company. My mind was more cultivated by reading than Keimer's; and it was for this reason, probably, that they set more value on my conversation. They took me to their houses, introduced me to their friends, and treated me with the greatest civility; while Keimer, though master, saw himself a little neglected. He was, in fact, a strange animal, ignorant of the common modes of life, apt to oppose with rudeness generally received opinions, an enthusiast in certain points of religion, disgustingly unclean in his person, and a little knavish withal.

We remained there nearly three months; and at the expiration of this period I could include in the list of my friends, Judge Allen, Samuel Bustil, secretary of the province, Isaac Pearson, Joseph Cooper;

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 had 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 fortune 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 business, 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 forcible 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 Read, 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,
Sees but part of the chain, the nearest link,
His eyes not carrying to the equal beam
That poises all above.

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 practise 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 advantageous 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

calculated to expose me, in the dangerous period of youth and in the hazardous situations in which I sometimes found myself, among strangers, and at a distance from the eye and admonitions of my father. I may say voluntary, because the errors into which I had fallen, had been in a manner the forced result either of may own inexperience, or the dishonesty of others. Thus, before I entered on my new career, I had imbibed solid principles, and a character of probity. I knew their value; I made solemn engagement with myself never to depart from them.

I had not long returned from Burlington before our printing materials arrived from London. I settled my accounts with Keimer, and quitted him, with his own consent, before he had any knowledge of our plan. We found a house to let near the market. We took it; and to render the rent less burthensome (it was then twenty-four pounds a-year, but I have since known it to let for seventy,) we admitted Thomas Godfrey, a glazier, with his family, who eased us of a considerable part of it; and with him we agreed to board.

We had no sooner unpacked our letter, and put our press in order, than a person of my acquaintance, George House, brought us a countryman, whom he had met in the streets enquiring for a printer. Our money was almost exhausted by the number of things we had been obliged to procure. The five shillings. we received from this countryman, the first fruit of our earnings, coming so seasonably, gave me more pleasure than any sum I have since gained; and the recollection of the gratitude I felt on this occasion to George House, has rendered me often more disposed, than perhaps I should otherwise have been, to encourage young beginners in trade.

There are in every country morose beings, who are always prognosticating ruin. There was one of this stamp in Philadelphia. He was a man of fortune, declined in years, had an air of wisdom, and a very grave manner of speaking. His name was Samuel Mickle.