A History of the University of Pennsylvania from Its Foundation to A. D. 1770/Chapter 3
The story of Franklin's landing in Philadelphia on that October Sunday morning in 1723, the same day in the week when in 1706 he first drew breath in Boston, is well known but always interesting. His walk up Market Street, with his three penny worth of rolls, "with a roll under each arm and eating the other," and back by Chestnut and Walnut Streets to the place of the landing, "to which I went for a draught of the river water, where being filled with one of my rolls, gave the other two to a woman and her child that came down the river with us, and were waiting to go farther."
Thus refreshed, I walked again up the street which by this time had many clean-dressed people in it, who were all walking the same way. I joined them, and thereby was led into the great meeting of the Quakers near the market. I sat down among them, and after looking round awhile and hearing nothing said, being very drowsy thro' labor and want of rest the preceding night, I fell fast asleep, and continued so till the meeting broke up, when one was kind enough to rouse me. This was therefore, the first house I was in, or slept in, in Philadelphia.[1]
It was a notable day in the annals of our city in which Franklin was introduced to it, and the simple story in his own inimitable phrases seems ever to renew an interest in its perusal. He wrote this narrative nearly half a century afterwards, but the vividness of his memory brought up to his mind the quaint scenes of that day, and the tale is told us as freshly as if written at the time.
On Monday morning he reported bright and early at Andrew Bradford's, and he tells us he there "found in the shop the old man, his father, whom I had seen at New York, and who, traveling on horseback, had got to Philadelphia before me. He introduced me to his son, who received me civilly, gave me a breakfast, but told me he did not at present want a hand." William Bradford undertook to introduce him to the "new printer, lately set up, one Keimer" who "not discovering that he was the other printer's father," babbled about his plans and said "he expected soon to get the greatest part of the business into his own hands," whereat Bradford "drew him on by artful questions and starting little doubts" to tell more of his plans, and Franklin "who stood by and heard all, saw immediately that one of them was a crafty old sophister, and the other a mere novice."[2] He lodged at Bradford's the while helping Keimer and doing small jobs for the former. But this first interview laid the seeds of the distrust between him and that family which was fostered in subsequent years by his successful opposition and intensified by later political controversies.
By promises from Sir William Keith, whose duplicit character he had yet to find out, he engaged to go to England to purchase printing apparatus wherewith to furnish a great establishment in Philadelphia; and in November 1724 he sailed thither, only to find the Governor's promises utterly worthless; he remained in London, working as best he might at his trade, and by October 1726 he was again in Philadelphia. For a young man who had not yet attained his majority, this was an education which not alone developed his self reliance but also added knowledge as well as experience to his stock of weapons wherewith to continue his battle with life.
In the year following he tells us he "form'd most of my ingenious acquaintances into a club of mutual improvement, which we called the Junto."[3] These were Joseph Brientnal, a scrivener; Thomas Godfrey, the mathematician; Nicholas Scull, a surveyor; William Parsons, afterwards surveyor general; William Maugridge,[4] "joiner, but a most exquisite mechanic;" Hugh Meredith,[5] "a Welsh Pennsylvanian, thirty years of age, bred to country work," and afterwards his partner for twelve years in the Pennsylvania Gazette; Stephen Potts, "a young countryman of full age, of uncommon natural parts, and great wit and humor, but a little idle;" George Webb, "an Oxford scholar;" Robert Grace, "a young gentleman of some fortune, generous, lively and witty;" and lastly, "William Coleman, then a merchant's clerk, about my age, who had the coolest, clearest head, the best heart, and the exactest morals, of almost any man I ever met with. He became afterwards a merchant of great note, and one of our provincial judges," who also became one of the original trustees of the Academy and College in 1749, and remained Franklin's most faithful coadjutor in this work until his death in 1769.
The Club continued almost as long, and was the best school of philosophy, morality, and politics, that then existed in the province; for our queries, which were read the week preceding their discussion, put us upon reading with attention upon the several subjects, that we might speak more to the purpose; and here, too, we acquired better habits of conversation, everything being studied in our rules, which might prevent us disgusting each other.[6]
From this quiet but influential centre grew in 1743 the institution of the first American Philosophical Society of which Thomas Hopkinson was the first President, which had not long existence, but was revived again by the greater organization of 1769, with Benjamin Franklin as its first President, though he was at the time absent in London representing his adopted province. Thus early did this young man display and exercise his rare leadership, and attract to his side men of thought and ideas; for one but twenty-two years of age to secure the attention of men, mostly his seniors, to weekly meetings for the discussion of useful and informing topics, indicates as great an instance as any displayed by him in later years of his strong executive ability, and his wonderful powers of attraction among all with whom he was associated in any enterprise. We dwell upon the great affairs of those later years in which he had such a directing hand, but these peculiar characteristics of his were being developed and matured a half century before the historian of his country devotes his pages to his later works. Franklin's accounts of all these matters is as engaging as it is frank; and it is this same frankness which also gives us that other and more human side of his early life in which occur those youthful follies and misdoings which seemed to have furnished his enemies with their most pointed weapons.