no letters. Instead, the Governor's secretary informed the caller that the Governor was extremely busy, but would be at Newcastle before the ship left that point and there the letters would be delivered. The Governor was at Newcastle when the ship anchored there, but was again too busy to be seen, and the polite secretary presented his excuses with the statement that the letters would be sent on board. The Colonel French previously mentioned brought the Governor's despatches to the ship, all in one bag, which the captain refused to open until later in the voyage when there would be more time. When the moment arrived there were no letters for Benjamin Franklin, and then came disillusionment. A Quaker merchant named Denham, who subsequently was to play an important if limited part in Benjamin Franklin's life and who was sharing quarters with him during the voyage, came for the first time into a knowledge of the affair and he informed young Franklin of Sir William Keith's true character. Denham scoffed at the idea of the Governor giving a letter of credit, saying he had no credit to give. Benjamin had sorrowfully to accept the conclusion that he had been deceived and that his dream of soon becoming a master-printer was not to be realized. The disappointment was keen, but he seems not to have felt any great degree of animosity toward its author. In later years he generously summed up Keith's character by saying: "He wished to please everybody; and, having little to give, he gave expectations. He was otherwise an ingenious, sensible man, and a good governor for the people, though not for his constituents, the proprietaries, whose instructions he sometimes disregarded." Keith was eventually removed from office and died in London in old age, neglected and destitute. Arriving in London, Franklin and his friend, James Ralph, who had accompanied him, found themselves in a strange city with only fifteen pistoles, amounting to about sixty dollars, in Franklin's pocket and none in Ralph's. Ralph had some ability as a writer and expected to make his living with his pen, but was unsuccessful and after Franklin's stock of pistoles was exhausted went to a small village where he secured employment as a schoolmaster. Franklin immediately secured work at Samuel Palmer's, a famous printing house in Bartholomew Close, which was the name of the enclosed space adjoining the Church of St. Bartholomew, the oldest church in London. The printing office was located in a part of the church called the Lady Chapel, at that time and for some time afterward devoted to secular uses. It has since been restored to its original purposes and the attendant takes pride in saying to visitors, particularly to those from America, that it is the site of the printing office in which Benjamin Franklin worked at his trade. In the north ambulatory in the church is a tablet to Thomas Roycroft, printer of the Polyglot Bible of 1677. Samuel Palmer was more than an ordinary printer. He had visited America, was letterfounder as well as printer, and was engaged in the writing of "A History of Printing," only a third of which he had completed when he died in 1732. He proposed to issue his history in two parts: Part I, historical, which was published in 1632, the first history of printing in English; and Part II, practical. An interesting fact in connection with this proposal is that when it became known, to quote Timperley's "Dictionary of Printing," "it met with such early and strenuous opposition from the respective bodies of letter-founders, printers, and bookbinders, and under an ill-grounded apprehension that the discovery of the mystery of those arts, especially the two first, would render them cheap and contemptible that he was forced to set it aside." At Palmer's, Franklin was employed in setting the type for the third (not the second, as stated in the "Autobiography") edition of a work called Wollaston's "Religion of Nature." Some of its rea THE RELIGION ОР NATURE DELINEATED. Ἔνιοι φέυγοντες τὴν Δεισιδαιμονίαν ἐμπίπτεσιν εἰς Ἀθεότητα τραχείαν καὶ Χαίρειν ἦν ἐάσας τας Τιμὰς τὰς τῶν πολλῶν ἀνθρώπων, τὴν ̓ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑΝ Re-printed in the Year 1724 by SAM. PALMER; and Sold by BERNARD LINTOTT, at the Cross Keys between the Temple Title page of the second edition of "The Religion of Nature" for which Franklin says in the "Autobiography" he set the type. He wrote from memory and in this statement was in error. He arrived in London in November, 1724, and it was the third edition, published in 1725, upon which he worked. Original in possession of the author. Size 5" x 7". soning appealing to him as unsound, he wrote "a little metaphysical piece," entitled "a Dissertation on Liberty and Neceffity, Pleasure and Pain," in refutation. It brought him to the favorable attention of his employer, but because of its atheistic attitude Franklin afterward regretted its publication. He is said to have attempted to suppress the edition, but four copies of the pamphlet are in existence. Franklin now decided to make two changes. His savings had disappeared and his rate of living made it difficult to set aside anything from his wages. He felt the necessity of obtaining an increased income and he accordingly sought and secured a position in a larger printing office, conducted by John Watts in Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, in another part of the city. Watts was one of the eminent printers of his time. He was largely instrumental in establishing the great type-founding house of Caslon & Company. William Caslon, its founder, was an engraver of ornamental devices on the barrels of firearms, who also made bookbinding stamps and dies that were noted by Watts for their neatness and accuracy. He introduced young Caslon to other prominent employing printers, with the result that three of them raised the sum of five hundred pounds with which to set Caslon up in business, Watts contributing one fifth of the amount, |