About this time, George Webb, who had bought his time of Keimer, with the aid of one of his female friends, solicited from the firm employment as a journeyman. Its situation was not such as to warrant his employment, but Franklin indiscreetly let him know as a secret that he expected to establish a newspaper soon; when he might have work for him. Bradford's newspaper, _The American Mercury_, he told Webb, was a paltry thing, stupid and wretchedly managed, and yet was profitable. "Three can keep a Secret if two are dead," is a saying of Poor Richard. It would have been well if Franklin on this occasion had been mindful of the wisdom in which it was conceived. He requested Webb not to mention what he said; but, as is often true under such circumstances, it would have been more prudent for him to have asked him to mention it. Webb did tell Keimer, and he immediately published the prospectus of a newspaper on which Webb was to be employed. This was resented by Franklin, and, to counteract the scheme, he and his friend Breintnal wrote some clever little essays for Bradford's newspaper under the title of the "Busy Body." In that dull sheet, they were, to borrow Shakespeare's image, like bright metal on sullen ground. Public attention was fixed upon them, and Keimer's prospectus was overlooked. He founded his newspaper nevertheless, and conducted it for nine months under the prolix name of the _Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences and Pennsylvania Gazette_. It never had, at any time, more than ninety subscribers, and, at the end of the nine months, in 1729, Franklin, who had for some time had his arms extended to catch it when it fell, bought it at a trifling price. Under his ownership, the cumbrous name of the paper was cut down simply to that of the _Pennsylvania Gazette_, and the absurd plan formed by Keimer of publishing an instalment of Chambers' Universal Dictionary of all the Arts and Sciences in every issue was abandoned for a strain of original comment and unctuous humor which made the _Gazette_ in popularity second only to _Poor Richard's Almanac_. Under Franklin's hands, the paper assumed from the beginning a better typographical appearance than any previously known to the Province, and some spirited observations by him on a controversy between Governor Burnet and the Massachusetts Assembly, which called into play his aversion to political tyranny, aroused so much public attention that all the leading citizens of the Province became subscribers. Many other subscribers followed in their train, and the subscriptions went on continually increasing until in a few years, to quote Franklin's own words, the _Gazette_ proved extremely profitable to him.