He went a little way up the street, and looked around him.
A boy was coming down, carrying a basket of bread.
"My young friend," said Franklin, "where did you get that bread?"
"At the baker's," said the boy.
"And where is the baker's?"
The boy showed him the little baker shop just around the corner.
Young Franklin was so hungry that he could hardly wait. He hurried into
the shop and asked for three-penny worth of bread.
The baker gave him three great, puffy rolls.
Franklin had not expected to get so much, but he took the rolls and
walked out.
His pockets were already full, and so, while he ate one roll, he held
the others under his arms.
As he went up Market street, eating his roll, a young girl stood in a
doorway laughing at him. He was, indeed, a very funny-looking fellow.
The girl's name was Deborah Read. A few years after that, she became the
wife of Benjamin Franklin.
Hungry as he was, Franklin found that he could eat but one of the rolls,
and so he gave the other two to a poor woman who had come down the river
in the same boat with him.
As he was strolling along the street he came to a Quaker meeting-house.
The door was open, and many people were sitting quietly inside. The
seats looked inviting, and so Franklin walked in and sat down.
The day was warm; the people in the house were very still; Franklin was
tired. In a few minutes he was sound asleep.
And so it was in a Quaker meeting-house that Benjamin Franklin found the
first shelter and rest in Philadelphia.
Later in the day, as Franklin was strolling toward the river, he met a
young man whose honest face was very pleasing to him.
"My friend," he said, "can you tell me of any house where they lodge
strangers?"
"Yes," said the young man, "there is a house on this very street; but it
is not a place I can recommend. If thee will come with me I will show
thee a better one."
Franklin walked with him to a house on Water street, and there he found
lodging for the night.
And so ended his first day in Philadelphia.
* * * * *
VIII.--GOVERNOR WILLIAM KEITH.
Franklin soon obtained work in a printing house owned by a man named
Keimer.
He found a boarding place in the house of Mr. Read, the father of the
girl who had laughed at him with his three rolls.
He was only seventeen years old, and he soon became acquainted with
several young people in the town who loved books.
In a little while he began to lay up money, and he tried to forget his
old home in Boston as much as he could.
One day a letter came to Philadelphia for Benjamin Franklin.
It was from Captain Robert Holmes, a brother-in-law of Franklin's.
Captain Holmes was the master of a trading sloop that sailed between
Boston and Delaware Bay. While he was loading his vessel at Newcastle,
forty miles below Philadelphia, he had happened to hear about the young
man Franklin who had lately come from Boston.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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