Franklin's Autobiography: (Eclectic English Classics)Franklin, Benjamin
History
Franklin's Autobiography: (Eclectic English Classics)
Franklin, Benjamin
Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790
But my giving this account of it here is to show something of the
interest I had, every one of these exerting themselves in recommending
business to us. Breintnal particularly procured us from the Quakers
the printing forty sheets of their history, the rest being to be done
by Keimer; and upon this we worked exceedingly hard, for the price was
low. It was a folio, pro patria size, in pica, with long primer notes.
I composed of it a sheet a day, and Meredith worked it off at press;
it was often eleven at night, and sometimes later, before I had
finished my distribution[95] for the next day's work, for the little
jobs sent in by our other friends now and then put us back. But so
determined I was to continue doing a sheet a day of the folio that one
night, when, having imposed[96] my forms, I thought my day's work
over, one of them by accident was broken, and two pages reduced to
pi,[97] I immediately distributed and composed it over again before I
went to bed; and this industry, visible to our neighbors, began to
give us character and credit; particularly, I was told, that mention
being made of the new printing office at the merchants' Every-Night
Club, the general opinion was that it must fail, there being already
two printers in the place, Keimer and Bradford; but Dr. Baird (whom
you and I saw many years after at his native place, St. Andrew's, in
Scotland) gave a contrary opinion: "For the industry of that
Franklin," says he, "is superior to anything I ever saw of the kind; I
see him still at work when I go home from club, and he is at work
again before his neighbors are out of bed." This struck the rest, and
we soon after had offers from one of them to supply us with
stationery; but as yet we did not choose to engage in shop business.
I mention this industry the more particularly and the more freely,
though it seems to be talking in my own praise, that those of my
posterity who shall read it may know the use of that virtue, when they
see its effects in my favor throughout this relation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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