Benjamin kept up the fight against beer-drinking until he fairly conquered. One after another yielded to his example and arguments, and abandoned the old habit of swilling down beer, until a thorough reformation was wrought in the printing office. The strength, health, tact, and enterprise of the "_water-drinker_" convinced them that he was right. The title, "_Our Water-drinker_" bandied about the printing house, came to be really an appellation of esteem. The printing press, on which Benjamin worked at Watts' printing house, is now in the Patent Office at Washington, where many visitors go to see it. Forty years after he worked on it, Franklin was in London, where his fame was greater than that of any other man, and he called at the old printing house, and going up to the familiar press, he said to the employees: "It is just forty years since I worked at this press, as you are working now." [Illustration: FRANKLIN'S LONDON PRINTING PRESS] The announcement rather startled them. That a public man of so much fame should ever have even served in a printing office as they were serving, was almost too much for them to believe. The publisher of this volume has in his possession _fac-simile_ letters from different gentlemen in England, fully verifying the press the engraving of which appears above. XXVIII. AT HOME AGAIN. We have seen that James Ralph and Benjamin parted company. Ralph had more brains than heart. His intellectual powers were greater than his principles. The reader may ask what became of him. After continuing poor and unsuccessful, engaging in several literary ventures that did little more than aggravate his poverty, and changing from one kind of work to another, good fortune seemed to become his portion. Mr. Parton says: "As a political writer, pamphleteer, and compiler of booksellers' history, he flourished long. Four ministers thought his pen worth purchasing: Sir Robert Walpole, Mr. Pelham, Lord Bute, and the Duke of Bedford. The nobleman last named evidently held him in high esteem, and furnished the money for one of Ralph's political periodicals. Lord Bute, it is said, settled upon him an annuity of six hundred pounds. Fox praises the fairness, and Hallam the diligence, displayed in his two huge folios of the 'History of William III.' His works may be examined by the curious in the library of Harvard University and in the Philadelphia city library. In estimating the career of this erring man, we should not forget that many of the noblemen and statesmen with whom he associated, and for whose advancement he toiled, had less principle than he, and had not his excuse."[3] "Swimming is one of the fine arts, I think," said Benjamin to Wygate, a printer with whom he was on the most intimate terms. "I feel about as much at home in the water as I do on the land."