While working with his brother, the young apprentice wrote two ballads, which he printed and sold in the streets of Boston. His father, however, ridiculed the performance; so he "escaped being a poet." He adopted at this time a somewhat original method to improve his prose writing. Meeting with an odd volume of the _Spectator_, he purchased it and read it "over and over," and wished to imitate the style. "Making short notes of the sentiment in each sentence," he laid them by, and afterwards tried to write out the papers without looking at the original. Then on comparison he discovered his faults and corrected them. Finding his vocabulary deficient, he turned some of the tales into verse, then retranslated them into prose, believing that the attempt to make verses would necessitate a search for several words of the same meaning. "I also sometimes jumbled my collection of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavoured to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentence and complete the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of my thoughts." Meeting with a book on vegetarianism, Franklin determined to give the system a trial. This led to some inconvenience in his brother's house-keeping, so Franklin proposed to board himself if his brother would give him half the sum he paid for his board, and out of this he was able to save a considerable amount for the purpose of buying books. Moreover, the time required for meals was so short that the dinner hour afforded considerable leisure for reading. It was on his journey from Boston to Philadelphia that he first violated vegetarian principles; for, a large cod having been caught by the sailors, some small fishes were found in its stomach, whereupon Franklin argued that if fishes ate one another, there could be no reason against eating them, so he dined on cod during the rest of the journey. After reading Xenophon's "Memorabilia," Franklin took up strongly with the Socratic method of discussion, and became so "artful and expert in drawing people, even of superior knowledge, into concessions, the consequence of which they did not foresee," that some time afterwards one of his employers, before answering the most simple question, would frequently ask what he intended to infer from the answer. This practice he gradually gave up, retaining only the habit of expressing his opinions with "modest diffidence."