Vegetarianism has been a stepping-stone to wealth in more than one instance. Undoubtedly Franklin’s vegetarianism was useful to him in a pecuniary as well as in a moral point of view. He writes:—“When about sixteen years of age, I happened to meet with a book written by one Tryson, recommending a vegetable diet. I determined to go into it. My brother, being unmarried, did not keep home, but boarded himself and his apprentices in another family. My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an inconvenience, and I was frequently chid for my singularity. I made myself acquainted with Tryson’s manner of preparing some of his dishes—such as boiling potatoes or rice, making pastry, puddings, and a few others; and then proposed to my brother, that if he would give me, weekly, half the money he paid for my board, I would board myself. He instantly agreed to it, and I presently found that I could save half what he paid me. This was an additional fund for the buying of books; but I had another advantage in it. My brother and the rest going from the printing-house to their meals, I remained there alone, and, despatching presently my light repast (which was often no more than a biscuit or a slice of bread, a handful of raisins, or a tart from the pastrycook’s, and a glass of water), had the rest of the time till their return for study, in which I made the greater progress from that greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension which generally attend temperance in eating and drinking. Now it was that, being on some occasion made ashamed of my ignorance in figures, which I had twice failed learning when at school, I took Cocker’s book on ‘Arithmetic,’ and went through the whole by myself with the greatest ease. I also read Seller’s and Thorny’s book on ‘Navigation,’ which made me acquainted with the little geometry it contains; but I never proceeded far in that science. I also read, about this time, Locke on the ‘Human Understanding;’ and the ‘Art of Thinking,’ by one of the writers of Port Royal.”