Happy now to find that books had the charm to keep his darling boy at home, and thinking that if he were put into a printing office he would be sure to get books enough, his father determined to make a printer of him, though he already had a son in that business. Exactly to his wishes, that son, whose name was James, had just returned from London with a new press and types. Accordingly, without loss of time, Ben, now in his twelfth year, was bound apprentice to him. By the indentures Ben was to serve his brother till twenty-one, _i.e._ _nine_ full years, without receiving one penny of wages save for the last twelve months! How a man pretending to religion could reconcile it to himself to make so hard a bargain with a younger brother, is strange. But perhaps it was permitted of God, that Ben should learn his ideas of oppression, not from reading but from suffering. The deliverers of mankind have all been made perfect through suffering. And to the galling sense of this villanous oppression, which never ceased to rankle on the mind of Franklin, the American people owe much of that spirited resistance to British injustice, which eventuated in their liberties. But Master James had no great cause to boast of this selfish treatment of his younger brother Benjamin; for the old adage "foul play never thrives," was hardly ever more remarkably illustrated than in this affair, as the reader will in due season be brought to understand. CHAPTER VII. _Ben in clover--Turns a Rhymer--Makes a prodigious noise in Boston --Bit by the Poetic Tarantula--Luckily cured by his father._ Ben is now happy. He is placed by the side of the press, the very mint and coining place of his beloved _books_; and animated by that delight which he takes in his business, he makes a proficiency equally surprising and profitable to his brother. The field of his reading too is now greatly enlarged. From the booksellers' boys he makes shift, every now and then, to borrow a book, which he _never fails to return_ at the promised time: though to accomplish this he was often obliged to sit up till midnight, reading by his bed side, that he might be as good as his word. Such an extraordinary passion for learning soon commended him to the notice of his neighbours, among whom was an ingenious young man, a tradesman, named Matthew Adams, who invited him to his house, showed him all his books, and offered to lend him any that he wished to read.