The boy ran errands, cleaned the presses, swept the shop, tied up bundles,
did the tasks that no one else would do; and incidentally "learned the
case." Then he set type, and after a while ran a press. And in those days
a printer ranked considerably above a common mechanic. A man who was a
printer was a literary man, as were the master printers of London and
Venice. A printer was a man of taste. All editors were printers, and
usually composed the matter as they set it up in type. Thus we now have
the expressions: a "composing-room," a "composing-stick," etc. People once
addressed "Mr. Printer," not "Mr. Editor," and when they met "Mr. Printer"
on the street removed their hats--but not in Philadelphia.

Young Franklin felt a proper degree of pride in his work, if not vanity.
In fact, he himself has said that vanity is a good thing, and whenever he
saw it come flaunting down the street, always made way, knowing that there
was virtue somewhere back of it--out of sight perhaps, but still there.
James, being a brother, had no confidence in Ben's intellect, so when Ben
wrote short articles on this and that, he tucked them under the door so
that James would find them in the morning. James showed these articles to
his friends, and they all voted them very fine, and concluded they must
have been written by Doctor So-and-So, Ph.D., who, like Lord Bacon, was a
very modest man and did not care to see his name in print.

Yet, by and by, it came out who it was that wrote the anonymous "hot
stuff," and then James did not think it was quite so good as he at first
thought, and moreover, declared he knew whose it was all the time. Ben was
eighteen and had read Montaigne, and Collins, and Shaftesbury, and Hume.
When he wrote he expressed thoughts that then were considered very
dreadful, but that can now be heard proclaimed even in good orthodox
churches. But Ben had wit and to spare, and he leveled it at government
officials and preachers, and these gentlemen did not relish the