proper letters to defray the cost would be sent on the same ship. No such
letters were ever written, and the boy found himself without money three
thousand miles from home. By working at the printer's trade he supported
himself for eighteen months in London. He relates how his companions at the
press drank six pints of strong beer a day, while he proved that the
"Water-American," as he was called, was stronger than any of them. The
workmen insisted that he should contribute to the general fund for drink.
He refused, but so many things happened to his type whenever he left the
room that he came to the following conclusion: "Notwithstanding the
master's protection, I found myself oblig'd to comply and pay the money,
convinc'd of the folly of being on ill terms with those one is to live with
continually." Such comments on the best ways of dealing with human nature
are frequent in the _Autobiography_.

At the age of twenty, he returned to Philadelphia, much wiser for his
experience. Here he soon had a printing establishment of his own. By
remarkable industry he had at the age of forty-two made sufficient money to
be able to retire from the active administration of this business. He
defined leisure as "time for doing something useful." When he secured this
leisure, he used it principally for the benefit of others. For this reason,
he could write in his _Autobiography_ at the age of seventy-six:--

"... were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a
repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the
advantages authors have in a second edition, to correct some faults of
the first. So I might, besides correcting the faults, change some
sinister accidents and events of it for others more favorable. But though
this were denied, I should still accept the offer. Since such a
repetition is not to be expected, the next thing like living one's life
over again seems to be a recollection of that life."