(TIMOTHY COLE'S ENGRAVINGS OF OLD ENGLISH MASTERS.) STABLE INTERIOR. PAINTED BY GEORGE MORLAND. ENGRAVED BY T. COLE FROM THE PAINTING IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY. BY PAUL LEICESTER FORD, Author of "The True George Washington," "The Honorable Peter Stirling," etc. VIRTUE and a Trade, are a Child's best Portion," said Poor Richard, and he not merely claimed, "He that hath a Trade, hath an Estate," but "He that has a Trade has an Office of Profit and Honour." Through all Franklin's life, he never missed an opportunity to praise the workman, be his calling what it might, and nowhere did he show more pride than in his own particular handicraft. Printing was not a family "mystery," as it was then termed, of the Franklins, they having hitherto been blacksmiths, dyers, or soap-makers. But Josiah, with ten boys to place in the world, had to seek other crafts, and James Franklin was sent to London, presumptively to his uncle Benjamin, and there apprenticed to a printer. His time out, he purchased a press and types, and returning to Boston in March, 1717, established "his Printing House in Queen Street, near the Prison," otherwise described as "over against Mr. Mills Schools." Thanks to his English training, probably, he was a good workman, and the issues of his press rank among the best of American printing of his time. From the first he seems to have prospered, and within a year needed an appren tice, who was easily found in his brother Benjamin, though not so easily bound, for the lad had a "hankering for the sea," and so objected to being apprenticed to the more humdrum life of printer's devil. "I stood out some time," he relates, "but at last was persuaded and signed the indentures when I was but twelve years old. I was to serve as an apprentice till I was twenty-one years of age, only I was to be allowed journeyman's wages during the last year. In a little time I made great proficiency in the business and became a very useful hand to my brother." It was certainly good fortune which secured him the instruction of a master printer of London training instead of some slovenly self-taught colonial, for, as Poor Richard remarked, "Learn of the skilful: He that teaches himself hath a fool for his master." It is to be questioned if the first years of the apprenticeship were of any particular value to Benjamin, save on their mechanic side, for the product of James Franklin's press is a dreary lot of "gone-nothingness." A few of the New England sermons of the day; Stoddard's "Treatise on Conversion"; Stone's "Short Catechism"; "A Prefatory Letter about Psalmody," in defense of Copyright, 1899, by THE CENTURY Co. All rights reserved. church singing, which many Puritans still held to be unholy; an allegory styled "The Isle of Man, or, Legal Proceedings in Manshire Against Sin"; Care's "English Liberties"; sundry pamphlets on the local politics of the moment, such as "A Letter from One in the Country to his Friend in Boston," "News from the Moon," " A Friendly Check from a Kind Relation to the Chief Cannonneer," and "A Word of Comfort to a Melancholy Country"; two or three tractates on inoculation, and one aimed half at the Boston clergy and half at the fair sex, entitled "Hooped Petticoats Arraigned by the Light of Nature and the Law of God," were the chief output of the new printer during the years his brother served him. In 1719 a more interesting job was undertaken, for the postmaster of Boston employed James Franklin to print for him the "Boston Gazette," the third paper issued in America. The contract was a short one, for the appointment of a new official led to other changes, and the printer, having supplied his office with what was needful for a newspaper and trained his men in the work, found himself left in the lurch. Partly in retaliation, and partly to utilize this experience and PRESS AT WHICH FRANKLIN WORKED IN WATTS'S material, James Franklin, though" dissuaded by some of his friends from the undertaking, as not likely to succeed, one newspaper being, in their judgment, enough for America," on August 7, 1721, issued the first number of "The New England Courant," which he promised should "be published once a Fortnight, and out of meer Kindness to my Brother-Writers, I intend now and then to be (like them) very, very dull; for I have a strong Fancy, that unless I am sometimes flat and low, this paper will not be very grateful to them." The dullness was to be only one feature of the new venture, however, for the "Publisher earnestly desires his Friends may favor him from time to time with some short Piece, Serious, Sarcastick, Ludicrous, or otherways amusing; or sometimes professedly Dul (to accomodate some of his Aequaintance) that this Courant may be of the more universal Use." This prospectus was taken in bad part by the already established journals, and one irate rival addressed an open letter to "Jack Dullman," taking him to task for his "very very frothy fulsome Account of himself "; a reproof the printer acknowledged in a joking poem which still more deeply stirred the objector, and led him to reply to what he termed "Franklin's hobbling Verse," which came not "from Parnassus; but as a little before the Composure you had been rakeing in the Dunghill, its more probable the corrupt Streams got into your Brains, and your Dull cold Skul precipitated them into Ribaldry." In his appeal for subscribers," The Undertaker" of the "Courant" pledged himself that nothing should be inserted "reflecting on the Clergy (as such) of whatever Denomination, nor relating to the Affairs of Government, and no Trespass against Decency or good manners." As already told, however, the "Courant" was quickly breaking lances with the most prominent of the Boston clergy, and within a twelvemonth of its beginning it printed an article which by implication threw discredit on the civil authorities. For this "Scandalous Libel" James Franklin was, by order of the council, taken into custody, publicly censured, and imprisoned for four weeks. Moreover, an attempt was made to pass a resolve that "no such Weekly Paper be hereafter Printed or Published without the same being first perused and allowed by the Secretary," but this was rejected as too extreme. The reproof and punishment were ineffectual, and the authorities complained that the |