that strange little store and printing-office on Market Street. He sent one of his journeymen to Charleston to establish a branch printing-office, of which Franklin was to pay one-third of the expense and receive one-third of the profits. After continuing in this manner some five years, the Legislature of the province in 1736 elected him clerk of that body, which enabled him to retain the printing of the notes, laws, paper money, and other public jobs, which he tells us were very profitable.

The next year Colonel Spotswood, PostmasterGeneral of the colonies, made him deputy postmaster of Philadelphia. This appointment reinforced his other occupations. He could collect news for his Gazette more easily, and also had greater facilities for distributing it to his subscribers. In those days the postmaster of a town usually owned a newspaper, because he could have the post-riders distribute copies of it without cost, and he did not allow them to carry any newspaper but his own. Franklin had been injured by the refusal of his predecessor to distribute his Gazette; but when he became postmaster, finding his subscriptions and advertisements much increased and his competitor's newspaper declining, he magnanimously refused to retaliate, and allowed his riders to carry the rival journal.

How much money Franklin actually made in his business is difficult to determine, although many guesses have been made. He was, it would seem, more largely and widely engaged than any other printer in the colonies, for nearly all the important

printing of the middle colonies and a large part of that of the southern colonies came to his office. He made enough to retire at forty-two years of age, having been working for himself only twenty years.

On retiring he turned over his printing and publishing interest to his foreman, David Hall, who was to carry on the business in his own way, but under the firm name of Franklin & Hall, and to pay Franklin a thousand pounds a year for eighteen years, at the end of which time Hall was to become sole proprietor. This thousand pounds which Franklin was to receive may be looked upon as an indication that before his retirement the business was yielding him annually something more than that sum, possibly almost two thousand pounds, as some have supposed.

He never again engaged actively in any gainful trade, and his retirement seems to have been caused by the passion for scientific research which a few years before had seized him, and by that trait of his character which sometimes appears in the form of a sort of indolence and at other times as a wilful determination to follow the bent of his inclinations and pleasures. Although extremely economical and thrifty in practice as well as in precept, he had very little love of money, and took no pleasure in business for mere business' sake. The charges of sordidness and mean penny-wisdom are not borne out by any of the real facts of his life. It is not improbable that just before his retirement he had advanced far A enough in his scientific experiments to see dimly in the future the chance of a great discovery and dis

tinction. He certainly went to work with a will as soon as he got rid of the cares of the printing-office, and in a few years was rewarded.

He had invested some of his savings in houses and land in Philadelphia, and the thousand pounds (five thousand dollars) which he was to receive for eighteen years was a very good income in those times, and more than equivalent to ten thousand dollars at the present day. He moved from the bustle of Market Street and his home in the old printing, stationery, and grocery house, and is supposed to have taken a house at the southeast corner of Second and Race Streets. This was at the northern edge of the town, close to the river, where in the summer evenings he renewed his youthful fondness for swimming.

It must be confessed that very few self-made men, conducting a profitable business with the prospect of steady accumulation of money, have willingly resigned it in the prime of life, under the influence of such sentiments as appear to have moved him. But that intense and absolute devotion to business which is the prevailing mood of our times had not then begun in America, and it was rather the fashion to retire.

The years which followed his retirement, and before he became absorbed in political affairs, seem to have had for him a great deal of ideal happiness. He lived like a man of taste and a scholar accustomed to cultured surroundings more than like a self-made man who had battled for forty years with the material world. In writing to his mother, he said,

"I read a great deal, ride a little, do a little business for myself, now and then for others, retire when I can, and go into company when I please; so the years roll round, and the last will come, when I would rather have it said, He lived usefully than He died rich."

After his withdrawal from business he remained postmaster of Philadelphia, and in 1753, after he had held that office for sixteen years, he was appointed Postmaster-General of all the colonies, with William Hunter, of Virginia, as his colleague, and he retained this position until dismissed from it by the British government in 1774, on the eve of the Revolution. There was some salary attached to these offices, that of Postmaster-General yielding three hundred pounds. The postmastership of Philadelphia entailed no difficult duties at that time, and his wife assisted him; but when he was made Postmaster-General he more than earned his salary during the first few years by making extensive journeys through the colonies to reform the system. The salary attached to the office was not to be allowed unless the office produced it; and during the first four years the unpaid salary of Franklin and his colleague amounted to nine hundred and fifty pounds. He procured faster post-riders, increased the number of mails between important places, made a charge for carrying newspapers, had all newspapers carried by the riders, and reduced some of the rates of postage.

But he was not the founder of the modern postoffice system, nor was he the first Postmaster-General of America, as some of his biographers insist. He merely improved the system which he found and in

creased its revenues as others have done before and since.

The leisure he sought by retirement was enjoyed but a few years. He became more and more involved in public affairs, and soon spent most of his time in England as agent of Pennsylvania or other colonies, and during the Revolution he was in France. There was a salary attached to these offices. As agent of Pennsylvania he received five hundred pounds a year, and when he represented other colonies he received from Massachusetts four hundred, from Georgia two hundred, and from New Jersey one hundred.

These sums, together with the thousand pounds a year from Hall, would seem to be enough for a man of his habits; but apparently he used it all, and was often slow in paying his debts.

In a letter written to Mrs. Stevenson in London, while he was envoy to France, he expresses surprise that some of the London tradespeople still considered him their debtor for things obtained from them during his residence there some years before, and he asks Mrs. Stevenson, with whom he had lodged, how his account stands with her. The thousand pounds from Hall ceased in 1766, and after that his income must have been seriously diminished, for the return from his invested savings is supposed to have been only about seven hundred pounds. He appears to have overdrawn his account with Hall, for there is a manuscript letter in the possession of Mr. Howard Edwards, of Philadelphia, written by Hall March 1, 1770, urging Franklin to pay nine hun