come back from
England with a press and letters, and at the age of twelve Benjamin was
bound to his brother as an apprentice.

James soon discovered Benjamin's cleverness with the pen and induced
him to compose two ballads, "The Light-House Tragedy," being the story
of a recent shipwreck, and "Blackbeard," a sailor's song on the capture
of that notorious pirate. These ballads, which the author frankly, and
no doubt truthfully, describes as "wretched stuff," were printed and
hawked about the streets by the boy. "The Light-House Tragedy" at least
sold prodigiously, and the boy's vanity was correspondingly flattered;
but the father stepped in and discouraged such work, warning Benjamin
that "verse-makers were generally beggars." So, perhaps, we were spared
a mediocre poet and given a first-rate prose writer, for the stuff of
poetry was not in Franklin's sober brain.

At this time the good people of Massachusetts were dependent for the
news of the world on a single paper, the "Boston News-Letter,"
afterwards called the "Gazette" (and indeed there was no other paper in
the whole country), published, as was commonly the case in those days,
by the postmaster of the town. But in 1721 James Franklin, much against
the advice of his friends, started a rival paper, the "New England
Courant," which the young apprentice had to carry about to subscribers
after helping it through the press. Benjamin, however, soon played a
more important part than printer's devil. Several ingenious men were in
the habit of writing little Addisonian essays for the paper, and
Benjamin, hearing their conversation, was fired to try his own skill.
"But being still a boy,"--so he tells the story himself,--"and
suspecting that my brother would object to printing anything of mine in
his paper if he knew it to be mine, I contrived to disguise my hand,
and writing an anonymous paper, I put it at night under the door of the
printing-house. It was found in the morning and communicated to his
writing friends when they called in as usual. They read it, commented
on it in my hearing, and I had the exquisite pleasure of finding it met
with their approbation, and that in their different guesses at the
author none were named but men of some character among us for learning
and ingenuity." Naturally the lad was flattered by the success of his
ruse; and he continued to send in his anonymous essays for more than a
year. They have been pretty conclusively identified as the