its busy life. Men were
still living who could remember when unbroken forests held the place of
Penn's city:--

"And the streets still reecho the names of the trees of the forest,
As if they fain would appease the Dryads whose haunts they molested."

Franklin was fond of contrasting his humble entrance into his adopted
home with the honorable station he afterwards acquired there. He was,
as he says, in his working dress, his best clothes coming round by sea.
He was dirty from being so long in the boat. His pockets were stuffed
out with shirts and stockings, and he knew no one nor where to look for
lodging. Fatigued with walking, rowing, and the want of sleep, he was
very hungry; and his whole stock of cash consisted in a single dollar
and about a shilling in copper coin, which he gave to the boatmen for
his passage. At first they refused it on account of his having rowed,
but he insisted on their taking it. "Man is sometimes," he adds, "more
generous when he has little money than when he has plenty; perhaps to
prevent his being thought to have but little."

It was indeed a strange entrance for the future statesman and
scientist. As he walked up to Market Street he met a boy with bread,
which reminded him forcibly of his hunger, and asking the boy where he
had got his loaf he went straight to the same baker's. Here, after some
difficulty due to difference of names in Boston and Philadelphia, he
provided himself with three "great puffy rolls" for threepence, and
with these he started up Market Street, eating one and carrying one
under each arm, as his pockets were already full. On the way he passed
the door of Mr. Read's house, where his future wife saw him and thought
he made an awkward, ridiculous appearance. At Fourth Street he turned
across to Chestnut and walked down Chestnut and Walnut, munching his
roll all the way. Coming again to the river he took a drink of water,
gave away the two remaining rolls to a poor woman, and started up
Market Street again. He found a number of clean-dressed people all
going in one direction, and by following them was led into the great
meeting-house of the Quakers. There he sat down and looked about him.
It was apparently a silent meeting, for not a word was spoken, and the
boy, being now utterly exhausted, fell into a sleep from which he was
roused only at the close of the service.

That night he lodged at the Crooked Billet, which despite its ominous
name seems to have b