and want of rest the preceding night, I fell fast asleep, and
continued so till the meeting broke up, when one was kind enough to
rouse me. This was therefore the first house I was in, or slept in, in
Philadelphia.

FRANKLIN AS A PRINTER

From the 'Autobiography,' in Bigelow's Edition of Franklin's Works

I now began to think of getting a little money beforehand, and
expecting better work, I left Palmer's to work at Watts's, near
Lincoln's Inn Fields, a still greater printing-house. Here I continued
all the rest of my stay in London.

At my first admission into this printing-house I took to working at
press, imagining I felt a want of the bodily exercise I had been used
to in America, where presswork is mixed with composing. I drank only
water; the other workmen, near fifty in number, were great guzzlers of
beer. On occasion, I carried up and down stairs a large form of types
in each hand, when others carried but one in both hands. They wondered
to see, from this and several instances, that the _Water American_, as
they called me, was _stronger_ than themselves, who drank _strong_
beer! We had an alehouse boy, who attended always in the house to
supply the workmen. My companion at the press drank every day a pint
before breakfast, a pint at breakfast with his bread and cheese, a
pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner, a pint in the
afternoon about six o'clock, and another when he had done his day's
work. I thought it a detestable custom; but it was necessary, he
supposed, to drink _strong_ beer that he might be _strong_ to labor. I
endeavored to convince him that the bodily strength afforded by beer
could only be in proportion to the grain or flour of the barley
dissolved in the water of which it was made; that there was more flour
in a pennyworth of bread; and therefore, if he would eat that with a
pint of water, it would give him more strength than a quart of beer.
He drank on, however, and had four or five shillings to pay out of his
wages every Saturday night for that muddling liquor; an expense I was
free from. And thus these poor devils keep themselves always under.

Watts after some weeks desiring to have me in the composing-room, I
left the pressmen: a new _bien venu_ or sum for drink, being five
shillings, was demanded of me by the compositors. I thought it an
imposition, as I had paid below: the master thought so too, and
forbade my paying it. I stood out two or three weeks, was acc