t the Franklin brothers published.

The blame for all the trouble James heaped upon Benjamin, and all the
credit for success he took to himself. James declared that Ben had the big
head--and he probably was right; but he forgot that the big head, like
mumps and measles and everything else in life, is self-limiting and good
in its way. So, to teach Ben his proper place, James reminded him that he
was only an apprentice, with three years yet to serve, and that he should
be seen seldom and not heard all the time, and that if he ran away he
would send a constable after him and fetch him back.

Ben evidently had a mind open to suggestive influences, for the remark
about running away prompted him to do so. He sold some of his books and
got himself secreted on board a ship about to sail for New York.

Arriving at New York, in three days he found the broad-brimmed Dutch had
small use for printers and no special admiration for the art preservative;
and he started for Philadelphia.

Every one knows how he landed in a small boat at the foot of Market Street
with only a few coppers in his pocket, and made his way to a bakeshop and
asked for a threepenny loaf of bread, and being told they had no
threepenny loaves, then asked for threepenny's worth of any kind of bread,
and was given three loaves. Where is the man who in a strange land has not
suffered rather than reveal his ignorance before a shopkeeper? When I was
first in England and could not compute readily in shillings and pence, I
would toss out a gold piece when I made a purchase and assume a 'igh and
'aughty mien. And that Philadelphia baker probably died in blissful
ignorance of the fact that the youth who was to be America's pride bought
from him three loaves of bread when he wanted only one.

The runaway Ben had a downy beard all over his face, and as he took his
three loaves and walked up Market Street, with a loaf under each arm,
munching on the third, he was smiled upon in merry mirth by the buxom
Deborah Read, as she stood in the doorway of her father's house. Yet
Franklin got even with her, for some months after, he went back that way
and courted her, grew to love him, and they "exchanged promises," he says.
After some months of work and love-making, Franklin sailed away to England
on a wild-goose chase. He promised to return soon and make Deborah his
wife. But he wrote only one solitary letter to the broken-hearted girl and
did not come back for nearly two years.