association is not only
appropriate, but it is honorable to his memory who united in his life the
humblest manual toil and the loftiest flights of genius; who both set up
types and drew the lightning from heaven, and combined in his own person
the practical printer and the scientific philosopher.

By your courtesy, gentlemen, I have been invited to say a few words
appropriate to the New York-Typographical Society. It is with unfeigned
reluctance that I assume the task. In this presence I behold so many
better qualified for the undertaking than myself, that I am apprehensive I
shall be able neither to do justice to my theme nor satisfy the
expectations which you in your clemency have anticipated. True it is, that
in my early life I was connected with your fraternity by more immediate
ties than at present exist. Circumstances have modified my career, but I
should prove recreant to the best feelings of my heart, turn ingrate to
the pleasantest associations of memory, and forget the most efficient
causes which have favored my journey thus far to mellow years, were I
unmindful of the gratifications I enjoyed while a fellow laborer in your
noble pursuits. The press is the representative of the intellectual man on
earth; it is the expositor of his cogitative powers; the promulgator of
his most recondite labors; the strong arm of his support in the defence
and maintenance of his inherent rights as a member of the social compact;
the vindicator of his claims to the exalted station of one stamped in the
express image of God; it is the charter of freedom to ameliorated man in
the glorious strife of social organization, in the pursuits of life,
liberty, and happiness. Hence I have ever cherished the deepest regard for
those who have appropriated their time and talents to this vast engine of
civilization. I have ever looked upon the vocation as holding the
integrity of our highest privileges on earth; freedom of inquiry, freedom
of utterance, and the vast behests of civil communion, with the kindred of
every nation, and the tongues of every speech.

When I was a boy of ten years of age, I became acquainted with the
biography of Franklin. I had purchased at auction a Glasgow edition of his
Life and Essays. I had read _Robinson Crusoe_, _George Barnwell_, _The
House That Jack Built_, _AEsop's Fables_, the duodecimo edition of Morse's
_Geography_, and other common publications of the times. No work that I
have perused, from that juven