like you would write
outside of business? You would print that this one had failed, that
that one had failed, and one don't collect bills handy from people who
have failed. I tell you that the whole province is about to fail, and
Philadelphia is going to ruin, and I advise you to turn right about and
pack up, and go to some other place. There will never be any chance for
you here."

Tap, tap, tap, went his cane, and he moved away.

Young Franklin started to go to his work with a heavy heart. The cane
stopped. Old Mr. Calamity looked around.

"I've warned you," said he with a flourish of the cane. "I tell you, I
tell you everything is going back to the wilderness, and I pity you, but
not half so much as you will pity yourself if you embark in the printing
business, and print failures for nothing, to fail yourself some day.
This is the age of rags, rags!"

Tap, tap, tap, went on the cane, and the old gentleman chuckled.

Young Franklin went on in his business. What was he to do? He saw
everything with hopeful eyes. But he was young. His heart told him to go
on in his undertaking, and he went on.

He had been laughed at in Boston, and old Mr. Calamity had risen up here
to laugh at him again.

He knew not how it was, but it was in him to become a printer. As the
young waterfowl knows the water as soon as it toddles from his nest, so
young Franklin from his boyhood saw his life in this new element; the
press was to be the source of America's rise, power, and glory, the
throne of the republic; it was to make and mold and fulfill by its
influence public opinion; the same public opinion was to rule America,
and the young printer of Philadelphia was to lead the way now, and to
reap the fruits of his spiritual resolution after he was seventy years
of age. He saw it, he felt it, he knew his own mind. So he left behind
old Mr. Calamity for the present, but he was soon to meet him again.

He had now taken a third step on the ladder of life. His business should
be built upon honor.

The next time that he met Mr. Calamity, the old gentleman gave him a
view of the prospects of a printer.

"If you think that you are going to get your foot on the ladder of life
by becoming a printer, you will find that you have mistaken your
calling. None of the great men of old were printers, were they? Homer
was no printer, was he?"

"I have never heard that he was."

"Nor did you hear of any one who ever printed the Iliad or the Odysse