And the young Bostonian at once set out on his way to the city where he made his home the remainder of his long and eventful life, and which in its oldest institutions, whether of philanthropy, of benevolence, of education, of science, or of business, testifies to his genius of organization and his fertility of resources.
The story of Franklin's landing in Philadelphia on that October Sunday morning in 1723, the same day in the week when in 1706 he first drew breath in Boston, is well known but always interesting. His walk up Market Street, with his three penny worth of rolls, "with a roll under each arm and eating the other," and back by Chestnut and Walnut Streets to the place of the landing, "to which I went for a draught of the river water, where being filled with one of my rolls, gave the other two to a woman and her child that came down the river with us, and were waiting to go farther."
Thus refreshed, I walked again up the street which by this time had many clean-dressed people in it, who were all walking the same way. I joined them, and thereby was led into the great meeting of the Quakers near the market. I sat down among them, and after looking round awhile and hearing nothing said, being very drowsy thro' labor 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.[1]
It was a notable day in the annals of our city in which Franklin was introduced to it, and the simple story in his own inimitable phrases seems ever to renew an interest in its perusal. He wrote this narrative nearly half a century afterwards, but the vividness of his memory brought up to his mind the quaint
- ↑ Bigelow, i. 63.
