executive ability, and his wonderful powers of attraction among all with whom he was associated in any enterprise. We dwell upon the great affairs of those later years in which he had such a directing hand, but these peculiar characteristics of his were being developed and matured a half century before the historian of his country devotes his pages to his later works. Franklin's accounts of all these matters is as engaging as it is frank; and it is this same frankness which also gives us that other and more human side of his early life in which occur those youthful follies and misdoings which seemed to have furnished his enemies with their most pointed weapons.
In 1728 he made a partnership with his friend Meredith for the extension of his printing business, and soon thought of establishing a paper.
My hopes of success, as I told him, [his narrative proceeds], were founded on this: that the then only newspaper, printed by Bradford, was a paltry thing, wretchedly managed, no way entertaining, and yet was profitable to him; I therefore thought a good paper would scarcely fail of good encouragement.[1] [But his scheme getting to the ears of his old employer, Keimer, the latter began a paper]; and, after carrying it on three quarters of a year, with at most only ninety subscribers, he offered it me for a trifle; and I, having been ready some time to go on with it, took it in hand directly, and it proved in a few years extremely profitable to me.
He now called the paper the Pennsylvania Gazette, and his first number was issued 2 October, 1729. He says:
Our first papers made quite a different appearance from any before in the province; a better type, and better printed. * * * Our number [of subscribers] went on growing continually. This was one of the first good effects of my having learned a little to scribble; another was that the leading men, seeing a newspaper now in the hands of one who could also
- ↑ Bigelow, i. 145.
