to his uncle Benjamin, and there apprenticed to a
printer. His time out, he purchased a press and types,
and returning to Boston in March, 1717, established
"his Printing House in Queen Street, near the Prison,"
otherwise described as "over against Mr. Mills Schools."
Thanks to his English training, probably, he was a good
workman, and the issues of his press rank among the
best of American printing of his time. From the first
he seems to have prospered, and within a year needed
an apprentice, who was easily found in his brother Ben-
jamin, though not so easily bound, for the lad had a
"hankering for the sea," and so objected to being ap-
prenticed to the more humdrum life of printer's devil.
"I stood out some time," he relates, "but at last was
persuaded and signed the indentures when I was but
twelve years old. I was to serve as an apprentice till
I was twenty-one years of age, only I was to be allowed
journeyman's wages during the last year. In a little
time I made great proficiency in the business and
became a very useful hand to my brother." It was
certainly good fortune which secured him the instruc-
tion of a master printer of London training instead of
some slovenly self-taught colonial, for, as Poor Richard
remarked, "Learn of the skilful: He that teaches him-
self hath a fool for his master."

It is to be questioned if the first years of the ap-
prenticeship were of any particular value to Benjamin,
save on their mechanic side, for the product of James
Franklin's press is a dreary lot of "gone-nothingness."
A few of the New England sermons of the day; Stod-
dard's "Treatise on Conversion"; Stone's "Short

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