BOSTONAMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION1906
Copyright, 1906
American Unitarian Association
The four essays in this volume were written for celebrations orcommemorations in which several persons took part. Each of them is,therefore, only a partial presentation of the life and character of itssubject. The delineation in every case is not comprehensive andproportionate, but rather portrays the man in some of his aspects andqualities.
I. Franklin
An address delivered before the meetingof the American Philosophical Society tocommemorate the two hundredth anniversaryof the birth of Benjamin Franklin, Philadelphia,
April 20, 1906.
II. Washington
An address given before the Union LeagueClub of Chicago at the exercises in commemorationof the birth of Washington,
February23, 1903.
III. Channing
An address made at the unveiling of theChanning statue on the occasion of the onehundredth anniversary of the birth of WilliamEllery Channing, Boston,
June 1, 1903.
IV. Emerson
An address delivered on the commemorationof the centenary of the birth of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Boston,
May 24, 1903.
The facts about Franklin as a printer are simple and plain, butimpressive. His father, respecting the boy's strong disinclination tobecome a tallow-chandler, selected the printer's trade for him, aftergiving him opportunities to see members of several different trades attheir work, and considering the boy's own tastes and aptitudes. It wasat twelve years of age that Franklin signed indentures as an apprenticeto his older brother James, who was already an established printer. Bythe time he was seventeen years old he had mastered the trade in all itsbranches so completely that he could venture, with hardly any money inhis pocket, first into New York and then into Philadelphia without afriend or acquaintance in either place, and yet succeed promptly inearning his living. He knew all departments of the business. He was apressman as well as a compositor. He understood both newspaper and bookwork. There were at that time no such sharp subdivisions of labor and nosuch elaborate machinery as exist in the trade to-day; and Franklincould do with his own eyes and hands, long before he was of age,everything which the printer's art was then equal to. When the faithlessGovernor Keith caused Franklin to land in London without any resourceswhatever except his skill at his trade, the youth was fully capable ofsupporting himself in the great city as a printer. Franklin had beeninduced by the governor to go to England, where he was to buy a completeoutfit for a good printing office to be set up in Philadelphia. He hadalready presented the governor with an inventory of the materials neededin a small printing office, and was competent to make a criticalselection of all these materials; yet when he arrived in London on thiserrand he was only eighteen years old. Thrown completely on his ownresources in the great city, he immediately got work at a famousprinting house in Bartholomew Close, but soon moved to a still largerprinting house, in which he remained during the rest of his stay inLondon. Here he worked