How Franklin Came To Philadelphia

To-day we may make our way from New York to Philadelphia in

a two-hour "Flyer," with palace-car accommodations.

To-morrow, perhaps, the journey will be made in ninety

minutes. Such, at least, is the nearly-realized dream of

railroad-men. A century and a half ago this journey took

considerably more time, and was made with much less comfort.

There is on record an interesting narrative of how the trip

was mad in 1723, which is worth giving as a contrast to

present conditions.



The traveller was no less notable a personage than Benjamin

Franklin, who, much to the after-advantage of the Quaker

City, had run away from too severe an apprenticeship in

Boston, failed to obtain employment in New York, and learned

that work might be had in Philadelphia. The story of how he

came thither cannot be told better than in his own homely

language, so we will suffer him to speak for himself.







"Philadelphia was one hundred miles farther; I set out,

however, in a boat for Amboy, leaving my chest and things to

follow me round by sea. In crossing the bay, we met with a

squall that tore our rotten sail to pieces, prevented our

getting into the Kill, and drove us upon Long Island. In our

way a drunken Dutchman, who was a passenger too, fell

overboard; when he was sinking, I reached through the water

to his shock pate and drew him up, so that we got him in

again. His ducking sobered him a little, and he went to

sleep, taking first out of his pocket a book, which he

desired I would dry for him."



The book proved to be the "Pilgrim's Progress," in Dutch,

well printed, and with copper-plate illustrations, a fact

which greatly interested the book-loving traveller.



"On approaching the island, we found it was a place where

there could be no landing, there being a great surge on the

stony beach. So we dropped anchor, and swung out our cable

towards the shore. Some people came down to the shore, and

hallooed to us, as we did to them; but the wind was so high,

and the surge so loud, that we could not understand each

other. There were some small boats near the shore, and we

made signs, and called to them to fetch us; but they either

did not comprehend us, or it was impracticable, so they went

off.



"Night approaching, we had no remedy but to have patience

till the wind abated, and in the mean time the boatman and

myself concluded to sleep, if we could; and so we crowded

into the hatches, where we joined the Dutchman, who was

still wet, and the spray, breaking over the head of our

boat, leaked through to us, so that we were soon almost as

wet as he. In this manner we lay all night, with very little

rest; but the wind abating the next day, we made a shift to

reach Amboy before night, having been thirty hours on the

water, without victuals, or any drink but a bottle of filthy

rum, the water we sailed on being salt."



The story seems hard to credit. The travellers had already

spent fifteen times the period it now takes to make the

complete journey, and were but fairly started; while they

had experienced almost as much hardship as though they were

wrecked mariners, cast upon a desolate coast. The remainder

of the journey was no less wearisome. The traveller thus

continues his narrative:



"In the evening I found myself very feverish, and went to

bed; but having read somewhere that cold water drunk

plentifully was good for a fever, I followed the

prescription, and sweat plentifully most of the night. My

fever left me, and in the morning, crossing the ferry, I

proceeded on my journey on foot, having fifty miles to go to

Burlington, where I was told I should find boats that would

carry me the rest of the way to Philadelphia.



"It rained very hard all the day; I was thoroughly soaked,

and by noon a good deal tired; so I stopped at a poor inn,

where I stayed all night, beginning now to wish I had never

left home. I made so miserable a figure, too, that I found,

by the questions asked me, I was suspected to be some

runaway indentured servant, and in danger of being taken up

on that suspicion. However, I proceeded next day, and in the

evening got to an inn, within eight or ten miles of

Burlington, kept by one Dr. Brown. He entered into

conversation with me while I took some refreshment, and,

finding I had read a little, became very obliging and

friendly. Our acquaintance continued all the rest of his

life. He had been, I imagine, an ambulatory quack doctor,

for there was no town in England, nor any country in Europe,

of which he could not give a very particular account. He had

some letters, and was ingenious, but he was an infidel, and

wickedly undertook, some years after, to turn the Bible into

doggerel verse, as Cotton had formerly done with Virgil. By

this means he set many facts in a ridiculous light, and

might have done mischief with weak minds if his work had

been published, but it never was.



"At his house I lay that night, and arrived the next morning

at Burlington, but had the mortification to find that the

regular boats were gone a little before, and no other

expected to go before Tuesday, this being Saturday,

wherefore I returned to an old woman in the town, of whom I

had bought some gingerbread to eat on the water, and asked

her advice. She proposed to lodge me till a passage by some

other boat occurred. I accepted her offer, being much

fatigued by travelling on foot. Understanding I was a

printer, she would have had me remain in that town and

follow my business, being ignorant what stock was necessary

to begin with. She was very hospitable, gave me a dinner of

ox-cheek with great good-will, accepting only of a pot of

ale in return; and I thought myself fixed till Tuesday

should come.



"However, walking in the evening by the side of the river, a

boat came by which I found was going towards Philadelphia,

with several people in her. They took me in, and, as there

was no wind, we rowed all the way; and about midnight, not

having yet seen the city, some of the company were confident

we must have passed it, and would row no farther; the others

knew not where we were; so we put towards the shore, got

into a creek, landed near an old fence, with the rails of

which we made a fire, the night being cold, in October, and

there we remained till daylight. Then one of the company

knew the place to be Cooper's Creek, a little above

Philadelphia, which we saw as soon as we got out of the

creek, and arrived there about eight or nine o'clock on the

Sunday morning, and landed at Market Street wharf."



The closing portion of this na[:i]ve narrative is as

interesting in its way as the opening. The idea that

Philadelphia could be passed in the darkness and not

discovered seems almost ludicrous when we consider its

present many miles of river front, and the long-drawn-out

glow of illumination which it casts across the stream.

Nothing could be more indicative of its village-like

condition at the time of Franklin's arrival, and its

enormous growth since. Nor are the incidents and conditions

of the journey less striking. The traveller, making the best

time possible to him, had been nearly five full days on the

way, and had experienced a succession of hardships which

would have thrown many men into a sick-bed at the end. It

took youth, health, and energy to accomplish the difficult

passage from New York to Philadelphia in that day; a journey

which we now make between breakfast and dinner, with

considerable time for business in the interval. Verily, the

world moves. But to return to our traveller's story.



"I have been the more particular in this description of my

journey, and shall be so of my first entry into that city,

that you may in your mind compare such unlikely beginnings

with the figure I have since made there. I was in my

working-dress, my best clothes coming round by sea. I was

dirty from my being so long in the boat. My pockets were

stuffed out with shirts and stockings, and I knew no one,

nor where to look for lodging. Fatigued with walking,

rowing, and the want of sleep, I was very hungry; and my

whole stock of cash consisted in a single dollar, and about

a shilling in copper coin, which I gave to the boatmen for

my passage. At first they refused it, on account of my

having rowed, but I insisted on their taking it. Man is

sometimes more generous when he has little money than when

he has plenty; perhaps to prevent his being thought to have

but little.



"I walked towards the top of the street, gazing about till

near Market Street, where I met a boy with bread. I had

often made a meal of dry bread, and, inquiring where he had

bought it, I went immediately to the baker's he directed me

to. I asked for biscuits, meaning such as we had at Boston;

that sort, it seems, was not made in Philadelphia. I then

asked for a three-penny loaf, and was told they had none.

Not knowing the different prices, nor the names of the

different sorts of bread, I told him to give me

three-penny-worth of any sort. He gave me, accordingly,

three great puffy rolls. I was surprised at the quantity,

but took it, and having no room in my pockets, walked off

with a roll under each arm, and eating the other.



"Thus I went up Market Street as far as Fourth Street,

passing by the door of Mr. Read, my future wife's father,

when she, standing at the door, saw me, and thought I made,

as I certainly did, a most awkward, ridiculous appearance.

Then I turned and went down Chestnut Street, and part of

Walnut Street, eating my roll all the way, and, coming

round, found myself again at Market Street wharf, near the

boat I came in, to which I went for a draught of the

river-water, and, being filled with one of my rolls, gave

the other two to a woman and her child that came down the

river in the boat with us, and were waiting to go farther.



"Thus refreshed, I walked again up the street, which by this

time had many cleanly-dressed people in it, who were all

walking the same way. I joined them, and was thereby led

into the great meeting-house of the Quakers, near the

market. I sat down among them, and, after looking round a

while and hearing nothing said, became very drowsy through

labor and want of rest the preceding night, I fell fast

asleep, and continued so till the meeting broke up, when

some one was kind enough to arouse me. This, therefore, was

the first house I was in, or slept in, in Philadelphia."



There is nothing more simple, homely, and attractive in

literature than Franklin's autobiographical account of the

first period of his life, of which we have transcribed a

portion, nor nothing more indicative of the great changes

which time has produced in the conditions of this country,

and which it produced in the life of our author. As for his

journey from New York to Philadelphia, it presents, for the

time involved, as great a series of adventures and hardships

as does Stanley's recent journey through Central Africa. And

as regards his own history, the contrast between the

Franklin of 1723 and 1783 was as great as that which has

come upon the city of his adoption. There is something

amusingly ludicrous in the picture of the great Franklin,

soiled with travel, a dollar in his pocket representing his

entire wealth, walking up Market Street with two great rolls

of bread under his arms and gnawing hungrily at a third;

while his future wife peers from her door, and laughs to

herself at this awkward youth, who looked as if he had never

set foot on city street before.



We can hardly imagine this to be the Franklin who afterwards

became the associate of the great and the admired of

nations, who argued the cause of America before the

assembled notables of England, who played a leading part in

the formation of the Constitution of the United States, and

to whom Philadelphia owes several of its most thriving and

useful institutions. Millions of people have since poured

into the City of Brotherly Love, but certainly no other

journey thither has been nearly so momentous in its

consequences as the humble one above described.