l these _foibles_, as he regarded them, these
_sins_ as Christianity pronounces them. He declares this simply to
have been another of the great errors of his youth. She informed Ralph
of his conduct. He was enraged, broke off all further communication
with Franklin, and thirty-five years passed away before they met
again. Ralph, goaded to desperation, gained a wretched living in
various literary adventures; writing for any body, on any side, and
for any price. Indeed he eventually gained quite an ephemeral
reputation. He could express himself with vivacity, and several quite
prominent politicians sought the aid of his pen.

Franklin, thus relieved from the support of Ralph, soon after entered
a more extensive printing house, at Lincoln's Inn Fields. Though he
was exceedingly fond of a sparkling glass of wine in his convivial
hours, he was too much of a philosopher to stupefy his brain in
guzzling beer. His habitual daily beverage was cold water.

"My companion at the press," he wrote, "drank every day a
pint before breakfast, a pint at breakfast with his bread and
cheese, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at
dinner, and another when he had done his day's work. I
thought it a detestable custom. But it was necessary, he
supposed, to drink strong beer that he might be strong to
labor. I endeavored to convince him that the bodily strength
afforded by beer could only be in proportion to the grain or
the barley dissolved in the water of which it was made; that
there was more flour in a pennyworth of bread, and,
therefore, if he could eat that with a pint of water, it
would give him more strength than a quart of beer. He drank
on, however, and had four or five shillings to pay, out of
his wages, every Saturday night, for that vile liquor; an
expense I was free from; and thus these poor devils keep
themselves always under."

Again Franklin wrote in characteristic phrase, in reference to the
influence of his example over some of his companions,

"From my example, a great many of them left their muddling
breakfast of bread, beer and cheese, finding they could,
with me, be supplied from a neighboring house, with a large
porringer of hot water gruel, sprinkled with pepper,
crumbled with bread and a bit of butter in it, for the price
of a pint of beer,--three half-pence. This was a more
comfortable, as w