I had but little schooling, being taken home at ten years to help my father’s business of tallow-chandler.  I disliked the trade, and desired to go to sea; living near the water in our home at Boston, I learned to swim well, and to manage boats.  From a child I was fond of reading, and laid out all my little money on books, such as Bunyan’s works, which I sold to get Burton’s “Historical Collections”; and in my father’s little library there were Plutarch’s “Lives,” De Foe’s “Essays on Projects,” and Mather’s “Essays to do Good.”  This bookish inclination determined my father to bind me apprentice to my brother James, a printer in Boston, and in a little time I became very proficient.  I had access to more books, and often sat up most of the night reading.  I had also a fancy to poetry, and made some little pieces; my brother printed them, and sent me about the town to sell them.

I now took in hand the improvement of my writing by various exercises in prose and verse, being extremely ambitious to become a good English writer.  My time for these exercises was at night and on Sundays.  At about 16 years of age, meeting with a book on the subject, I took to a vegetable diet, and thus not only saved an additional fund to buy books, but also gained greater clearness of head.  I now studied arithmetic, navigation, geometry, and read Locke “On the Human Understanding,” the “Art of Thinking,” by Messrs. du Port Royal, and Xenophon’s “Memorable Things of Socrates.”  From this last I learned to drop my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation, and to put on the humble inquirer and doubter.

My brother had begun to print a newspaper, “The New England Courant,” the second that appeared in America.  Some of his friends thought it not likely to succeed, one newspaper being enough for America; yet at this time there are not less than five-and-twenty.  To this paper I began to contribute anonymously, disguising my hand, and putting my MSS. at night under the door of the printing-house.  These were highly approved, until I claimed their authorship.

But I soon took upon me to assert my freedom, and determined to go to New York.  A friend of mine agreed with the captain of a sloop for my passage; I was taken on board privately, and in three days found myself in New York, near 300 miles from home, a boy of but seventeen, and with very little money in my pocket.  The printer there could not give me employment, but told me of a vacancy in Philadelphia, 100 miles further.  Thither, therefore, I proceeded, partly by land, and partly by sea, and landed with one Dutch dollar in my pocket.

There were two printers in the town, both of them poorly qualified.  Bradford was very illiterate, and Keimer, though something of a scholar, was a mere compositor, knowing nothing of press-work.  Keimer gave me employment.  He had been one of the French prophets, and could act their enthusiastic agitations.  He did not profess any particular religion, but something of all on occasion, and had a good deal of the knave in his composition.  I began to have acquaintance among the young people that were lovers of reading; and gaining money by industry and frugality, I lived very agreeably, forgetting Boston as much as I could.