I now set up in partnership with Meredith, one of Keimer’s workmen, the money being found by Meredith’s father.  In the autumn of the preceding year, I had formed most of my ingenious acquaintance into a club of mutual improvement, which we called the Junto; it met on Friday evenings for essays and debates.  Every one of its members exerted himself in recommending business to our new firm.

Soon Keimer started a newspaper, “The Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences and Pennsylvania Gazette,” but after carrying it on for some months with only ninety subscribers he sold it to me for a trifle, and it proved in a few years extremely profitable.  With the help of two good friends I bought out Meredith in 1729, and continued the business alone.

I had turned my thoughts to marriage, but soon found that, the business of a printer being thought a poor one, I was not to expect money with a wife.  Friendly relations had continued between me and Mrs. Read’s family; I pitied poor Miss Read’s unfortunate situation, and our mutual affection revived.  Though there was a report of her husband’s death, and another report that he had a preceding wife in England, neither of these were certain, and he had left many debts, which his successor might be called on to pay.

But we ventured over these difficulties, and I took her to wife September 1, 1730.  None of the inconveniences happened that we had apprehended; she proved a good and faithful helpmate, assisted me much by attending the shop; we throve together, and have ever mutually endeavoured to make each other happy.

I now set on foot my first project of a public nature, that for a subscription library.  By the help of our club, the Junto, I procured fifty subscribers of forty shillings each to begin with, and ten shillings a year for fifty years.  We afterwards obtained a charter, and this was the mother of all the North American subscription libraries now so numerous, which have made the common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries.

III.—­The Scheme of Virtues

It was about 1733 that I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection.  I wished to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into.  As I knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other.  But I soon found that I had undertaken a task of great difficulty, and I therefore contrived the following method.  I included under thirteen names of virtues all that at that time occurred to me as necessary or desirable, and annexed to each a short precept, which expressed the extent which I gave to its meaning.