“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.

THE PERILS OF THE WILDERNESS.

On the 31st day of October, in the year 1753, a young man, whose name was as yet unknown outside the colony of Virginia, though it was destined to attain world-wide fame, set out from Williamsburg, in that colony, on a momentous errand.  It was the first step taken in a series of events which were to end in driving the French from North America, and placing this great realm under English control,—­the opening movement in the memorable French and Indian War.  The name of the young man was George Washington.  His age was twenty-one years.  He began thus, in his earliest manhood, that work in the service of his country which was to continue until the end.