translated into as many as twenty languages and is still in
circulation today.

Franklin kept a shop in connection with his printing office,
where he sold a strange variety of goods: legal blanks, ink,
pens, paper, books, maps, pictures, chocolate, coffee, cheese,
codfish, soap, linseed oil, broadcloth, Godfrey's cordial, tea,
spectacles, rattlesnake root, lottery tickets, and stoves--to
mention only a few of the many articles he advertised. Deborah
Read, who became his wife in 1730, looked after his house, tended
shop, folded and stitched pamphlets, bought rags, and helped him
to live economically. "We kept no idle servants, " says Franklin,
"our table was plain and simple, our furniture of the cheapest.
For instance, my breakfast was a long time bread and milk (no
tea), and I ate it out of a twopenny earthen porringer with a
pewter spoon."

With all this frugality, Franklin was not a miser; he abhorred
the waste of money, not the proper use. His wealth increased
rapidly. "I experienced too," he says, "the truth of the
observation, 'THAT AFTER GETTING THE FIRST HUNDRED POUND, IT IS
MORE EASY TO GET THE SECOND, money itself being of a prolific
nature." He gave much unpaid public service and subscribed
generously to public purposes; yet he was able, at the early age
of forty-two, to turn over his printing office to one of his
journeymen, and to retire from active business, intending to
devote himself thereafter to such public employment as should
come his way, to philosophical or scientific studies, and to
amusements.