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Franklin, Benjamin

"The Autobiography Of Benjamin Franklin"


So I went on now very agreeably.
<4> "A printing-house is always called a chapel by the
workmen, the origin of which appears to have been that
printing was first carried on in England in an ancient
chapel converted into a printing-house, and the title
has been preserved by tradition. The bien venu among
the printers answers to the terms entrance and footing
among mechanics; thus a journeyman, on entering a
printing-house, was accustomed to pay one or more gallons
of beer for the good of the chapel; this custom was
falling into disuse thirty years ago; it is very properly
rejected entirely in the United States."--W. T. F.
My lodging in Little Britain being too remote, I found another
in Duke-street, opposite to the Romish Chapel. It was two pair
of stairs backwards, at an Italian warehouse. A widow lady kept
the house; she had a daughter, and a maid servant, and a journeyman
who attended the warehouse, but lodg'd abroad. After sending to inquire
my character at the house where I last lodg'd she agreed to take
me in at the same rate, 3s. 6d. per week; cheaper, as she said,
from the protection she expected in having a man lodge in the house.
She was a widow, an elderly woman; had been bred a Protestant,
being a clergyman's daughter, but was converted to the Catholic
religion by her husband, whose memory she much revered; had lived much
among people of distinction, and knew a thousand anecdotes of them
as far back as the times of Charles the Second.


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