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Updated: July 10, 2025
"I feel about as much at home in the water as I do on the land." "Well, I should go to the bottom pretty quick if I should venture where the water is over my head, for I can't swim any more than this printing-press can," answered Wygate. "Why don't you learn? It might be of great use to you sometime." "I should like to know how, but I never tried to learn."
"Some people can't practise what they preach if they try ever so hard, in business or in morals," rejoined Wygate. Wygate was the son of a wealthy man, who educated him quite thoroughly. He could read Latin and French about as well as he could English, and he could write very entertaining articles. He was fond of reading, too, and loved to discuss important questions.
"Well, what do you think of the plan?" "I should say that it is practicable, although the suggestion is entirely new to me. Could we get work at our business?" "I took it for granted that we could," replied Wygate. "I have no more means of knowing than you have."
What might do for Wygate, whose home is here, might not do for you, whose home is in America." "That may be." Benjamin's brief reply indicated that he was not quite certain on that point. "It appears to me," continued Mr. Denham, "that your first thoughts should be concerned about returning to Philadelphia, that you may set up business for yourself there."
In estimating the career of this erring man, we should not forget that many of the noblemen and statesmen with whom he associated, and for whose advancement he toiled, had less principle than he, and had not his excuse." "Swimming is one of the fine arts, I think," said Benjamin to Wygate, a printer with whom he was on the most intimate terms.
Not long after Wygate learned to swim, and while the feats that Benjamin performed in the water were still a subject of remark, some gentlemen proposed an excursion by water to Chelsea, several miles from London. "Wouldn't you like to go, Ben?" "Of course I would, if you are going." "I will go if you go. I will call round with some of the party and introduce you to them."
Denham, and reported to Wygate, to the no small disappointment of the latter; and both discarded the scheme and devoted themselves to honest labor. Benjamin heard of a place where he could get boarded at two shillings a week, when he was paying three shillings and sixpence a week in Duke Street. "I think I shall be under the necessity of changing," he said to the widow with whom he was boarding.
On returning, one of the gentlemen said: "Franklin, why can you not give us an exhibition of your antics in the water?" "Yes, Ben, do; let them see that what I have told them is literally true," entreated Wygate. "Come, Ben, do it," added Hall; "it will put Saltero's curiosities into the shade. These gentlemen will be so interested in your performances that they will forget all other curiosities."
As this brief experience, together with his teaching Wygate and Hall to swim, won him quite a reputation on this line, we may state here, that after Benjamin had decided to return to Philadelphia and arranged therefor, he received a note from Sir William Wyndham, a noted public man, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Bolingbroke administration, inviting him to pay him a visit.
"You are a water-American in more senses than one," remarked Wygate, in admiration of Benjamin's pranks in the water. "You could live in the water about as well as on the land." "That is not strange," responded Hall; "he believes in water, inside and outside; he only practises what he preaches, and that is what he ought to do."
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