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.
From boyhood Franklin had been interested in natural phenomena.

His "Journal of a Voyage from London to Philadelphia", written at sea as he returned from his first stay in London, shows unusual powers of exact observation for a youth of twenty.

Many of the questions he propounded to the Junto had a scientific bearing.