Read Online A Benjamin Franklin Reader by Walter Isaacson - Free Book Online

his former employer, a quirky printer named Samuel Keimer, beat him to it. So Franklin began writing for an older paper in Philadelphia, published by an established gentleman named Andrew Bradford, in hopes of putting Keimer out of business. Keimer decided to serialize an encyclopedia as a way to build circulation, and in the first installment included the entry on “abortion.” So Franklin, using the pseudonym of two outraged women, “Celia Shortface” and “Martha Careful,” manufactured the first known abortion debate in America.
    T HE A MERICAN W EEKLY M ERCURY , J ANUARY 28, 1729
    Mr. Andrew Bradford,
    In behalf of my self and many good modest women in this city (who are almost out of countenance) I beg you will publish this in your next Mercury, as a warning to Samuel Keimer: that if he proceed farther to expose the secrets of our sex, in that audacious manner, as he hath done in his gazette, no. 5. Under the letters, a.b.o. to be read in all taverns and coffee-houses, and by the vulgar: I say if he publish any more of that kind, which ought only to be in the repository of the learned; my sister Molly and my self, with some others, are resolved to run the hazard of taking him by the beard, at the next place we meet him, and make an example of him for his immodesty. I subscribe on the behalf of the rest of my aggrieved sex. Yours,
    Martha Careful
    Friend Andrew Bradford,
    I desire thee to insert in thy next Mercury, the following letter to Samuel Keimer, for by doing it, Thou may perhaps save Keimer his ears, and very much oblige our sex in general, but in a more particular manner. Thy modest Friend, Celia Shortface.
    Friend Samuel Keimer,
    I did not expect when thou puts forth thy advertisement concerning Thy Universal Instructor, (as Thou art pleased to call it,) That, thou would have Printed such things in it, as would make all the modest and virtuous women in Pennsylvania ashamed.
    I was last night in company with several of my acquaintance, and thee, and thy indecencies, was the subject of our discourse, but at last we resolved, that if thou continue to take such scraps concerning us, out of thy great dictionary, and publish it, as thou hath done in thy Gazette, No. 5, to make thy ears suffer for it: And I was desired by the rest, to inform thee of our resolution, which is that if thou proceed any further in that scandalous manner, we intend very soon to have thy right ear for it; therefore I advise thee to take this timely caution in good part; and if thou canst make no better use of thy dictionary, sell it at thy next luck in the bag; and if thou hath nothing else to put in thy Gazette, lay it down, I am, thy troubled friend,
    Celia Shortface

The Busy-Body
    The next week, as part of his crusade to put Keimer out of business, Franklin launched a series of classic essays for Bradford’s paper, signed Busy-Body. “By this means the attention of the public was fixed on that paper,” Franklin later recalled, “and Keimer’s proposals, which we burlesqued and ridiculed, were disregarded.” The Busy-Body was a scold and a tattler in the tradition of the character “Isaac Bickerstaff” that the English essayist Richard Steele had created, thus adding gossip columnist to the list of Franklin’s American firsts. He readily admitted that much of this was “nobody’s business,” but “upon mature deliberation” and “out of zeal for the public good,” he volunteered “to take nobody’s business wholly into my own hands.”
    B USY -B ODY #1, T HE A MERICAN W EEKLY M ERCURY , F EBRUARY 4, 1729
    Mr. Andrew Bradford,
    I design this to acquaint you, that I, who have long been one of your courteous readers, have lately entertained some thoughts of setting up for an author my self; not out of the least vanity, I assure you, or desire of showing my parts, but purely for the good of my country.
    I have often observed with concern, that your Mercury is not always equally entertaining. The delay of ships expected