"
After all he did not carry his point. His own words about the affair
were as follows:
"I stood out two or three weeks, was accordingly considered as an
excommunicate, and had so many little pieces of private malice
practised on me, by mixing my sorts, transposing and breaking my
matter, etc., etc., if ever I stepped out of the room,--and all
ascribed to the _chapel ghost_, which they said ever haunted those not
regularly admitted,--that, notwithstanding the master's protection, I
found myself obliged to comply and pay the money; convinced of the
folly of being on ill terms with those one is to live with
continually."
Benjamin kept up the fight against beer-drinking until he fairly
conquered. One after another yielded to his example and arguments, and
abandoned the old habit of swilling down beer, until a thorough
reformation was wrought in the printing office. The strength, health,
tact, and enterprise of the "_water-drinker_" convinced them that he
was right. The title, "_Our Water-drinker_" bandied about the printing
house, came to be really an appellation of esteem.
The printing press, on which Benjamin worked at Watts' printing house,
is now in the Patent Office at Washington, where many visitors go to
see it. Forty years after he worked on it, Franklin was in London,
where his fame was greater than that of any other man, and he called
at the old printing house, and going up to the familiar press, he said
to the employees:
"It is just forty years since I worked at this press, as you are
working now.
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