Before long, Ben began to appreciate the advantages of his new line of work. His appetite for reading had always grown with the eating; of late he had devoured Pilgrim’s Progress and other works by Bunyan, Burton’s Historical Collections, Plutarch’s Lives, Defoe’s Essay on Projects, and various of Cotton Mather’s preachments. Now that he was thrown into regular contact with the most literate element in a highly literate society, he discovered that an even wider array of literature fell open to him. As apprentice to a printer, he daily dealt with
