Note 9 — Chapter XV

The kind of club into which the compositors of a printing-house always form themselves has from time immemorial been termed a chapel; and the petty tricks by which Franklin was annoyed were said to be played him by the chapel ghost. "My employer desiring," he says, "after some weeks, to have me in the composing room, I left the pressmen. A new bien-venu for drink, being five shillings, was demanded of me by the compositors. I thought it an imposition, as I had paid one to the pressmen. The master thought so too, and forbade my paying it. 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, &c. &c., 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 my master's protection, I found myself obliged to comply and pay the money."