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on board a privateer, from whence I fetched him,” Franklin wrote. “No one imagined it was hard usage at home that made him do this. Every one that knows me thinks I am too indulgent a parent as well as master. When boys see prizes brought in and quantities of money shared among the men and their gay living, it fills their heads with notions that distract them and put them quite out of conceit with trades and the dull ways of getting money by working.”
    Returning home through Franklin’s intervention, he badgered his father into getting him an army commission and marched off to fight the French in Canada. Franklin expected the bitter war and harsh northern winter would send William scurrying home with a new appreciation for his life in Philadelphia. Instead, William thrived. His Pennsylvania regiment was decimated – sixteen soldiers were killed in one ambush; others succumbed to injuries or deserted. William wrote to his father, who included scant reports in the Gazette . Franklin’s newspaper made no mention of William’s promotion to captain. William returned home with military experience and self-confidence, but when Franklin refused to help him buy a commission in the British military, William relinquished his red uniform and gilt epaulet. His active duty amounted to 515 days.
    Almost immediately, William began another adventure. With fur trader George Croghan , he rode west to an Indian conference on the Ohio River. Like other Americans of his generation, young Franklin was overwhelmed by the richness of the land beyond the Alleghenies. He loved to share his story about “the country back of us” with his father, who was so impressed he sent copies of William’s journal to friends in England. In it, William wrote of the frontier’s majestic mountain ranges, grazing buffalo, black bears, and its great promise. He had feasted with his Indian hosts on fresh corn and venison and paddled canoes down the lush Ohio River.
    William was convinced that a fortune was waiting for the men who would possess these lands, then owned by small tribes of Native Americans who regarded them as hunting preserves. When William returned home, he talked of organizing trading companies and colonizing expeditions to establish England’s hold on the territory. For a while, the Ohio valley seemed to be all that interested him.
    Finally, Franklin pulled William aside and said the territory, as fascinating and important as it might become, was as substantial as a castle in the clouds. Franklin feared William was investing time in these fantasies because he was in line for a substantial inheritance. Franklin told his son he planned to spend the modest estate he had accumulated on himself and that William should think about a profession. “Will is now nineteen years of age, a tall proper youth, and much of a beau,” Franklin wrote in a letter to his mother. “He . . . begins of late to apply himself to business, and I hope will become an industrious man. He imagined his father had got enough for him, but I have assured him that I indent to spend what little I have, myself, if it please God that I live long enough, and as he by no means wants sense, he can see by my going on that I am like to be as good as my word.”
    Franklin would not allow his son to idle long after his frontier excursion. William’s wild stories made him popular at social gatherings, and he seemed content to bounce from one to another. Franklin introduced his son to Freemasonry , wherein William came into contact with Philadelphia’s most prominent thinkers in architecture, astrology, and mathematics. William began to understand his father’s place in this society, as a highly respected scientist. None revered Benjamin Franklin as much as young William. When Franklin lacked confidence even in himself, his son made up for the deficit. William pressed his father’s ideas sometimes long after Franklin had