"Ax(e) to grind" redux

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 2 Jun 2005, Fred Shapiro inquired:
>
>The OED states the following:
>
>"to have axes to grind (orig. U.S. politics): to have private ends to
>serve [in reference to a story told by Franklin]"
>
>Can anyone supply any details as to where the Franklin story referred to
>here is published?

Sam Clements responded:
>
>According to Christine Amer in AHD of Idioms,
>
>"...comes from a story by Charles Miner, published in 1811, about a boy
>who was flattered into turning the grindstone for a man sharpening his
>ax.  He worked hard untill the school bell rang, whereupon the man,
>instead of thanking the boy, began to scold him for being late and told
>him to hurry to school."

This question came up recently on the alt.usage.english newsgroup, and I
dug up an article that helps explain how Miner's story got attributed to
Franklin:

-----
New York Times, Apr 12, 1914, (Book Review) p. 190
"Queries and Answers in All Branches of Literature"

Can the editor tell me where to find the story of the man who had the axe
to grind? It is generally attributed to Franklin, and I believe myself to
have read it once in one of his books, but cannot find it now. I want to
place it, and shall be grateful for information.

According to Walsh's Handy Book of Literary Curiosities the phrase about
which our correspondent inquires has been frequently attributed to
Benjamin Franklin, but it really belongs to Charles Miner (1780-1865), and
occurs in an essay, entitled "Who'll turn the Grindstone?" originally
contributed to The Wilkes-Barre Gleaner, a country newspaper in the
interior of Pennsylvania, in 1811. The author says that when he was a
little boy he was accosted one cold Winter morning by a man with an axe on
his shoulder. [...]
The essay, it will be seen, is imitated from Franklin's "Don't pay too
much for your whistle." To make the analogy more complete, the series to
which it belonged was gathered up into a book under the title of "Essays
from the Desk of Poor Robert the Scribe," Doylestown, 1815.
The lines which contains the phrase referred to are as follows:
When I see a merchant over-polite to his customers, begging them to taste
a little brandy and throwing half his goods on the counter--thinks, I,
that man has an axe to grind.
-----

So the similarity of the story to Franklin's "Whistle" story, and its
inclusion in an anthology under the pen name "Poor Robert" (suggestive of
Franklin's "Poor Richard"), led people to attribute the story to Franklin.
On APS, I see attributions to Franklin going back to 1836. And in the
early 20th century, credit was given to Franklin in the widely read _Elson
Readers_ by William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck (Elson also coauthored
the "Dick & Jane" series). In Book 5 of the _Readers_ series, Elson and
Keck included both "The Whistle" and "The Axe to Grind", allowing for a
side-by-side comparison:

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/7lsrd11.txt

There's still the question of when Miner's story was originally published.
Both of the above sources say 1811, but Sam found the story appearing
(unattributed) in the Nov. 28, 1810 issue of _The Centinel_ of
Gettysburg, Pa., reprinted from _The Luzerne Federalist_.

More on Charles Miner in this interesting blog entry:

http://vernondent.blogspot.com/2004/10/blogging-in-1820.html


--Ben Zimmer