Jenny Franklin, the "pet and beauty of the family," Benjamin's favorite sister, was born in 1712, and was six years younger than he.
"My little Jenny," said Josiah, "has the Franklin heart." Little Ben found that heart in her baby days, and it was true to him to the end.
Uncle Benjamin had entertained such large hopes of the future of little Ben since the boy first sent to him a piece of poetry to England, that he wrote of him:
"For if the bud bear grain, what will the top?"
and again:
"When flowers are beautiful before they're blown,What rarities will afterward be shown!If trees good fruit un'noculated bear,You may be sure't will afterward be rare.If fruits are sweet before they've time to yellow,How luscious will they be when they are mellow!"
He also saw great promise in bright little Jenny, who had heart full of sympathy and affection. Jenny, Ben, and Uncle Benjamin became one in heart and companionship.
Beacon Hill was a lovely spot in summer in old Boston days. Below it was the Common, with great trees and windingways. It commanded a view of the wide harbor and far blue sea. It looked over a curve of the river Charles, and the bright shallow inlet or pond, where the Boston and Maine depot now stands, that was filled up from the earth of the fine old hillside. The latter place may have been the scene of Ben's bridge, which he built in the night in a forbidden way. The place is not certainly known.
Uncle Benjamin, one Sunday after church, took Ben and little Jenny, who was a girl then, to the top of the hill. It was a showery afternoon in summer—now bright, now overcast—and all the birds were singing on the Common between the showers.
In one of the shining hours between the showers they sat down under an ancient forest tree, and little Jenny rested her arms on one of the knees of Uncle Benjamin, and Ben leaned on the other. The old man looked down on the harbor, which was full of ships, and said:
"I wish I had my sermons that I left behind. I would read one of them to you now."
"I would rather hear you talk," said Ben, with conscientious frankness.
"So would I," said Jenny, who thought that Ben was a philosopher even at this early age, and who echoed nearly everything that he said.
"Look over the harbor," said the old man. "There are more and more ships coming in every year. This is going to be a great city, and America will become a great country. Ben, I hope there will never be any wars on this side of the water. War is sloth's maintainer, and the shield of pride;it makes many poor and few rich, and fewer wise.[A]Ben, this is going to be a great country, and I want you to be true to the new country."
"I will always be true to my country," said Ben.
"And I will be true to my home," said little Jenny.
"So you will, so you will, my darling little pet; I can see that," said Uncle Benjamin.
Ben was so pleased at his echo that he put his arm around his sister's neck and kissed her many times.
The old man's heart was touched at the scene. He thought of his lost children, who were sleeping under the cover of the violets now.
"It is going to rain again," he said. "The robins are all singing, and we will have to go home. But, children, I want to leave a lesson in your minds. Listen to Uncle Ben, whose heart is glad to see you so loving toward each other and me.
"More than wealth, more than fame, more than anything, is the power of the human heart, and that power is developed by seeking the good of others.Live for influences that multiply, and for the things that live. Now what did I say, Ben?"
"You said that more than wealth, more than fame, more than anything, was the power of the human heart, and that that power was developed in seeking the good of others."
"That's right, my man.—Now, Jenny, what did I say?"
"I couldn't repeat all those big words, uncle."
"Well, you lovely littlecreeter, you; you do not need to repeat it; you know the lesson already; it was born in you; you have the Franklin heart!"
"Beloved Boston," Franklin used to say when he became old. What wonder, when it was associated with memories like these!
Sometime after Uncle Benjamin, who became familiarly known as Uncle Ben, had revealed to little Ben his heart's secret, and how that he had for his sake sold his library of pamphlets, which was his other self, the two again went down to the wharves to see the ships that had come in.
They again seated themselves in an anchored boat.
"Ben," said Uncle Benjamin, "I have something more on my mind. I did not tell you all when we talked here before. You will never forget what I told you—will you?"
"Never, uncle, if I live to be old. My heart will always be true to you."
"So it will, so it will, Ben. So it will. I want to tell you something more about your Great-uncle Thomas. You favor him. Did any one ever tell you that the people used to think him to be a wizard?"
"No, no, uncle. You yourself said that once. What is a wizard?"
"It is a man who can do strange things, no one can tell how. They come to him."
"But what made them think him a wizard?"
"Oh, people used to be ignorant and superstitious, likeReuben of the Mill, your father's old friend and mine. There was an inn called the World's End, at Ecton, near an old farm and forge. The people used to gather there and tell stories about witches and wizards that would have made your flesh creep, and left you afraid to go to bed, even with a guinea pig in your room.
"Your Great-uncle Thomas was always inventing things to benefit the people. At last he invented a way by which it might rain and rain, and there might be freshets and freshets, and yet their meadows would not be overflown. The water would all run off from the meadows like rain from a duck's back. He made a kind of drain that ran sideways. Now the pious Brownites thought that this was flying in the face of Providence, and people began to talk mysteriously about him at the World's End.
"But it was not that which I have heavy on my mind or light on my mind, for it is a happy thought. There are not many romantic things in our family history. The Franklins were men of the farm, forge, and fire. But there was one thing in our history that was poetry. It was this—listen now.
"What was the name of that man to whom I sold the pamphlets?" he asked in an aside.
"Axel."
"That is right—always remember that name—Axel.
"Now listen to that other thing. Your uncle, or great-uncle Thomas, started a subscription for a chime of bells. The family all loved music—that is what makes your father play the violin. Your Great-uncle Thomas loved music in the air. You may be able to buy a spinet for Jenny some day.
"Now your Great-uncle Thomas's soul is, as it were, in those chimes of Nottingham. I pray that you may go to England some day before you die and hear the chimes of Nottingham. You will hear a part of your own family's soul, my boy. It is the things that men do that live. If you ever find the pamphlets, which are myself—myself that is gone—you will read in them my thoughts on the Toleration Act, and on Liberty, and on the soul, and the rights of man. What was the man's name?"
"Axel."
"Right."
Little Jenny, who loved to follow little Ben, had come down to the wharf to hear "Uncle Benjamin talk." She had joined them in the boat on the sunny water. She had become deeply interested in Uncle Tom and the chimes of Nottingham.
"Uncle Ben," she asked, "was Uncle Tom ever laughed at?"
"Yes, yes; the old neighbors who would hang about the smithy used to laugh at him. They thought him visionary. Why did you ask me that?"
"What makes people who come to the shop laugh at Ben? It hurts me. I think Ben is real good. He is good to me, and I am always going to be good to him. I like Ben better thanalmostanybody."
"A beneficent purpose is at first ridiculed," said Uncle Benjamin.
Little Ben seemed to comprehend the meaning of this principle, but the "big words" were lost on Jenny.
"He whose good purpose is laughed at," said Uncle Benjamin,"will be likely to live to laugh at those who laughed at him if he so desired; but, hark! a generous man does not laugh at any one's right intentions. Ben, never stop to answer back when they laugh at you. Life is too short. It robs the future to seek revenge."
Uncle Benjamin was right.
Did little Ben heed the admonition of his uncle on this bright day in Boston, to follow beneficence with a ready step, and not to stop to "answer back"? Was little Jenny's heart comforted in after years in finding Ben, who was so good to her now,commended?We are to follow a family history, and we shall see.
As the three went back to the Blue Ball, Ben, holding his uncle by the one hand and Jane by the other, said:
"I do like to hear Jane speak well of me, and stand up for me. I care more for that thanalmostany other thing."
"Well, live that she may always speak well of you," said Uncle Benjamin; "so that she may speak well of you when you two shall meet for the last time."
"Uncle," said Jenny, "why do you always have something solemn to say? Ben isn't solemn, is he?"
"No, my girl, your brother Ben is a very lively boy. You will have to hold him back some day, I fear."
"No, no, uncle, I shall always push him on. He likes to go ahead. I like to see him go—don't you?"
Peter Folger, Quaker, the grandfather of Benjamin Franklin, was one of those noblemen of Nature whose heart beat for humanity. He had been associated in the work of Thomas Mayhew, the Indian Apostle, who was the son of Thomas Mayhew, Governor of Martha's Vineyard. The younger Mayhew gathered an Indian church of some hundred or more members, and the Indians so much loved him that they remained true to him and their church during Philip's war.
What stories Abiah Franklin could have told, and doubtless did tell, of her old home at Nantucket!—stories of the true hearts of the pioneers, of people who loved others more than themselves, and not like the sea-rovers who at this time were making material for the Pirate's Own Book.
Josiah, too, had his stories of Old England and the conventicles, heroic tales of the beginning of the long struggle for freedom of opinion. Hard and rough were the stories of the Commonwealth, of Cromwell, Pym, and Sir Henry Vane, the younger.
There was one very pleasing old tale that haunted Boston at this time, of the Hebrew parable order, or after themanner of the German legend. Such stories were rare in those days of pirates, Indians, and ghosts, the latter of whom were supposed to make their homes in their graves and to come forth in their graveclothes, and to set the hearts of unquiet souls to beating, and like feet to flying with electrical swiftness before the days of electricity.
Governor Winthrop—the same who got lost in the Mystic woods, and came at night to an Indian hut in a tree and climbed into it, and was ordered out of it at a later hour when the squaw came home—took a very charitable view of life. He liked to reform wrongdoers by changing their hearts. Out of his large love for every one came this story of old Boston days.
We will listen to it by the Franklin fire in the candle shop. It was an early winter tale, and it will be a good warm place to hear it there.
"It is a cold night," said Josiah, "and Heaven pity those without fuel on a night like this! There are not overmany like Governor Winthrop in the world."
Abiah drew her chair up nearer to the great fire, for it made one chilly to hear the beginning of that story, but the end of it made the heart warm.
"It was in the early days of the colony," said Josiah, "and the woods in the winter were bare, and the fields were cold. There was a lack of wood on the Mystic near the town.
"A poor man lived there on the salt marsh with his family. He had had a hard time to raise enough for their support. A snowstorm came, and his fuel was spent, his hearth was cold, and there was nothing to burn.
"The great house of the Governor rose over the ice-bordered marshes. Near it were long sheds, and under them high piles of wood brought from the hills.
"The poor man had no wood, but after a little time smoke was seen coming out of his chimney.
"There came one day a man to the Governor, and said:
"'Pardon me, Governor, I am loath in my heart to accuse any one, but in the interest of justice I have something which I must tell you.'
"'Speak on, neighbor.'
"'Some one has been stealing your wood.'
"'It is a hard winter for the poor. Who has done this?'
"'The man who lives on the marsh.'
"'His crop was not large this year.'
"'No, it failed.'
"'He has a wife and children.'
"'True, Governor.'
"'He has always borne a good reputation.'
"'True, Governor, and that makes the case more difficult.'
"'Neighbor, don't speak of this thing to others, but send that man to me.'
"The man on the marsh came to the Governor's. His face was as white as snow. How he had suffered!
"'Neighbor,' said the Governor, 'this is a cold winter.'
"'It is, your Honor.'
"'I hope that your family are comfortable.'
"'No, your Honor; they have sometimes gone to bed supperless and cold.'
"'It hurts my conscience to know that. Have you any fuel?'
"'None, your Honor. My children have kept their bed for warmth.'
"'But I have a good woodpile. See the shed: there is more wood there than I can burn. I ought not to sit down by a comfortable fire night after night, while my neighbor's family is cold.'
"'I am glad that you are so well provided for, for you are a good man, and have a heart to feel for those in need.'
"'Neighbor, there is my woodpile. It is yours as well as mine. I would not feel warm if I were to sit down by my fire and remember that you and your wife and your children were cold. When you need any fuel, come to my woodpile and take all the wood that you want.'
"The man on the marsh went away, his head hanging down. I believe that there came into his heart the powerful resolution that he would never steal again, and we have no record that he ever did. The Governor's hope for him had made him another man.
"He came for the wood in his necessity one day. The Governor looked at him pleasantly.
"'Why did you not come to me before?'"
Josiah Franklin looked around on the group at the fireside, and opened the family Bible.
"Do you think that the Governor did right, Brother Ben?"
"Well, it isn't altogether clear to me."
"What do you think, Abiah?"
"Father would have done as he did. He hindered no one, but helped every one. He saw life on that side."
"Well, little Ben, what have you to say?"
"The Governor looked upon the heart, didn't he? He felt for the man. Would it not be better for all to look that way? The worth of life depends upon those we help, lift, and make, not in those we destroy. I like the old Governor, I do, and I am sorry that there are not many more like him. That seems like a Luke story, father. Read a story from Luke."
Josiah read a story from Luke.
There followed a long prayer, as usual. Then the children kissed their mother and Jenny and crept up to their chamber. The nine-o'clock bell had rung, and the streets were still. The watchman with his lantern went by, saying, "Nine o'clock, and all is well!" None of the family heard him say, "Ten o'clock, and all is well!" They were in slumberland after their hard, homely toil, and some of them may have been dreaming of the good old Governor, who followed literally the words of the Master who taught on the Mount of Beatitudes.
LittleBenjamin once had the boy fever to go to sea. This fever was a kind of nervous epidemic among the boys of the time, a disease of the imagination as it were. Many boys had it in Boston; they disappeared, and the town crier called out something like this:
"Hear ye!Hear ye!Boy lost—lost—lost!Who returns him will be rewarded."
He rang the bell as he cried. The crier's was the first bell that was rung in Boston.
But why did boys have this peculiar fever in Boston and other New England towns at this time? It was largely owing to the stories that were told them. Few things affect the imagination of a boy like a story. De Foe's Robinson Crusoe was the live story of the times. Sindbad the sailor was not unknown.
Old sailors used to meet by the Town Pump and spin wonderful "yarns," as story-telling of the sea was then described.
But there was one house in Boston that in itself was a story. It was made of brick, and rose over the town, at theNorth End, in the "Faire Green Lane," now decaying Chatham Street. In it lived Sir William Phips, or Phipps, the first provincial Governor under the charter which he himself had brought from England.
Sir William had been born poor, in Maine, and had made his great fortune by an adventure on the sea.
The story of Sindbad the Sailor was hardly more than a match for his, with its realities.
He was one of a family of twenty-six children; he had been taught to read and write when nearly grown up; had come to Boston as an adventurer, and had found a friend in a comely and sympathetic widow, who helped to educate him, and to whom he used to say:
"All in good time we will come to live in the brick house in the Faire Green Lane."
A Boston boy like young Franklin, among the pots and kettles of life, could not help recalling what this poor sailor lad had done for himself when he saw the brick house looming over the bowery lane.
The candle shop at the Blue Ball, that general place for story-telling by winter fires, when it was warm there and the winds were cold outside, often heard this story, and such stories as the Winthrop Silver Cup, which may still be seen; of lively Anne Pollard, who was the first to leap on shore here from the first boat load of pioneers as it came near the shore at the North End, when the hills were covered with blueberries; of old "sea dogs" and wonderful ships, like Sir Francis Drake and the Golden Hynde, or "Sir Francis and his shipload of gold," which ship returned to England oneday with chests of gold, but not with Sir Francis, whose body had been left in many fathoms of sea! Ben listened to these tales with wonder, with Jenny by his side, leaning on him.
What was the story of Sir William Phipps, that so haunted the minds of Boston boys and caused their pulses to beat and the sea fever to rise?
It was known in England as well as in America; it was a wonder tale over the sea, for it was associated with titled names. Uncle Ben knew it well, and told it picturesquely, with much moralizing.
Let us suppose it to be a cold winter's night, when the winds are abroad and the clouds fly over the moon. Josiah Franklin has played his violin, the family have sung "Martyrs"; the fire is falling down, and "people are going to meetin'," as a running of sparks among the soot was called, when such a thing happened in the back of the chimney.
Little Ben's imagination is hungry, and he asks for the twice-told tale of Sir William. He would be another Sir William himself some day.
By the dying coals Uncle Ben tells the story. What a story it was! No wonder that it made an inexperienced boy want to go to sea, and especially such boys as led an uneventful life in the ropewalk or in the candle shop!
Uncle Ben first told the incident of Sir William's promise to the widow who took him to her home when he was poor, that she should live in the brick house; and then he pictured the young sailor's wonderful voyages to fulfill this promise. He called the sailor the "Treasure-finder."
Let us snuggle down by the fire on this cold night in Bostontown, beside little Ben and Jenny, and listen to the story.
Uncle Ben, mayhap, shakes his snuffbox, and says:
"That boy dreamed dreams in the daytime, but he was an honest man." Uncle Ben rang these words like a bell in his story.
"He was an honest man; but a man in this world must save or be a slave, and young William's mind went sailing far away from the New England coast, and a-sailing went he. What did he find? Wonders! Listen, and I will tell you.
"William Phips, or Phipps, went to the Spanish Main, and he began to hear a very marvelous story there. The sailors loitering in the ports loved to tell the legend of a certain Spanish treasure ship that had gone down in a storm, and they imagined themselves finding it and becoming rich. The legend seized upon the fancy of William the sailor and entered his dreams. It was only a vague fancy at first, but in the twilight of one burning day a cool island of palms appeared, and as it faded away a sailor who stoodwatchingit said to him:
"'There is a sunken reef off this coast somewhere; we are steering for it, and I have been told that it was on that reef that the Spanish treasure ship went down. They say that ship had millions of gold on board. I wonder if anybody will ever find her?'
"William, the sailor, started. Why might not he find her?—William was an honest man.
"It was early evening at sea. The shadows of night fell on the Bahama Islands. The sea and the heavens seemed tomingle. The stars were in the water; the heavens were there. A stranger on the planet could not have told which was the sea and which was the sky.
"The sails were limp. There was a silence around. The ship seemed to move through some region of space. William Phipps sat by himself on the deck and dreamed. Many people dream, but it is of no use to dream unless youdo.
"He seemed to see her again who had been the good angel of his life; he saw the gabled house in the bowery lane, and two faces looking out of the same window over Boston town.—William was honest.
"He dreamed that he himself was the captain of a ship. He saw himself in England, in the presence of the king. He is master of an expedition now, in his sea dream. He finds the sunken treasure ship. He is made rich by it, and he returns to Boston and buys the gabled house in the cool green lane by the sea. An honest man was Sir William. He was notSirWilliam then.
"He returned to Boston with his dream. William stayed in port for a time, and then prepared for a long voyage; but before he went away he obtained a promise from the widow that if she ever married any one it should be himself. There was nothing wrong in that.
"The ship owners saw that he had honor, and that they could trust him. He was advanced in the service, and he learned how to command a ship.
"He returned and married the widow, and went forth again to try to reap the harvest of the sea for her, carrying with him his dreams.—He was an honest man.
"William Phipps, the sailor, heard more and more in regard to the sunken treasure ship, and he went to England and applied to the king for ships and men to go in search of this mine of gold in the sea.
"Gold was then the royal want, and King James's heart was made right glad to hear the bold adventurer's story. The king put at his command ships and men, and young William Phipps—now Commander Phipps—went to the white reef in the blue Bahama Sea and searched the long sea wall for treasures faithfully, but in vain. He was compelled to return to England as empty-handed as when he went out.
"He heard of the great admiral, the Duke of Albemarle, and was introduced to him by William Penn. The duke heard his story, and furnished him with the means to continue the search for the golden ship in the coral reef.
"Ideals change into realities and will is way. Commander William bethought him of a new plan of gaining the needed intelligence. Might not some very old person know the place where the ship was wrecked? The thought was light. He found an old Indian on a near island who remembered the wreck, and who said he could pilot him to the very spot where the ship had gone down.
"Captain William's heart was light again. With the Indian on board he drifted to the rippling waters over the reef.
"Below was a coral world in a sea as clear as the sky. Out of it flying-fish leaped, and through it dolphins swam in pairs, and over it sargasso drifted like cloud shadows.
"Captain William looked down. Was it over these placidwaters that the storm had made wreckage many years ago? Was it here that the exultant Spanish sailors had felt the shock that turned joy into terror, and sent the ship reeling down, with the spoils of Indian caciques, or of Incarial temples, or of Andean treasures?
"The old Indian pointed to a sunken, ribbed wall in the clear sea. The hearts of the sailors thrilled as they stood there under the fiery noonday sky.
"Down went the divers—down!
"Up came one presently with the news—'The wreck is there; we have found it!'
"'Search!' cried Captain William, with a glad wife and a gable house in Boston town before his eyes. 'Down!'
"Another diver came up bringing a bag. It looked like a salt bag.
"An officer took an axe and severed the bag. The salt flew; the sailors threw up their hands with a cry—out of the bag poured a glittering stream of gold!
"Captain William reeled. His visions were now taking solid forms; they had created for him a new world.
"'Down! down!' he commanded.
"They broke open a bag which was like a crystal sack. It was full of treasure, and in its folds was a goblet of gold.
"They shouted over the treasure and held up the golden cup to the balmy air. It had doubtless belonged to a Spanish don.
"More salt bags of gold! The deck was covered with gold! It is related that one of the officers of the ship went mad at the sight. But Captain William did not go mad as he surveyedthe work of the men in the vanishing twilight. He had been there in spirit before; he had expected something, and he was on familiar ground when he had found it. He had been a prophetic soul.
"He carried home the treasure to England, and, soul of honor that he was, he delivered every dollar's worth of it to the duke. His name filled England; and his honesty was a national surprise, though why it should have been we can not say. But didn't I tell you he was an honest man?
"The duke was made happy, and began to cast about how to bestow upon him a fitting reward.
"'What can I do for you?' asked his Highness.
"I have a wife in Boston town, over the sea. She is a good woman. Her faith in me made me all I am. She is the world to me, for she believed in me when no one else did.'
"'You are a fortunate man. We will send her the goblet of gold, and it shall be called the Albemarle Cup.'
"The imagination of Captain William Phipps must have kindled and glowed as he received the 'dead don's cup,' which in itself was a fortune.
"'And to you, for your honor and honesty, shall be given an ample fortune, and there shall be bestowed upon you the honor of knighthood. You shall be able to present to your good wife, whose faith has been so well bestowed, the Albemarle Cup, in the name of the Duke of Albemarle and of Sir William Phipps!'
"Captain William Phipps returned to Boston a baronet, with the Albemarle Cup. The widow that he had won wasLady Phipps. New England never had a wonder tale like that.
"The Albemarle Cup! The fame of it filled Boston town. There it stood in massive gold, in Lady Phipps's simple parlor, among humbler decorations. How strange it looked to her as she saw it! Then must have arisen before her the boy from the Maine woods, one of twenty-six school-denied children; the ungainly young sailor with his hot temper and scars; the dreamer of golden dreams; the captain, the fortune-finder, the knight. Another link was soon added to this marvelous chain of events. The house of gables in the green lane was offered for sale. Sir William purchased it, and the Albemarle Cup was taken into it, amid furnishings worthy of a knight and lady.
"The two looked out of the upper window over Boston town.—He was an honest man.
"After this many-time repeated declaration that Sir William was an honest man," he added: "A man must get a living somehow—he must get a living somehow; either he must save or be a slave."
Little Ben thought that he would like to earn a living in some such way as that. The brick house in the "Faire Green Lane" meant much to him after stories like those. He surely was almost as poor as Sir William was at his age. Could he turn his own dreams into gold, or into that which is better than gold?
"Jenny," he said, "I would like to be able to give a brick house in the Faire Green Lane to father and mother, and to you. Maybe I will some day. I will be true to my home!"
Blessedis he who lends good books to young people. There was such a man in Boston town named Adams, one hundred and ninety years ago. His influence still lives, for he lent such books to young Benjamin Franklin.
The boy was slowly learning what noble minds had done in the world; how they became immortal by leaving their thought and works behind them. His constant question was, What have I the chance or the opportunity to do? What can I do that will benefit others?
It was a November evening. The days were short; the night came on at six o'clock. These were the dark days of the year.
"There is to be a candle-light meeting in the South Church, and I must go," said Uncle Benjamin. "It will be pretty cold there to-night, Ben; you had better get the foot stove."
The foot stove was a tin or brass box in a wooden frame with a handle. It was filled with live coals, and was carried to the church by a handle, as one would carry a dinner pail.
Little Benjamin brought the stove out of a cupboard to the hearth, took out of it a pan, which he filled with hard coals and replaced it.
"Ben," said Uncle Ben, "you had better go along with us and carry the stove."
"I will go, too," said Josiah Franklin. "There is to be a lecture to-night on the book of Job. I always thought that that book is the greatest poem in all the world. Job arrived at a conclusion, and one that will stand. He tells us, since we can not know the first cause and the end, that we must be always ignorant of the deepest things of life, but that we must do just right in everything; and if we do that, everything which happens to us will be for our best good, and the very best thing that could happen whether we gain or lose, have or want. I may be a poor man, with my tallow dips, but I have always been determined to do just right. It may be that I will be blessed in my children—who knows? and then men may say of me, 'There was a man!'"
"'And he dwelt in the land of Uz'" said Uncle Ben.
"Wait for me a few minutes while I get ready," said Josiah Franklin. "I will have to shave."
The prospect of a lecture in the old South Church on the philosophical patriarch who dwelt in the land of Uz, and led his flocks, and saw the planets come and go in their eternal march, on the open plains or through the branches of pastoral palms, was a very agreeable one to little Ben.
He thought.
"Uncle Benjamin," he said, "a man who writes a book like Job leaves his thoughts behind him. He does not die like other men; his life goes on."
"Yes, that is what some people call an objective life. Icall it aprojectivelife. A man who builds men, or things, for the use of men, lives in the things he builds. He has immortality in this world. A man who builds a house leaves his thought in the form of the house he builds. If he make a road, he lives in the road; if he invent a useful thing, he lives in the invention. A man may live in a ship that he has caused to be constructed, or his mind may see the form of a church, a hall, or a temple, and he may so build after what he sees that he makes his thoughts creative, and he lives on in the things that he creates after he dies. It was so with the builders of cities, of the Pyramids. So Romulus—if there were such a man—lives in Rome, and Columbus in the lands that he discovered. The Pilgrim Fathers will always live in New England. Those who do things and make things leave behind them a life outside of themselves. I call such works a man's projected life."
Little Ben sat swinging the foot stove.
"He lives the longest in this world who invents the most useful things for others," continued Uncle Benjamin. "The thoughts of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton changed the world. Those men can never die."
Little Ben swung the stove in his hand.
Suddenly he looked up, and we fancy him to have said:
"Uncle Benjamin, haveIa chance?"
Jamie the Scotchman came into the house, jingling the door bell as he shut the door.
"Philosophizing?" said he.
"Little Ben here is inquiring in regard to his chance of doing something in the world—of living so as to leave histhoughts in creative forms behind. What do you think about it, Jamie?"
"Well, I don't know; it is a pretty hard case. Drumsticks will make a noise, so any man may make himself heard if he will. Certain it is Ben has no gifts; at least, I have never discerned any. There are no Attic bees buzzing around him, none that I have seen, unless there be such things up in the attic, which would not be likely in a new house like this."
Uncle Ben pitied the little boy, whose feelings he saw were hurt.
"Jamie, I have read much, and have made some observation, and life tells me that character, industry, and a determined purpose will do much for a man that has no special gifts. The Scriptures do not say that a man of gifts shall stand before kings, but that the man 'diligent in his business' shall do so. Ben here can rise with the best of the world, and if he has thoughts, he can project them. It is thinking that makes men work. He thinks.—Ben, you can do anything that any one else of your opportunities has ever done. There—I hate to see the boy discouraged."
"The fifteenth child among seventeen children would not seem likely to have a very broad outlook," said Jamie, "but it is good to encourage him; it is good to encourage anybody. He is one of the human family, like all the rest of us.—Are you going to the lecture? I will go along with you."
Josiah Franklin was now ready to go, and the party started. Josiah carried a lantern, and little Benjamin the foot stovewith the coals. As they walked along they met other people with lanterns and foot stoves.
Uncle Benjamin felt hurt at what Jamie had said, so he proceeded to encourage the boy as they went along.
"If you could invent a stove that would warm the whole church, you would have aprojectedlife, for example," said he.
"Have I a chance?" asked again the future inventor of the Franklin stove.
"Or if you could print something original that might live; or found a society to study science—something might come out of that; or could make some scheme for a better government of the people in these parts; but that would be too great for you. There I go!"
Uncle Benjamin stumbled. Little Ben helped him up.
They came to the South Church, where many lanterns, foot stoves, and tallow dips were gathered, and shadowy forms were moving to and fro.
Little Ben set down the stove in the pew. The lecture began. He heard the minister read the sublime passage of the ancient poem beginning, "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said." He heard about the "morning stars singing together," the "sweet influences of Pleiades," and the question, "Canst thou bind the sea?"
The boy asked, "Have I a chance? have I a chance?" The discouraging words of Jamie the Scotchman hung over his mind like a cloud.
The influence of the coals led Josiah Franklin to slumberland after his hard day's work. Little Ben saw his fathernod and nod. But Uncle Benjamin was in the Orient with the minister, having a hard experience for the good of life with the patriarch Job.
"Have I a chance?" The boy shed tears. If he had not gifts, he knew that he had personality, but there was something stirring within him that led his thoughts to seek the good of others.
The nine-o'clock bell rang. The lecture was over.
"Good—wasn't it?" said Jamie the Scotchman as they went out of the church and looked down to the harbor glimmering under the moon and stars, and added:
"Ben, you will be sure to have one thing to spur you on to lead that 'projected life' your Uncle Benjamin tells about."
"What is that, sir?"
"A hard time, like Job—a mighty hard time."
"The true way to knowledge," said Uncle Benjamin encouragingly.
Uncle Benjamin felt a hand in his great mitten. It was little Ben's. The confidence touched his heart.
"Ben, you are as likely to have a projected life as anybody. A man rises by overcoming his defects. Strength comes in that way."
Little Ben went through the jingling door with a heart now heavy, now light. He set down the lantern, and climbed up to his bed under the roof.
He was soon in bed, the question, "Have I a chance?" still haunting him.
In summer there would be the sound of the wings of the swallows or purple swifts in the chimney at night as they becamedisplaced from their nests. He would start up to listen to the whirring wings, then sink into slumber, to awake a blithe, light-hearted boy again.
All was silent now. He could not sleep. His fancy was too wide awake. Was Uncle Benjamin right, or Jamie the Scotchman? Had he a chance?
"Youmust read good books," said Benjamin Franklin's godfather. "How sorry I am that I had to sell my pamphlets!"
Books have stamped their character on young men at the susceptible age and the turning points of life. But their influence for good or evil comes to receptive characters. "He is a genius," says Emerson, "who gives me back my own thoughts." The gospel says, "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."
Abraham Lincoln would walk twenty miles to borrow a law book, and would sit down on a log by the wayside to study it on his return from such a journey. Horace Greeley says that when he was a boy he would go reading to a woodpile. "I would take a pine knot," he said, "put it on the back log, pile my books around me, and lie down and read all through the long winter evenings." He read the kind of books for which his soul hungered. He read to find in books what he himself wished to be. A true artist sees and hears only what he wishes to see and hear. An active, earnest, resolute soul reads only that which helps him fulfill the haunting purpose of his life. Almost every great man's books that were his companionsin early years were pictures of what he most wished to be and to do.
How many men have had their spiritual life quickened by a hymn! How many by a single poem! Homer and Ossian filled the imagination of Napoleon. Plutarch's Lives has helped form the characters of a thousand heroes, and Emerson placed Plutarch next to the Bible in the rank of beneficent influences. We would say to every boy, Read Plutarch; read the best books first.
A few books well read would be an education. Let a boy read the Bible, Josephus, Plutarch's Lives, Rawlinson's, Hallam's Macaulay's, Bancroft's, and Prescott's histories, Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Longfellow, and he would have a basis of knowledge of such substantial worth and moral and literary standard as to cause his intelligence to be respected everywhere and to become a power. Yet all these books could be purchased for twenty-five dollars, and the time that many waste in unprofitable reading for three years would be sufficient to master them.
"I am a part of all that I have met," says Tennyson, and a man becomes a part of all the books that color his mind and character. Ask a company of people what books they most sought in childhood, and you may have a mental photograph of each.
Benjamin Franklin says that his opinions and character were so greatly influenced by his reading Cotton Mather's Essays to do Good, that he owed to that book his rise in life. A boy, he says, should read that book with pen and note-book in hand.
Benjamin Franklin declared that it was in this book that he found the statements of the purposes in life that met his own views. "To do good," he said, was the true aim of existence, and the resolution became fixed in his soul to seek to make his life as beneficent as possible to all men. How to help somebody and to improve something became the dreams of his days and nights. "A high aim is curative," says Emerson. Franklin had some evil tendencies of nature and habit, but his purpose to live for the welfare of everybody and everything overcame them all in the end, and made him honestly confess his faults and try to make amends for his lapses. To do good was an impelling purpose that led him to the building of the little wharf, where boys might have firm footing whence to sail their boats, and it continued through many wiser experiences up to the magic bottle, in which was stored the revelation of that agent of the earth and skies that would prove the most beneficent of all new discoveries.
The book confirmed all that Uncle Benjamin had said. In it he saw what he should struggle to be: he put his resolution into this vision, and so took the first step on the ladder of life which was to give him a large view of human affairs.
He turned from the candle molds to Cotton Mather's strong pages, which few boys would care to read now, and from them, a little later, to Addison, and from both to talk with Jenny about what he would like to do and to become, and, like William Phips to the widow, he promised Jenny that they, too, should one day live in some "Faire Green Lane in Boston town." He would be true to his home—he and Jenny.
Besideshis instruction from encouraging Mr. Brownell and his Uncle Benjamin, little Benjamin Franklin had spent one year at school and several years of self-instruction under helps. His father needed him in the candle shop, and he could not give him a larger education with so many mouths to feed.
Young Ben did not like his occupation in the candle shop. He worked with his hands while his heart was absent, and his imagination was even farther away.
He had a brother John who had helped his father when a boy, who married and moved to Rhode Island to follow there his father's trade as a candle and soap maker. John's removal doubled the usefulness of little Ben among the candle molds and soap kettles. He saw how this kind of work would increase as he grew older; he longed for a different occupation, something that would satisfy his mental faculties and give him intellectual opportunities, and his dreams went sailing to the seas and lands where his brother Josiah had been. There were palms in his fancy, gayly plumed birds, tropical waters, and a free life under vertical suns—India, the Spanish Main, the ports of the Mediterranean. He talked so much of goingto sea that his father saw that his shop was not the place for this large-brained boy with an inventive faculty.
"Ben," said Josiah Franklin one day, "this is no place for you—you are not balanced like other boys; your head is canted theotherway. You'll be running off to sea some day, just as Josiah did. Come, let us go out into the town, and I will try to find another place for you. You will have to become an apprentice boy."
"Anything, father, but this dull work. I seem here to be giving all my time to nothing. Soap and candles are good and useful things, but people can make them who can do nothing else. I want a place that will give me a chance to work with my head. What is my head for?"
"I don't know, Ben; it will take time to answer that. You do seem to have good faculties, if youaremy son. I would be glad to have you do the very best that you are capable of doing, and Heaven knows that I would give you an education if I were able. Come, let us go."
They went out into the streets of Boston town. The place then contained something more than two thousand houses, most of them built of timber and covered with cedar shingles; a few of them were stately edifices of brick and tiles. It had seven churches, and they were near the sign of the Blue Ball: King's Chapel, Brattle Street, the Old Quaker, the New North, the New South, the New Brick, and Christ Church. There was a free writing school on Cornhill, a school at the South End, and another writing school on Love Lane. Ben Franklin could not enter these simple school doors for the want of means. To gain the Franklin Medal, providedby legacy of Benjamin Franklin, is now the high ambition of every Boston Latin schoolboy. There were fortifications on Fort Hill and a powder house on the Common. There were inns, taverns, and ordinaries everywhere. Boston was a town of inns with queer names; Long Wharf was the seaway to the ships. Chatham Street now was then a fair green lane; Salem Street was a place of property people or people of "quality."
In King's Chapel was a state pew for the royal Governors. On the pulpit stood an hourglass in a frame of brass. The pillars were hung with escutcheons of the king.
Ben may have passed the old Latin School which at first was established at a place just east of King's Chapel. If so, he must have wished to be entered there as a pupil again. The school has distributed his medals now for several generations. He may have passed the old inns like the Blue Anchor Tavern, or the Royal Exchange, or the fire of 1711 may have wiped out some of these old historic buildings, and new ones to take their places may have been rising or have been but recently completed. The old Corner Bookstore was there, for it was built directly after the fire of 1711. It is the oldest brick building now standing in the city, and one of the few on which little Ben's eyes could have rested. A new town arose after the fire.
Josiah Franklin and little Ben visited the workshops of carpenters, turners, glaziers, and others, but, although they had a good time together in the study, the kind father could not find a place that suited his son. Ben did not like to be apprenticed to any of the tradesmen that he met.
He had a brother James, of a bright mind but of no veryamiable disposition, who was a printer. He had been to London to improve his trade, and on his return he became the one printer in the town.
One evening, between the violin and the Bible, Josiah Franklin suddenly said:
"Ben, you look here!"
"What, father?" asked the boy, starting.
"It all comes to me what you ought to do. You should become a printer."
"That I would like, father."
"Then the way is clear—let me apprentice you to James."
"Would he have me, father? We do not always get on well together. I want to learn the printer's trade; that would help me on to an education."
Josiah Franklin was now a happier man. Ben would have no more desire to go to sea. If he could become anything out of the ordinary, the printer's trade would be the open way.
He went to his son James and presented the matter. As a result, they drew up an indenture.
This indenture, which may be found in Franklin's principal biographies, was a very queer document, but follows the usual form of the times of George I. It was severe—a form by which a lad was practically sold into slavery, and yet it contained the demands that develop right conduct in life. Ben was not constituted to be an apprentice boy under these sharp conditions even to his own brother. But all began well. His mother, who worried lest he should follow the example of his brother Josiah, now had heart content. His father securedan apprentice, and probably had drawn up for him a like form of indenture.
Benjamin, too, was happy now. He saw that his new way of life led to somewhere—where? He would do his best to make it lead to the best in life. He started with a high resolve, which we are sorry he did not always fulfill in the letter, though the spirit of it never was lost.
His successor in the tallow shop does not seem to have been more happy than he. His name was Tinsley. There appeared in the New England Courant of 1722 the following queer advertisement, which we copy because it affords a picture of the times: