Читать книгу True to His Home: A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin - Hezekiah Butterworth - Страница 24

Table of Contents

Did little Ben's trumpet and gun indicate that he would become a statesman whose cause would employ armies? We do not know. The free will of a boy on the playground is likely to present a picture of his leading traits of character. In old New England days there was a custom of testing a child's character in a novel way. A bottle, a coin, and a Bible were laid on the floor at some distance apart to tempt the notice of the little one when he first began to creep. It was supposed that the one of the three objects that he crept toward and seized upon was prophetic of his future character—that the three objects represented worldly pleasure, the seeking for wealth, and the spiritual life.

Franklin's love for public improvements was certainly indicated in his early years. He liked the water and boats, and he saw how convenient a little wharf near his house would be; so he planned to build one, and laid his plans before his companions.

"We will build it of stone," he said. "There are plenty of stones near the wharf."

"But the workmen there would not let us have them," said a companion.

"We will take them after they have gone from their work. We can build the wharf in a single evening. The workmen may scold, but they will not scold the stone landing out of the water again."

One early twilight of a long day the boys assembled at the place chosen by young Franklin for his wharf, and began to work like beavers, and before the deep shadows of night they had removed the stones to the water and builded quite a little wharf or landing.

"We can catch minnows and sail our boats from here now," said young Franklin as he looked with pride on the triumphs of his plan. "All the boys will be free to use this landing," he thought. "Won't it make the people wonder!"

It did.

The next morning the weather door of the thrifty tallow chandler opened with a ring.

"Josiah Franklin, where is that boy of yours?" asked a magistrate.

The paper cap bobbed up, and the man at the molds bent his head forward with wondering eyes.

"Which boy?"

"Ben, the one that is always leading other boys round."

"I dunno. He's making a boat—or was.—Benjamin!" he called; "I say, Benjamin!"

The door of the living room opened, and little Ben appeared.

"Here's a man who has come to see you. What have you been doing now?"

"Boy," said the man—he spoke the word so loudly that the little boy felt that it raised him almost to the dignity of a man.

"What, sir?" gasped Ben, very intelligent as to what would follow.

"Did you put those stones into the water?"

"Yes, sir."

"What did you do that for?"

"To make a wharf, sir."

"'To make a wharf, sir!' Didn't you have the sense to know that those stones were building stones and belonged to the workmen?"

"No, sir; I didn't know that they belonged to any one. I thought that they belonged to everybody."

"You did, you little rascal! Then why did you wait to have the workmen go away before you put them into the water?"

"The workmen would have hindered us, sir. They don't think that improvements can be made by little shavers like us. I wanted to surprise them, sir—to show them what we could do, sir."

"Benjamin Franklin," said Josiah, "come here, and I will show you what I can do.—Stranger, the boy's godfather has come to live with us and to take charge of him, and he does need a godfather, if ever a stripling did."

Josiah Franklin laid his hand on the boy, and the workman went away. The father removed the boy's jacket, and showed him what he could do, the memory of which was not a short one.

"I did not mean any harm, father," young Benjamin said over and over. "It was a mistake."

"My boy," said the tallow chandler, softening, "never make a second mistake. There are some people who learn wisdom from their first mistakes by never making second mistakes. May you be one of them."

"I shall never do anything that I don't think is honest, father. I thought stones and rocks belonged to the people."

"But there are many things that belong to the people in this world that you have no right to use, my son. When you want to make any more public improvements, first come and talk with me about them, or go to your Uncle Ben, into whose charge I am going to put you—and no small job he will have of it, in my thinking!"

Benjamin Franklin said, when he was growing old and was writing his own life, that his father convinced him at the time of this event that "that which is not honest could not be useful."

We can see in fancy his father with a primitive switch thus convincing him. He never forgot the moral lesson.

Where was Jamie the Scotchman during this convincing episode? When he heard that the little wharf-builder, bursting with desire for public improvement, had fallen into disgrace, he came upon him slyly:

"So you've been building a wharf for the boys of the town. When one begins so soon in life to improve the town, there can be no telling what he will do when he grows up. Perhaps you will become one of the great benefactors of Boston yet. Who knows?"

"We can't tell," said the future projector of Franklin Park, philosophically.

"No, that is a fact, bubby. Take your finger out of your mouth and go to cutting candle wicks. It must make a family proud to have in it such a promising one as you! You'll be apt to set something ablaze some day if you keep on as you've begun."

He did.

Jamie the Scotchman went out, causing the bell on the door to ring. He whistled lustily as he went down the street.

Little Benjamin sat cutting wicks for the candle molds and wondering at the ways of the world. He had not intended to do wrong. He may have thought that the stones, although put aside by the workmen, were common property. He had made a mistake. But how are mistakes to be avoided in life? He would ask his Uncle Benjamin, the poet, when he should meet him. It was well, indeed, never to make a second mistake, but better not to make any mistake at all. Uncle Benjamin was wise, and could write poetry. He would ask him.

Besides Jamie the Scotchman, who spent much time at the Blue Ball, little Benjamin's brother James seems to have looked upon him as one whose activities of mind were too obvious, and needed to be suppressed.

The evening that followed the disgrace of little Ben was a serious one in the Franklin family. Uncle Ben had "gone to meeting" in the Old South Church.

The shop, with its molded candles, dipped candles, ingot bars of soap, pewter molds, and kettles, was not an unpleasant place in the evening, and old sea captains used to drop in to talk with Josiah, and sometimes the leading members of the Old South Church came to discuss church affairs, which were really town affairs, for the church governed the town.

On this particular night little Ben sat in the corner of the shop very quietly, holding little Jane as usual. The time had come for a perfect calm in his life, and he himself was well aware how becoming was silence in his case.

Among those who used to come to the shop evenings to talk with Josiah and Uncle Ben, the poet, was one Captain Holmes. He came to-night, stamping his feet at the door, causing the bell to ring very violently and the faces of some of the Franklin children to appear in the window framed over the shop door. How comical they looked!

"Where's Ben to-night?" asked Captain Holmes.

Little Ben's heart thumped. He thought the captain meant him.

"He's gone to meetin'," said Josiah. "Come, sit down. Ben will be at home early."

Little Ben's heart did not beat so fast now.

"Where's that boy o' yourn?" asked the captain.

Ben's heart began to beat again.

"There, in the corner," said Josiah, with a doubtful look in his face.

"He'll be given to making public improvements when he grows up," said the captain. "But I hope that he will not take other people's property to do it. If there is any type of man for whom I have no use it is he who does good with what belongs to others."

The door between the shop and the living room opened, and the grieved, patient face of Abiah appeared.

"Good evening, Captain Holmes," said Abiah. "I heard what you said—how could I help it?—and it hurt me. No descendant of Peter Folger will ever desire to use other people's property for his own advantage. Ben won't."

"That's right, my good woman, stand up for your own. Every drop of an English exile's blood is better than its weight in gold."

"Ben is a boy," said Abiah. "If he makes an error, it will be followed by a contrite heart."

Little Ben could hear no more. He flew, as it were, up to the garret chamber and laid down on the trestle bed. A pet squirrel came to comfort him or to get some corn. He folded the squirrel in his bosom.

Ting-a-ling! It was Uncle Ben, the poet, whose name he had disgraced. He could endure no more; he began to sob, and so went to sleep, his little squirrel pitying him, perhaps.

There was another heart that pitied the boy. It was Uncle Ben's. Poor Uncle Ben! He sleeps now at the side of the Franklin monument in the Granary burying ground, and we like to cast a kindly glance that way as we pass the Park Street Church on Tremont Street, on the west side. It is a good thing to have good parents, and also to have a good uncle with a poetic mind and a loving heart.

There was one trait in little Benjamin's character that Josiah Franklin saw with his keen eye to business, and it gave him hope. He was diligent. One of Josiah Franklin's favorite texts of Scripture was, "Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men." This text he used to often repeat, or a part of it, and little Ben must have thought that it applied to him. Hints of hope, not detraction, build a boy.

Jamie the Scotchman had little expectation that puttering Ben would ever "stand before kings." Not he. He had not that kind of vision.

"Ah, boy, I could tell you a whole history of diligent boys who not only came to stand before kings, but who overturned thrones; and he who discrowns a king is greater than a king," said he one day. "Think what you might become."

"Maybe I will."

"Will what?"

"Be some one in the world."

"Sorry a boy you would make to 'stand before kings,' and I don't think you'll ever be likely to take off the crown from anybody. So your poor old father might as well leave that text out of the Scriptures. There are no pebbles in your sling of life. If there were, wonders would never cease. You are just your Uncle Ben over again. I'm sorry for ye, and for all."

Little Ben looked sorry too, and he wondered if there really were in the text something prophetic for him, or if Jamie the Scotchman were the true seer. But many poor boys had come to stand before kings, and some such boys had left tyrants without a crown.

Jamie the Scotchman thought that he had the gift of "second sight," as a consciousness of future events was called, but he usually saw shadows. He liked to talk to himself, walking with his hands behind him.

After his dire prophecy concerning the future of little Ben he walked down to Long Wharf with Uncle Benjamin, talking to himself for the latter to hear.

"Ye can't always tell," said he; "I didn't speak out of the true inward spirit when I said those things. It hurt the little shaver to tell him there was no future in him; I could see it did. The boy has a curious way of saying wise things; such words fly out of his mouth like swallows from a cave. If I were to take up a dead brand in the blacksmith's shop and he was around, as he commonly is, he would say, 'The more you handle a burned stick the smuttier you become'; or if I were to pick up a horseshoe there, and say, 'For the want of a nail the shoe was lost,' he would answer, 'And for want of a shoe the horse was lost.' Then, after a time, he would add, 'For want of a horse the rider was lost,' and so on. His mind works in that way. Maybe he'll become a philosopher. Philosophers stand before kings. I now have the true inner sight and open vision. I can see a streak of light in that curious gift of his. But blood tells, and his folks on his father's side were blacksmiths over in England, and philosophers don't come from the forge more'n eagles do from the hen yard.

"I said what I did to stimulate him. It cut the little shaver to the quick, didn't it? Now he wouldn't have been so cut if there had been nothing there. The Lord forgive me if I did wrong!"

He walked down the wharf to the end. Beyond lay the blue harbor and the green islands. The town had only some ten thousand inhabitants then, but several great ships lay in the harbor under the three hills, two of which now are gone.

The harbor was girded with oaks and pines. Here and there a giant elm, still the glory of New England, lifted its bowery top like a cathedral amid towns of trees. Sea birds screamed low over the waters, and ospreys wheeled high in the air.

Jamie the Scotchman had not many things to occupy his thoughts, so he sat down to wonder as to what that curious Franklin boy might become.

A new thought struck him.

"He has French blood in him—the old family name used to be Franklein," he said to himself. "Now what does that signify? French blood is gentle; it likes to be free. I don't see that it might not be a good thing to have; the French like to find out things and give away to others what they discover."

A shell fell into the water before him from high in the air. The water spouted up, causing an osprey to swoop down, but to rise again.

Jamie the Scotchman turned his head.

"You, Ben? You follow me 'round everywhere. What makes ye, when I treat ye so?"

"If a boy didn't hope for anything he would never have the heartache."

"True, true, my boy; and what of that?"

"I would rather expect something and have the heartache."

"No one ever misses his expectations who looks for the heartache in this world. But what queer turns your mind does take, and what curious questions you do ask! Let us return to the Blue Ball."

They did, through winding streets, one or more of which were said to follow the wanderings of William Blackstone's cow from the Common. Boston still follows the same interesting animal.

There were windmills on the hills and tidemills near the water. There was a ferryboat between Boston and Charlestown, and on the now Chelsea side was the great Rumney Marsh. On the Common, which was a pasture, was a branching elm, a place of executions. Near it was a pond into which had been cast the Wishing Stone around which, it was reported, that if one went three times at night and repeated the Lord's Prayer backward at each circuit one might have whatever he wished for. Near the pond and the great tree were the Charles River marshes. Such was Boston in 1715-'20.

Little Ben went to the South Church on Sundays, and the tithingman was there. The latter sat in the gallery among the children with his long rod, called the tithing stick, with which he used to touch or correct any boy or girl who whispered in meeting, who fell asleep, or who misbehaved. Little Ben must have looked from the family pew in awe at the tithingman. The old-time ministers pictured the Lord himself as being a kind of a tithingman, sitting up in heaven and watching out for the unwary. Good Josiah Franklin governed the conduct of the children in his own pew. You may be sure that none of them whispered there or fell asleep or misbehaved.

The tithingman, who was a church constable, was annually elected to keep peace and order in the church. In England he collected tithes, or a tenth part of the parish income, which the people were supposed, after the Mosaic command, to offer to the church. He sometimes wore a peculiar dress; he was usually a very solemn-looking man, the good man of whom all the children, and some of the old women, stood in terror.

A crafty man was the tithingman in the pursuit of his duties. He was on the watch all the time, and, as suspicion breeds suspicion, so the children were on the watch for him. The sermons were long, the hourglass was sometimes twice turned during the service, and the children often kept themselves awake by looking out for the tithingman, who was watching out for them. This was hardly the modern idea of heart culture and spiritual development, but the old Puritan churches made strong men who faced their age with iron purposes.

We said that the tithingman was sometimes a terror to old women. Why was he so? It was sweet for certain good old people to sleep in church, and his duties extended to all sleepers, young and old. But he did not smite the good old ladies with a stick. In some churches, possibly in this one, he carefully tickled their noses with a feather. This led to a gentle awakening, very charitable and kindly.

It is a warm summer day. Josiah Franklin's pew is crowded, and little Ben has gone to the gallery to sit among the boys. Uncle Ben, the poet, is there, for he sees that the family pew is full.

How can little Ben help whispering now, when the venerable poet is by his side and will not harshly reprove him, and when so many little things are happening that tempt him to share his thoughts with his amiable godfather?

But he restrained himself long and well.

In her high-backed pew, provided with the luxury of the cushion, sat fine old Lady Wiggleworth, all in silks, satins, and plumes. Little Ben, looking over the gallery rail, saw that my lady's plumes nodded, and he gently touched Uncle Ben and pointed down. Suddenly there came a tap of the tithing stick on his head, and he was in disgrace. He looked very solemn now; so did Uncle Ben. It was a solemn time after one had been touched by the tithing rod.

But the tithingman had seen Lady Wiggleworth's nodding plumes. Could it be possible that this woman, who was received at the Province House, had lost her moral and physical control?

If such a thing had happened, he must yet do his duty. He would have done that had the queen been there. The law of Heaven makes no exception, nor did he.

He tiptoed down the stair and stood before the old lady's pew. All her plumes were nodding, something like the picture of a far ship in a rolling sea. My lady was asleep.

The tithingman's heart beat high, but his resolution did not falter. If it had, it would soon have been restored, for my lady began to snore.

Gently, very gently, the tithingman took from his side pocket a feather. He touched with it gently, very gently, a sensitive part of the oblivious old lady's nose. She partly awoke and brushed her nose with her hand. But her head turned to the other side of her shoulders, and she relapsed into slumber again.

The sermon was still beating the sounding-board, and a more vigorous duty devolved upon the tithingman.

He pushed the feather up my lady's nose, where the membrane was more sensitive and more quickly communicated with the brain. He did this vigorously and more vigorously. It was an obstinate case.

"Scat!"

The tithingman jumped. My lady opened her eyes. The sermon was still beating the sounding-board, but she was not then aware that she, too, had spoken in meeting.

There were some queer church customs in the days of Boston town.