CHAPTER IV
Picture of a wise father – To which is added a famous receipt for health and long life.
The reader must already have discovered that Ben was uncommonly blest in a father. Indeed from the portrait of him drawn by this grateful son, full fifty years afterwards, he must have been an enviable old man.
As to his person, though that is but of minor consideration in a rational creature—I say, as to his person, it was of the right standard, i.e. medium size and finely formed—his complexion fair and ruddy—black, intelligent eyes—and an air uncommonly graceful and spirited. In respect of mind, which is the true jewel of our nature, he was a man of the purest piety and morals, and consequently cheerful and amiable in a high degree. Added to this, he possessed a considerable taste for the fine arts, particularly drawing and music; and having a voice remarkably sonorous and sweet, whenever he sung a hymn accompanied with his violin, which he usually did at the close of his day's labours, it was delightful to hear him. He possessed also an extraordinary sagacity in things relating both to public and private life, insomuch that not only individuals were constantly consulting him about their affairs, and calling him in as an arbiter in their disputes; but even the leading men of Boston would often come and ask his advice in their most important concerns, as well of the town as of the church.
For his slender means he was a man of extraordinary hospitality, which caused his friends to wonder how he made out to entertain so many. But whenever this was mentioned to him, he used to laugh and say, that the world was good natured and gave him credit for much more than he deserved; for that, in fact, others entertained ten times as many as he did. By this, 'tis thought he alluded to the ostentatious practice common with some, of pointing their hungry visitant to their grand buildings, and boasting how many thousands this or that bauble cost; as if their ridiculous vanity would pass with them for a good dinner. For his part, he said, he preferred setting before his visitors a plenty of wholesome fare, with a hearty welcome. Though to do this he was fain to work hard, and content himself with a small house and plain furniture. But it was always his opinion that a little laid out in this way, went farther both with God and man too, than great treasures lavished on pride and ostentation.
But though he delighted in hospitality as a great virtue, yet he always made choice of such friends at his table as were fond of rational conversation. And he took great care to introduce such topics as would, in a pleasant manner, lead to ideas useful to his family, both in temporal and eternal things. As to the dishes that were served up, he never talked of them; never discussed whether they were well or ill dressed; of a good or bad flavour, high seasoned or otherwise.
For this manly kind of education at his table, Dr. Franklin always spoke as under great obligations to his father's judgment and taste. Thus accustomed, from infancy, to a generous inattention to the palate, he became so perfectly indifferent about what was set before him, that he hardly ever remembered, ten minutes after dinner, what he had dined on. In travelling, particularly, he found his account in this. For while those who had been more nice in their diet could enjoy nothing they met with; this one growling over the daintiest breakfast of new laid eggs and toast floated in butter, because his coffee was not half strong enough!—that wondering what people can mean by serving up a round of beef when they have no mustard!—and a third cursing like a trooper, though the finest rock-fish or sheep's-head be smoking on the table—because there is no walnut pickle or ketchup! He for his part, happily engaged in a pleasant train of thinking or conversation, never attended to such trifles, but dined heartily on whatever was set before him. In short, there is no greater kindness that a young man can do himself than to learn the art of feasting on fish, flesh, or fowl as they come, without ever troubling his head about any other sauce than what the rich hand of nature has given; let him but bring to these dishes that good appetite which always springs from exercise and cheerfulness, and he will be an epicure indeed.
He would often repeat in the company of young people, the following anecdote which he had picked up some where or other in his extensive reading. "A wealthy citizen of Athens, who had nearly ruined his constitution by gluttony and sloth, was advised by Hippocrates to visit a certain medicinal spring in Sparta; not that Hippocrates believed that spring to be better than some nearer home; but exercise was the object—" "Visit the springs of Sparta," said the great physician. As the young debauchee, pale and bloated, travelled among the simple and hardy Spartans, he called one day at the house of a countryman on the road to get something to eat. A young woman was just serving up dinner—a nice barn-door fowl boiled with a piece of fat bacon. "You have got rather a plain dinner there madam," growled the Athenian. "Yes, sir," replied the young woman blushing, "but my husband will be here directly, and he always brings the sauce with him." Presently the young husband stepped in, and after welcoming his guest, invited him to dinner. "I can't dream of dining, sir, without sauce," said the Athenian, "and your wife promised you would bring it." "O, sir, my wife is a wit," cried the Spartan; "she only meant the good appetite which I always bring with me from the barn, where I have been threshing."
And here I beg leave to wind up this chapter with the following beautiful lines from Dryden, which I trust my young reader will commit to memory. They may save him many a sick stomach and headache, besides many a good dollar in doctor's fees.
"The first physicians by debauch were made;
Excess began and sloth sustains the trade.
By chace, our long liv'd fathers earn'd their bread;
Toil strung their nerves and purified their blood:
But we, their sons, a pamper'd race of men,
Are dwindled down to threescore years and ten.
Better hunt in fields for health unbought,
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught.
The wise for health on exercise depend;
God never made his works for man to mend."
CHAPTER V
Ben continued with his father, assisting him in his humble toils, till his twelfth year; and had he possessed a mind less active might have remained a candle-maker all the days of his life. But born to diffuse a light beyond that of tallow or spermaceti, he could never reconcile himself to this inferior employment, and in spite of his wishes to conceal it from his father, discontent would still lower on his brow, and the half-suppressed sigh steal in secret from his bosom.
With equal grief his father beheld the deep-seated disquietude of his son. He loved all his children; but he loved this young one above all the rest. Ben was the child of his old age. The smile that dimpled his tender cheeks reminded him of his mother when he first saw her, lovely in the rosy freshness of youth. And then his intellect was so far beyond his years; his questions so shrewd; so strong in reasoning; so witty in remark, that his father would often forget his violin of nights for the higher pleasure of holding an argument with him. This was a great trial to his sisters, who would often intreat their mother to make Ben hold his tongue, that their father might take down his fiddle, and play and sing hymns with them: for they took after him in his passion for music, and sung divinely. No wonder that such a child should be dear to such a father. Indeed old Josias' affection for Ben was so intimately interwoven with every fibre of his heart, that he could not bear the idea of separation from him; and various were the stratagems which he employed to keep this dear child at home. One while, to frighten his youthful fancy from the sea, for that was the old man's dread, he would paint the horrors of the watery world, where the maddening billows, lashed into mountains by the storm, would lift the trembling ship to the skies; then hurl her down, headlong plunging into the yawning gulphs, never to rise again. At another time he would describe the wearisomeness of beating the gloomy wave for joyless months, pent up in a small ship, with no prospects but barren sea and skies—no smells but tar and bilge water—no society but men of uncultivated minds, and their constant conversation nothing but ribaldry and oaths. And then again he would take him to visit the masons, coopers, joiners, and other mechanics, at work: in hopes that his genius might be caught, and a stop put to his passion for wandering. But greatly to his sorrow, none of these things held out the attractions that his son seemed to want. His visits among these tradesmen were not, however, without their advantage. He caught from them, as he somewhere says, such an insight into mechanic arts and the use of tools, as enabled him afterwards when there was no artist at hand, to make for himself suitable machines for the illustration of his philosophical experiments.
But it was not long before this obstinate dislike of Ben's to all ordinary pursuits was found out; it was found out by his mother. "Bless me," said she one night to her husband, as he lay sleepless and sighing on his son's account, "why do we make ourselves so unhappy about Ben for fear he should go to sea! let him but go to school, and I'll engage we hear no more about his running to sea. Don't you see the child is never happy but when he has a book in his hand? Other boys when they get a little money never think of any thing better to lay it out on than their backs or their bellies; but he, poor fellow, the moment that he gets a shilling, runs and gives it for a book; and then, you know, there is no getting him to his meals until he has read it through, and told us all about it."
Good old Josias listened very devoutly to his wife, while she uttered this oration on his youngest son. Then with looks as of a heart suddenly relieved from a heavy burden, and his eyes lifted to heaven, he fervently exclaimed—"O that my son, even my little son Benjamin, may live before God, and that the days of his usefulness and glory may be many!"
How far the effectual fervent prayer of this righteous father found acceptance in heaven, the reader will find perhaps by the time he has gone through our little book.
CHAPTER VI
Ben taken from school, turns his own teacher – History of the books which he first read – Is bound to the printing trade.
At a learned table in Paris, where Dr. Franklin happened to dine, it was asked by the abbé Raynal, What description of men most deserves pity?
Some mentioned one character, and some another. When it came to Franklin's turn, he replied, A lonesome man in a rainy day, who does not know how to read.
As every thing is interesting that relates to one who made such a figure in the world, it may gratify our readers to be told what were the books that first regaled the youthful appetite of the great Dr. Franklin. The state of literature in Boston at that time, being like himself, only in its infancy, it is not to be supposed that Ben had any very great choice of books. Books, however, there always were in Boston.1 Among these was Bunyan's Voyages, which appears to have been the first he ever read, and of which he speaks with great pleasure. But there is reason to fear that Bunyan did no good: for, as it was the reading of the life of Alexander the Great that first set Charles the Twelfth in such a fever to be running over the world killing every body he met; so, in all probability, it was Bunyan's Voyages that fired Ben's fancy with that passion for travelling, which gave his father so much uneasiness. Having read over old Bunyan so often as to have him almost by heart, Ben added a little boot, and made a swap of him for Burton's Historical Miscellanies. This, consisting of forty or fifty volumes, held him a good long tug: for he had no time to read but on Sundays, and early in the morning or late at night. After this he fell upon his father's library. This being made up principally of old puritanical divinity, would to most boys have appeared like the pillars of Hercules to travellers of old—a bound not to be passed. But so keen was Ben's appetite for any thing in the shape of a book, that he fell upon it with his usual voracity, and soon devoured every thing in it, especially of the lighter sort. Seeing a little bundle of something crammed away very snugly upon an upper shelf, his curiosity led him to take it down: and lo! what should it be but "Plutarch's Lives." Ben was a stranger to the work; but the title alone was enough for him; he instantly gave it one reading; and then a second, and a third, and so on until he had almost committed it to memory; and to his dying day he never mentioned the name of Plutarch without acknowledging how much pleasure and profit he had derived from that divine old writer. And there was another book, by Defoe, a small affair, entitled "An Essay on Projects," to which he pays the very high compliment of saying, that "from it he received impressions which influenced some of the principal events of his life."
Happy now to find that books had the charm to keep his darling boy at home, and thinking that if he were put into a printing office he would be sure to get books enough, his father determined to make a printer of him, though he already had a son in that business. Exactly to his wishes, that son, whose name was James, had just returned from London with a new press and types. Accordingly, without loss of time, Ben, now in his twelfth year, was bound apprentice to him. By the indentures Ben was to serve his brother till twenty-one, i.e. nine full years, without receiving one penny of wages save for the last twelve months! How a man pretending to religion could reconcile it to himself to make so hard a bargain with a younger brother, is strange. But perhaps it was permitted of God, that Ben should learn his ideas of oppression, not from reading but from suffering. The deliverers of mankind have all been made perfect through suffering. And to the galling sense of this villanous oppression, which never ceased to rankle on the mind of Franklin, the American people owe much of that spirited resistance to British injustice, which eventuated in their liberties. But Master James had no great cause to boast of this selfish treatment of his younger brother Benjamin; for the old adage "foul play never thrives," was hardly ever more remarkably illustrated than in this affair, as the reader will in due season be brought to understand.
CHAPTER VII
Ben in clover – Turns a Rhymer – Makes a prodigious noise in Boston – Bit by the Poetic Tarantula – Luckily cured by his father.
Ben is now happy. He is placed by the side of the press, the very mint and coining place of his beloved books; and animated by that delight which he takes in his business, he makes a proficiency equally surprising and profitable to his brother. The field of his reading too is now greatly enlarged. From the booksellers' boys he makes shift, every now and then, to borrow a book, which he never fails to return at the promised time: though to accomplish this he was often obliged to sit up till midnight, reading by his bed side, that he might be as good as his word.
Such an extraordinary passion for learning soon commended him to the notice of his neighbours, among whom was an ingenious young man, a tradesman, named Matthew Adams, who invited him to his house, showed him all his books, and offered to lend him any that he wished to read.
About this time, which was somewhere in his thirteenth year, Ben took it into his head that he could write poetry: and actually composed several little pieces. These, after some hesitation, he showed to his brother, who pronounced them excellent; and thinking that money might be made by Ben's poetry, pressed him to cultivate his wonderful talent, as he called it; and even gave him a couple of subjects to write on. The one, which was to be called the Light-house Tragedy, was to narrate the late shipwreck of a sea captain and his two daughters: and the other was to be a sailor's song on the noted pirate Blackbeard, who had been recently killed on the coast of North Carolina, by Captain Maynard, of a British sloop of war.
Ben accordingly fell to work, and after burning out several candles, for his brother could not afford to let him write poetry by daylight, he produced his two poems. His brother extolled them to the skies, and in all haste had them put to the type and struck off; to expedite matters, fast as the sheets could be snatched from the press, all hands were set to work, folding and stitching them ready for market; while nothing was to be heard throughout the office but constant calls on the boys at press—"more sheets ho! more Light-house tragedy! more Blackbeard!" But who can tell what Ben felt when he saw his brother and all his journeymen in such a bustle on his account—and when he saw, wherever he cast his eyes, the splendid trophies of his genius scattered on the floor and tables; some in common paper for the multitude; and others in snow-white foolscap, for presents to the great people, such as "His excellency the governor."—"The hon. the secretary of state."—"The Worshipful the mayor."—"The aldermen, and gentlemen of the council."—"The reverend the clergy, &c." Ben could never tire of gazing at them; and as he gazed, his heart would leap for joy—"O you precious little verses," he would say to himself, "Ye first warblings of my youthful harp! I'll soon have you abroad, delighting every company, and filling all mouths with my name!" Accordingly, his two poems being ready, Ben, who had been both poet and printer, with a basket full of each on his arm, set out in high spirits to sell them through the town, which he did by singing out as he went, after, the manner of the London cries—
"Choice Poetry! Choice Po-e-try!
Come BUY my choice Po-e-try!"
The people of Boston having never heard any such cry as that before, were prodigiously at a loss to know what he was selling. But still Ben went on singing out as before,
"Choice Poetry! Choice Poetry!
Come, buy my choice Poetry!"
I wonder now, said one with a stare, if it is not poultry that that little boy is singing out so stoutly yonder.
O no, I guess not, said a second.
Well then, cried a third, I vow but it must be pastry.
At length Ben was called up and interrogated.
"Pray, my little man, and what's that that you are crying there so bravely?"
Ben told them it was poetry.
"O!—aye! poetry!" said they; "poetry! that's a sort of something or other in metre—like the old version, isn't it?"
"O yes, to be sure," said they all, "it must be like the old version, if it is poetry;" and thereupon they stared at him, marvelling hugely that a "little curly headed boy like him should be selling such a wonderful thing!" This made Ben hug himself still more on account of his poetry.
I have never been able to get a sight of the ballad of the Light-house Tragedy, which must no doubt have been a great curiosity: but the sailor's song on Blackbeard runs thus—
"Come all you jolly Sailors,
You all so stout and brave;
Come hearken and I'll tell you
What happen'd on the wave.
Oh! 'tis of that bloody Blackbeard
I'm going now for to tell;
And as how by gallant Maynard
He soon was sent to hell—
With a down, down, down derry down."
The reader will, I suppose, agree with Ben in his criticism, many years afterwards, on this poetry, that it was "wretched stuff; mere blind men's ditties." But fortunately for Ben, the poor people of Boston were at that time no judges of poetry. The silver-tongued Watts had not, as yet, snatched the harp of Zion, and poured his divine songs over New-England. And having never been accustomed to any thing better than an old version of David's Psalms, running in this way—
"Ye monsters of the bubbling deep,
Your Maker's praises spout!
Up from your sands ye codlings peep,
And wag your tails about."—
The people of Boston pronounced Ben's poetry mighty fine, and bought them up at a prodigious rate; especially the Light-house Tragedy.
A flood of success so sudden and unexpected, would in all probability have turned Ben's brain and run him stark mad with vanity, had not his wise old father timely stepped in and checked the rising fever. But highly as Ben honoured his father, and respected his judgment, he could hardly brook to hear him attack his beloved poetry, as he did, calling it "mere Grub-street." And he even held a stiff argument in defence of it. But on reading a volume of Pope, which his father, who well knew the force of contrast, put into his hand for that purpose, he never again opened his mouth in behalf of his "blind men's ditties." He used to laugh and say, that after reading Pope, he was so mortified with his Light-house Tragedy, and Sailor's Song, which he had once thought so fine, that he could not bear the sight of them, but constantly threw into the fire every copy that fell in his way. Thus was he timely saved, as he ingenuously confesses, from the very great misfortune of being, perhaps, a miserable jingler for life.
But I cannot let fall the curtain on this curious chapter, without once more feasting my eyes on Ben, as, with a little basket on his arm, he trudged along the streets of Boston crying his poetry.
Who that saw the youthful David coming up fresh from his father's sheep cots, with his locks wet with the dews of the morning, and his cheeks ruddy as the opening rose-buds, would have dreamed that this was he who should one day, single handed, meet the giant Goliah, in the war-darkened valley of Elah, and wipe off reproach from Israel. In like manner, who that saw this "curly headed child," at the tender age of thirteen, selling his "blind men's ditties," among the wonder-struck Jonathans and Jemimas of Boston, would have thought that this was he, who, single handed, was to meet the British ministry at the bar of their own house of Commons, and by the solar blaze of his wisdom, utterly disperse all their dark designs against their countrymen, thus gaining for himself a name lasting as time, and dear to liberty as the name of Washington.
O you time-wasting, brain-starving young men, who can never be at ease unless you have a cigar or a plug of tobacco in your mouths, go on with your puffing and champing—go on with your filthy smoking, and your still more filthy spitting, keeping the cleanly house-wives in constant terror for their nicely waxed floors, and their shining carpets—go on I say; but remember it was not in this way that our little Ben became the GREAT DR. FRANKLIN.