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FROM THE LIBRARY OF
OLIVE TROWBRIDGE
AND

FRANK CAMPBELL LITTLETON
“OAK HILL”, ALDIE, VIRGINIA

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OLN P Pe a)YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.ee ee

“ But the work shall not be lost.”—Passage jrom the Epitaph of
Benjamin Franklin, written by himself.

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RATIONAL ANIMALS.YOUNG

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

SHOWING
Che Principles Which raised a Printer’s Pop to Hirst

ambassador of the American Republic.

BY
HENEKY MAYHEW,
LUTHOR OF
‘‘rHE STORY OF THE PEASANT BOY PHILOSOPHER,”

‘YOUNG HUMPHRY DAVY,” ‘‘ LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,”

)

‘THE GREAT WORLD OF LONDON,” ETC.

WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS BY F¥OHN GILBERT.

FIFTH THOUSAND.

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NEW YORK:
PUTNAM AND SONS.

 

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Miu Lord,

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that, as the freesent liacl: treats af sulects
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ae ae adPREFACE.

Ir was Walter Scott who first raised his voice
against the folly of writing down to the child,
saying, wisely enough, that the true object among
authors for the young should be to write the
child up to the man. As people talk broken
English to Frenchmen, and nurses prattle the
baby dialect to babies, so it was once thought that

v

 

as
puerile in subject, and puerile in style, as the
tales about “ Don’t-care Harry” (who was torn to

boys’ books should be essentially puerile

pieces by a hungry lion, merely because he would
persist in declaring that he “didn’t care” about
certain things in life), and such-like tender bits
of verdure that used to grace the good old English
Spelling-Books of some quarter of a century back.

Conformably to the Walter Scott theory, this
volume has not been penned with the object of
showing boys the delight of slaying a butfalo
or a bison; nor yet with the view of impressing
upon them the nobility of fighting or fagging at
school. ‘The one purpose of the book is to give
young men some sense of the principles that
shold cuide a prudent, honourable, generous,
and refined gentleman through the world. It
does not pretend to teach youth the wonders ofvill PREFACE.

optics, chemistry, or astronomy, but to open
young eyes to the universe of beauty that encom-
passes every enlightened spirit, and to give the
young knights of the present day some faint idea
of the chivalry of life, as well as to develop in
them some little sense of, and taste for, the poetry
of action and the grace of righteous conduct.

It has long appeared to the author that the
modern system of education is based on the fal-
lacy, that to manufacture a wise man is necessarily
to rear a good one. The intellect, however, is but
the servant of the conscience (the impulses or
propensities of mankind being merely the executive,
rather than the governing and originating faculty of
our natures); and hence the grand mistake of the
teachers of our time has been to develop big
brains at the cost of little hearts—to cram with
science and to ignore poetry—to force the scholar
with a perfect hot-bed of languages, and yet to
stunt the worthy with an utter want of principle:
in fine, to rear Palmers, Dean Pauls, redpaths,
Davisons, Robsons, Hughes, Watts, and a whole
host of well-educated and hypocritical scoundrels,
rather than a race of fine upright gentlemen,
Society, however, seems to have had its fill of the
mechanics’ institute mania; the teachy-preachy
fever appears to have come to acrisis; and, in the
lull of the phrensy, the author of the present book
wishes to say his say upon the means of worldly
welfare, the laws of worldly happiness, and the
rules of worldly duty, to the young men of the
present generation.

As to the handling of the subject, some ex-PREFACE, ix

planation is needed. Uncle Benjamin, who is
made the expounder of the Franklinian philo-
sophy to the boy Benjamin himself, is nota purely
imaginary character. He has been elaborated
into greater importance here, certainly, than he
assumes in the biography of his nephew; but this
has been done upon that Shakesperian rule of art,
which often throws an internal moral principle
into an external dramatis persona; and as the
witches in Macbeth are merely the outward em-
bodiment, in a weird and shadowy form, of Mac-
beth’s own ambition, and have, obviously, been
introduced into the play with the view of giving
a kind of haunted and fatalistic air to a bloody
and devouring passion (a passion, indeed, that if
represented really and crudely, rather than ideally
and grandly, as it is, would have made the
tragedy an object of execration instead of sym-
pathy—a bit of filthy literality out of the Royal
Newgate Calendar, instead of a fine supernatural
bit of fate, overshadowed with the same sense

 

of doom as an old Greek play); even so, in a
small way, has Uncle Ben here been made the
exponent of the Franklin view of life, rather
than his nephew Benjamin to be the first to con-
ceive and develop it. Some may urge that, by
this means, the genius of Franklin is reduced
from its original, cast-iron, economic character,
to a mere second-rate form of prudential mind.
Nevertheless, there must have been some reason
for the printer-ambassador’s “‘ Poor Richardism ;”
say it was organization, temperament, or idiosyn-
erasy, if you will, that made him the man heee ee

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x PREFACE.

was; still the replication to such a plea is, that
even these are now acknowledged to be more or
less derivative qualities, in which the family type
is often found either exaggerated into genius, or
dwarfed into idiocy. Hence it is believed that
no very great historic violence has been com-
mitted here, in making a member of the F rankln
family the father of Benjamin Franklin’s character,
even as his parents were assuredly the progeni-
tors of his “ Uithiasis.’? Moreover, Uncle Benjamin
was his godfather; and that in the days when
vodfathership was regarded as a far different duty
(the duty of moral and religious supervision) from
the mere bit of silver-spoon-and-fork-odand that
itisnow. Again, from the printer’s own descrip-
tion of the character of his uncle, it is plain that
Uncle Ben was not the man to ignore any duty
he had taken upon himself. Besides, the old
man lived in the house with Benjamin’s father,
and had himself only one son (who was grown
up and settled as a cutler in the town); so that
as the uncle was comparatively childless, it has
been presumed that the instinctive fondness of
age for youth might have led the old boy to be
taken with the budding intellect and principles of
his little nephew and namesake, and thus to have
exceeded his sponsorial duties, so far as to have
become the boy’s best friend and counsellor,
loving him like a son, and trainmg him like a
novice. Further we know that Uncle Benjamin
was a man of some observation and learning ; he
appears also to have been a person of consider-
able leisure, and perhaps of some little meansPREFACE. Xl

(for we do not hear of his following any occu-
pation in America); so that when we remember
how slight is the addition that even the pro-
foundest geniuses make to the knowledge-fund of
the world, and how little advance those who take
even the longest strides make upon such as have
cone before them, we cannot but admit that
Franklin must have got the substratum of his
knowledge and principles somewhere—since, born
under different circumstances, he would have
been a wholly different man. Surely then there
is no great offence offered to truth in endeavour-
ing to explain artistically how Benjamin Frank-
lin became the man he was; nor any great
wrong done to history in using Uncle Ben as
the means of making out to youths, what was the
peculiar “Old Richard” philosophy that distin-
cuished the printer-sage in after life. The main
object was to give the young reader a sense of
the early teachings Benjamin Franklin when a boy
might have received (and doubtlessly did receive)
from his old Nonconformist uncle, and accordingly
the latter has been made, if not the virtual hero,
at least the prime mover of the incidents in the
present book.

Those critics who know the difficulties of the
problem with which the author has had to deal—
who are acquainted with the many speculation.
that have been advanced as to the seat and
sources of the intellectual and other pleasures of
our nature, will readily discern that the princi-
ples here enunciated have not been “decanted”
out of previous esthetic treatises, but are peculiarLD a ot oF oh

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xX PREFACE.

to the present work, and spring—naturally, it is
hoped—from the idiosyncrasy of the characters
enunciating them. Again, it is but fair to enforce
that the views here given as to the means by
which labour is made pleasant, have sprung out
of the author’s previous investigations rather than
his readings; and so, indeed, has that part of the
book which seeks to impress the reader with a
livelier sense of the claims of the luckless, and
even the criminal, to our respect and earnest con-
sideration. Principles in fine that have cost the
author a life to acquire are often expressed in a
chapter, and expressed, it 1s hoped, sufficiently
in keeping with the current of the story, to
render it difficult for the reader to detect where
the function of dramatizing ends and that of
propounding begins.

The “jail proper” described in this book is
hardly the jail proper belonging to httle Benja-
min Franklin’s time.

Nor has the deviation from historic propriety
been made unadvisedly. It is generally as idle as
it is morbid to paint past horrors. ‘lo have set
forth the atrocities and iniquities practised in the
British jails a century and a half ago, would
have been following in the track of the pernicious
French school of literature, where everything is
sacrificed to melodramatic intensity, and which is
for ever striving to excite a spasm rather than
eratify a taste.

The genius of true English landscape painting,
on the contrary, is ‘‘repose;” and the genius of
modern English poetry is “repose,” too,—a kind

)PREFACE. X1ll

of Sabbath feeling which turns the heart from the
grossnesses and vanities of human life, and lets
the workday spirit loose among the quiet, shady,
and healthful beauties of nature. The intense
school and the repose school are the two far-dis-
tant extremes of all art; and they differ as much
from each other as the sweet refreshment of an
evening by one’s own fireside does from the
heated stimulus of a tavern debauch.

For these artistic reasons, then, the dead bones
of the old jail iniquities and cruelties have not
been disinterred and set up as a bugaboo here.
Such a picture might have been true to the time,
but mere literal truth is a poor thing after all.
Why, Gustave le Gray’s wonderful photograph of
the Sunlight on the Sea, that is hanging before
our eyes as we write, is as true as ‘ Mangnall’s
(Juestions ;” and yet what a picturesque barbarism,
and even falsity, itis! It no more renders, what
only human genius can seize and paint—the ex-
pression, the feeling, the soul of such a scene—
than the camera obscura can fac-simile the
human eye in a portrait, or give us the faintest
elimmer of the high Vandyke quality—the pro-
found thinking, talking pupils of that grand old
countenance in our National Gallery.

But the real object which the author of this book
had in view, was to wake, not only his boy hero up
to a sense of duty, but other boys also; and to let
them know (even without doing any great vio-
lence to the natural truth of things) what prison
iniquities are still daily wrought in the land inel at A al ae oF MO OS al at SF oh

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X1V PREFACE.

which we live. The jail proper of the present
story (though the scene is laid in British America
before the declaration of Independence, and dates
a century and a half back) is a mere transcript of
a well-known jail now standing in the first city in
the world, in the year of our Lord one thousand
eight hundred and sixty. The details given here
are the bare literalities noted by the author only
a few months back, and printed in his account of
the metropolitan prisons in that wretched frag-
ment of a well-meant scheme, the ‘“‘ Great World of
London.” . There, if the sceptic needs proof, he
can get chapter and verse, and learn that many of
the facts here given were recorded in the presence
of some of the visiting justices themselves. Jails
may have been bad a hundred years ago, but this
plague-spot of the first city in the world seems to
the author worse than all; because it still goes on
after Howard’s labours—after Brougham’s reforms
after Sheriff Watson’s fine industrial schools;
yes, there it stands, giving the lie to all our May-
day meetings, our ragged schools, our City mis-
sions, and pretended love of the destitute, the
weak, and the suffering. We no longer wonder that
the atrocities of the French Bastille roused the
Parisian people to rush off in a body and tumble
the.old prison-citadel down into a heap of ruins ;
and if Tothill Fields lay across the Channel, the
same indignant outrage might perhaps be again
enacted. But here, good easy citizens as we are,
we pay our poor-rates, we call ourselves miserable
sinners, in a Joud voice, once a week, from a cosy
pew ; our ‘good lady” belongs to a district visit-PREFACE, XV

ing society, and distributes tracts in the back
slums; we put our cheque into the plate, after a
bottle or two of port, at a charity dinner; and,
this done, we are self-content.

We once passed a quiet half-hour with Mr. Cal-
craft, the hangman, and in the course of the conver-
sation, he alluded to Mrs. Caleraft! The words no
sooner fell upon the ear than a world of wonder
filled the brain, Hven he, then, had somebody to
care about him. ‘There was somebody to hug and
caress him before he left his home in that scratch wig
and fur capin which we saw him come disguised
to Newgate (for the ‘‘ roughs” had threatened to
shoot him), and carrying that small ominous satchel
basket, at two in the morning, on the day of
Bousfield’s execution.

The wretched lads in Tothill Fields prison are
worse off than Calcraft himself. They have no-
body in the world to care about them.

Nobody! Yet, stay, we forget; there is this
same Calcraft to look after a good many of them..

In fine—to drop the author and speak in propria
persond—I have attempted to write a book which,
while it treated of some subject that a boy would
be likely to attend to, should at the same time
admit of enunciating such principles as I wished
my own boy, and other boys as good and as honest
and earnest as he, to carry with them through
life; and yet I have striven while writing it, to
do no positive violence to truth either in the love

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to nature—true to the spirit, perhaps, rather
ian the lower of things--even though I had a
peculiar scheme to work out. And now such as
it is, 1 give the present volume to the youth of
the time, in the hope that it may serve them for
what I myself felt the want of more than anything,
after leaving Westminster School, as a youns
man crammed to the tip of one’s tongue with
Latin and Greek and nothing else, viZ.: for
something like a guide to what Uncle Ben calls

‘the right road through life.”

Hy. M.YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

PARI’ FE

YOUNG BEN’S LOVE OF THE SEA, AND HOW
HE WAS WEANED FROM IT.

CHAPTER I.
‘‘ WHAT EVER SHALL WE DO WITH THE BOY 2”

A pretty chubby-faced boy, with a pair of cheeks
rosy and plump as ripe peaches, was Master
Benjamin franklin in his teens.

Dressed in a tiny three-cornered hat—a very
small pair of ‘‘smalls,” or knee-breeches—and a
kind of little stitfskirted fan-tailed surtout—he
looked hke a Greenwich pensioner in miniature ;
or might have been mistaken (had the colours
been gayer) for the little fat fairy-coachman to
Cinderella’s state-carriage.

It would have made a pretty picture to have
handed down to our time, could an artist have
sketched the boy, as he sat beside his toy ship, in
the old-fashioned, dark back parlour behind the
tallow-chandler’s store—‘‘at the corner of Ha-
nover and Union Streets,” in the city of Boston,
New England.2 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

Over the half-curtain of a olass-door, a long
deep fringe of white candles, varied with heavy
tassel-like bunches of “‘ sixes » and ‘ eights,”
might be seen dangling from the rafters of the
adjoining shop, with, here and there, several small
stacks of yellow and white soap, in ingot-like
bars, ranged along the upper shelves; and the
eye could also catch olimpses of the square brown
paper cap which crowned the head of Josiah
Franklin (the proprietor of the establishment, and
father of our Benjamin), wandering busily about,
as the shop-bell was heard to tinkle-tinkle with
the arrival of fresh customers, seeking supplies of
the ‘“‘ best mottled” or “ dips.”

The back parlour itself, being lighted only from
the shop, was dim as a theatre by day, so that all
around was wrapt in the rich transparent-brown
shade of what artists call ‘ clear obscure.” The
little light pervading the room shone in faint
lustrous patches upon the bright pewter platters
and tin candlesticks that were arranged as orna-
ments on the narrow wooden mantelpiece, whilst
it sparkled in spots in one corner of the apartment,
where, after a time, the eye could just distinguish
a'few old china cups and drinking-glasses set out
on the shelves of the triangular cupboard.

Tn this little room sat Benjamin’s mother, spin-
ning till the walls hummed like a top with the
drone of her wheel, and his sister Deborah, who
was busy making a main-sail for the boy’s cutter
out of an old towel, now that she had finished
setting the earthen porringers for the family
supper of bread and milk; while young Ben him-
self appeared surrounded with a litter of sticks
sntended for masts and yards, and whipcord for
rigging, and with the sail-less hull of his home-
made vessel standing close beside him on its little
stocks (made out of an inverted wooden footstool),““WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH HE Boy?” 3

ov
and seeming as if ready to be «“
nary ’—under the dresser.
The boy had grown tired of his daily work ; for
the candle-wicks which his father had set him to
cut lay in tufts about the deck of his boat, and the
few snips of cotton on the sanded floor told how
little of his task he had done since dinner-time,*
Indeed, it did not require much sagacity to
perceive that Benjamin hated the unsavourv
pursuits of soap-boiling and candle-making, and
deighted in the more exciting enterprises of
shipping and seafaring. ‘On the bench at his
elbow was the bundle of rushes that had been
given him to trim, in readiness for what was his
especial horror—the approaching “ melting-day,”
together with the frame of pewter moulds that
required to be cleaned for the new stock of “ cast
candles.” But both of these were in the same
state as he had received them in the morning :
whereas the coat of the boy, and the ground all
about him, were speckled with chips from the old
broomstick that .he had been busy shaping into a
main-mast for his miniature yacht, and near at
hand were two small pipkins filled with a penny-
worth of black and white paint, with which he
had been striping the sides of the little vessel, and

laid up in ordi-

printing the name of the ‘‘ FLYING DUTCHMAN oF
BOSTON ”’ upon her stern.

* “At ten years old,” are Franklin’s own words, given in
the history of his boyhood, written by himself, “1 was taken
to help my father in his business, which was that of a tallow-
chandler and soap-boiler—a business to which he was not
bred, but had assumed on his arrival in New England,
because he found that his dyeing trade, being in little
request, would not maintain his family. Accordingly, I was
employed in cutting wicks for the candles, filling the moulds
for ‘ cast candles,’ attending to the shop, and going errands,
&e.” Atthe opening’of our story, the lad is supposed to
have been some time at this trade. ‘

BZ4 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

The craft itself did no small credit to young
Benjamin’s skill as a toy ship-builder, though
certainly her ‘‘ lines” were more in the washing-
tub style of naval architecture than the ‘‘ wave-
principle” of modern American clippers: for
the hull was fashioned after the shape of the
Dutch ‘“ Dogger-boats’’ in the Boston harbour,
and had the appearance of an enormous wooden
shoe.

It had taken one of the largest logs from the
wood-house to build the boat, for she was the
size of a doll’s cradle at least. It had cost no
little trouble, too, and broken not a few gouges in
hollowing out a ‘“‘ hold” for her—even as big as a
pie-dish ; and now that the mighty task had been
accomplished, she had sufficient capacity under
her hatches to carry a crew of white mice, and
might, on an emergency, have stowed away
victuals enough for a squirrel skipper to winter

upon.
Yet, in his heart, Benjamin found little plea-
sure in the amusement. He knew he was

neglecting his work for it; he knew, too, that his
half-Puritan father regarded disobedience as the
prime cause of all error, so that playing at such a
time was, after all, but sorry, deadly-lively sport
to him. Instead of being delighted with the
pastime, he went about it in fear and trembling—
with one eye on the miniature mast he was shap-
ing, and the other intently watching the move-
ments of the dreaded brown-paper cap in the
shop without, Every turn of the door-handle
made his little heart flutter like a newly-trapped
pird, and every approaching footstep was like the
click of a pistol in his ear; so that the stick
almost fell from his hand involuntarily with the
fright, and the candle-wicks and scissors were
suddenly snatched up instead, while an air of the

.a a eet Sl Ee eee ase

  

““ WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE BOY ?” D

most intense industry was assumed for the time
being.

Indeed, the boy’s life of late had been one
continual struggle and fight between his in-
clinations and his duty. For the last two years he
had been supposed to be eng: iged at his father’s
business, though from the work being anything
but a “ labour of love” to him, he had ‘really been
occupied with other things. He was for ever
longing to get away to sea, and nothing delighte d
him but wh: it, so to speak, smacked of ‘‘ the tar ;
whereas he sickened at the smell of the « melting-
days,” and the mere sight of the tallow was asso-
ciated in his mind with a youthful horror of mut-
ton fat.*

Born and bred within a stone’s throw of the
beautiful bay of Massachusetts, his earliest cames
with the children of his acquaintance had been in
jumping from barge to barge, alongside the quay ;
and ever since the little fe sllow he id been breeched
he had been able to scull a boat across the “ basin ;”
whilst, in his schoolhood, he and his cronies
were sure every holiday to be out sailing or row-
ing over to some one of the hundred is] ads that
dappled the blue expanse of water round about
the city.

Steering had been the boy’s first exercise of
power, and the pleasure the little cockswain had
felt in making the boat answer as readily as his
own muscles to his will, had charmed him with
the sailor’s life; while the danger connected with

* “T disliked the trade,” Franklin tells us himself, in the
account of his early life, ‘‘ and had a strong inclination to go
to sea; my father, however, declared against it. But
residing near the water, I was much in it and on it. I
learned to swim well, and to manage boats; and when em-
barked with other boys, I was commonly allowed to govern,
especially in case of any difficulty9 ae peng te yr jee da je eae
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Ce tk at be a ete Ree ee

 

 

 

 

 

6 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

the pursuit served only to increase the delight of
triumphing over the difficulties. Again, to his
young fancy, a ship at sea seemed as free as the
gull in the air* (though it has been well said, on
the contrary, that a ship is a “ prison without any
chance of escape”). Nor did he ever see a vessel
with its white pouting sails, glide like a snowy
summer cloud across the bay towards the silver
ring of the horizon, without wondering what
the sailors would find beyond it, and longing to
be with the crew, to visit strange countries
and people, and see what the earth was like,
and whether it was really true that there was no
end to the world, nor any place where one could
stand on the brink of it, and look down into the
great well of space below.

For the last hour or two, however, the youth had
laid aside his ship tools, and having given his sister
instructions about the sail she had promised to
make for him, had taken from his pocket the book
which his brother-in-law, Captain Holmes—he
who had married his half-sister Ruth, and was
master of a sloop—had brought him that day (as
he ran in at dinner-time just to shake hands with
them all), on his return from his last voyage to
England. Benjamin had been burning to read
the volume all the day long; for it was en-
titled ‘“‘ The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Mariner,
by Daniel De Foe,” and the captain had told him that
it had *‘ only just been published in London” at
the time when he had set sail from that port.

* The writer (who was a midshipman in his youth) would
seriously advise boys to abandon all such silly notions as to the
pleasures of a sailor's life, for he can conscientiously say that
it is not only the hardest and most perilous of all callings,
but one in which the living, the housing, and the gains are of
the poorest possible kind.i) i ,
lea Ne i i Re a a eee eee San
tine - — SSS : ee ae

““WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE BOY?” 7

From his earliest childhood the little fellow had
been ‘‘ passionately fond” of reading, and all the
halfpence his big brothers and his Uncle Ben-
jamin gave him he was accustomed to devote to
the purchase of books.* A new book, therefore,
was the greatest treat that could possibly have
been offered him, and such a one as his brother-
in-law had brought him (for he had already turned
over the leaves, and seen that it was about a sailor
cast away on a desert island) was more than he
could keep his eyes off till bedtime.

It had been lke a red-hot coal in his pocket
all day.

So now that his mast was “stepped,” and
Deborah was getting on with the sail, young
Benjamin had got the volume spread open on his
knees, and was too deeply absorbed in the mar-
vellous history of Crusoe’s strange island life to
think either of the wicks, the rushes, or the
mould for the ‘‘ cast candles ”—or even the punish-
ment that surely awaited him for his neglect.

Again and acain his mother had entreated him
to put down the volume, and go on with the
wicks.

‘‘ Benjamin!” she would cry aloud, to rouse the
lad from the trance he had fallen into, ‘‘ do give
over reading till after work time, there’s a good

child !”

* «Wrom my infancy,” says our hero, in the narrative of
his boyhood, “T was passionately fond of reading, and all
the money that came into my hands was laid out in the
purchasing of books. I was very fond of voyages... . My
father’s little library consisted chiefly of works on polemic
divinity, most of which I read. I have often regretted, that
at a time when I had such a thirst for knowledge, more
proper books had not fallen in my way. There was among
them ‘Plutarch’s Lives,’ which I read abundantly, and still
think that time spent to great advantage. There was also
a bock of De Foe’s, called ‘An Essay on Projects.a a ae al ae Pty
Po

mar enna ogee

 

 

 

 

YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

The eager boy, however, sat with his” nose
almost buried in the leaves, and, without raising
his eyes from the book, merely begged to be
allowed to read to the end of ‘that chapter ;”
though, no sooner was one finished than the pages
were turned over to learn the length of the next,
and another begun.

‘““T wish Captain Holmes had never brought
you the book!” the kind-hearted mother would
exclaim with a sigh, while she tapped the treadle
of her wheel the quicker for the thought —interject-
ing the next minute, as she heard the shop-bell
tinkle, and stretched up her neck, as usual, to look
over the blind, and see who was the new comer:
‘“ Why, there’s your Uncle Benjamin got back
from meeting, I declare !—I¢ will only lead, I’m
afraid, to fresh words between you and your
father.: Your head, Ben, is too full of the sea
already, without any vain story-books of sailors’
adventures to lead you astray.”’

‘“‘T am sure it was very kind of the captain,”
little Ben would reply, ‘‘to make me such a nice
present; but he always brings every one of us
something at the end of each voyage. “I can’t
talk to you, though, just now, mother; for if I
was to get the strap for it, I couldn’t break off
in the middle of this story—it’s so nice and
interesting, you can’t tell ;” and the lad again bent
his head over the pages, so that the long hair, that
usually streamed down upon his shoulders, hung
over the leaves: and he kept tossing the locks
peevishly back as he gloated over the text.

In a moment he was utterly lost again in the
imaginary scenes before him; and then he no more
heard his mother tell him that she was sure it
was time to think about putting the shutters up,
than if he had been fast asleep. Neither could
sister Deborah get a word from him, even though“WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE BOY?” 9§

she wanted instructions as to where to place the
little ‘‘ reef-points ” upon his mimic main-sail.

‘‘ Benjamin! Benjamin!” cried the mother, as
she rose from her wheel and shook the boy, to
rouse him from his trance, ‘‘ do you know, sirrah,
that your father will be in to supper directly,
and here you haven’t cut so much as one bundle
of wicks all the day through? How shall I be
able to screen you again from his anger, so strict
as he is 2”

The boy stared vacantly, as though he had been
suddenly waked up out of a deep slumber, and
began to detail the incidents of the story he had
just read, after the fashion of boys in general, from
the time when stories were first invented. ‘‘ Crusoe
gets shipwrecked you know, mother,” he started off,
‘Cand then he makes a raft, and goes off to the
vessel, you know, and saves a lot of things from
the ship, you know, and then, you know—”’

“There! there! have done, boy!” cried the
mother in alarm; “this madness for the sea will
be the ruin of you. Just think of the life Josiah
Franklin has led since he went off as a cabin-boy,
shortly after your father’s first wife died; for
though he was the late Mrs. Franklin’s pet child,
I’ve heard your father say that he shut his doors
upon him when he came back shoeless and shirt-
less at the year’s end; and whatever has become of
the poor boy now, the Lord above only knows.’”*

* «J eontinued thus employed,” says Franklin, in his
Autobiography, “in my father’s business for two years; that
is, till I was twelve years old ; and then my brother John, who
was bred to that business, having left my father, and married,
and set up for himself at Rhode Island, there was every
appearance that I was destined to supply his place, and
become a tallow-chandler. But my dislike to the trade
continuing, my father had apprehensions, that if he did not
yut me to one more agreeable, I should break loose to go to
sea, as my brother Josiah had done, to his great vexation.”

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
     

 

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pene
= SShaat act a al

 

 

 

10 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

‘“‘ But, mother,” persisted the lad, whose brain
was still so inflamed by the excitement of the
wondrous narrative that he could neither speak
nor think of anything else, ‘‘ only let me tell you °
about what I have been reading—it’s so beauti-
ful—and then Ill listen patiently to whatever
you've got to say;” and without waiting for an
answer Ben began again: ‘Well, you know,
mother, Crusoe gets a barrel or two of gunpowder
from off the wreck, you know, and some tools as
well; and then he sets to work, you know, and
builds himself a hut on the uninhabited island.”

The dame paid no heed to the incidents detailed
by the lad, but kept stretching her neck over the
curtain of the glass-door, and watching first the
figure of her husband in the shop, and then glanc-
ing at the wooden clock against the wall, as if she
dreaded the coming of the supper hour, when she
knew his father would be sure to demand of Ben-
jamin an account of his day’s work.

She was about to snatch the book from the boy’s
hands, and remove the cottons and the rushes out
of sight, when suddenly the voice of the father,
calling for Benjamin to bring him the wicks,
dispelled the boy’s dream, and made the mother
tremble almost as much as it did the lad himself.

‘““Qh! mother! youll beg me off once more,
won't you?’ sobbed the penitent Benjamin, as
his disobedience now flashed upon him, for he
knew how often his father had pardoned him for
the same fault, and that he had warned him that
no entreaties should prevent him punishing him
severely for the next offence.

*‘ Benjamin, I say!” shouted the voice, authori-
tatively, from the shop.

“Go to him, child,” urged the mother, as she
patted her pet boy (for he was the youngest) on
the head to give him courage, “‘and confess your“WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE BOY?’ 11

fault openly lke a lttle man. You know the
store your father sets upon a ‘ contrite heart,’” she
added, in the conventicle cast of thought peculiar
to the early settlers in New England; ‘and rest
assured, if he but sees you repentant, his anger
will give way; for the aim of all punishment, Ben-
jamin, is to chasten, and not to torture; and peni-
tence does that through the scourging of the spirit,
which the other accomplishes through the sutter-
ing of the body.”

‘Go you instead of me, mother—do. now, there’s
a dear. You will, won't you, eh?” begged the
little fellow, as he curled his arm coaxingly about
her waist, and looked up at her through his tears.
‘Do you tell him, mother, I never shall be able
to keep to the horrid candle-work, for I hate 1t—
that I do; and though every night when I lie
awake I make vows that I will not vex him again,
but strive hard at whatever he gives me to do,
still when the next day comes my heart fails me,
and my spirit keeps pulling my body away” (the
boy had canght the puritanical phrases of the
time), “and filling my head with the delight
of being on the water; and then, for the life of
me, I can’t keep away from my voyage-books,
or my little ship, or something that reminds me of
the sea. If you'd only get him to let me go with
Captain Holmes—” and as the dame turned
her head away he added quickly, “just for one
voyage, dear mother—to see how I like it,—oh!
Vd—l’d—I don’t know what I’d not do for you,
mother dear; I’d bring you and Deborah home
such beautiful things then, and—”

The boyish protestations were suddenly cut
short by the sight of the brown-paper cap in the
shop moving towards the parlour; so, without
waiting to finish the sentence, the affrighted lad
dung open the side-door leading to the staircase,

La ee

at eprrapsaenteignas” ts tia ae NO

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ingen ent one
a“ oe. = tale 5 =I I ale ttt alia

Oe tae tae

 

 

 

12 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

and scampered up to his room, with an imaginary
parent following close at his heels.

Here the little fellow threw himself on the
‘trestle-bed” that stood in one corner of the
garret, and lay for a time too terrified for tears ;
for his conscience converted the least noise into
the approach of his father’s footsteps; so that he
trembled like a leaf at every motion—his heart
beating the while in his bosom like a flail.

After a time, however, the lad, finding he was
left by himself, began to lay aside his fears, and
to talk, as boys are wont to do, about the hard-
ships he endured.

‘‘ He was sure he did everything he possibly
could,” he would mutter to himself, as he whim-
pered between the words; ‘and he thought it
very cruel of them to force him to keep to that
filthy, nasty candle-making, when they knew he
couldn’t bear it; and what was more, he never
should like it—not even if he was to make ever
so much money at it, and be able to keep a pony
of his own into the bargain. Why wouldn’t they
let him go to sea, he wondered? He called it
very unkind, he did.’ And the boy would doubt-
lessly have continued in the same strain, had not
the little pet guinea-pig, that he kept in an old
bird-cage in one corner of his room, here given a
squeak so shrill that it sounded more like the
piping of a bird than the cry of a beast.

In a moment Benjamin had forgotten all his
sorrows ; and with the tear-drops still lingering
in the corner of his eyes—like goutes of rain in
flower-cups after a summer shower—he leapt from
the bed, saying :—‘* Ah! Master Toby Anderson,
you want your supper, do you?” and the next
minute his hand was inside the cage, dragging the
plump little piebald thing from out its nest of hay.““WIIAT SHALL WE DO WITH. THE BOY?” 13

Then, cuddling the pet creature close up in his
neck, while he leant his head on one side so as to
keep its back warm with his cheek, he began
prattling away to the animal almost as a mother
does to her babe.

“Ah! Master Tiggy, that’s what you like, don’t
you ?” said Benjamin, as he stroked his hand along
the sleek sides of the tame little thing till it
made a noise like a cry of joy, somewhat between
the chirruping of a cricket and the purr of a cat.
‘* You like me to rub your back, you do—you fond
little rascal! But I’ve got bad news for Toby;
there’s no supper for him to-night; no nice bread
and milk for him to put his little pink tooties in

while he eats it—for he’s got all the manners of

the pig, that he has. Ah! he'll have to go to bed,
like his poor young master, on an empty stomach—
for what do you think, Tiggy dear? Why, they’ve
been very unkind to poor Benjamin, that they
have ;” and the chord once touched, the boy con-
fided all his sorrows to the pet animal, as if it had
been one of his cronies at school.

“T wouldn’t treat you so, would I, Toby ?” he
went on, hugging the little thing as he spoke, ‘‘ for
who gives the beauty nice apple-parings? and
who’s a regular little piggy-wiggy for them ?—-who
but Master Toby Anderson here. Ay, but to-night
my little gentleman will have to eat his bed;
though it won’t be the first time he has done that ;
for he dearly loves a bit of sweet, new hay—don’'t
you, Tobe ?”

Presently the boy cried, as the animal wriggled
itself up the sleeve of his coat, ‘‘ Come down here,
sir; come down directly, I say!” and then stand-
ing up he proceeded to shake his arm violently
over the bed, till the little black and white ball
was dislodged from the new nestling-place he had
chosen.a la aa ae ae ea OT

att tae atl ete ea ee

 

14 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

‘“Come here, you little rascal! Come and let
me look at you! There now, sit up and wash
yourself with your little paws, like a ki‘ten, for
youre going to bed shortly, I can tell you. Oh,
he’s a beauty, that he is!—with his black patch
over one eye like a little bull-dog, and a little
brown spot at his side, the very colour of a pear
that’s gone bad. Then he’s got eyes of his own
like large black beads, and little tiddy ears that
are as soft and pinky as rose-leaves. He’s a nice
clean little tiggy, too, and not like those filthy
white mice that some boys keep, and which have
such a nasty ratty smell with them—no! Toby
smells of nice new hay instead. There! there’s
a fine fellow for you,” cried the lad, as he rubbed
up the tiny animal’s coat. the wrong way. “ Why,
he looks like a little baby hog with a mane of
bristles up his neck. But Loby’s no hog, that he
isn’t, for he wouldn’t bite me even with my finger
at his mouth—no! he only nibbles at it, to have
a game at play, that’s all. But come, Master
Anderson, you must go back to your nest, and
make the best supper you can off your bed-clothes ;
for you can’t sleep with the cat to-night, so you’ll
have to keep yourself warm, old fellow, for I
couldn't for the life of me go down stairs to get
Pussy for you to cuddle just now.”

 

The pet was at length returned to its cage,
and Benjamin once more left to brood over his
troubles; so he flung himself on the bed again,
and began thinking how he could best avoid the
punishment that he felt sure awaited him on the
morrow.

Yet it was strange, he mused, his father had
not called him down even to put the shutters up.
Who had closed the shop? he wondered. They
must have done supper by this time. Yes! that“WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE BOY a ee

was the clatter of the things being taken away.
Why didn’t Deborah come to him ?—he always did
to her when she was in disgrace. Who had asked
a blessing on the food now he was away? stil
he could not make out why he wasn’t called down.
Had mother begged him off as usual? No! that
couldn’t be, for father had threatened last time
that he would listen to no more entreaties. Per-
haps one of the deacons had come in to talk with
father about the affairs of the chapel in South-
street ;* or else Uncle Ben was reading to them
his short-hand notes of the sermon he had gone
to hear that evening.T

Soon, however, the sounds of his father’s violin
below-stairs put an end to the boy’s conjectures as
to the occupation of the family, and as he crept
outside the door to listen, he could hear them all
joining in a hymn.{

Still Benjamin could not make out why his
punishment should be deferred. However, he
made his mind up to one thing, and that was to
be off to his brother-in-law, Captain Holmes, at

* “T yemember well,’ Franklin writes in the description
he gives of his father’s character in his Autobiography, “‘ his
being frequently visited by leading men, who consulted him
for his opinion on public affairs, and those of the church he
belonged to; and who showed a great respect for his judg-
ment and advice.”

+ “He had invented a short hand of his own,” says
Franklin in his life speaking of his Uncle senjamin,
“which he taught we; but not having practised it, I have
now forgotten it. He was very pious, and an assiduous
attendant at the sermons of the best preachers, which he
reduced to writing according to his method, and had thus
collected several volumes of them.”

{ “My father was skilled a little in music. His voice was
sonorous and agreeable, so that when he played on his violin,
and sang withal, as he was accustomed to do after the busi-
ness of the day was over, it was extremely agreeable to hear.’
—Franklin’s Autobiography.

 

 

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16 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

daybreak on the morrow, and get him to promise
to take him as a cabin-boy on his next voyage—for
that would put an end to all the noises between
his father and him.

The plan was no sooner framed than the lad
was away in spirit again, sailing far over the sea,
while he listened to the drone of the sacred tune
below; until at last, tired out with his troubles,
he fell asleep as he lay outside the bed, and woke
only when the air was blue with the faint light
of the coming day.

His first thoughts, on opening his eyes, were of
the chastisement that he felt assured was in store
for him if he stayed till his father was stirring.
So without waiting to tidy himself, he crept with
his shoes in his hand as silently as possible down
stairs, and then slipping them on his feet, he was
off—like a frightened deer—to the water-side.

Come what might, little Ben was determined to
be a sailor.

 

CHAPTAR It.

‘* MISSING: A YOUNG GENTLEMAN

99

 

“Tf Benjamin Franklin will return to his home, all will
be for—”

‘No! no! I won’t have ‘forgiven’ put down,”
doggedly exclaimed the father, seizing hold of
Uncle Benjamin’s arm to stop his pen, as the latter
read out, word by word, the announcement he was
busy writing for the town-crier; while, in one
corner of the room, that important civic functionary
stood waiting for the bit of paper, with his big bell
inverted, so that it looked like an enormous brass
tulip in his hand.

‘Task your pardon, Master Frankling, but we‘¢MIscING = A YOUNG GENTLEMAN——” 17

general says ‘forgiven’ in all sitch cases,” meeklv
observed the bellman, with a slight pull of his
forelock.

“Oh, Josiah, remember the words of your
morning prayer!” interposed the broken-hearted
mother, as for a moment she raised her face from
out her hands: ‘ ‘forgive us as we—’ you know
the rest.”

‘“¢ Ay, come, Josh,” said Uncle Benjamin, ‘‘ don’t
be stubborn-hearted! Think of the young ‘ never-
do-well’ you were yourself when you were ‘pren-
tice to brother John, at Banbury.’*

“That's all very well!” murmured the Puritan
tallow-chandler, turning away to hide the smiles
begotten by the youthful recollection, and still
struggling with the innate kindness of his nature ;
“but I’ve got a duty to perform to my boy, and
do it I will, even if it breaks my heart.”

‘Yes, but, Josh,” remonstrated Uncle Ben, as
he laid his hand on his brother’s shoulder, ‘‘ think
of the times and times you and I have stolen away
on the sly to Northampton, to see the mummer
there, unbeknown to father. Ah, you were a saa
young Jackanapes for the playhouse, that you
were, Master Josh, at Ben’s age,” he added,
nudging the father playfully in the side.

‘— don’t mean to deny it, Benjamin ;” and the
would-be Brutus chuckled faintly, as his brother
reminded him of his boyish peccadilloes—‘‘ but,”
he added immediately afterwards, screwing up as
good a frown as he could manage under the clr-

* “ John, my next uncle, was bred a dyer, I believe, o
wool,’ says Benjamin Franklin himself in his bh yt
“My grandfather Thomas, who was born in 1598, lived at
Ecton till he was too old to continue his business, when he
retired to Banbury in Oxfordshire, to the house of his son
John, with whom my father served an apprenticeship.” —Seo
Autobiography, pp. 3 and 4.
©

    
   
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
   

eeSEDO I ot gt seer

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ae al a en Oe

ee ee ee eee

 

 

18 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

ewustances, ‘ that’s no reason why I should allow
my boy to be guilty of the same sins. ‘There, go
along with you—ao,” he exclaimed good-humour-
edly, as he endeavoured to shake off both the
mother and the uncle, who, seeing that the ice of
paternal propriety was fast thawing under the
warmth of his better nature, had planted them
selves one on either side of him. ‘‘ I tell you it’s
my bounden duty not to overlook the boy’s dis-
obedience any longer ;” and, so saying, he beat
the air with his fist, as if anxious to hammer the
notion into his own mind as well as theirs.

‘“‘ Verily, Josiah, justice says all should be

punished, ‘for there are none perfect—no not
one,’’’ whispered the religious wife impressively
in his ear; ‘‘but love and mercy, husband, cry
Forgive.” ;
. “To be sure they do,” chimed in the good-
natured uncle; ‘for as the mummers used to say
in the play, Josh—‘ If all have their deserts, who
shall ’scape whipping? So, come, I may put down
‘forgiven,’ eh?” added the peacemaker, as he shook
his brother by the hand, while Josiah tumed away
as if ashamed of his weakness. ‘Ah! I knew it
‘ud be so,” and quickly inditing the word, Uncle
Benjamin handed the paper to the crier, saying,
‘‘'There, my man, you'd better first go round the
harbour with it; and if you bring the prodigal
back with you in an hour or two, why, you shall
have a mug of cider over and above your pay.”

Ihe crier, having nodded his head, and scraped
his foot back along the sanded floor, by way of
obeisance, took his departure, when in a minute
or two the family heard his bell jangling away at
the end of the street, and immediately afterwards
caught the distant ery of “ Oyez, oyez, oyez! hif
Benjamin Frankling will return to his ’°ome—-”
‘Do you hear, sister?” said Uncle Benjamin,‘MISSING: A YOUNG GENTLEMAN———” 19

consolingly, as he approached the weeping mother ;
‘your boy will be heard of all over the town, and
yowll soon have your little pet bird back again
in his cage, rest assured.”

‘Heaven grant it may be so, and bless you for
your loving-kindness, brother!” faltered out the
dame, half hysteric, through her tears, with delight
at the thought of regaining her lost son.

‘Hah! it'll all come right enough by-and-by,”’
said Uncle Benjamin, with a sigh like the blowing
of a porpoise, as he now prepared to copy into his
short-hand book the notes of the sermon he had
heard on the previous evening; ‘“ and the young
good-for-nothing will turn out to be the flower of
the flock yet—take my word for it. Wasn't our
brother Thomas the wildest of all us boys, Josh?
and didn’t he come after all to be a barrister, anda
ereat man? And when Squire Palmer advised
him to leave the forge, on account of his love of
learning, and become a student at law, didn’t father
—you remember, Josh—vow he wouldn’t listen to
it, and declare that the eldest son of the Franklins
had always beena smith, and a smith, and nothing
else than a smith, his eldest son should be? Well,”
the good man proceeded, as he kept rubbing his
spectacles with the dirty bit of wash-leather he
usually carried in his pocket, “didn’t Tom, I
say, in spite of father’s objections and prophecies,
rise to be one of the foremost men in the whole
county, and a friend of my Lord Halifax ?* ay, and

 

# « Thomas, my eldest uncle,” wrote Franklin in 1771 to
his son, William Temple Franklin, who was then Governor
of New Jersey, “was bred a smith under his father” (“the
eldest son being always brought up to that employment,” he
states in another place), “but being ingenious, and encou-
raged in learning, as all his brothers were, by an Esquire
Palmer, then the principal inhabitant of our parish, he quali-
fied himself for the Bar, and became a considerable man in
the county, was chief mover of all public-spirited enterprises
C2Fe a a ay

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Dal a ot

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Us Soeeas

a Aree en ee aed ek ae Bed

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  

20) YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

so your Ben, mark my word, will come to be courted
by the great some day. For—though he’s my own
godson, and called after me, too—he’s the very
image of his uncle the barrister, that he is; so like
him, indeed, that if Thomas, instead of dying, as
he did four years to a day before Benjamin was
born, had quitted this world for a better just four
years later, why I should have said—had I been a
heathen, and believed in such things—that the
spirit of the one had passed into the body of the
other; for your Ben has got the same clever head-
piece of his own, and is for all the world the same
greedy glutton at a book.”

‘‘T grant he’s a lad of some parts,” exclaimed
the flattered father, while slipping on, over the
arms of his coat, the clean linen sleeves his wife
had put to air for him, ‘‘ and, indeed, was always
quick enough at his learning. But I’m wanted in
the shop,” he added, as the bell was heard to
tinkle without; ‘so do you, Benjamin, talk it
over with Abiah here, and please her mother’s
heart by raising her hopes of her truant child.
Coming!” shouted the tallow-chandler, as he
ducked his head under the fringe of candles,
whilst the impatient visitor kept tapping on the
counter.

As the husband left the parlour, the tidy wife
cried in a half-whisper after him, ‘‘ Do pray stop,

.

 

for the county or town of Northampton, as well as of his own
village, of which many instances were related of him, and
he was much taken notice of and patronized by my Lord
Halifax. He died in 1702, four years to a day before I was
born. The recital which some elderly persons made to us of
his character, I remember struck you as something extraor-
dinary, from its similarity with what you know of me. ‘Had
he died,’ said.you, ‘four years later, on the same day, one
might have supposed a transmigration.’ ’—Autobiograph y
Bohn’s Edition, p. 4. te‘MISSING: A YOUNG GENTLEMAN——” 92]

Josiah, and put on a clean apron, for really that
isn't fit to go into the shop with,” and then,
finding she had spoken too late, she turned to
Uncle Benjamin (who was now scribbling away at
the table), and continued, with all the clory of a
mother’s pride, ‘“‘ I can hardly remember the time
when our Ben couldn’t read: how, too, the little
fellow ever learnt his letters was always a mys-
tery to me, for I never knew of any one teaching
him.* But I can’t get Josiah to bear in mind
that he was a boy himself once; for though Ben
may be a little flighty, I’m sure there’s no vice in
the child.”

And now that her thoughts had been diverted
into a more lively channel, she rose from her seat,
and began to busy herself with making the apple-
and-pumpkin pie that she had promised the chil-
dren for that day’s feast.

‘““It was only a packman with tapes and
ribbons,” said Josiah, as he shortly rejoined the
couple: ‘but even he had got hold of the news
of our misfortune.”

‘Well but, Josiah,” expostulated the brother,
looking up sideways, like a bird, from the book
in which he was writing: ‘ don’t you remember
the time, man alive, when you used to walk over
from Banbury to the smithy at Ectont every

* “ My early readiness in learning to read,” says our hero,
in the account he gives of himself, “(and which must have
been very early, as I cannot remember the time when I could
not read,) and the opinion of all friends that T should cer-
tainly make a good scholar, encouraged him (my father) in
this purpose of his—of putting me to the church.”’—Frank-
lin’s Life, p. 7.

t ‘Some notes which somes of my uncles, who had some
curiosity in collecting family anecdotes, once put into my
hands, furnished me with several particulars relative to our
ancestors. From these notes I learned that they lived in the
village of Ecton, in Northamptonshire, on a freehold of

   

 

 

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22 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

week, and go nutting and _birds’-nesting with us
boys in Sywell Wood, on God’s-day, without ever
setting foot in His house? and do you recollect,
too, how we boys ’ud carry off the old iron from
the forge, and sell it to the travelling tinker,
who used to come round with his cart once
a month, and put up at the ‘ World's End’ (that
was the sign of the inn at licton, Abiah,”: be
added, parenthetically, ‘and the half-way house
between Northampton and Wellingborough, in
Old England), and how we let father accuse
Mat Wilcox,—you remember old Mat—who was
|| helping him at the forge then, of stealing his
metal, without ever saying a word to clear the
poor man. Ah! Josiah, Josiah! we can always
| sec the mote in another’s eye—”
! ‘‘Say no more, Ben,” exclaimed the reproved
brother, ‘“‘ we are but weak vessels at best.”
‘¢ Now confess, husband,” interrupted the wife,
as she continued rolling out the paste before her,
41] it was like a sheet of buff leather, ‘isn’t it
better that I got you to sleep on your anger be-
; fore punishing the poor lad. It is but fmght, after
i\ all, that has driven him from us; and when

 

| he returns, let me beg of you to use reason
| rather than the whip with him.”
| “Yes, Abiah,” drily observed the husband,
| “<< Snare the rod,’ and—” (he nodded his head as
P| much as to say, ‘‘I needn't tell you the conse-
| quence,”) ‘that is ever a woman’s maxim.”

 

a a ee eT ale a

about thirty acres, for at least 300 years, and how much

longer could not be ascertained. This small estate would

not have served for their maintenance without the business

of a smith, which had continued in the family down to my

| uncle’s time, the eldest son always being brought up to that
employment—a custom which he and my father followed with
regard to their eldest sons.”’—Life of Franklin, pp. 2 and 3.

re

dee eee ee ae‘SMISSING: A YOUNG GENTLEMAN [ae

At this moment the side-door opened stealthily,
and Deborah (dressed for the morning’s work
in a long checked pinafore reaching from the
throat to the heels—so that the young woman
looked like a great overgrown girl) thrust
her head in the crevice, and gave her mother
“4 look”—one of those significant household
elances which refer to a thousand and odd
little family matters never intended for general
ars.

“You can come in now, Deborah,” cried the
mother, who, still engaged in the preparation
of her apple-and-pumpkin pie, was busy thumb-
ing patches of lard over the broad sheet o!
paste, and converting it in appearance into a
huge palette covered with dabs of white paint.
‘Have you finished all up stairs?’ she inquired,
looking round for the moment.

The girl, in her anxiety for her brother, did
not stop to answer the question, but said in an
undertone, as she drew close up to her mother’s
side, ‘‘ Has father forgiven Ben ?”

The dame, however, on her part merely rephed,
“There, child! never mind about that just now—
youll know all in good time,” and immediately
began to catechise her on her domestic duties.
“ Have you put a good fire in ‘the keeping-room,’
and sanded the floor nicely, and got out some
more knives and forks for the children—for, re-
member, we shall sit down upwards of a score to
dinner to-day ?”

But Deborah was too intent to listen to anything
but the fate of the boy, whom she loved better
than all her brothers, for she had been allowed to
nurse him when a baby, though but a mere chilc
herself at the time, and had continued his toy-
maker in general up to the present moment. So
she pulled her mother timidly by the apron, and

este Se

i

—24 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

said, as she glanced hastily at her father, to assure
herself that he was still arguing with Uncle
Benjamin, ‘‘ Will father let him come back home
—have you found out where he’s gone to yet—and
do you really think, mother, he’s run away to
sea ?” adding the next minute with a start, as the
thought suddenly flashed upon her, ‘‘Oh, dear
me! I quite forgot to tell you, mother, a man
brought this letter to the side-door, and said I was
to deliver it privately to you.”

“What a head you have, child!” exclaimed
the dame, as, dusting the flour from her hands,
she snatched the note from the girl, and hastily
tore it open.

But her eye had hardly darted backwards and
forwards over the first few lines, before the mother
uttered a faint scream, and staggered back to the
bee-hive chair.

In a minute, the husband and Uncle Benjamin
were at her side, and Deborah, seizing the vinegar
cruet from the dresser-shelf, was bathing her
mother’s temples with the acid.

‘“‘God be praised! my boy’s at Ruth’s,” the dame
at length gasped out in answer to the anxious
group around her; ‘‘ Holmes has sent a note here
i to say he will bring him round in the evening,”
| and she pointed laneuidly to the letter which had
| fallen on the floor.

i ale ee

eee

CHAPTER III.

THE FRANKLIN FAMILY.

ial eT re ee,

JOSIAH F'RanKLIN retained sufficient of the austere
habits of the Puritans and the early Nonconformists
| to have made it a rule—even if his limited means
f and large family (no fewer than thirteen of whom

ee eeTHE FRANKLIN FAMILY. 20

occasionally sat together at his table*) had not
made it a matter of necessity—that the food par-
taken of by the little colony of boys and girls he
had to support should be of the plainest possible
description. Simple fare, however, was so much
a matter of principle with Josiah (despising, as
he did, all « lusting after the flesh-pots”’), that he
never permitted at his board any of those un-
seemly exhibitions of delight or disgust, which
certain youngsters are wont to mdulge in on the
entry of any dish more or less toothsome than the
well-known and ever-dreaded scholastic ‘ stick-
jaw.” T

In so primitive a household, therefore, there
must have been some special cause for the com-
pounding of so epicurean a dish as the before-men-
tioned apple-and-pumpkin pie,—some extraordinary
reason why Dame Franklin should have instructed
Deborah. as she did, ‘‘to be sure and put out
plent7 of maple sugar for the children,” besides
‘‘a gallon of the dried apples and peaches to be
stewed for supper,’—and why that turkey and

* « By his first wife my father had four children born in
America (besides three previously in England), and by a
second, ten others—in all, seventeen—of whom I remember to

have seen thirteen sitting together at his table, who all e-rew
up to years of maturity, and were married.”—A ‘tobiography,
p- 9.

+ «Little or no notice was ever taken of what related to the
victuals on the table—whether well or ill cooked—in or out of
season—of good or bad flavour—preferable or inferior to this
or that other thine of the kind: so that I was brought up in
such perfect inattention to these matters as to be quite in-
different what kind of food was set before me. Indeed, I
am so unobservant of it, that, to this day, I can scarce tell,
a few hours after dinner, of what dishes it consisted. This
has been a great convenience to me in travelling, when my
companions have sometimes been very unhappy for want of
a suitable gratification of their more delicate, because better
instructed, tastes and appetites.’—Life of Franklin, p. 9.

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26 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

those ‘“canvas-back ducks” (so highly prized
among the creature-comforts of America) were ere
long twirling away in front of the bright, cherry-
red fire, and filling the whole house with their
savoury perfume *—and why, too, the brisket of
corned-beef had been got up from ‘‘the cask”
below, and was now wabbling and steaming, with
its dozen of dough-nuts bumping against the lid of
the iron pot on the hob, and the corn-cakes
baking in the oven, and the huge bowl of curds
—white and cold-looking as marble—standing on
the dresser.

Why all this preparation for feasting in a house
where the ordinary food was almost as frugal as a
hermit’s fare ?

The Franklin family knew but one holiday in
the course of the year—the anniversary of the
father’s safe landing in America in 1685, which
the pious Josiah had made a family “‘ Thanksgiving
Day.” ‘To commemorate this event, the younger
eirls (those who had not yet finished their school-
ing) came home from their maiden aunts, Hannah
and Patience Folger, who kept a day-school at
Sherbourne, in Nantucket; while the boys who
were out in the world, serving their apprentice

 

* The white, or canvas-back duck, derives its name from
the colour of the feathers between the wings being of a
light-brown tint, like canvas. These birds breed on the
borders of the great northern lakes, and in winter frequent
the Susquehanna and Potomac rivers, in order that they
may feed on the bulbous root of a grass that grows on the
flats there, and which has much the flavour of celery. It is
to the feeding on this root that the peculiarly delicious
flavour of their flesh is attributed. They are held in as great
esteem in America as grouse with us, and are frequently
sent as a present for hundreds of miles. A canvas-back
duck, indeed, is reckoned one of the greatest dainties in the
States, being more delicate in flavour than a wild duck,
though considerably larger. The Americans eat it with
currant-jelly, as if it were venison.Cc»)
«

THE FRANKLIN FAMILY. 27

4

ship, got leave to quit their masters’ house for
the day, to take part in the family festival; and
the grown-up sons, who were in business for
themselves, gave over their work, or shut up
their stores, and came with their wives and little
ones to join in the rejoicing.

So sacred a duty, indeed, did all the Franklins
regard it, to assemble once a year under the
paternal roof, that none but the most cogent
excuse for absence was ever urged or received ;
so that even those who were away in distant lands
strove to return in time for the general meet-
ing.

The morning was not far advanced, and Josiah
had hardly done putting up the shutters of his
store. as was his wont on this day precisely at
ten in the forenoon, before the boys and the girls,
and the grown-up young men and women of the
family, began to swarm in like so many bees at
the sound of a gong.

First came Jabez and Nehemiah—two stout,
strapping lads, carpenter's and mason’s appren-
tices (the one had called tor the other on his
road), dressed in their Sunday three-cornered hats
and bright-yellow leather breeches, and with their
thick shoes brown with the earth of the ploughed
fields they had trudged over, and carrying in their
hands the new walking-sticks that they had cut
from the copse as they came along.

Then young Esther and Martha made their
appearance, wrapped in their warm scarlet cloaks,
and looking like a pair of “little Red Riding-
Hoods ”—for they had come from school at Nan-
tucket, and had been brought to the door by the

mate of the New York sloop that plied between
Long Island and Boston, touching at the inter-
vening islands on the way, once a month in those

days. Under their cloaks they carried a bundle

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28 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
containing the Jone worsted mittens they had
knitted for the mother, and the warm patchwork
quilt they had made for the father, together with
the highly-prized samplers of that time —the latter
of which had been done expressly to be framed
for the keeping-room.

After these walked in John Franklin, the tal-
low-chandler (who was just about to set up in
Rhode Island), with his young Quakeress wife
on his arm; and then followed the married
daughter, Abiah, and her husband, the trader in
furs and beaver skins, who had always an inex-
haustible stock of stories to tell the children about
the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians, including
wild tales of the chiefs ‘Blue Snake” or “ Big
Bear,” or even Nekig the “ Little Otter.”

Nor did Zachary, the ship-builder (he who had
sent the ducks from the Potomac river), absent
himself, even though he had to come all the way
from Annapolis for the gathering; and he brought
with him his motherless little boy, for his young
wife had died of the fever since the last family
meeting.

Lhere was Ebenezer, too, the bachelor farmer ;
and the swarthy and stalwart Thomas, the first-
born and hereditary smith of the family; and
Ruth, with her half-dozen little ones toddling
close after her, like a hen with her brood of chicks ;
and Samuel Franklin, Uncle Benjamin’s son from
London, who had recently set up as a cutler in
Boston city ; and, indeed, every one of the Frank-
lins that could by any means manage to reach the
house at the time.

Only three out of the multitudinous family
were absent: James, the printer, who had gone
to London to purchase a stock of types—Josiah,
the outcast—and Benjamin, the littie runaway.
Ihe absence of the elder brothers created noies eee eed

  

THE FRANKLIN FAMILY.

6?
oY

astonishment ; for Josiah had not sat at that board
for years—many of the young children, indeed,
had never set eyes on his countenance—while all
had heard of James’s trip to the mother-country,
But where was Ben ?—where was Ben? was the
-general cry, as the family came stre eaming in, one
after another.

Jabez and Nehemiah ran all over the house,
shouting after the little fellow. Esther and
Martha, too, kept teasing Deborah all the morning
to tell them where he had got to, for they fi incied
he was hiding from them in play, and they were
itching to show him the little sailor’s Guernsey
frock they had knitted for him at school. John

wished to hear how the lad got on at candle-

making, and whether he could manage the dips
yet, and Zachary to see what new toy-ship he had
got on the stocks—and, indeed, every one to say
something to him; for he was a general favourite,
not only because he was the youngest of the boys,
but because he was the cleverest and best-natured
of them ali.

The news that Ben was ‘‘in disgrace” made all
as sad as death for a time; but every one had a
kind word to say for him to the father. The
younger ones begged hard for him; the elder
ones ple ,aded well for him: so that Josiah had not
fortitude enough to hold out against such a
friendly siege, and was obliged to promise he
would let the boy off as lightly as possible;
though, true to his principles, the would-be
disciplinarian vowed that the next time ‘*he’d—
he’d—but they should see.”

Mistress Franklin (as the sons and daughters
came pouring in one after another, till the house
was so full of boys and girls— children and
grandchildren—that it was almost impos ssible, as

 

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A ecehsda tae30 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

has been well said, to shut the doors for them)
had enough to do between preparing the dinner
| and tidying the young ones for the occasion ;
| though it almost broke her housewife’s heart to
| find how buttonless and stringless, and even
| ragged, their clothes had become during their
| long absence.

| Scarcely had she kissed the boys before she
| twisted them round by the shoulders, as she eyed
| them from top to toe, and commenced pouring
down upon their unlucky heads a heavy shower
i of motherly reproofs; whilst the lads, who were
Ri | thinking only of the feast, kept worrying her
| as to what she was going to give them for dinner.
' | ‘Dear heart!” she would begin to one, ‘‘ why
| don’t you wash up at the roots of your hair, boy ?”
| or else she would exclaim, as she threw up her
| hands and eyebrows, ‘‘Is that your best coat?
Why, you’ve only had it a year, and it’s not fit to
be seen. Where you fancy the clothes come from,
Jad, is more than I can tell.”

The boy, however, would merely reply, “ What
pie have you made this year, mother?—1 hope
it’s a big’un! Let’s have a peep in the oven—
you might as well.”

Then to another she would cry, as she seized
him by his leg like a sheep, ‘ Why, I declare
there’s a large hole in the heel of your stocking,
boy, big enough for a rat to get through; and if
| you were a sweep’s child, ’m sure your lnen
| couldn’t well be blacker.”

But this one paid no more heed than the other
to the dame’s observations; for the only answer
he made was, ‘“‘ Got any honey, mother, for after
dinner? Don’t the ducks smell jolly, Jabe—

| that’s all! Isay, mother, give usa sop in the pan.”
| Nor did the girls undergo a less minute scrutiny.

“Why didn’t a big child hke Esther write home

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=, ~
eT ON erp we hd Ne hansen ialTHE FRANKLIN FAMILY. 3t

and say she wanted new flannels, for those she’d
on were enough to perish her. She never saw
children grow so in all her life.”

““Come here, girl; whatever is the matter with
your mouth?” next she would shriek, as she
caught hold of Martha, and dragged her to the
light; ‘‘you want a good dosing of nettle-tea ta
sweeten your blood—that you do.” Whereupon,
heaving a deep sigh, she would add, ‘“‘ Hah! you
must all of you, children, have a spoonful or two of
nice brimstone and treacle before you leave home
again.”

Then, as soon as the dame caught sight of Ruth,
she began to question her about poor little Ben,
continuing her cooking operations the while. At
one moment she was asking whether the lad was
fretting much, and the next she was intent on
basting her ducks, declaring that there was no
leaving them a minute, or she’d have them burnt
to a cinder,

Now she would fall to stirring the potful of
‘‘hominy,” and skimming the corned beef; then
pausing for an instant to tell Ruth how frightened
she had been when she found that poor Ben had
left the house that morning, and begging of her
to get Holmes to do all he could to set the lad
against the sea.

And when Ruth had told the mother that
Holmes was obliged to stay and see his cargo
discharged at the wharf, and that he thought it
would save words if Ben came round with him in
the evening; and when she had informed her,
moreover, that Ben had forgotten 1t was 'Thanks-
giving-day at home, till he saw her and her little
ones leaving for the feast, and that then he seemed
to take it to heart greatly—the mother stopped
short in her examination of the pie during the
process of baking, and cried, as she held it half

 

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32 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

drawn out of the oven, “I'l! put by a bit of every-
thing for him, and he shall have the largest cut
of the pie, that he shall ;” adding the next minute,
“But he'll be round in the evening in time for the
stewed fruit and corn-cakes—bless him !”

Immediately after this she began wondering
again whether that girl Deborah had thought
about tapping a fresh cask of cider, and ‘‘ fussing,”
as usual, now about her boy, and then about her
dinner.

CHAPTER IV.
THE FEAST, AND AN ARRIVAL.

WueEn all the family had assembled in the “ keep-
ng-room,” it was the invariable custom of the
Puritan father on this day to offer up a prayer of
thanksgiving for his safe arrival in New England ;
after which the violin was taken out, and he would
play while the family joined in a hymn. This
was usually followed by a short discourse from
Josiah, touching the great principles of religious
liberty, so dear to the early settlers of America ;
for the sturdy old Nonconformist loved to impress
upon the children gathered round him that he
had left the home where his forefathers had lived
for many generations—not to seek “treasures that
moth and rust corrode,” but merely to be able to
worship the Almighty as he thought fit, and which
was held to be a crime at that time in his native
land.*

* “My father married young, and carried his wife with
three children to New England about 1685. The conven-
ticles being, at that time, forbidden by law, and frequently
disturbed in the meetings, some considerable men of his

acquaintance determined to go to that country, and he was
persuaded to accompany them thitber, where they expectedTHE FEAST, AND AN ARRIVAL. oo

The family devotions and discourse were barely
ended ere the “ cuckoo clock” whooped twelve,
and immediately a crow of delight from the
younger branch of the Franklin family announced
the entry of the corned beef and dough-nuts.

Such manifestations of the pleasures of the
palate, we have before said, were highly dis-
approved of by the simple-minded Josiah ; so, as
his eye suddenly lighted upon the young: car-
penter’s apprentice, in the act of rubbing his
waistcoat, and drawing in his breath in youthful
ecstasy, the ascetic father cried, with a shake of
the head :

‘‘ Jabez! how often have I told you that this
giving way to carnal joys is little better than a
heathen !”

But scarcely had the parent finished chiding one
son, than he was startled by a loud smacking of
the lips from another; when, glancing in the
direction of the sound, he found the young mason
with his mouth and eyes wide open, in positive
raptures, as he sniffed the savoury odour of the

to enjoy the exercise of their religion with freedom, * * *
Our humble family early embraced the reformed religion,”
writes Benjamin Franklin. “ Our forefathers had an English
Bible, and to conceal it, and place it in safety, it was
fastened open with tapes under and within the cover of a
joint-stool. When my great-grandfather wished to read
it to his family, he placed the joint-stool on his knees, and
then turned over the leaves under the tapes. One of the
children stood at the door to give notice if he saw the appa-
ritor coming, who was an officer of the Spiritual Court. . .
This anecdote,” Franklin adds, “I had trom uncle Ben-
jamin. The family continued,” he then proceeds to say, “all
of the Chureh of England, till about the end of Charles II.’s
reign, when some of the ministers who had been ‘outed’ for
their nonconformity, having opened a conventicle in North-
amptonshire, my Uncle Benjamin and my father adhered
to them, and so continued all their lives.”—Franklin’s Auto-
biography, p. 5.

D

   
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
   
   

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oc34 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

brown and smoking canvas-back ducks that
Deborah was about to place at the bottom of the
table.

‘“T’m ashamed of you, Nehemiah,” the tallow-
chandler shouted, as he frowned at the lad,
“giving up your heart to the vanities of this
world in such a manner!”

A secret pull at his coat-tails, however, from
Uncle Benjamin, cut short the lecture, for the
| father knew that the friendly hint meant to im-
| ply, ‘‘ It’s only once a year, Josh !”"
| At length the dinner was ended, grace said, and

a button or two of the boys’ waistcoats undone ;
and then the table itself was got out of the way,
| and the games commenced.
ae This, however, was a part of the entertainment
that the seriously-inclined Josiah was but little
given to; and, indeed, it required some more of
Uncle Ben’s good-humoured bantering before
he could be induced to consent to it. Even then
| he insisted that the children should play at
‘‘ Masters and Men,” because there was a certain
bt amount of knowledge to be gained from the repre-
‘\ | sentations of the various trades; for nothing
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annoyed him more than to see youth wasting its
( 1 time in mere idle amusements. .
1 But the ice of propriety once broken, Uncle Ben
ia and the children were soon engaged in the most
| boisterous and childish gambols: not only was
| ‘dropping the ’kerchief” indulged in—and the
| grave Josiah himself made to form part in the
ring—but even the wild frolic of . ‘jingling”
Li was resorted to, and the father and mother, and
a Uncle Ben—and Zachary the shipbuilder, and
Ruth too—as well as young Abiah and her hus-
| | band, the trapper—and John, and his young
Bi Quakeress wife—and, indeed, the entire company
|i —were all pressed into the service, and every one

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THE FEAST, AND AN ARRIVAL. 35 WI

of them blindfolded at the same time; whilst the Hi,
part of ‘‘ jingler” fell to the lot of Nehemiah, who
ran about the keeping-room like a frantic young
town crier, ringing the hand-bell to give notice of
his whereabouts to the blind players, as they kept
rolling continually one over the other in their | BI

eagerness to catch hin. hi | .

A ee

 

ae

It was at this moment, when the noise and Nas oe
madness of the sport had reached their - createst ip im
height, and the father and Uncle Benjamin lay |
flat upon the floor, with a Se ite. mound of
children and grandchildren piled on top of them,
that James Franklin—the young printer, who had
gone to London for a stock of types and presses—
burst into the room, fresh from the vessel that ae
had just dropped anchor in the bay, and with ee
his arms laden with packets of presents for the HI
several members of a family. hy

‘‘ Here’s brother James come back from Old ih t
England!” shouted Nehemiah. throwing away his Hee
bell. ‘Ae |

In an instant the bandages were torn from all He
the faces, and the half- ash: med father dragged Hi
from under the bodies struggling on top of him
—the newly-arrived son laughing heartily the
while.

As the children and the grown brothers, and the
rest, came scrambling up to kiss or shake hands
with the printer, on his return, he told them one
after the other the gift he had brought them from
the ‘“‘old country ;” and when he had greeted the
whole of the company present, he stared round
and round, and then glancing at Josiah, cried,
‘¢ But where’s little Ben, father ?”

Josiah averted his head, for he had no wish to
mar the general happiness by again alluding to
his boy’s disgrace, while the mother shook her
D2

 

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36 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

head significantly at the printer, and Uncle Ben-
jamin gave him a secret kick.

James knew by the pantomimic hints that
something was amiss; 80 he answered, ‘‘ What!
not allowed to be present on Thanksgiving-day ?
Surely, father, one outcast in the family is
enough !”

“There, say nothing about it, lad,” cried Uncle
Ben; ‘it’s all been looked over long ago, and the
little fellow will be here to supper shortly. But
come, let’s have the news, Master James? You
went down to Hcton, of course?” he added: and
the young man had scarcely signified that he had
made the journey, when the father and uncle,
anxious to know all about their native village,
and the companions of their youth, fired off such
a volley of questions, that it was more than James
could do to answer them fast enough.

Had he been to the old smithy? inquired one ;
and had he got a slip of the ‘‘ golden pippin ” tree
in the orchard ?

Was Mistress Fisher still living at the forge ?
asked the other, and who carried on the busi-
ness now that their brother Thomas’s son was
dead ?

“Dear, dear!’ they both cried, as they heard
the answer, ‘‘the smithy sold to Squire Isted,
the lord of the manor,* and the old forge pulled
down? Well! well! what changes do come to
pass !”

Next it was, How was their new German king,
George I., liked by the people at home? And
did he go and have a mug of ale at the ‘‘ World’s

* «My erandfather’s eldest son, Thomas, lived in the house
at Ecton, and left it, with the land, to his only daughter
who, with her husband, one Fisher, of Wellingborough, sold
it to Mr. Isted, now lord of the manor,”— Life of Franklin,

p. 3.THE FEAST, AND AN ARRIVAL. SY

End?” and did Dame Blason keep the old inn

still? Did he go to meeting too at the Nortn-
ampton Conventicle, and learn whether the

99

‘‘ Brownists”’ were increasing in numbers round
about ? and was old Luke Fuller, who was ‘ outed ”
for Nonconformity at the time when they them-
selves seceded from the Church, the minister there
still ?

And when James had replied that the good
man had departed this life two years come
Michaelmas, the old people hung down their head
as they sighed, ‘‘ Hah! it will be our turn soon.”

Then they wanted to know, Were the rebels in
Scotland all quiet when he left? and had he been
over to Banbury, and seen the dye-house, and had
John Franklin still got the best of the business
there ?

Had he set eyes on their old schoolfellow,
Reuben of the Mill? and was old Ned, the travel-
ling butcher, still alive? And who held the
‘‘hundred-acre farm” of the young Lord Halifax
now? And did the Nonconformists seem con-
tented with the ‘‘ Toleration Act?” and was there
any stir among them about getting ‘“‘the Cor-
poration Act” repealed? And was Squire Palmer’s
widow living at the Hall still? And had he been
over and seen the folk at Earls-Barton and Mears-
Ashby, and told them that they were all doing
well in New England. Hah! they would give the
world to set eyes on the old places and the old
people again.

The gossip about their native village and
ancient friends would have continued, doubt-
lessly, until bedtime, had not Jabez—who had a
turn for that extravagant pantomime which boys
consider funny—here danced wildly into the
room after the style of the Red Indians that his
brother-in-law, the trapper, had just been telling

 

 

 

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38 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

them about, and springing into the air with a
cry imitative of the war-whoop, announced to
the startled company that the “Big Bear” and
“ Little Otter” were coming up the stairs to join
the party.

Whereupon Captain Holmes and the truant
Benjamin entered the room.

 

CHAPTER VY.
THE FATHER’S LECTURE.

* Come this way, Benjamin! I wish to speak with
you below,” said the father, gravely, as soon as the
lad had gone the round of his relatives, and just
at the interesting moment when the “ carnal-
minded” Jabez was making Ben’s mouth water
with a list of the many good things they had haa
for dinner that day.

The paternal command caused no little excite-
ment among the youthful members of the family,
who knew too well what the summons meant.

But scarcely had Josiah removed one of the
hghted candles from the mantel-shelf to carry
with him to the parlour, than the mother rose and
followed close at the heels of the father and the
chap-fallen boy; whilst Jabez and Nehemiah
nudged one another aside, as they whispered,
‘* Let’s come too, and see what father’s going to do
with Ben.”

To satisfy their curiosity, the anxious lads
availed themselves of the darkness of the shop,
where they stood—quiet as mutes—peeping over
the curtain into the little back room, and watch-
ing the movements of their parents within.
‘“‘Father’s lecturing him well, I can see,” whis-hannah ete Rope eee = s -

      
 

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papery cataTHE FATHER’S LECTURE. 39

pered Jabez, on tip-toe, to the brother at his side,
“for he is shaking his head till his gray locks fly
about again, and holding up his forefinger as he |
always does, you know, when he’s talking very |
seriously.”

‘© What’s mother doing?” asked the brother.

“« Why, she’s got Ben drawn close up to her, and j
keeps passing her hand over his cheek,” answered 1
Jabez. ‘‘ How aged father gets to look, doesn’t he ?” | i
the boy added, almost in the same breath, for he ee
could not help remarking the change, now that | ie
his whole attention was riveted on his parent’s i 7
fizure. ‘‘ He’s got to stoop dreadfully since last i
Thanksgiving-day.”

“Yes.” observed the other, ‘“ that Sunday gray
coat of his, that he’s had ever since I can remember, ij
gets to hang about him like a smock frock, that it
does. I was thinking so only just before dinner, \i
Jabe.” |

‘¢ Ah! and mother isn’t so young as she used to ti
be,” mournfully continued Jabez, “for she gets to
look more like old grandfather Folger in the face, |
every— |

«« What’s that noise?” whispered Nehemiah, as
a loud scuffle was heard in the parlour. ‘

“Why father’s just dragged Benjamin from
mother’s arms,” was the answer, “for she kept
hugging and kissing him all the time he was lec-
turing him. Hush! I shall hear what he says z=
directly, for he’s talking much louder now.” |

‘ What’s he telling him, eh?” inquired the young |
mason, in an under tone, after holding his breath
till he felt half stifled with his suspense.

“J can just make out that he’s very angry with
mother for petting Ben as she does,” replied the
little carpenter, «because father says ‘it makes his
conduct appear undeservedly harsh, and strips his
ofs’—yes, those were his words—‘ of all the !

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40 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

force that justice would otherwise give them.
Isn’t that like father, Nee ?”

“Yes,” added the brother; “he may be a little
severe at times, but he’s always very just with us,
I’m sure; and mother, you know, wil! spoil Ben,
because he’s the youngest of us boys.”

‘“Be quiet, Nee!” said Jabez, as he kicked his
brother gently to enforce the command, and put
his ear closer to the door, ‘‘ Father’s saying now
that if Ben doesn’t like the candle-making—yes ”
and the lad paused to catch the remainder of
the speech—‘ he’ll let him choose a trade for him-
self. What do you think of that?”

“Why that comes of Uncle Benjamin being
here,” interposed Nehemiah. <‘Uncle’s been
having a long talk with father about the matter, I
can see.”

‘Do be quiet, will you, or I shall miss it all,”
cried Jabez, tetchily. ‘‘ What’s that he’s saying
now ?” the lad inquired, talking to himself, as he
strove to catch the words. ‘“ Father’s warning
Ben,” he added in measured sentences, as he fol-
lowed the old man’s voice, ‘‘ that when he’s chosen
another trade—if he ever runs away from his work
again—he’ll close his doors against him for ever—
the same as he did with his outcast son, Josiah.”

 

An hour or two after the above scene, the three
boys, fresh from their supper of stewed peaches and
hot corn-cakes (of which the mother had given her
pet boy Ben double allowance), had retired to the
little attic for the night, and when Jabez and
Nehemiah had heard from their brother all about
his running away, and the wonderful “ Flying
Dutchman” (clipper built) that he’d got nearly
ready for launching, they began to gossip among
themselves, as boys are wont to do, while they
prepared for bed.First Ben’s guinea-pig was taken out, and exhi-
bited to the admiring brothers, who, boy-like,
not only of guinea-pigs,
but of every pet animal in creation—from white
mice to monkeys; whereupon they immediatelv
commenced discussing the comparative beauties of
the ‘‘ black,” the ‘‘ tortoiseshell,” and the “ fawn ”
kinds of African porkers—one saying that ‘ too
many tea-leaves were not good for them, as they
made them pot-bellied,” and the other remarking
that ‘‘he didn’t like guinea-pigs because they ate
their young lke rabbits:” a circumstance which
suddenly reminded him of a ‘‘double-smut” of
his acquaintance that ‘‘ had devoured her whole
litter of six—every bit of them except their tails,
but those she couldn’t swallow because they were

were young “ fanciers,”

so fluffy.”

This led to a long discourse on rabbits in general,
when Jabez dived very learnedly into the varieties
of ‘‘ double-lops,”’ and ‘‘ horn-lops,” and ‘‘ oar-lops,”
as well as the ‘‘up-eared” species, and told tales
of wonderful Does, the tips of whose ‘‘ fancy ears ”
had touched the ground, and measured more than

a foot in length.

After this the
pigeons, young Benjamin observing, that if Jabe
would only make him a ‘‘snap-trap,” he’d keep
some ‘‘ tumblers ” in their loft, for Captain Holmes
had just brought Bobby a couple of beautiful
‘“‘ soft-billed almonds ” from London: besides, there
was a prime place for a pigeon-house against their
melting-shed, and a schoolfellow of his at old.
Brownwell’s had promised to give him a pair of
splendid-hooded ‘‘ Jacobins,” and some ‘‘ Leghorn
runts” for stock directly he’d got a place to keep
them in; so Jabe might as well make a house for
him in his overtime.

Presently the young carpenter and mason pro-

THE FATHER’S LECTURE.

conversation

 

Jeodimartciion Lane

 

 

     
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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42

ceeded to compare notes as to the strength of the
““sky-blue,” and the thickness of the butter on the
“scrape” at their respective masters, and to talk
of the wives of those gentlemen as ‘‘ Old Mother
So-and-So ;” until, tired of this subject, the youth-
ful trio digressed into ghost stories, and so
frightened each other with their hobgoblin tales,
that, as the candle sputtered and flickered in the
socket, they trembled at every rattle of the win-
dow-sashes, till sleep put an end to their terrors
and their talk.

YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

At length the morning arrived when the younger
branches of the Franklin family were to return to
their masters and mistresses ; and then the dame
was in the same flurry as on the day of their
arrival, with the preparation of the hundred and
one things required at her hands.

On the table before her lay a small lot of brown
worsted stockings done up into balls that resembled
so many unwashed potatoes, and new canvas smocks
for the boys to work in (short as babies’ shirts),
and new shoes too, the soles of which were studded
with nails almost as big as those on a church door
—as well as mob-caps, and tippets, and aprons for
the girls, after the style of our charity children of
the present day—and hanks of worsted yarn for
knitting, and seed-cakes, and bags of spiced-nuts,
together with a jar of honey for each of them—
besides a packet of dried herbs to be made into
tea, to ‘‘ purify their blood” at the spring and fall
of the year.

When, too, the dreaded hour of departure arrived
and the boys’ bundles had been made up, and the
girls’ hand-baskets ready packed for the journey,
the tears of the mother and little ones rolled down
their cheeks as fast and big as hail-stones down
a skylight; and, as the weeping children crossedA TALK ABOUT THE SEA, 43

the threshold, the eager dame stood on the door-
step, watching them down the narrow street, and
calling after them to remind them of an infinity
of small things they were to be sure and do
directly they reached their destination.

Ben, too, on his part, kept shouting to Jabez,
‘‘not to forget to make him the pigeon-bouse as
soon as he could get the wood,” and calling to the
young mason to remember to send him some prime
‘“bonces”’ and “ alleys” directly he got back to the
stone-yard.

 

CHAPTER. VI.
A TALK ABOUT THE SEA.

On the evening after the Thanksgiving-day Capt.
Holmes came round, when they had ‘ knocked off
work” at the ship, to smoke his pipe with Josiah
and Uncle Benjamin—for the father wished the
captain to talk with young Ben about his love of
the sea; so the dame had made one of her famous
bowls of ‘‘ lambs’-wool”’ for the occasion.

The captain was a marked contrast, both in form
and feature, to Josiah and his brother Benjamin.
His frame seemed, indeed, to be of cast iron, his
chest being broad as a bison’s, and the grip of his
big, hard hand like the squeeze of a vice. His
face was gipsy-bronze with the weather he had
long been exposed to, and set in a horse-shoe of
immense black whiskers, the hair of which stood
out from the cheeks on either side like a couple
of sweep’s brushes; and between these his white
teeth glistened like the pearly lining of an oyster-
shell as he laughed, which he did continually,
and almost without reason.

 

 

 

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A4 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

The old men, on the other hand, were but the
noble ruins of humanity—graced rather than dis-
figured by age. At the time of the opening of
our story, Josiah was in his sixty-third year, and
Uncle Benjamin some few years his senior; and
yet neither gave signs of the approach of that
second childhood which is but the return of the
circle of life imto itself—lnking the gray-beard
with the infant, and foreshadowing the Eternal in
that mysterious round which brings us back (if
the furlough from Above be but long enough) to
the very babyhood from which we started.

The red Saxon blood, as contradistinguished
from the swarthier Norman sap, inherent in Eng-
lish veins, was visible in the cheeks of both of
the old men; indeed, their complexion was so
pinky that one could well understand their boast
that ‘‘they had never known a day’s illness in
their lives ;’* whilst their fresh colour contrasted
as pleasantly with their silver-white hair as the
crimson light of a blacksmith’s forge glowing
amid the snow of a winter’s day. The only sign
that the brothers gave of age was a slight crooking
of the back, like packmen bending beneath their
load—of years; for their teeth were still perfect,
neither was the mouth drawn in, nor were the
cheeks hollowed with the capacious dimples of
second childhood.

Had it not been for the ‘sad colour” and
formal Quaker-like cut of their clothes, no one
would have fancied that they belonged to that
heroic and righteous kody of men, who, following
in the footsteps of the first “ pilgrims ” to America,
had willingly submitted to the martyrdom of exile

* «Tnever knew my father or mother to have any sickness

but that of which they died—he at 89 and she at 85 years of
age.”’-—Autobiography, p. 9.A TALK ABOUT THE SEA. Ad

for the sake of enjoying the free exercise of their
religion; for the hale and hearty Josiah had the
cheerful and contented look of the English yeoman,
whilst the more portly and dumpy Benjamin had
so good-humoured an air that he might have been
imistaken, in another suit, for the jolly landlord ot
a road-side inn.*

Mistress Franklin, being some dozen years
younger than her husband—and looking even
younger than she was—seemed barely to have
reached the summit of life’s hill, rather than to
have commenced her journey down it. ‘True, a
quick eye might have discovered just a filament or
two of silver streaking the dark bands of hair that
braided her forehead; but these were merely the
hoar-frosts of Autumn whitening the spider’s
threads—for as yet there was no trace of Winter
in her face.

At the first glance, however, there was a half-
masculine look about the dame that made her
seem deficient in the softer qualities of feminine
grace, for her features, though regular, were too
bold and statuesque to be considered beautiful
in a woman; and yet there was such exquisite
tenderness—indeed, a plaintiveness that was almost
musical—in her voice, together with such a good
expression, glowing like sunshine over her whole
countenance, that the stranger soon felt as assured
of her excellence as those even who had proved it
by long acquaintance.

The wife, too, belonged to the same Puritan
stock as Josiah; her father—‘‘ Peter Folger of
Sherbourne ” in Nantucket—having been amongst
the earliest pilgrims to New England, and being

* “T suppose you may like to know what kind of a man
my father was,” says Benjamin Franklin in writing to his
son. “ He had an excellent constitution, was of a middle
stature, well set, and very strong.”

*

    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
    

 

ee a ee

    
 

    
 

seetton

  

eee46 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

styled ‘‘a godly and learned Englishman ” in the
chronicles of the country.*

The simplicity of her dress, however, consti-
tuted the chief mark of her conventicle training.
The main characteristic of her appearance was
| the immaculate cleanliness as well as the fastidious
neatness of her attire. There was so much of
white, indeed, about her (what with the mob-cap,
the muslin kerchief crossed over her bosom, and
the ample linen apron covering her skirt) that
she always looked fresh and tidy as a dairy—
| snowy as suds themselves. Her dress, too, was
aa as free as a moonlight scene from all positive
Ho colour, for even the mere fillet of ribbon which
bi she wore round her cap was black, and her stuff-
gown itself gray as a friar’s garment.

Rip Ir inje ine pepsi Pine RP -

St a ia

‘““Tve been pointing out to the youngster here,

father,” proceeded the captain, as he punctuated

‘his speech with the pufts of his pipe, when the

subject of the evening’s conversation had been

| fairly broached ; ‘‘ what a dog’s life a sailor’s is, and
asking him how he’d like to live all his time upon
maggoty biscuits and salt junk, that goes by the
name of ‘mahogany’ aboard a ship—because it’s
so hard and red, and muc] easier carved into
eT fi chess-men than it’s chewed and digested, I can
i | tell you. DTve been asking him, too, how he’d
Hh like to have to drink water that’s as black and
| putrid, ay! and smells, while its being pumped
a out of the casks in the hold, as strong as if 1t was
ait being drawn out of a cesspool, so that one’s glad

ag ale etal

ee ee

ai) * «My mother (the second wife of my father) was Abiah
Rai Folger, daughter of Peter Folger, one of the first settlers of
‘a New England; of whom honourable mention is made by
Ait Cotton Mather in his ecclesiastical history of that country,
iN entitled Magnalia Christi Americana, as ‘a godly and learned
Englishman,’ if I remember the words rightly.”—Life ef

Franklin, p. 6.

a eeA TALK ABOUT THE SEA. 47

to strain it through the corner of his handkerchief
while drinking it from the ‘tots.’ And, what's
more, youngster, you'd get only short allowance of
this stuff, | can tell you; for over and over again,
when I was a boy aboard the ‘ Francis Drake,’
I give you my word I’ve been that dry in the
tropics (what with the salt food, that was like
munching solid brine, and the sun right overhead
like a red-hot warming-pan) that I’ve drunk the
sea-water itself to moisten my mouth, till I’ve
been driven nearly mad with the burning fury of
the thirst that was on me. Ah! you youngsters,
Ben, little know what we sailors have to put up
with : for mind you, lad, ’m not pitching you
any stiff yarn here, about wrecks, and being cast
away on rafts, and drawing lots as to who’s to be
devoured by the others ; but what I’m telling you
is the simple every-day life of the seaman, ay!
and of half the ‘reefers,’ too.”

Here the captain paused to indulge in his
habitual chuckle (for it was all the same to him
whether the subject in hand was serious or
comic), while Mistress Franklin looked perfectly
horror-stricken at the account of the water her boy
had been, as it were, just on the point of drinking.

Little Ben himself, however, was not yet “at
home” enough to make any remark, but sat on
the stool at his mother’s feet, with his eyes count-
ing the grains of sand on the floor, for he was
still ashamed to meet his father’s gaze.

As for Josiah, he was but little moved by
the captain’s picture of the miseries of seafaring,
and merely observed, that as he had taught his
children to abstain from hankering after the “ flesh-
pots,” Ben could bear the absence of creature-
comforts better than most boys—a remark that set
the captain chuckling again in good earnest.

‘“What you say, father, about hankering after

 

 

 

 

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AS YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

the ‘ flesh-pots,’ is all very well,” continued the
good-humoured sailor, as he tittered, while he
tapped the ashes from the bowl of his pipe, “ but
if you’d had a twelvemonth on mahogany and sea-
biscuits as hard and dry as tiles, you yourself would
get hankering after a bit of ‘soft tommy ’ (that’s
our name for new bread, Ben) and 2 cut of
roast-beef, ’ll be bound: ay! ay! and think the
fat old bum-boat woman that comes off to the ship
with a cargo of fresh quartern loaves, directly you
make the land, the loveliest female in all creation.
But,” added Captain Holmes, after a long pull at
a fresh mug of the delicious ‘“‘ lambs’-wool,” “‘ there
are worse things aboard a ship, let me tell you,
Ben, than even the rations. Youngsters think
seafaring a fine life because it’s full of danger,
and looks pretty enough from the shore ; but only
let them come to have six months of it ‘tween
decks, cooped up in a berth little bigger than a
hutch, and as dark and close as a prison-cell,
directly the wind gets a little bit fresh and the
scuttles and port-holes have to be closed; and
to be kept out of their hammocks half the night,
with the watches that must be kept on deck wet
or dry, fair or foul—ay! and to be roust out too,
as soon as they get off to sleep—after the middle-
watch, may be —to reef topsa’ls, or take in to’-gal-
lan’-sa’ls, or what not, whenever a squall springs
up—only let them have a taste of this, I say, and
they soon begin to sing another song, I can tell
you. Why, when I was ’prentice on board the
‘Francis Drake,’ I’ve often been put to walk the
deck with a capsta’n-bar over my shoulder, and a
bucket of water at the end of it to keep me awake,
and even then I’ve been that drowsy that I’ve
paraded up and down by the gangway as fast
asleep as if I’d been a som—som—what do you

4999

call it:A TALK

 

ABOUT THE SEA. 49

‘*-nambulist,” suggested Uncle Benjamin.

‘Ay! ay! that’s it, mate,” nodded the ec captain,
with another laugh. ‘“ neers over and over again
when I’ve sneaked away to pick out a soft plank
between the hencoops, and have just dropped off,
the second-mate has found me out, and come
and os, tee two or three buckets of salt water over
me, and set me off striking out as if I was swim-
ming, for I’d be fancying in my sleep, you see,
that “the vessel had cot on a reef, and was filling
and going fast to the bottom.

“But the worst of all, lad,” the sailor went
on, when he had done puffing away at his pipe, so
as to rekindle its half-extinguished fire, ‘is to be
roust out of your sleep w ith the bo’s’ain’ s whistle
ringing in your ears, and the cry of ‘ A man over-
board! a man overboard! shouted on every side.”

“Ah, that must be terrible indeed,” shuddered
Mrs. Franklin, as she covered her face with her
palms in horror at the thought.

Little Ben, however, sat with his mouth open,
staring up in the captain’s face, and mute with
eagerness to hear the story he had to tell. The
father and uncle, too, said not a word, for they
were loth to weaken the impression that the
captain’s simple narrative was evidently making
on the sea-crazed boy.

“ Ay, ay, mother!” Captain Holmes proceeded ;
‘it zs terrible, 1 can assure you, to rush on deck
in the dé arkness of night, when even your half-
wakened senses tell you that there is 1 nothing but
a boundless watery desert round about the ‘ship,
and to find the canvas beating furiously against
the masts, as the sails are put suddenly aback to
check the way upon the vessel. ‘Then, as you fly
instinctively to the ship’s side, you see, per-
haps, some poor fellow struggling with the black
waves, and, strange to say, apparently swimming
Eoe od ee oe ae or ot eg

ae ae ain

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Nee bet atl et ae ae

ee Oe ee

 

   

50 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

as hard as he can away from the vessei itsell
before it is well brought to—for one forgets, at the
moment, you see, the motion of the ship: and so
as it dashes past the wretched man in the water,
it seems as if he, in the madness of his fright,
was hurrying away from the hull rather than the
hull from him. ‘Who is it? who is it? crya
score of voices at once. ‘Tisdale,’ answers one.
‘No, no; it’s Swinton,’ says another. ‘I tell you
its Markham,’ shouts a third; ‘he fell from the
main-chains as he was drawing a bucket of water ;’
and while this goes on, some one, more thoughtful
than the rest, runs to the starn and cuts adrift the
life-buoy that is always kept hanging there over
the taffrel. Then, as the buoy strikes the water,
the blue light that is attached to it takes fire, and
the black. mass of waves is lighted up for yards
round with a pale phosphoric glow. But scarcely
has this been done, before some half-dozen brave
fellows have rushed to the davits, and jump-
ing into the cutter over the ship’s quarter, low-
ered the boat, with themselves in it, down into the
sea. The next minute the oars are heard in the
silence of the night to rattle quickly in the
rullocks, while the cox’ain cries aloud, ‘ Give
way, boys; give way,’ and the hazy figure of the
receding boat is seen to glide lke a shadow
towards the now-distant light of the life-buoy
dancing on the water. ‘Then how the sailors
crowd about the gangway, and cluster on the
poop, peering into the darkness, which looks
doubly dark from the very anxiety of the gazers
to see farther into it! The sight of the sea, Ben,
miles away from land on a starless night is
always terrible enough; for then the dark ring of
water encompassing the lonely vessel looks like a
vast black pool, and the sky, with its dull dome of
clouds, like a huge overhanging vault of lead. ButA TALK ABOUT THE SEA. 51

when you_know, lad, that one of your own ship-

mates is adrift in that black pool—where there is
not even so much as a rock, remember, to cling to
—and battlng for very life with the oreat Ww aste
of waters sedued about him, w hy, even the rough-
est sailor’s bosom is touched with a pity that
makes the eyes smart again with something like a
tear. You may fancy then how the seamen watch
the white boat, as it keeps searching about in the
pale light of the distant buoy; and iow the crowd
at the “ship's s side cry first-—‘ Now they see him
yonder ;’ and next, as the cutter glides away in
another direction—‘ No, they're on the wrong
track yet, lads;,—and then how the men on
board discuss whether the poor fellow could swim
or not, and how long he could keep up in the
water; until at length the buoy-light fades, and
even the figure of the cutter itself suddenly
vanishes from the view. Nothing then remains
but to listen in terrible suspense for the pulse of
the returning oars; and as the throbbing of the
strokes is heard along the water, every heart beats
with eagerness to learn the result. ‘ What cheer,
boys, what cheer?’ cries the officer, as the boat’s
crew draw up alongside the vessel once more, and
every neck is c iad over the side to see whether
the poor fellow hes stretched at the bottom of
the cutter. And when the ugly news is told that
the body even has not been found (for that is
the usual fate in the dark), you can form, per-
haps, some faint idea, Ben, of the gloom that
comes over the whole crew. ‘ Whose turn is it to
be next,—who is to be left like that poor fellow
firhting with the ocean in the dark? What be-
came of him? is he still clinging to the spar that
was thrown to him,—struggling and shrieking to
the ship as he sees the cabin lights sailing from
his sight? or was he seized by some shark lurking
E 2a a a ee eee le eae red

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Sa

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52 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

in the ship’s wake, and dragged under as soon as
he struck the waves? Who can say? And the
very mystery gives a greater terror to such an end.”

‘‘'T'he Lord have mercy on the lost one’s soul,”
sighed Benjamin’s mother, as she hugged her boy
close to her knees, grateful even to thanksgiving
that he had escaped so ghastly a doom. As for
Ben himself, his eyes were glazed with tears, and
as he still looked up in the captain’s face, the big
drops kept rolling over his long lashes till his
little waistcoat was dappled with the stains.

The good-natured captain did not fail to note
how deeply the lad had been touched with the
story, and jerking his head on one side towards
the boy, so as to draw the father’s attention to
the youngster, he indulged in one of his habitual
chuckles as he said, ‘‘ Come, come, Ben, swab the
decks. You haven’t heard half of the perils of a
sailor's life yet. Ah! you lads think a long
voyage at sea is as pleasant as a half-hour’s cruize
in the summer-time; so J did once, but a few
weeks in the middle of the ocean, where even the
sight of a gull, or a brood of Mother Carey’s
chickens seems a perfect God-send in the intense
solitude of the great desert about you—and where
the same everlasting ring of the horizon still
pursues you day after day, till the sense of the
distance you have to travel positively appals the
mind—-a few weeks of such a life as this, lad, is
sufficient to make the most stubborn heart turn
back to home and friends, and to pray God in
the dead of the night, when there is nothing but
the same glistening cloud of stars set in the
same eternal forms to keep one company, that
he may be spared to clasp all those he loves
to his bosom once again. You think a sailor,
youngster, a thoughtless dare-devil of a fellow,
with hardly a tender spot to his nature—theA TALK ABOUT THE SEA. 53

world speaks of his heart as a bit of oak; but I
can tell you, boy, if yon could hear the yarns that
are spun during the dog-watches on the fo’cas’l,
there is hardly a tale told that isn’t homeward
bound, as we say, and made up of the green
scenes of life, rather than the ugly perils at sea.
Ay! and what’s more, Ben, if we could but know
the silent thoughts of every heart on deck during
the stiliness of the middle watch, I’d wager there
is not one among them that isn’t away with
mother, sister, or sweetheart, prattling all kinds
of fond and loving things to them. Your father
Josiah, too, would tell you that sailors are a god
less, blaspheming race; but / can tell you, lad,
better than he (for I know them better), that a
seaman, surrounded as he always is with the very
sublimity of creation—with the great world of
water by day, which seems as infinite and incom-
prehensible as space itself, and with the lustrous
multitude of stars by night—the stars that to a
sailor are like heaven’s own beacon-lghts set
up on the vast eternal shore of the universe, as
if for the sole purpose of guiding his ship along
a path where the faintest track of any previous
traveller is impossivle-the sailor, I say, amid
such scenes as these, devells under the very tem-
ple of the Godhead himself, and shows in the
unconquerable superstition of his nature—despite
his idle and unmeaning oaths—how deeply he
feels that every minute of his perilous hfe is
vouchsafed him, as it were, through the mercy of
the all-Merciful.”

The pious brothers bent their heads in reverence
at the thoughts, while the mother looked tenderly
and touchingly towards her son-in-law, and smiled
as if to tell him how pleased she was to find that
even he, sailor as he was, had not forgotten the
godly teaching of his Puritan parents.a ee =

Pa epee

 

 

54 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

For a moment or two there was a marked silence ,

among the family. The captain had touched the
most solemn chord of all in their heart, and they
sat for a while wrapt in the sacred reverie that
filled their mind like the deep-toned vibration of
‘Ca passing bell.”

Presently Captain Holmes, who was unwilling
to leave his brother Ben without fairly rooting
out every thread of the romance that bound the
little fellow to the sea, proceeded once more with
his narrative.

« But Pll tell you what, Master Ben, is the most
shocking sight of all that a sailor has to witness, ay,
and one that makes a stark coward of the bravest,
and a thoughtful man of the most thoughtless—
death, youngster!—death, where there are no
churchyards to store the body in, and no tomb-
stones to record even the name of the departed ;
death, amid scenes where there is an everlasting
craving for home, and yet no home-face near to
soothe the last mortal throes of the sufferer. Why,
lad, ’ve seena stout, stalwart fellow leave the deck
in the very flush of life and health, as 1 came on
duty at the watch after his, and when I’ve gone
below again, some few jhcurs afterwards, I have
found him stricken down: by: 4 sun-stroke as sud-
denly as if he had been shot, and the sailmaker
sitting by his berth, and busy sewing the corpse
up in his hammock, with a cannon-ball at the feet.
The first death I had ever witnessed, lad, was
under such circumstances as these. I was a mere
youngster, like yourself, at the time, and had been
by the man’s side day after day—had listened to
his yarns night after night—had heard him talk,
with a hitch in his breath, about the wife and
little baby-boy he had left behind—had seen her
name (ay, and some half a dozen others), with
hearts and love-knots under them, pricked in blueA TALK ABOUT THE SEA. 55

on his great brawny arms. I had known hin,
indeed, as closely as men locked within the same
walls for months together, and suffering the same
common danger, get to know and like one another.
I had missed sight of his face for but a few hours,
and when I saw it next, the eye was fixed and
elazed, the features as if cut in stone, the hand
heavy and cold as lead; and I felt that, boy as I
was, | had looked for the first time deep down
into the great unfathomable sea of our common
being. ‘The hardest thing of all, lad, is to believe
in death ; and when we have been face to face with
a man day by day, there seems to be such a huge
gap left in the world when he is gone, that the
mind grows utterly sceptical, and can hardly
be convinced that an existence, which has been
to it the most real and even palpable thing in
all the world, can have wholly passed away.
To look into the same eyes and find them return
no glance for glance—to speak and find the ear
deaf, the lips sealed, and the voice hushed, is so
incomprehensible a change that the judgment posi-
tively reels again under the blow. Ashore, lad,
you can get away from death ; you can shut it out
with other scenes, but on board ship it haunts you
like a spectre; and then the day after comes the
most dreadful scene of all—burial on the high seas.”
The captain remained silent for a moment or
two, so that Ben might be able to “ chew the cud”
of his thoughts. Holmes had noticed the little
follow’s head drop at the mention of the death at
sea. and he was anxious that the lad should realize
to himself all the horror of such a catastrophe.
Presently Captain Holmes began again -—‘* As
the bell tolls, the poor fellow’s shipmates come
streaming up the hatchways, with their heads bare
and their necks bent down ; for few can bear to
look upon the lifeless body of their former com-

 

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56 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

panion, stretched, as it is, on the hatches beside

the ship’s gangway, pointing to its last home—'‘

the sea; whilst the ship’s colours, with which it
is covered, scarcely serve to conceal the outline
of the mummy-like form stitched in the ham-
mock underneath. It needs no elocution, Ben,
to make the service for the dead at sea the most
solemn and impressive of all prayers—an outpour-
ing that causes the heart to grieve and the soul
to shudder again in the very depth of its emotion ;
for with the great ocean itself for a cathedral, and
the wild winds of heaven to chant the funeral
dirge, there is an awe created that cannot pos-
sibly be summoned up by any human handi-
work. And when the touching words are uttered,
of ‘ashes to ashes, and dust to dust,’ and the body
is slid from under the colours into the very
midst of the ocean—as if it were being cast back
into the great womb of Nature itself—a horror
falls upon the senses hke a deep absorbing
stupor.”

Another long pause ensued. ‘The captain him-
self was absorbed in recalling all the sad associ-
ations of the scenes he had described. Josiah
and Uncle Benjamin had long forgotten the little
lad whose love of the sea had been the cause of
the discourse, and were silently nursing the pious
thoughts that had been called up in their minds ;
while poor Mrs. Franklin sat sobbing and mutter-
ing to herself disjointed fragments of prayers.

Presently the mother rose from her seat, and
flinging herself on the captain’s shoulder wept half
hysterically; at last, with a strong effort, she
cried through her sobs: ‘The Lord in heaven
reward you, Holmes, for saving my boy from such
a fate.”

Next Uncle Benjamin started from his chair,
and going towards his little namesake, said, as he

  

a a lil ele ennaiA TALK ABOUT THE SEA, 57

led him to his weeping parent, “ Come, dear lad,
promise your mother here you will abandon all
thoughts of the sea from this day forth.”

‘I do mother,” cried the boy, “I promise you
l wiil,”

The mother’s heart was too full to thank her
boy by words; but she seized him, and throwing
her arms about his neck, half smothered him with
kisses, that spoke her gratitude to her son in
the most touching and unmistakable of all lan-
guage,

‘“Give me your hand, sir,” said Josiah to little
Benjamin; “let us be better friends than we yet
have been, and to-morrow you shall choose a trade
for yourself.”

‘¢ Oh, thank you, father, thank you,” exclaimed
the delighted lad; and that night he told his joys
to his guinea-pig, and slept as he had never done
before.

END OF PART I,

 

   
 
    
    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
   

 

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PART II.

YOUNG BEN’S LESSON IN LIFE, AND WHAT
HE LEARNT FROM IT.

 

CHAPTER VII.
GOING OUT IN THE WORLD.

Ir was arranged by Josiah and his wife, after part-
ing with the captain overnight, that young Ben-
jamin should be intrusted to the care of his uncle
for a few days, before being called upon to select
his future occupation in life.

Uncle Benjamin had pointed out to the father
that he was too prone to look upon his boy as a
mere industrial machine, and had begged hard to
be allowed to take his httle godson with him ‘“ out
in the world” for a while, so as to give him some
slight insight into the economy of human life and
labour.

“The lad at present,” urged the uncle, ‘is
without purpose or object. He knows absolutely
nothing of the ways of the world, and has no more
sense of the necessity or nobility of work—nor,
indeed, any clearer notion of the great scheme of
civilized society, than an. Indian Papoose. What
can a child like him,” the godfather said, ‘‘ under-
stand of the value of prudence, of the over-
whelming power of mere perseverance—or of
the magic influence of simple energy and will—GOING OUT IN THE WORLD. 59

till he is made to see and comprehend the dif-
ferent springs and movements that give force,
play, and direction to the vast machinery of in-
dustry and commerce? So far as the great world
of human enterprise is concerned,” added the uncle,
“the lad is but little better than a pup of eight
days old; and until his mind’s eye is fairly opened,
it is idle to expect him to have the least insight
into the higher uses and duties of life.”

As soon as the morning meal of the next day
was finished, little Benjamin, to his utter astonish-
ment, was presented by his uncle with a new fish-
ing-rod and tackle, and told to get himself ready
to start directly for a day’s sport.

‘What ever can this have to do with the choice
of a trade?” thought the boy to himself.

There was no time, however, for wondering ; for
the next minute the mother was busy brushing
his little triangular hat, while his sister was
helping him on with his thick, big-buckled
shoes. Then a packet of corned beef and bread
was slipped into the pocket of his broad-skirted
coat: and without a hint as to what it all meant,
the little fellow was dismissed with a kiss and a
‘«‘God-speed ” upon his mysterious journey.

The boy and his uncle were not long in travers-
ing the crooked and narrow streets of Boston.
The quaint old-fashioned State House in front
of the large park-like ‘‘common” was soon left
behind, and the long wooden bridge crossed in the
direction of the neighbouring suburb of Dorchester.

Young Benjamin, though pleased enough to be
free for a day’s pleasure, was so eager to be put
to some new occupation, that he kept speculating in
his own simple manner, as he trotted along with
his rod on his shoulder, as to why his father had
broken his premise with him.

 

 

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60 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

The uncle guessed the reason of his little
nephew’s silence, but said not a word as to the
real object of the excursion; and as they made
towards the heights of Dorchester, he recounted
to the lad, in order to divert his thoughts, stories
of the persecutions of the Franklin family in the
old country; till at length, having reached a
small streamlet at the foot of the heights them-
selves, the rod and line were duly mounted, and
the day’s sport commenced.

Then, as the boy sat on the green bank, with
his fishing-rod speared into the ground, and watch-
ing the tiny float that kept dancing hke a straw in
the current, the old man at his side took advan-
tage of the quietude of the spot to impress his
little nephew with his first views of life.

It was a lovely autumn day. The blue vault
of the sky was like a huge dome of air upspring-
ing from the distant horizon, and flecked with
jarge cumulus clouds that lay almost as motion-
less, from lack of wind, as if they were mounds
of the whitest and softest snow piled one above
another. From an opening between two such
clouds the sun’s rays came pouring down visibly,
in distinct broad bands of “ fire mist”— such as
are seen streaming through a cathedral window—
and fell upon the earth and water in large sheets
of dazzling phosphorescence. Out at sea, the
broad ocean-expanse constituting the Bay of
Massachusetts looked positively solid as crystal
in its calmness, while the shadows of the clouds
above, dulling in parts the bright surface of
the water, swept over it almost as imperceptibly
as breath upon a mirror. In the distance, the
little smacks that seemed to be revelling in the
breeze far away from land had each left be-
hind them a bright trail, which looked like a long
shining scar upon the water ; and from the scores ofGOING OUT IN THE WORLD. 61
islands, dappling the great ocean-lake, ferry boats
freighted with a many-coloured load of market-
women, peasants, and soldiers kept plying to and
from the shore.

Looking towards the home they had left, the
town of Boston itself was seen crowding the
broad peninsular pedestal on which it was
set, and the three hills that gave it its an-
cient name of ‘“T'ri-mountain,” swelling high
above the tide at its base. In front of the city,
the masts of the many vessels in the harbour were
like a mass of reeds springing out of the water,
and from the back and sides of the town there
stretched long wooden bridges, which in the dis-
tance seemed as though they were so many cables,
mooring the huge raft of the city to the adjacent
continent.

The country round about was dappled with
many a white and cosy homestead, and the earth
itself variegated as a painter’s palette with all the
autumn colours of the green meadows and the
brown fallow lands—the golden orchards, the
crimson patches of clover, and the white flocks and
red cattle with which it was studded; whilst
overhead, on the neighbouring Dorchester heights,
there rose a fine cloud of foliage that was as rich
and yet sombre in its many tints as the sky at
sunset after a storm.

‘‘Look round about you, lad,” said Uncle Ben-
jamin to the youth at his side, ‘‘and see what a
busy scene surrounds us. ‘There is not a field
within compass of the eye that the husbandmen
are not at work in. Yonder the plough goes
scoring the earth, as the yoke of oxen passes slowly
over it, and changing the green soil into a rich
umber brown, so that the exhausted ground may
drink in fresh life from the air above. Here the
farm cart is in the field studding it with loads of

 

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62 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

manure at regular distances, to serve as nutriment
for the future grain. The smoke from the up-
rooted heaps of stubble burning yonder goes drift-
ing over the dark plain, in order that even the
ashes from the past crop may tend to feed the
coming one. ‘That swarthy-looking fellow you
see over there, Ben, with a basket on his arm, is a
sweep, sowing soot broadcast, for the same purpose.
Down by the shore, again, the people are out with
their waggons collecting seaweed, with a like
object. At the salt-marshes, too, you perceive the
cowherd is busy opening the sluices, so that the
tide as it flows may moisten the rich meadows
upon which the cattle are grazing.

‘¢On the other hand,” continued the old man, as
he pointed to the several objects about him, ‘the
tiny vessels yonder, that look like so many white
gulls as they skim the broad bay, are those of
the fishermen gathering supphes for to-morrow’s
market. That noble-looking Indiaman, with the
men, like a swarm of bees about its yards, gather-
ing in the pouting sails as it enters the harbour, is
laden with teas and spices from the Hast; and that
line of craft moored beside the ‘Long Wharf,’
with the cranes dipping into their holds, is landing
bags of sugar from the Western Indies. The drove
of cattle halting there to drink at the road-side
pool, and with their reflected images colouring the
water like a painting, have come from the distant
prairies to swell our butchers’ stores. ‘T’he white
figure you can just see at the top of yon mill is
that of the miller’s man, guiding the dangling
sacks of flour on their way down to be carted off
to the city. The very birds of the air—the crows
now cawing as they fly over head; the swallows
twittering as they skim zigzag across the surface
of the pools; the white gull yonder that has just
settled down on the waves; the hawk poised aboveGOING OUT IN THE WORLD. 63

the wood waiting for the coming pigeon; are, one
and all, in quest of food. Even the very pein
beside us are busy upon the same errand. The big
bee buzzing in the flower cup at our feet; the
tiny ants, that are hardly bigger than motes in
the sunbeam, hurrying to and fro j in the grass; the
spider that has spun his silken net across the twigs
of the adjacent hedge—are all quickened with the
cravings of their bigger fellow-creatures. Indeed,
the sportsman on the hills above, whose gun now
makes the woods chatter again, is there only
from the same motive as is stirring the insects
themselves. And you yourself, Ben, —but look at
your float, lad! look at your float! The bobbing
of it talies you that the very fish—like the birds
and the insects, the sportsmen and the husband-
men round about—have left their lurking-places
on the same hungry mission. Strike, boy,
strike !”

As the uncle said the words, the delighted
youngster seized the rod, and twitched a plump-
looking chub, struggling, from the pool.

In a few mniitbe fs prize was stored away in
the fish-basket they had brought with them, and
the float once more dancing in ‘the sh: ade above the
newly-baited hook in the water.

And when the rod was speared anew in the
ground beside the brook, Uncle Ben said to his
nephew, as the little fellow flung himself down on
the bank slope, ‘Can you understand now, my
little man, why I brought you out to fish ?”

The lad looked up in his uncle’s good-humoured
face, and smiled as the solution of “the morning’s
riddle flashed across his mind,

“Why, to teach me, uncle, that every thing that
lives seeks after its food,” answered the younger
Benjamin, delighted with the small discovery | he
had made; for as yet he had never shaped, in

 

 

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64 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

his mind, the cravings of creatures into anything
approximating to a general law.

“Hardly that, my “little man,” replied the uncle,
‘‘for I should have thought your own unguided
reason would have shown. you as much ere this.
What I really want to impress upon you, Ben, is
rather the vital necessity for work. The lesson I
wish to teach you is not a very deep one, my lad;
but one that requires to be firmly and everlast-
ingly engraven on the mind. Now look round
again, and see what difference you can notice be-
tween the lives of animals and plants. Observe
what is going on in the fields, and what among the
insects, the birds, the fishes, the beasts, and even
the men, that throng the land, the air, and the
water about us.”

The boy cast his eyes once more over the broad
expanse of nature before him, and said, hesitat-
ingly, ‘‘The animals are all seeking after food,
and—and—”

‘‘The husbandmen are busy in the fields, taking
food to the plants,” added Uncle Benjamin, help-
ing the little fellow to work out the problem.

‘The one form of life goes after its food, and the
other has it brought to it.”

The old man paused for a minute, so that the
lad might well digest the difference.

“The distinctive quality of an animal,” he then
went on, ‘‘is that it seeks its own living, whereas
a plant must have its living taken to it.”

‘““T see,” said Benjamin, thoughtfully.

‘¢ An animal,” said the uncle, ‘“‘ cannot thrust its
lower extremities into the ground and drink up the
elements of its trunk and limbs from the soil, like
the willow-tree there on the opposite bank, whose
roots you can see, like a knot of writhing snakes,
piercing the earth all round about it. Unlike the
tree and the shrub, Ben, the animal is endowedGOING OUT IN THE WORLD. 65
with a susceptibility of feeling, as well as fitted
with a special and exquisitely beautiful appa-
ratus for motion. The sentient creature is thus
not only gifted with a sense of hunger to tell him
instinctively (far better than any reason could pos-
sibly do) when his body needs refreshment; but in
order to prevent his sitting still and starving with
pleasure (ashe assuredly would have done if hunger
had been rendered a delight to him) this very
sense of hunger has, most benevolently, been made
painful for him to suffer for any length of time.
Now it is the pain or uneasiness of the growing
appetite that serves to sting the muscles of his
limbs into action at frequent and regular in-
tervals, and to make him stir in quest of the
food that is necessary for the reparation of his
frame. And what is more, the allaying of the
pain of the protracted appetite itself has been ren-
dered one of the chief pleasures of animal nature.”

‘‘How strange it seems, uncle, that I never
thought of this before! for, now you point it out to
me, it 1s all so plain that I fancy I must have been
blind not to have noticed it,” was all that the
nephew could say; for the new train of thought
started in his brain was hurrying him away with
its wild crowa of reflections.

‘Rather it would have been much stranger,
Ben, could you have discovered it alone ; for such
maiters are visible to the mind only, and not to be
noted by the mere eyes themselves,” the uncle
made answer.

“T understand now,” exclaimed the boy, half
musing; ‘‘all animals must stir themselves in
order to get food.”

“Ay, my lad! but there is another marked dif-
ference between animals and plants,” continued
the uncle, ‘‘ and that will explain to us why even
food itself is necessary for animal subsistence. A

F

      
   
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
   

 

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tree, you know, boy, is inactive that willow
would remain where it is till it died unless moved
by some one—and there 1s, therefore, little or no
waste going on inits frame. Hence the greater
part of the nutriment it derives from the soul and
| air is devoted to the growth or strengthening of its
b || trunk and limbs. But the chief condition of
| | animal life is muscular action, and muscular action
| cannot go on without the destruction of the tissues
themselves. After a hard day’s exercise, men are
known to become considerably lighter, or, in other
words, to have lost several pounds weight of their
bodily substance. Physicians, too, assure us that
the entire body itself becomes changed every
| seven years throughout life: the hair, for in-
stance, is for ever growing, the nails are being
continually pared away, the breath is always
carrying off a certain portion of our bulk, the
| blood is hourly depositing fresh fibre and absorb-
Ba i ing decayed tissues as it travels through the sys-
Hh tem; transpiration, again, is for ever going on, and
| xan only be maintained by continual drains upon
| the vital fluids within. Even if we sit still, our
body is at work—the heart beating, the lungs
playing, the chest heaving, the blood circulating ;
and all this, as with the motion of any other
engine (even though it be of iron), must be
H I attended with more or less friction or rubbing
ei away of the parts in motion, and consequently
IF with a slower or quicker wearing out or waste of
i the body itself.” .
‘¢T should never have thought of that, uncle,”
; observed the youth.
\ ‘Tt is this waste, lad, which, waking or sleep-
ing, moving or resting, is for ever going on in the
if animal frame, that makes a continual supply of
| } food a vital necessity with us all, ood, in-
| deed, is to the human machine what coals are to

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eeGOING OUT IN THE WORLD. 67

Savery’s wonderful steam-engine—the fuel that is
necessary to keep the apparatus in motion; and,
as a chaldron of coal applied to a steam-boiler will
do only a certain amount of work, so a given quan-
tity of bread and bacon put into a man’s stomach
is equal to merely a definite quantity of labour.
But since we can only get food by working, why
work itself, of course, becomes the supreme neces-
sity of our lives. Our blood, our heart, our lungs
are, as I said, for ever at work, and we must there-
fore work, if it be only to keep them working. It
is impossible for such as us to stand still without
destroying some portion of our substance; and
hence one of three things becomes inevitable.”

‘¢ And what are they, uncle ?”

“Why, work, beggary, or death !” was the over-
whelming reply. ‘‘ You may choose which of the
three you will adopt, but one or other of them there
is no escaping from. You must either live by your
own labour, lad, or by that of others, or else you
must starve-—such is the lot of all.”

‘“Work, beggary, or death!” echoed the boy, as
he chewed the cud of his first lesson in hfe.
‘© Wor . beggary, or death !”

Then suddenly turning to his uncle, the little
fellow exclaimed, “‘ You have given me thoughts
I never knew before. Let me go home and tell
my father and mother how different a boy you
have made me, and my future life shall show you
how much I owe to this day’s lesson.”

The journey home was soon performed, for young
Benjamin was too full of what he had heard to feel
the distance they journeyed.

‘Well, Ben, my boy!” exclaimed the father, as
the little fellow entered the candle store, ‘‘ what
sport have you had? What have you brought
home?”

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68 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

“JT have brought one fish,” answered his son,
demurely.

“Ts that all?’ asked the old man.

“No,” replied the altered youth. ‘I have come
back with one fish and one strong determination,
father.”

‘‘Hh, indeed! A strong determination to do
what, my lad?” said the parent.

‘To lead a new life for the future,”
grave response of the little man.

was the

 

CHAPTER VIII.
POO MEnTEE I GA Sar 10”

Tuat night, after the evening hymn had been
chanted by the family, to the accompaniment of
the father’s violin as usual, and young Benjamin
had retired to rest, the conversation of the
brothers and the wife turned upon the marked
change that had occurred in the little fellow’s
behaviour.

‘‘ He certainly seems a different lad,” observed
the father, as he arranged the table for the hit at
backgammon that he and his brother Benjamin
occasionally indulged in after the day’s work;
“quite a different lad. I really don’t think he
uttered a word beyond ‘asking the blessing’ all
supper-time.”

‘* And when I went up to his room to take his
light,” chimed in the mother, who had now settled
down to her knitting, and was busy refooting a
pair of the young carpenter’s worsted stockings,
‘‘the dear child was praying to God to give him
grace and strength to carry out his new purpose.”
‘Weill! well! that looks all healthy enough,69

mother,” exclaimed Josiah, rattling away at the
dice-box, “if itll only last. You see the flesh is
weak with all of us, and children are but reeds in
the wind ; poor little reeds, mother.”

“Last!” echoed Benjamin, as he raised his eye
for a moment from his brother’s game, ‘‘ why, with
God’s blessing, it’s sure to last, that it is... What
lve told you all along, Josh, 1s that you hadn't
faith in that boy’s mind. He’s as like our own
brother Tom, 1 say again, as one grain of sand
is to another; and as our Thomas came to be
the foremost man of our family, why, mark my
words, Josh, your Ben will grow up to be the
greatest man in all yours—though | dare say none
of us here will ever be spared to see the day.
The boy has a fine common-sense mind of his own,
and where there’s a mind to work upon, you can
do anything, brother, within reason. With Jack-
asses, of course you must give them the stick to
make them go the way you want; but with
rational creatures, it’s only a fool that believes
blows can do more than logic. What first set you
and me thinking about our duties in life, Josh?” he
asked, and gave the dice-box an extra rattle as he
paused for a reply. ‘* Was it kicks, eh? kicks and
cuffs? No! but it was sitting under good old Luke
Fuller at the Northampton Conventicle, and listen-
ing to his godly teachings—that it was, if / know
anything about it. And now I'll tell you what I
mean to do with my godson Ben. J’ve made my-
self responsible for the errors of his youth, you
know, and what I mean to do is this—”

The mother stopped her needles for the moment,
as she awaited anxiously the conclusion of the
speech ; but Benjamin, who by this time had got
by far the best of the hit at backgammon, paused
to watch the result of the throw he was about to
make; and when the dice were cast upon the

“a wir! A HIT!”

 

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79 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

board, Josiah, who, like his brother, was divided
between the discourse and the contest, inquired—

“Well, and what do you mean to do, Master
Ben?”

““Why, I mean to gammon you nicely this time,
Master Josh,” he replied with a chuckle as he
“took up” the ‘‘blot” his antagonist had left on
the board.

“Tut! tut! man alive,” returned Josiah in a
huff at the ill luck which pursued him. “But
what do you mean to do with the boy, I want to
know ?”

“Why, J mean,” answered brother Benjamin,
abstractedly, as the game drew to a close, and he
kept gazing intently at the board, ‘“‘ I mean ”’—and
then, as he took off his last man, and started up
rubbing his palms together as briskly as if it were
a sharp frost, with exultation over his victory, he
added—‘ But you shall see—you shall see what
Y mean to do with him. Come, that’s a hit to me,
brother.”

It was useless for Josiah or his wife to attempt
to get even a clue to the method Uncle Benjamin
intended to adopt with their son.

The godfather, on second thoughts, had judged
it better to keep his mode of proceeding to him-
self, and so, finding he could hardly hold out
against the lengthened siege of the father and
mother, he deemed it prudent to beat a retreat:
and accordingly, seizing his rushlight and the
volume of manuscript sermons, that he never let
out of his sight, he wished the couple good-night,
and retired to his room.CHAPTER I&.
THE WILL AND THE WAY.

A sMALL sailing vessel lay becalmed next morn-
ing far out in the offing of the Massachusetts bay.
The fresh breeze that had sprung up at sunrise
had gradually died away as the day advanced
towards noon, and now the mainsail hung down
from the yard as loose and straight asa curtain from
a pole, while the boom kept swinging heavily from
side to side as the boat rolled about in the long
and lazy swell of the ocean. At the helm sat one of
the smartest young cockswains out of Boston har-
bour—Young Benjamin Franklin ; and near him
was the uncle who had undertaken to shape the
little fellow’s course through life.

The lad was again at a loss to fathom the reason
of the trip.

So long as the breeze had lasted he had been
too deeply engrossed with the management of the
craft—too pleased with watching the bows of the
tiny vessel plough their way through the foaming
water, like a sledge through so much snow—to
trouble his brains much about the object of an
excursion so congenial to his heart. So long as
the summer waves rushed swiftly as a mill-siuice
past the gunwale of the boat, and the hull lay
over almost on its side under the pressure of the
pouting sail, the blood went dancing, almost
as cheerily as the waves, through the veins of
the excited boy; and his hand grasped the tiller
with the same pride as a horseman holds the rein of

 

 

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72 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

a swift and well-trained steed. But when the wind
flagged, and the sail began to beat backwards and
forwards with each lull in the breeze, like the
fluttering wing of a wounded gull, the little fellow
could not keep from wondering why Uncle Benja-
min had brought him out to sea. What could any
one learn of the ways of the world in an open boat
far away from land?

The boy, however, lacked the courage to inquire
what it all meant.

Presently he turned his head to note the dis-
tance they had run, and cried as he looked back
towards Boston, ‘‘ Why, I declare, uncle, we can
hardly see the State House !”

“Yes, lad,’ was the answer, “the town has
faded into a mere blot of haze; but how finely
the long curving line of the crescent-shaped bay
appears to rampart the ocean round, now that the
entire sweep of the shore is brought within grasp
of the eye! What a vast basin it looks: so vast,
indeed, that the capes which form the horns of the
crescent coast, seem to be the very ends of the
earth itself! And yet, vast as it looks to us, lad,
this great tract of shore is but a mere span’s length
in comparison with the enormous American conti-
nent; that continent, which is a third part of the
entire earth—one of the three gigantic tongues of
land that stretch down from the North Pole,* and
ridge the ocean as if they were so many mighty
sea-walls raised to break the fury of the immense
flood of water enveloping the globe. Now tell

* The three tongues of land spoken of are,—1, North and
South America; 2, Europe and Africa; 8, Asia and Austra-
lasia. Hach of these great tracts is more or less divided mid-
way into two portions. Between the two Americas flow the
Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea; between Europe and
Africa, on the other hand, runs the Mediterranean: whilst

Asia and Australasia are separated by the Chinese Sea and
Indian Archipelago.oe —— a eile nie ak eles oa

THE WILL AND THE WAY. 73

me, who was it that discovered the great continent
before us, Benjamin ?”

‘‘Cristcfaro Colombo, the Genoese sailor, on the
11th of October, in the year 1492,” quicklyanswered
the nephew, proud of the opportunity of displaying
his knowledge of the history of his native land.

‘“ And that is but little more than two hundred
years ago,” the other added. ‘For thousands of
years one third of the entire earth was not even
known to exist by the civilized portion of the globe ;
and had it not been for the will of that Genoese
sailor, you and I, Ben, most likely, would not have
been gazing at this same land at this same moment.”

“The will of Columbus!” echoed the nephew
in wonderment at the speech.

“Yes, boy. Ihave brought you out in this boat
to-day, to show you what the mere will of a man
can compass,” continued the uncle, ‘for I want
to impress upon you, my little fellow—now that
we are here, with the mighty American shore
stretching miles away before our eyes—how the
will of a simple mariner gave these mighty shores
an existence to the rest of the habitable globe.”

‘‘The will!” repeated the boy.

“Yes, Benjamin, the will!” the uncle iterated
emphatically; ‘‘for the finding of this great
country was not a mere accidental discovery—not
a blind stumbling over a heap of earth in the dark
— but the mature fruition of a purpose long con-
ceived and sustained in the mind. When did
Columbus first form the design of reaching India
by a westward course ?”’ asked the old man, de-
lighted to catechize his little godson concerning the
chronicles of America.

Young Ben reflected for a moment, and then
stammered out, as if half in doubt about the date,
“As early as the—as the year 1474, I think the
book says, uncle.”

eee ater

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_ Ut YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

‘“‘Yes, boy, he formed the design nearly twenty
years before he made the discovery. T’o reach India
by sea,” proceeded the mentor, ** was the great
problem of navigation in those days. Marco Pole
had travelled overland as far even as China and
Japan; but the boats of our forefathers, flat-
bottomed as they were, and impelled only by
oars, were unable to venture far out of sight of
land; for in those days sailors hadn’t even the
knowledge of the compass, nor of any imstrument
to measure the altitudes of the stars, whereby to
ouide a vessel in its course. ven the passage to
India round by the Cape of Good Hope was a
voyage that none as yet had had the hardihood to
undertake. Well, and what were the reasons
Columbus had for believing that land lay across
the Atlantic ?”

“The objects cast on the shores of Europe after
westerly winds,” spoke out the boy, tor the
interesting story of the discovery of America had
been scanned over and over again by him.
“ Besides, you know, uncle, after Columbus married
Philippa de Palestrello, he supported himself, and
kept his old father too, at Genoa by drawing
maps and charts.”

“There’s a brave lad!” returned the uncle pat-
ting his godson encouragingly on the head, till
each kindly touch from the old man thrilled
through every nerve of the youngster; * and in the
old charts by Andrea Bianco and others of Venice,
Columbus had doubtlessly been struck by the long
range of territory that was vaguely indicated as
lying to the west of the Canary Islands. Well,
when the sailor had once formed the idea of cross-
ing the Atlantic in quest of land, what did he
do? Did he sit down and grieve that he was too
poor to fit out the fleet that was necessary to put
the project into execution, eh, lad?”THE WILL AND THE WAY. (
‘““No, uncle,” wasthe ready reply; “he journeyed
. 7 . . . . Ba

with his little son Diego, who was then, if ]

remember rightly, only eleven years old (for

his wife Philppa, you know, uncle, had died

some time before), to the different courts of

Kurope, in the hope of getting some of the kings
to give him ships and men for the voyage.”

‘* Ay, and when he found himself foiled by the
intrigues of the courtiers of John the Second of
Portugal, and the great scheme of crossing the
Atlantic rejected by the council of the State, did
the sailor give way to despair, and abandon the
project for ever in disgust?’ again the old man
interrogated the youth.

‘“No, Uncle Benjamin; he set out with his little
son to Spain, though in the greatest poverty at
the time, and there sought the assistance of Ferdi-
nand and Isabella.’

‘* And how long did he remain there, lad, danc-
ing attendance on the lacqueys of a government
many of whom even laughed to scorn the notion
of the world being round ?” was the next query.

‘Five years he stayed in Spain,” the youth
replied.

‘And when all hope failed him there, what did
he afterwards? Did he lose heart, and pluck his
long-chesished purpose out of his mind?

‘No, no!” exclaimed the lad, whom the uncle
me now worked up to a sense of the sailor's
indomitable determination; ‘* Columbus then got
his brother Bartholomew to make proposals for
the voyage to Henry VII. of England.”

“« Yes, ° exclaimed the elder Benjamin, ‘‘and to
England this man of stern will would most as-
sured] y have gone had not the Queen Isabella,
when she hear d of it, been persuaded to send for
him back.”

«« And then, you know, she consented to pledge

 

 

 

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76 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

her jewels so as to raise money enough for the
expedition,” chimed in little Benjamin.

“So she did, my little man,” the godfather re-
turned with an approving nod; ‘‘and by such
means, at last, three small vessels, the ‘Santa
Maria,’ the ‘ Pinta,’ and the ‘ Nina’ (two of them,
remember, being without decks), were fitted for
sea, and one hundred and twenty hands to man
them, collected, by hook or by crook, with the
ereatest difficulty, owing to the general dread
of the passage. And when the tiny fleet of fish-
ing smacks (for it was little better, boy), ulti-
mately set sail—on the 3rd of August, 1492, it
was—out of the port of Palos, in the Mediter-
ranean, and made straight away for the broad
havenless ocean itself, did the will of the bold
adventurer—the will that he had nursed through
many a long year of trial, want, and scorn—did it
waver one jot then, or still point to the opposite
shore, steady as the compass itself to the pole? ay,
and that even though he knew that the crew he
commanded were timid as deer, and the boats
he had to navigate almost as unseaworthy as
cradles ?”

‘“‘T never read the story in this way before, uncle,”
exclaimed the thoughtful boy, now that the object
of his teacher began to dawn upon his mind.

‘“T dare say not, lad; but hear the grand tale to
its end,” was the answer. ‘‘ Well, for some months,
you know, Ben, the wretched little fleet of open
boats had been beating about the wide and appa-
rently-boundless Atlantic, and the sailors, worn
with fatigue and long want of shelter and proper
food, had grown mutinous and savage at searching
for what seemed to them like the very end of space
itself; and then the great admiral (for you re-
member he had been made one), though still
fortified by the same indomitable purpose as ever,THE WILL AND THE WAY. tT

was obliged, after exhausting every other resource,
to beg of his rebellious sailors a few days’ grace,
and to promise to return with them then, if un-
successful. Night and day afterwards, did this
man of iron resolution gaze into the clouds that
rested on the horizon, and believe he saw in them
the very land that his fancy had discovered there
nearly twenty years before; but at last this same
cloud-land had'‘so often cheated the sight, that all
hope of seeing any shore in that quarter had been
banished from every breast—but his own. One
night, however Hees memorable night of the 15th
of “October, 1492,—as the admiral sat on the poop
of the ‘Santa Mania’ peering into the darkness
itself, he thought he beheld moving lights in the
distance ; then the crew were called up to watch
them, and eye he eye began to see the same
bright fiery specks wandering about in the haze
as the admiral hinself ; until, at length, doubt
grew into conviction, and a wild exulting cry of
‘land! land!’ arose from every voice.

And when the morning dawned, and the eyes
of Columbus gazed upon that strange coast, crim-
soned over and gilt with the rays of the rising
sun, who shall describe the passions that crowded
in his bosom? who shall tell the honest pride he
felt at the power of the will which had led him
to summon, into existence as it were, the very
land before him? or how even he himself mar-
velled over that staunch fortitude of purpose
which had sustained him through years of trial to
such an end?”

‘Tt was then,” said the boy, half stricken down
with wonder at the thought, now that he could
grasp it in all its grandeur, “the will of Columbus
that gave America to us.’

“lt was, lad, the will of the heroic Genoese
sailor—expressing the will of God; and if it wasCla et ee eee ee

 

Piste atenttiniended beanie a katie ea

     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

78 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

the will of a simple mariner that first made known
this enormous continent—this new world as we
call it—-why, it was merely the same inflexible
resolution that first peopled it, with the very race
that now possesses it.”

‘‘Indeed!” cried the boy in greater amazement
than ever.

“Yes, Ben,” was the answer. “ The same iron
determination was in the souls of the Pilgrim
Fathers as in that of Columbus himself; but theirs
was one of a holier nature. They sought these
lands, neither quickened by a life of adventure
yor stirred by the lust of riches. They had merely
one immovable purpose in their heart—to worship
the Almighty after the dictates of their own con-
science—and it was this that led the pious band
to quit the shores of the Humber in the old coun-
try; this that sustained them for years as exiles
in Holland; and this which ultimately bore them
across the Atlantic in the ‘Speedwell’ and the
‘Mayflower, and gave them strength to fight
through the terrors of the first winter here in
their adopted father-land.”

‘How strange!” exclaimed the musing lad;
‘¢ will discovered the land, and will peopled it.”

“Yes, Benjamin; it was to make you compre-
hend the power of this same will in man that J
brought you out here to-day. I wanted to let you sec
almost with a bird’s eye the mighty territory that
has been created by it. The plains, which a few
years back were mere wild and half-barren hunt-
ing grounds possessed by savages, are now studded
with large and noble towns—the fields striped
with roads and belted with canals—the coast
pierced with harbours—the land rich with vegeta-
tion—the cities busy with factories —the havens
bristling with shipping—ay, and all called into
existence by the indomitable will of the one manHOW TO MAKE WORK PLEASANT, eo

who originally discovered the country, and that
of the conscientious band who afterwards came
from England to make a home of it. It was the
will of the Almighty that first summoned the
land out of the water, lad; and it is the same
‘xod-like quality in man—the great creative and
heroic faculty—that changes barren plains into
fertile fields, and builds up cities in the wilder-
ness.’

 

CHAP PEE X.
Il0W TO MAKE WORK PLEASANT AND PROFITABLE.

Ir was now time for the uncle and nephew to
think about returning to Boston harbour. ‘They
had promised to be home to a late dinner at two;
but the promise had been made irrespective of the
wind and the tide, and the couple were then
some miles out at sea, without a breath of wind
strong enough to waft a soap-bubble through
the air, and with a strong ebb-current drifting
them farther from land.

The head of the vessel was at length, by dint of
sculling, brought round to the shore; but still
the sail hung down as limp and straight as the
feathers of barn-door fowls after a heavy shower,
and even the paper that the uncle threw over-
board (as he opened the packet of bread and
meat they had brought with them) floated per-
petually by the ship’s side, as motionless as the
pennant at the mast-head. .

‘« Heyday, my man! we seem to be in a pretty
fix here,” cried Uncle 3enjamin, as he munched
the bread and beef, while he kept his eyes
riveted on the piece of the old ** Boston Gazette -
swimming beside them in the water. ‘‘ What do

 

 

 

sects ant rage
a

arenes

Pe oie Sek oe ret80 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

you say, my little captain—what’s to be done?
Remember, I’m in your hands, youngster.”

«“ There’s nothing to be done that I see, uncle,”
returned the youth, as he smiled with delight at
nh the idea of being promoted to the captaincy of the
Bt vessel—‘‘ nothing but to wait out here patiently
aa till sundown, and then a breeze will spring up
| most likely ; it generally does, you know, at that
imme, but 1 thought it ‘ud be so, to tell you
the truth, while you were talking; and I should
have whistled for a wind long ago, but I
fancied you might think I wasn’t attending.
It’s impossible to pull back with this heavy tide
against us; and if you look out to sea, uncle,
| there isn’t a puff of wind to be seen coming
Bn up along the water anywhere ;” and as he said
a the words the little monkey put his hand up
HH before his brows, in imitation of his old sailor
friends, and looked under them in all directions,
| to observe whether he could distinguish in the
! distance that ruffling of the glassy surface of the
water which marks the approach of a breeze in a
al calm.
a ‘Well, captain, what must be must,” said the
godfather, calmly resigning himself with all the
gusto of a philosopher at once to the position and
the victuals. ‘‘'T’here’s no use railing against
| i the wind, you know, and it’s much better having
t
|
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a ee a ae
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to whistle for a breeze than a dinner, I can
tell you. So come, lad, while you fall foul of
the meatand the cider, I can be treating you to
a little snack of worldly philosophy by way of
salt to the food; and so, you see, you can be
digesting your dinner and your duty in life both
at the same time.”

nt The youngster proceeded to carry out his
| ; uncle’s order in good earnest, for the sea-trip
had whetted his bodily appetite as much as the

SS

deta iiaaetn bat ala ae man ta eee eae ee ete a a
2 Ce es ae ee a et RE eeHOW TO MAKE WORK PLEASANT. Sl

story of Columbus had sharpened the edge of

his wits; so, pulling out his clasp knife, he fell
to devouring the buffalo hump and the old man’s
discourse almost with equal heartiness.

‘Well, my son,” proceeded the elder Benjamin,
‘*T have shown you the power of the will in
great things, and now I want to point out to you
the use of it in what the world calls ‘ little things.’
I have made you understand, I think, that the
prime necessity of life is labour. sut labour
is naturally irksome to us. You remember, boy,
it was the primeval curse inflicted upon man.”

«So it was!” exclaimed the lad, in haste to
let his uncle see that he knew well to what he
referred. ‘‘‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou
eat bread’ were the words, uncle.”

‘Good, good, my son! Ill make a fine, upright
man of you before IL have done—that J will,’’
added the delighted godfather. ‘But labour,
though naturally irksome and painful, still admits,
like hunger itself, of being made a source of
pleasure to us.’

‘‘ How can that be?” the nephew inquired.

‘Well, Ben,” the uncle went on, ‘‘ there are
three means—and only three, so far as I know—by
which work may be rendered more or less de-
lightful to all men. ‘The first of these means is
variety ; the second, habit ; and the third, purpose,
or object.”

“7 don’t understand you, uncle,
boy said.

‘You know, my little man,” the other went
on, “that as it is hard and difficult to remain
at the same occupation for any length of time, so
does it become a matter of mere recreation to
shift from one employment to another as soon
as we grow tired of what we have been previously
doing. Child’s-play is merely labour made easy,
G

99

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32 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

and what boys call amusement is often very hard
work. But it is the change of occupation that
makes even the severest muscular exercise a
matter of sport to youth. A whole life of
football, however, or fifty years at leap-frog,
would be far more fatiguing, I can tell you,
than the hewing of wood or the drawing of
water. And even this boating, which is so
delightful to you, lad, when pursued as a re-
laxation or relief from other modes of work, is
the heaviest possible punishment to the poor
galley slaves who are doomed to it for the term of
their natural. lives. The great zest of life is
change, boy; even as the chief drug of our

existence is the mental and bodily fatigue which

arises from long continuance at the same pursuit.
Recreation, indeed, is merely that restoration of

energy which comes from change of work or

occupation; and it is this principle of change
or variety in. labour which, as with the boating
of boys, can transform even the hard work of
galley slaves into a matter of child’s play.”

“Ohi then; uncle,” ‘cried. little « Benjamin,
flushed with the belief that he had made a grand
discovery, ‘‘ why not let people work at a number
of different things, and do each for only a little
time, instead of setting them to labour always
at the same pursuit for the whole of their lives?
Kivery one would be fond of working then.”

“Yes, but, lad,” rejoined the old man, smiling
as well at the simplicity as at the aptness of his
pupil, ‘this flighty or erratic kind of labour
would be of no more value to the world than are
the sports of children. A tailor must continue
using the needle for years, Ben, before he can
work a button-hole fit to be seen. How long
must people have toiled on and on, generation
after generation, before they learnt how to makeHOW TO MAKE WORK PLEASANT. 83

window-glass and bottles out of the sand and
the weeds by the sea-shore! Could you or I,
Ben, ever hope, by labouring half an hour a day,
to get a pair of scissors or a razor out of a lump
of iron-stone, or to fashion a slice of an elephant’s
tusk into the exquisitely-nice symmetry of a billiard
ball? For labour to be of special use and value
to the world, it must have some special skill; and
skilled labour, being but the cunning of the fingers,
requires the same long education of the hands
as deep learning does of the head. It is because
savages and vagabonds have no settled occupations
that their lives are comparatively worthless to the
rest of mankind.”

‘‘T see now!” ejaculated the thoughtful boy.

«Yes, my lad, variety of occupation makes work
as pleasant as play,” the uncle added; “but it
makes it as valueless also. So now let us turn to
the second means of making labour agreeable.”

‘And that’s habit, I think you said,” inter-
jected the younger Benjamin.

«© T did,” he replied. ‘‘ Now habit, I should
first tell you, my little man, is one of the most
wonderful principles in the whole human consti-
tution. The special function of habit is to
make that which is at first irksome for us to
do, pleasant after a time to perform: it serves
to render the actions which originally required
an express effort on our part to execute, so purely
mechanical as it were (when they have been
frequently and regularly repeated for a certain
period), as to need almost the same express effort
then to prevent us indulging in them.”

‘«« How strange!” mused the nephew.

«The simple habit of whittling will teach you,
lad, how difficult it is for people to keep their
hands from doing work they have been long
ccaustomed to. Again, when you were trying
G 2ee eee ee ee
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84 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

to play your father’s violin, you remember how
hard you found it to move each finger as you
wanted, and how your eye was obliged to be fixed
first on the music-book, and then on the strings,
in order to touch each particular note set down:
until at length, disgusted with the tedium of the
task, you left off practising on the instrument
altogether? And yet, had you pursued the study,
there is no doubt you would ultimately have
played with all the ease, and even pleasure, of
your father, and have got to work your fingers
ere long with the same nimbleness, and even the
same inattention, as your mother plies her knit-
ting-needles while reading in the evening.”

“So I should, I dare say; but isn’t it odd,
uncle, that mere habit should do this 2” observed
the lad, as he grew alive to the wonders worked
by it.

‘It ws odd, my boy—very odd, indeed, that the
mere repetition of acts at frequent and regular
intervals (for that is all that is required) should
make them, however difficult and distasteful at
first, grow easy and congenial to us in time; that
it should change pain into pleasure, labour into
pastime; that it should render a vertain set of
muscles unconscious of effort, and callous to
fatigue, and transform the most arduous voluntary
actions into the simplicity and insensibility of
mere clockwork. But so it is, my little man:
and it is this same principle of habit applied
to the different forms of manual labour which
constitutes what is termed ‘ industrial training ;’
it is this which makes ‘skill’ in the world, and
gives to the handiwork of mechanics a stamp of
the cunning and dignity of art.”

‘“'The use of apprenticeship, then, I suppose,”
observed the boy, ‘is to form a kind of habit of
working in a particular way-—isn’t it so, uncle 2”peter st —— 2 OREN eee Te. <a

   

HOW TO MAKE WORK PLEASANT. S90

“Well said, my quick little man. There is a
high pleasure in teaching such as take delight
in ‘Jearning, hke you, Ben.”

MBit, uncle,” continued the youth, tingling
all over with delight at the applause, ‘if habit
can do away with the unpleasantness of labour,
where can be the use of the other thing you spoke
of as a means of making work agreeable—though
I forget what you said it was, I’m sure.”

‘“ It was purpose or olject, my lad, that I told
you makes work pleasant also.”

‘¢ Oh, yes, so it was—purpose or object,” young
Benjamin repeated; ‘but I hardly know what
you mean by such grand words.”

“They are not only grand words, but they
stand for the grandest things in life, my little
fellow,” the old man went on. ‘‘ Habit, after all,
makes a man work but as a machine. ‘The
blacksmith who has been long accustomed to
wield the sledge hammer has no more sense of
fatigue (except “when he works beyond the time
he has been used to) than that wonderful new
invention the steam-engine, which you have seen
swinging its iron arms about as it pumps the
water out of our docks. But aman with a pur-
pose, my son, works like a man, and not lke a
steam-engine—even though that very purpose
makes him as insensible of weariness in his labour
as the steam-engine itself.”

‘‘Does purpose, then, as you call it, do the
same as habit, uncle?’ inquired the youth.

‘“Yes, Ben, but it does that cmmediately which
habit requires years to accomplish. Only let a
man put his w hole soul into what he is doing—
let him work, so to spe ak, lad, with his Henne in
his hand, and the toil is instantly made a high and
grand delight to him. This is the wonderful effect

g
of the will, Ben. What you will to do, you must

Sn a na

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86 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

of course do willingly, and therefore more or less
easily; and labour is especially repulsive when
your will wants to be off working at one thing
while your hands are constrained to be toiling at
another. Those who are without purpose in life,
boy, are vagabonds either in body or spirit, for if
there be no settled object there can hardly be
any settled pursuit. ‘Such people, therefore, fly
from this to that occupation, according as the
caprice of the moment may happen to sway them:
they are like empty bottles, lad, cast into the
great ocean, far away from land, destined to be
buffeted about by the winds and the waves of every
passing storm, and driven whithersoever the cur-
rent of the time may chance to carry them. With-
out some enduring purpose, boy, there can be no
enduring work; and, after all, it is continuity in
labour, or long persistence at the same pursuit,
that masters every difficulty, and beats down
every obstacle. The power of the sturdy sand-
bag you know, Ben, is far greater than that of the
impetuous cannon-ball.”

‘How wonderful!” was all the little fellow
could say, as he mused over what he heard.

The uncle went on—‘ But I want to show you
now, lad, how it is that the will can produce im
an instant the same wondrous changes as habit
does in years; and I want to do this so as to
impress the matter deeply and indelibly on your
mind. I have pointed out to you what great
things will can accomplish in the world, and I
now wish to let you see how easily and pleasantly
it can accomplish them,”

‘“T should like to hear that, uncle,” said the
attentive boy; ‘‘for as yet I can hardly under-
stand what you mean.”

“Of course you cannot comprehend in a
minute, Ben,” the old man replied, ‘ principlesHOW TO MAKE WORK PLEASANT. 87

that have cost philosophers years of study to
arrive at. But 1 will try and make the operation
of will in man more plain to you. Now | pointed
out to you yesterday that animals differ from
plants—in what respect, lad ?”

“Why, in going after their food instead of
having it brought to them, uncle,” was the ready
reply.

“Yes, my child, but animals go after their food
because, as I said, the power of moving has been
given to them, while plants have no such faculty.
Nothing, however, can move without a cause.
This boat stops, you see, directly the propelling:
force ceases: and the movements of animals, and
even men, inexplicable as they may seem to you, can
proceed only from the operation of uniform motive
powers. You of course have never asked yourself
what it is that moves men to act as they do.”

“Pm sure I never gave that a thought as yet,
uncle,” the boy replied frankly. ‘‘But now |
come to turn it over in my mind, it seems to me
as if nobody could tell as much.”

‘‘TIndeed, lad: let us see. Well, Ben, innu-
merable as are the movements continually going
on jn the human frame, they all admit of being
resolved into three kinds—according as they
are preceded or not by some particular feeling.
In the first place, our muscles may move like the
machinery of a mere automaton, Or, in other
words, without any feeling at all. Our heart beats
and our lungs expand continually, without our
being even conscious of the incessant action going
on within us—ay, and what is more wonderful,
without the least sense of fatigue being connected
with the work.” :

‘««Tsn’t it strange,” Jenjamin exclaimed, ‘that
s tired of moving, like our

 

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88 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

‘‘Yes, and isn’t it as kind as it is strange, my
lad, that such should be the case ?” the uncle re-
minded his pupil ; ‘‘ but our muscles not only move
automatically, without any preceding feeling; but
they move also instinctively—that 1s to say, In con-
sequence of some feeling which immediately pre-
cedes and gives rise to the motion. Any sudden
pain, such as a burn upon the finger, for instance,
causes you involuntarily to contract the muscles
of the injured part, and to withdraw the limb
directly from the object wounding you. Again, if
you are surprised or startled by any unexpected
circumstance, your whole body is drawn back,
and your hands thrown up immediately, to ward
off the fancied danger ; ay, and that, too, long before
you have time to think about what it is best to do,
or even to obtain any knowledge as to the nature
of that which has alarmed you. Such muscular
movements, however, are wholly involuntary—that
is to say, they are not left to the slow operations
of our will to conceive and carry out; but, being
necessary for our preservation, In common with
that of animals, they have been made matters of
instinct with us as with. them; or, in other
words, ordained to follow immediately upon a
particular feeling existing in the mind.”

‘« Is animal instinct, then,” inquired the lad, as
he pondered over and repeated his uncle’s words,
** merely a certain kind of muscular movement made
to follow immediately upon a particular feeling ?”

‘‘T’hat is all, my son,” was the reply. ‘ The
bird builds its nest, not with any thought of the
young she is destined to rear, but merely in con-
sequence of a vague sensation that is on her at the
time. The squirrel lays up a store of nuts for the
winter, not because it foresees a decrease of the
summer stock, but simply in obedience to the
feelings and promptings of its nature.”eee ea neta. cea

     
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

co

WOW TO MAKE WORK PLEASANT. 5

«TI gee now,” mused the youth, as he turned
the new truths over and over in his mind.

‘But the muscles of man, my child, have been
made to move, not only instinctively, or, what
amounts to the same thing, involuntarily, according
to the dictates of mere animal nature, but they
have been made to move also voluntarily—that 1s
to say, in obedience to the suggestions and deter-
mination of the will. Bishop Cranmer—you know
who he was, Benjamin ?”

“Oh, yes!” cried the youth; ‘I know; he was
one of the martyrs, burnt with Ridley and Lati-
mer opposite Baliol College at Oxford, in Old
England, and he held his hand in the flames at
the stake, uncle, because, as he said, ‘it had
offended him in writing contrary to his heart,’
and he had solemnly declared at St. Marys
Church. that ‘if he came to the fire that hand
should be punished first.’ ”

‘Well said, my govd little fellow,” cheered
the godfather; ‘ but didn’t Cranmer feel the same
pain from the flames, think you, and the same
animal instinct to withdraw his hand from them
as we ourselves should have felt? and yet it was
by the determined effort of his will that he kept it
there, in defiance of the promptings of his animal
instincts, as he cried aloud, ‘ ‘This unworthy hand !
this unworthy hand!’ and forced it to burn and
char before the rest of his limbs. Can you see
now, Benjamin, what is the use of will in man?”

‘‘T think I can, uncle; but do you tell me, and
let me hear whether I am right,” he answered, for
the boy was afraid to trust himself to frame his
thoughts into speech.

“ Well, lad,” Uncle Benjamin replied, “ the high
and noble use of man’s will 1s to control or guide
the animal instincts of his nature.”’

“JT thought it was so from what you said about

   

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90 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

Cranmer, uncle ;” and the lad fell musing over the
subject in his own simple way, while the ‘godfather
paused to watch with delight the workings of the
boy’s mind, that, like a newly -fledged bird, was
making its first attempts toni OFF So! the use of
man’s will,” the youth repeated over and over
again to himself, in order to impress the words
wall on his memory, ‘‘is to control or guide the
animal instincts of his nature.”

‘But I say, my noble captain,” cried the
mere again waking up to a sense of ea position,

‘are we really to remain here all day? I could
talk to you quite as well if we were moving on a
bit, but this is sad slow work, my boy.”

‘““There’s a strong ebb- tide on just now, uncle
and there’s no making the least headway against
that; and, let me see—_let me see,” he mused, UL
would hee been high water in the harbour to- day
at eleven, so it will be about five o’clock before
the tide turns, you know,” and the youngster
shook his he ad, as much as to say he could
discover no means of getting out of their diffi-
culty.

“Five o'clock Shut, tat! and I wanted to
have been at meeting at six.’ Then, as Uncle
Benjamin gave vent to his impatience, he tugged
from his fob a watch as big as the “ bull’s- eye”
to a ship’s scuttle, and cr coun after looking well at
the dial, and holding it up to his ear to ee
himself it was still going, ‘ Why, it’s not three yet
I declare.”

‘* Besides, you remember, uncle, the sun doesn’t
set now till long past five, and there’s no chanco
of a breeze till then, I’m certain,” was the only
consolation the little captain could offer.

‘“But are you quite sure of one at that time,
you young rascal, eh ?” inquired the old gentleBECALMED. 91

man, in no little alarm at the idea of having to
pass the night out at sea.

«There generally is a breeze at sundown, you
know, uncle,” answered young Ben, delighted to
display his nautical knowledge once more.

«Well, all I can say is, I’m in your hands,
captain—in your hands, bear in mind; for, Heaven
knows, I’m as ignorant as a sucking-pig of all that
concerns the water;” and, so saying, the elder
Benjamin abandoned himself with becoming resig-
nation at once to the sourness of the circumstances
and the cider.

 

CHAPTER XI.
BECALMED.

For a while Uncle Benjamin silently grieved over
the untowardness which prevented him adding
the discourse of that evening to the three volumes
of manuscript sermons that he had written out
from notes taken in chapel, during their delivery
by the most celebrated preachers of the day. His
temper, however, was of too even and cheerful a
quality to be any more ruffled than the water
itself by the lack of wind ; so when he had drained
the cider-bottle, he wrote in pencil on a slip of
paper, ‘‘ All well on board ‘Tae Livery Nancy,’
off Boston, October 2nd, 1719;” and corking up the
playful memorandum, flung the flagon with the
note inside into the sea.

“There it goes, Ben,” he cried, as he watched
the bottle dance up and down beside the boat,
‘¢without any more purpose to direct it than an
-dler. Where it will ultimately land, or what
will be its end, no one can say.”

The lesson was not wasted on the youth ; so,
stretching himself at full length on the seat oppo-

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92 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

site his uncle, he said, as he lay comfortably ar-
ranged for listening, with his cheek resting on his
hand, ‘‘ You were telling me, uncle, about the use
of the will, you know.”

‘* Well, lad, the function of our will,” the old
man resumed, ‘‘1is to interfere between our feel-
ings and our actions—to check in us some sudden
propensity that has been prompted (either by the
sense of a present pain or the prospect of a future
pleasure), before it has time to stir the muscles.
The will thus serves, you see, Ben, to stay the
operation of our instincts, until the conscience has

sat in judgment on the motives or consequences of
the contemplated acts—until, indeed, it has pro-
nounced them to be either ‘right or wrong,’
‘prudent or imprudent,’ for us to pursue. Nor is
this all: for when the moral sense has duly de-
liberated and determined, the will tends either to
restrain the impulse, if it be thought bad, or else
to encourage it, by giving additional force and
persistence - to it, if consider ed to be good.”

“JT can hardly follow you,” exclaimed the
youth, trying to make it all out.

‘* You remember the trouble you got into, Ben,
about reading ‘ Robinson Crusoe’ ?” said his tutor,
proceeding to give him anillustration; ‘well, the
impulse that stirred you then to see what the
shipwrecked mariner did in his desert island was
but the natural result of a boy’s instinctive delight
in adventure ; but, though to you, lad, the pro-
pensity seemed irresistible, had you brought your
will to bear upon the matter, had you used its
power to check the operation of the passion that
was on you (till such time as you had asked your
own heart whether you ought, or even whether it
would be better for you to read at such a moment,
in defiance of your father’s commands), I am
quite sure now what you would have determined,BECALMED, 93

or, In other words, what you would have willed,
to do.” : ,

The little fellow hung down his head, in shame
to find the error of his past conduct used as an
illustration of the operation of a mere instinct.
unguided and unrestrained by any superior prin-
ciple. ‘I hope I shall act differently for the
future, uncle,” was all he could stammer out.

‘“‘ Let it pass, lad, let it pass,” cried the old
man; and accordingly he went on. ‘* Now it is
principally in this wonderful faculty of will,
sen, that man differs from the rest of the animal
creation. ‘The most sagacious dog never pauses to
reflect between its instincts and its acts-——neither
does it weigh the consequences of doing or not doing’
this or that thing, nor determine to act one way or
the other, acc ording as the action seems likely to
be beneficial or hurtful to itself or cthers.”

‘“« Of course it doesn’t,” interposed young Ben.

Again, it is will, my boy,” the uncle sontined:
= ae “makes the chick distinction between the
same human being waking or dreaming—in in-
fancy or manhood—in a state of si unity or “insanity.
No one reproaches hinself for his thoughts and
feelings—base and savage as they often are—
during either sleep or madness; because at such
times we have no more power than in infancy to
deliberate on our impulses before giving way to
them ; indeed, we have then neither the sense to
judge whether they are right or wrong, nor the
moral strength to encourage or restrain them. That
our will re ally sleeps during slumber, you yourself,
Jen, must be convinced, “from the fact that in
your nightmare dreams you are unable to move a
limb, or even utter a cry for your protection; and
that simply because you have then lost all power
over the nerves and the muscles which, in your
waking moments, never fail to answer directly to

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G4 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

the will that is then aroused in you. It is this
will, moreover, that makes us responsible for our
actions here; for as we, unlike the other animals,
have been endowed with the power to reflect
upon the tendency of our impulses—to see and
weigh the consequences of our acts, and either to
foster the good or reject the bad ; why it is but fair
that our conduct in this respect should be judged
both in this world and the next, my little man.”

‘Oh, now I understand.” exclaimed the ycuth,
‘““what has always appeared to me so hard to
make out—why dogs and horses should not go to
heaven as well as ourselves! They have only
instinct to guide them—isn’t it so, uncle ?”

‘¢ Yes, my boy,” nodded the preceptor, ‘‘ whilst
we have conscience and will to direct and sustain
us. But we mustn’t wander from our object,
which was—” and the old man paused to see if
the lad, in the maze of thought through which he
had led him, could find his way back to the point
whence they started.

‘* Let me see,” pondered little Ben, ‘‘ you were
going to show me, uncle—but I’m sure I forget
what now.”

“ Why, I was going to show you, lad, how
will or purpose makes work pleasant. Well then,
my boy, I must tell you—what would appear at
first sight to be opposed to such a result—that,
with the operation of the will, there is generally
connected a certain sense of effort; and every
effort we make is more or less try ing or irksome
to us to sustain. If you determine to lift a
heavy weight, lad, you know how painful it is for
you to exert your strength to its utmost, and who
intensely fatiguing it is for you to continue doing
so. Again you remember how with the violin, the
irksomeness of having to move each finger by an
express effort of your will at each different noteBECALMED, 95

soon made you grow weary of the task. With the
operations of instinct, however, there seems to be
little or no fatigue associated. The albatross, that is
met with hovering in mid-ocean, far away from any
land or even a rock, seems never to be tired of
being on the wing; gnats, too, appear to fly all the
day long, and though their wings beat many
times in a second—as we know by the musical
note they give out—the muscles that move them
are apparently as insensible of fatigue as those
that stir our own heart.”

‘* How then, uncle, can the exercise of our
will be made pleasant to us, since, as you say,
there is always this sense of effort and fatigue
connected with it?” inquired the boy, puzzled
with the apparent contradiction.

‘‘ Why, lad,’ returned the elder Benjamin,
‘“such a result may be brought about, simply by
using the will to strengthen the good and virtuous
impulses of our nature, rather than to control the
bad and vicious ones; that is to say, by making
the will work with us instead of against us. To doa
thing that we have no natural inclination to do—
to do it merely because our conscience tells us that
it is right—is to perform an act of stern duty, and
duty always demands more or less of sacrifice
on our part. At such times there is a continual
battle between the animal and moral parts of our
nature; the flesh struggles to go one way, the
spirit another ; force has to be used against force,
and hence a strong and continuous effort is
required to sustain us. But our impulses are not
all bad, Ben. If our instincts would lead us to
hate and persecute our enemies, surely they teach
us also to love and benefit our family and our
friends; if our appetites, lad, tend to make beasts
of us, at least our sympathy with tke suffering
serves to give us something of the dignity of

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96 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

angels. The will therefore may be used as much
to encourage and sustain our higher and kindlier
propensities, as to restrain and subdue our more
brutal and savage ones. A man’s heart may
prompt him to good works as well as evil; and
to will to do the good, in preference to the evil
which our heart desires, is at once to work with all
the heart and with all the soul as well.”

‘‘T think I begin to see what you mean now,
uncle,” young Benjamin murmured half to himself.

“There is no finer instance of the untiring
energy cf the will, my boy, when working in
unison with the heart,’ the old man continued ;
‘no more striking example of its wondrous
power at such times to render even the heaviest
labour light and pleasant to us—as well as to
support us through trials, by giving us a capacity
of endurance that seems to be almost insensible to
suffering and fatigue—than is to be found in the
career of Peter, the present Emperor of Russia.”

Young Benjamin had heard his father and the
chapel deacons, who often ‘dropped in” to
converse with Josiah in the evening, refer occa-
sionally, in the course of their political discus-
sions, to the Russian monarch as the royal
wonder of their time; but as yet the boy had
been unable to gather more than that this same
Peter was a king who had worked as a common
shipwright somewhere.

he mere mention of the great man’s name,
therefore, was sufficient to rouse the youngster
from the seat on which he had been reclining at
full length while listening to the “ drier” parts
of his uncle’s discourse; so he sat up on the
bench with his elbows resting on his knees, and
his chin pillowed on his palms, while he gazed
intently in his uncle’s face, eagerly waiting for
the story he had to tell.RECALMED. 97

“ At ten years of age, lad,” the old man began,
‘Peter came to the crown of Russia: but the
(Jueen-Regent, Sophia, who was _ his half-sister,
strove to keep him as ignorant as she could, as
well as to make him idle and sensual, by placing
the most debasing temptations in his way, and
withholding from him all means of instruction and
refinement. ‘The Queen-Regent did this, not only
to keep her brother from the throne as long as
possible, but to render him utterly unfit for the
exercise of royal power. ‘I'he rude, ignorant, and
self-willed boy, however, was barely seventeen
before he burst through the regent’s control, and
took the reins of government into his own hands.
l'hen he set to work to educate himself, and
mastered—entirely without tuition, Ben—a know-
ledge of several foreign languages. He studied
also many of the mechanical arts; for, boy-king as
he was, and unprejudiced by the luxurious train-
ing of a court, he had too grand an idea of the
dignity of labour, and too high a sense of the
value, even to a monarch, of industrial knowledge,
to consider such occupations either degrading or
unfitted to him.”

‘‘ Wasn't it noble of him, uncle!” eried the
enthusiastic little fellow; “and how strange that a
boy like him, without any schooling, should have
such ideas !”

‘“‘ Peter had what is even better than education,
Ben—better because it makes us educate ourselves.
and gives us a firm reliance on our own powers,”
Uncle Benjamin made answer.

“And what: is that, uncle 2’ inquired the
simple lad. 5

‘Why, can’t you guess, can’t you guess, my
clever little man?—a_ strong, persistent will,”
was the reply. ‘The mechanic king had not
only an instinct that made him conceive great
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9§ YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

things without previous training, but a will that
gave him zeal enough to undertake them —en-
durance enough to labour long at them—and de-
termined courage enough, come what might, to
master them.”

« T geo! I see! I see!” exclaimed the delighted
boy, as he still gazed straight in his uncle’s
eyes; “I see that will is the greatest power in
man.”

‘¢ Russia, when Peter came to the throne,”’ con-
tinued the uncle, ‘‘ possessed no seaport but that
of Archangel, on the banks of the White Sea;
and to give ships and commerce to his country
soon became the one absorbing object of the boy-
king’s mind. Before his time the Russian people
were merely a race of despised and barbarous
Muscovites; but hardly was the crown on his
head, than the bold young czar had determined
to create harbours, fleets, trades, manufactures,
arts, and schools for the nation. Now what would
you, Ben, have done under the same circum-
stances—with such a purpose in your brain?
Imagine yourself a king, boy; with almost in-
finite means at your command, with a palace for
your home, and countless troops and serfs to do
your bidding. How would you have set about
such an undertaking ?”

The youth could not help smiling at the idea
of his coming even to an imaginary throne; and,
delighted to fancy himself possessed of such 1m-
mense power in the world, he cried, exultingly,
‘Why, I should have set the people to work upon
it, uncle, immediately.”

‘Of course you would—like the rest of the
world, lad,” was the rejoinder. ‘‘ But Peter was
no ordinary man; so, before setting the people to
build ships for him, he resolved to learn how to
build them for himself. And how do you thinkBECALMED. QG&

he learnt the art, Ben—by having masters to
teach him, eh?”

The boy, ashamed of his previous mistake, re-
mained silent this time.

‘Not he!” the uncle added. ‘‘A man of his
will wanted no masters, lad. King though he
was, there was but one way of making himself
thoroughly and practically acquainted with the
craft; and that was by learning it as other men
learn it—by working at it with one’s own hands;
and the idea once formed, his was not the mind
to be shaken from its object.”

‘‘ Did he then really labour as a common ship-
wright, eh, uncle?” timidly inquired the youth.

‘«* Assuredly he did, lad—labour and live lke
a common labourer too. His heart longed te
make his country a great commercial nation, and
his will gave him strength and courage to accom-
plish his purpose, as no monarch had ever done
before. With his darling object deep in his heart,
King Peter travelled as a private person to the two
creat maritime countries of the time, first to
Holland, then to England; and worked in the
dockyards of Amsterdam and Deptford as an
ordinary shipbuilder, living and faring like his
fellow mechanics—his crown laid on one side for
a paper cap, a flannel jacket and apron displacing
his royal robes.”

Little Benjamin could only cry, ‘‘ How won-
derful! how grand!” as the story went on.

«© And was the labour of such a life drudgery
to such a man, think you, Ben? No, lad! rest
assured, no! Of all the workmen in those dock-
yards, depend upon it, none toiled so zealously,
none with so light a heart, so vigorous a hand, or
with so little sense of fatigue as he who wielded a
hammer instead of a sceptre. And why, Ben-
jamin, was it so?”

 

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100 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

‘* Because he was working with his whole heart,
as you said, uncle, and with his whole soul too,”
the boy exclaimed, now fired with sufficient en-
thusiasm almost to have started on the same
mission himself.

““ Just so, my good little man,” nodded his
uncle, approvingly. ‘‘ He was not labouring like
& mere animal-—bestirring himself only in quest
of food; but a high and noble purpose was fast
in his mind—a strong and energetic will quicken-
ing his muscles, and giving courage and vigour
to his heart. It was the will within him, lad, that
made the labourer-king do his work with scarcely
an effort—this that kept him to the task day after
day, and month after month, without any flagging,
and with hardly a desire for rest—this that made
his humble mechanic’s home happier than a
palace, and his simple mechanic’s fare daintier
than any royal banquet. So now, Ben, remember
that of all the ways to make labour pleasant, and
even valuable, there is nothing like having a noble
purpose backed by a noble will.”

‘‘T shall never forget it, uncle—never,” the
youth replied, solemnly, as the lesson sank deep
into his mind; “at least so long as I recollect the
stories of Columbus and the Pilgrim Fathers, as
well as that of Peter the Great.”

Ihe lesson ended, Uncle Benjamin began to
wake up, as it were, to a sense that he and his
nephew were still miles away at sea, and without
any apparent prospect too of being favoured with
the promised breeze at sundown.

“Come! I say, captain,” the uncle cried, as he
glanced towards the shore, and beheld the sun.
trembling like a huge golden bubble, as it seemed
to rest poised on the very edge of the distant hills,
and tinting the ‘air, earth, and sea with a blushBECALMED. 101

that was as faint and delicate as the rosy lining
of a shell. ‘* Come, I say, master, where’s your
breeze at sundown. I’m afraid youre out in ha
your reckoning, my little skipper.” Whereupon

the couple looked again towards the horizon in the |

vain hope of discovering the slightest trace of
what sailors call a ‘‘catspaw” on the waiter. |
Neither was there a single ‘ goat’s hair” nor |
‘‘mare’s tail” to be seen, like whiffs of gossamer, a
floating in the sky; for the clouds were still H |
gathered into those large cumulus snow-clumps a

 

which are indicative of a summer stillness in the wit

air, while the sea itself was so calm and smooth fi
that it looked like a broad pavement of glass, more i 6) hoe
easy to be walked over than sailed through. i i ( a

The young skipper felt himself called upon to
sive his little breeches the true nautical hitch, as
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stances—except, indeed, to whistle; for that was
the remedy which the best sailors always pre-
scribed for a lack of wind.”

“Whistle!” shouted Uncle Benjamin, as he
laughed outright at the absurd though desperate
predicament in which they were plaeed ; ‘and is
that the result of all my long moral lessons to you
this day, you young monkey ?” and as he said the
words he seized the lad and shook him playfully
by the ear. ‘‘Have I been out with you here,
ever since the morning, trying to hammer into
your little noddle that will overcomes all diffi-
culties, and yet you have faith now—only in
whistling. Why, we may stop here the night
through, and puff every gasp of breath out of our
bodies before we shall get wind enough that way,
you superstitious young rascal you, (and again
he twiddled at the boy’s ear), to drive even a
walnut-shell through the water.”

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102 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

‘“‘ Well, but, uncle, it’s impossible to pull all the
way back to Boston,” remonstrated the nephew;
and, as if to assure himself of the fact, he cast a
despairing glance towards the coast, that now, as
the twilight fell like a thick haze over the water,
appeared even dimmer and more distant than
before.

‘* And you assert that as your deliberate opinion,
eh, captain?” smiled the old man, as he bowed
with mock deference to the youngster.

‘It certainly seems to me impossible,” little
Benjamin made answer, with a shrug of his
shoulders expressive of utter helplessness under
the circumstances.

‘““T can only say, then, that ’m vastly glad to
hear it, Master Ben,” answered the uncle, chafing
his palms together with pretended delight, ‘ be-
cause the very predicament we’re in will afford
you the finest possible opportunity of proving, in
a practical manner, the power of the will in you; and
youll learn from it, moreover, my lad, how it’s
much better to depend on that than on any power
of whistling in such a position.”

‘“* But, uncle, it’s eight miles to Boston Harbour
if it’s an oar’s length,” remonstrated the faint-
hearted youngster.

‘¢ Never mind, boy. If it were twenty, but will to
master the distance, and you'll find it only a hop
skip and a jump after all. Come, lad!” cried the
old man, slapping the little fellow on the back to
rouse his dormant energy. ‘‘ Have faith in your own
powers—have faith, Ben! for without faith there
are no good works, I can tell you. It’s easier, any
how, to scull a boat than to build ships. Peter had
the welfare only of. his country to stir him to do
what he did; but you have father and mother to
make happy by your brave deeds. Set your heart
on home, boy! and your hands will bring you thereBECALMED. 103

fast and readily enough. Have you no purpose to
lighten the labour? Is there no distant glory to
rouse in you will enough to sustain you at the
work? Willit be no delight to your parents to
find that you can be a fine noble fellow if you
please ? that you have a man’s purpose now in your
heart, and a man’s will in your soul? that you
have no longer such a childish dread of continuous
toil as to be cowed by a few ugly-looking diffi-
culties. Let them see that you are ready to fight the
battle of life with a courage that can never waver ;
a resolution strong enough to change defeat ito
triumph; an energy sufficiently enduring to make
you compass what you set your heart upon? Think
of this, my little man, think of this! and work to
gladden father and mother, as King Peter worked
to benefit a nation.”

“ TI] do it! Pl do it, uncle! You shall see to-
night what a man you have made of me. Ay!
and father and mother shall see it too.” And
without another word the little fellow proceeded
to lower the sail, and then stripping off his coat,
he seized the sculls, and began to give way in
right good earnest.

3y this time, the lights of Boston city in the
distance had come twinkling forth one after another,
as if they had been so many stars peeping over the
horizon: and as the boy laboured at the oars, the
uncle cheered him on, by reminding him of the
moving lights that Columbus had seen on the
shore in the night, as he sat on the poop of the
«Santa Maria;” and he bade him have the same
will to reach those shores as had sustained Colum-
bus himself.

Next he would tell the lad how John Huss, the
martyr, had willed to die for the truth, and how
the brave Bohemian had. chanted hymns at the

   

 

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Cn Na ai ah eae oe104 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

Stake, while the flames were curling about his
body. Then he would recount to him the story
of Palissy, the potter, explaining to him that
Palissy was the discoverer of the means of glazing
earthenware—our cups, plates and dishes before
b his time having been as rude and rough as tiles—
Bt and that so determined had he been to succeed in
his object, that he not only broke up the very bed-
steads of his wife and children for fuel for his fur-
naces, but burnt the flooring and rafters of the house
they lived in; until, at length, the potter mastered
all the difficulties that beset him, and realized an
| immense fortune by the discovery.
| When, too, Uncle Benjamin fancied he could
ray | see the little fellow’s spirit or strength beginning
HH to flag, he would cry aloud to him, “Pull, lad!
iH | pull as King Peter would have pulled under the
| same circumstances ;” or else the old uncle would
HAN make the little fellow laugh by telling him that
th | he himself would try to help him, but he knew he
i | should “catch a crab” the very first stroke, and
Ry be hurled backwards over the seat into the bottom
Da of the boat.
ane Then, these resources being exhausted, the old
vie | man tried to beguile the way to the boy, first by
it chanting hymns; afterwards by reciting por-
| tions of ‘‘ Paradise Lost,” and next, by telling him
i stories about John Milton, the great Noncon-
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formist.

It was, however, hard work enough for the little
fellow to hold on; and had not the tide been flow-
ing, he must have given in or dropped before half
of the distance had been travelled.

Nevertheless, the boy laboured on and on, reso-
aad lute in accomplishing the task. Indeed, his pride
| Hi increased rather than flagged, as he drew nearer

 

 

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scorned to listen to the suggestion, and fell to with
redoubled vigour.

Still the last half-mile was all—but more than
little Benjamin could manage. His hands were
smarting with blisters, and the muscles of his
arms and back aching with their long exertion.
Many a time he thought he must drop Abe sculls.
Nevertheless he could. not bear to be beaten after all
he had done; so on he went again, looking round,
almost at every other stroke, to note how much
farther he had to gO.

Then the old man, seeing the struggle of the poor
boy, fell to cheering him, first clapping his hands
and crying ‘‘ Bravo! bravo, captain!” and then
calling him “ Peter the little” and ‘* young Master
Cristofaro,” till the little fellow was obliged to
laugh even in his pain. And after that he told him
to fank of the grand story he should have to tell
his father and Mpthier on reaching home, about his
young friend Captain Benjamin Franklin—as to
how he had saved his old uncle by his great courage
and energy, as well as fine seamanship, from being
drifted out of sight of land at mightfall w ithout
either provisions or water.

Thus, at last, the harbour was gained.

And when the little hero stepped from the boat
on to the landing-place, he felt, though his arms
were cramped w ith the long labour, that he was
really a new man; that he had learnt for the
first time in his life to have faith in his own
energies, and had found out by experience that
a strong will can master difficulties which seem insuperable
to a weak heart.

 

 

 

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YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

CHAPTER XII.
A NEW WORLD.

** Hor, Ben, hoi! we'll stop here, lad! stop, you
wild young jackanapes—stop, I say!” shouted the
uncle through his hands to his young fellow-
traveller, who had started on ahead, as they
burst from out the dusk of a dense wood into
the bright sunshine of a vast open plain.

The long luxuriant grass of the broad mea-
dows before them reached so high above the
belly of the shock-coated pony young Benjamin
was riding, that the little porpoise-like animal
positively seemed to be swimming along in a sea
of verdure. However, in obedience to the sum-
mons, the boy leant back on the saddle, like a
rower in his seat, as he tugged at the creature’s
mouth, and cried aloud ‘ What, stop here, uncle—
stop here !”

Then wheeling round, he galloped back to
the old man, and found him already hanging
over the saddle, in the act of dismounting. The
uncle paused for a moment with one foot in the
stirrup; and as he looked across the pommel at
the features of the disappointed lad, he could
hardly keep from laughing, on beholding his
godson’s face all lengthened out with wonder,
almost as extravagantly as if it had been reflected
in the bowl of a teaspoon.

“Stop here!” iterated the amazed young Ben-
jamin. <‘‘Why, there isn’t a house for miles
round; just you look yourself, uncle; you can’tA NEW WORLD. 107

 

see a curl of smoke anywhere about—can you
now?” And the youth leant his hand upon the
crupper, while he turned himself sideways on his
saddle, to look well back upon the scene.

‘‘T know, boy, there is not a homestead nearer
than a day’s ride,” answered the godfather, still
inwardly enjoying the fun of the boy’s bewilder-
ment, and patting on the shoulder, now that he
was fairly dismounted, the old ‘‘nag-horse” that
had borne him from St. Louis that morning.
‘‘ Nevertheless, this is our journey’s end, Master
Benjamin.”

“This our journey’s end! Well, well!” the
youth exclaimed in greater amazement than ever,
as he tossed up his head, like a horse with a halt-
empty nose-bag; and then drawing one foot from
the stirrup, he screwed himself round once more
on the saddle as upon a pivot, so as to take another
good broad survey of the country. ‘* Why, J
thought you were going to show me some large
town or other, uncle—or some great shipping place
—or grand farm, perhaps. But what your object
can be in bringing me out here to an immense
wilderness in the backwoods, I’m sure I can’t
tell :” and the half-sulky lad flung himself off his
pony, and stood almost up to his middle in the
2Tass.

Then, by way of consolation, he proceeded to
hug the shaggy little steed round the neck, call-
ing him the while his “ darling Jacky,” and ‘a
beauty,” and telling the tiny creature, as he
cuddled and caressed it like a human being,
‘<how happy he would be if Jacky only belonged
to him, instead of the French farmer they had
borrowed it from.”

«Patience, my little philosopher — patience:
You shall know all in good time,” was the simple
rebuke of the godfather, while slipping the bridle

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108 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

from his nag previous to turning him adrift in the
herbage that was almost as high as corn.

Little Benjamin proceeded to follow the old
man’s example, and having divested Jacky of his
head-gear, he advanced towards his uncle with
the bit dangling from his hand. Then, as the
lad stood on tip-toe beside a neighbouring tree,
trying to hang the bridle on the same branch as
his godfather had used for the same purpose, he
exclaimed, “ But, uncle, you must allow I’ve had
a good bit of patience already. Why, let me see:
we've been away from home now” (and he paused
to make a mental calculation of the precise time )—
‘yes! more than three weeks, I declare; and
though I did worry you, perhaps, a good deal at
first—when we were in the sloop, you know, on
our way from Boston to Annapolis—as to where
you were going to take me, and why we were
coming so far away from home; still, you remem-
ber, when I found you wouldn’t tell me anything
about it, but bade me have a little patience,
as you do now, why, I never said another word
to you on the matter; though I must confess [
couldn’t keep from twisting it over and over in
my mind, all the time we were in that strange-
looking old stage-wageon travelling over the
Alleghany Mountains to Pittsburg; and that was
many days—wasn’t it, uncle, eh ’”

‘Yes, you monkey! but you made up for it
well—that you did—on board the ‘ Ark,’ that we
came down the Ohio in,” responded the tutor, as
he shook his forefinger playfully in the face of
the laughing lad; “ for then not a town appeared
in sight but it was, ‘Are we going to stop here,
uncle? ‘Is this the place you wanted me to see,
uncle?’ ‘How long will it be before we get to our
journey’s end, uncle? ‘What are you going to
show me this time, uncle?’ and a thousand andA NEW WORLD. 109

one other knagging questions that would have
given poor old Job himself an attack of the bile 7”

‘“Well, I dare say I did tease you a bit, poor
nnky,” replied the wheedling little fellow, as he
sat down on the grass beside his godfather, and
curled his arm about his neck, while,
abashed, he leant his head upon the old one’s
shoulder; ‘‘ but you should remember I’m only
‘a bit of a boy’ still, as-mother says. Besides,
you have such a strange way of teaching me
things, you know — so “different from old Mr.
Brownwell; though I’m sure he was kind enough
to all of us boys in the school. First, you take me
out fishing; then we go boating together; and
though I fancied each time you meant merely
to treat me to a day’s pleasure, I found out after-
wards that you had planned the trip only on pur-
pose to give me some lesson in hfe.”

‘Yes, my dear lad,” said the kind-hearted old
gentleman, while passing his hand over the cheek
of his young pupil; ‘‘1 turned your recreations
into matters of study. I used your boyish sports
as ameans to show you what is a man’s business
in the world. Children remember their nursery
rhymes better than their catechism, Ben, because
the lesson is pleasanter ; and when the heart is
in the work, the task, you know now, lad—”

‘Ts always lightened,” promptly added the little
fallow? 74) recollect, ‘uncle, it was that which
made the hard labour of the dockyard come so
easy to Peter the Great. But still, unky dear,
I really can’t see what there is to be learnt in
such a place as this.” (‘he old man shook: his
nead as he smiled at the boy’s frankness.) ‘* You

said you were going to teach me how to get on
in life, but what can I possibly learn of the ways
of the world in a part that seems to be almost out
of it—-where there are no towns, no farms, no

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110 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

crops, no workshops, no shipping—nothing, in-
deed, but the tracks of wild Indians, wild birds,
and wild cattle?”

‘J dare say, my little man, it does seem strange
to you,” replied the uncle; “and doubtlessly it
will seem much stranger when I tell you that
Thave brought you all this long way from home
—many hundreds of miles—to this vast unin-
habited plain to teach you-—”

“What?” cried the eager boy, unable to wait
for the conclusion of the sentence.

‘““ How to be rich, my son,” was all the reply.

‘“ How to be rich!” cried the youth, even more
bewildered than ever. ‘ How to be rich! Oh,
I should like to know about that, uncle, very
much,” and, boy-like, he chuckled with delight at
the prospect of getting plenty of money. ‘ But,
dear me! this és an odd kind of place to come to
for such a lesson. Why, there are no riches at
all here that I can see—nothing but a great barren
plain for miles and miles on.”

“Barren do you call it, you rogue!” echoed
the tutor, still amusing himself with the per-
plexity of his pupil.

‘* Well, uncle, there is no corn growing, nor
any turnip fields, nor kitchen gardens, nor any
orchards either that I can see,” explained young
3en.

“True lad,” replied the other, as he proceeded
to spread out on the grass before him the packet
of venison-hams and bread that he had brought
from St. Louis for their gipsy dinner that day ;
‘‘but, uncultured as it is, the finest English park,
Jaid out with the nicest taste, and kept with
the greatest care, is not more beautiful; no farm,
however well tilled, has soil so rich as that
beneath our feet; no meadows in the world are
flocked with finer herds of cattle, or carpetedA NEW WORLD. Pit

with a richer sward; no plantation is set with
nobler trees or greener shrubs; no squire’s pre-
serves in the old country are more abundant in
game; no florist’s garden is studded with such a
choice profusion of flowers as you behold here,
spangling the earth, as thick as stars in the milky
way; nor is any orchard better stocked with
fruit, for yonder you see it dangles as in Aladdin’s
wonderful garden, like balls of gold, and big
jewels from the boughs.

“ This ig an American prairie, lad!” the old
man went on—‘‘ one of God’s own parks—crea-
tion’s broad manor, of which every man in a
primitive state is ‘lord ’__the noble estate which
Nature entails on her barbarian children. Yonder
are the beeves and the venison with which she
welcomes her helpless offspring on their entry
into the world; here the fruits with which she
strews their board before they have learnt to grow
them for themselves; this the soft velvet carpet
that she spreads for her barefooted sons, and these
the flowers which she hangs, like bright beads
and bells, about the cradles of her first-born.”

Young Benjamin had never seen a prairie be-
fore. He had often read of the immense American
plains, and ofteri heard of them too from the
neighbours and deacons who came to chat at his
father’s house in the evening ; he had heard of them
also from his companions at school, while telling
one another stories of the wild Indians and the
wonders of the new country ; and from his brother-
in-law, ‘‘the trader in furs und skins;” as well
as from the sailors and mates whose acquaintance
he had picked up at the Boston harbour.

Boy-like, he had often longed to learn whether
the reality In any way resembled the imaginary
picture that repeated descriptions had conjured
up in his mind. Up to this time, he had seen the

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112 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

great plains only, as it were, in a dream—like the
image of a magic lantern gloaming faintly in the
dark; and now that the vast tracts themselves
were spread before his eyes in all the vividness
of sunshine, he was so intent upon learning his
uncle’s object in bringing him thus far from
home, that until the witching word “ prairie ” fell
from the old man’s lips, the little fellow had no
sense that he was gazing upon the grand Indian
hunting-grounds for the first time in his life.

But now the lad began to look upon them with
different eyes, and grew eager to detect the many
natural charms of which he had heard and read.

As he glanced fitfully from spot to spot, he
noted the several clumps of trees rising like
woodland islets out of the boundless ocean of
verdure which surrounded them—the long luxuri-
ant grass undulating in the breeze, with waves
that rolled across the plain, as if it were one vast
liquid lawn, and that kept playing in the light,
with all the rich, soft shades of moving velvet—and
the gently swelling land heaving here and there
in long, sweeping curves, like the sea in the lazy
languor of a calm after a summer storm,

As far as the eye could reach, the earth was
one immense floor of meadows, vast as a desert,
and yet rich as a garden, and planted like a park.
he broad land was like an endless lake of fields,
rather than the earth, as we ordinarily know it,
broken into small patches, and hemmed in by hills
and hedges. ‘The prairies were a-flame with the
myriads of bright-coloured wild flowers, that
scintillated, as so many sparks of fire, in the
waving grass; amid which the yellow helianthus
bloomed so luxuriantly that it threw a bright amber
tint over the entire plains, and made them seem, at
a little distance off, as gorgeous as a natural field of
cloth of gold.

 

eke eee nance nesses eeeA NEW WORLD. 1]

Lhe prairie flowers, indeed, were of every scent
and hue; there were the rich prairie violets,
purpling the soil in positive masses of colour, and
perfuming the air with luxurious daintiness; the
wild bean-flowers fluttering in the breeze like
floral butterflies, and scattering, as they swung to
and fro, a delicate odour of vanilla all around;
the balls of white clover, shaped like fairy
guelder roses, filling the atmosphere with a
honeyed fragrance ; the slender rushes of the wild
lavender, like little blue ears of corn, nodding re-
dolently amid the blades; the daisy-like camomile
flowers, twinkling as though they were a galaxy
of silver stars in the grass. In sooth, the rich
soil was so pregnant with sweetness here that, at
every tread of the foot, the fragrance of the crushed
flowers—of all the infinite variety of little scented
herbs—steamed up in rich gusts, and mingled
with the other odours; till the exquisite inter-
blending of the several shades and grades of redo-
lence made the air seem to be filled with a very
rainbow of perfumes.

Nor was the feast of colour less gorgeous. ‘The
waxen-stemmed balsams were of every hue, and
looked like hundreds of little elfin maypoles gar-
landed with many-coloured roses; the foxglove,
with its long stalk hung with bright purple bells ;
the glowing crimson cups of the monster cactus-
blossoms, dazzling as heaps of burning coal; the
vivid amber tufts of the clustering honeysuckle—
all made the earth sparkle with the brilliant tints
of the kaleidoscope, and look as rich, with its
hundred hues, as the marigold window of some
ancient cathedral.

Then the prairie trees had a grandeur and a
beauty unknown to other parts. Now they grew
in circular clumps, and seemed like a broad tower
of foliage springing from the soil. Here flourished
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114 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

the gaudy tulip-tree, with its huge flowers, glowing
among the leaves, bright as the tinted lamps upon
a mimic Luther’s-tree; there was seen the stately
cotton-tree, graceful as a Corinthian column, with
the trumpet-flower twining up its stem, and the
big scarlet blossoms swinging, like bells of red
coral, in the air. The Judas-tree was there too,
with its gorgeous hues; and the Cornelian cherry-
tree, with its yellow parachute-shaped flowers,
and the red balls of fruit dangling beneath them ;
and the beaver-wood as well, with its long, glossy,
laurel-like leaves and its blush-white waxen
petals ; and the papaw-tree, with its tall naked
stem, spreading like a palm at the top, and its
orange-coloured custard apples, like balls of gold,
pendant from the blossoms. And besides these
there were oak, and chestnuts, and sycamores, and
black walnuts, and cypresses, and cucumber-trees,
and locust-trees ; sometimes growing singly, and
at others forming a copse or grove, or else fringing
the banks of some narrow stream that traversed
the great plain.

The wild fruits, again, were as luxuriant as the
wild flowers themselves: There were prairie
plums, and wild grapes, and wild strawberries,
and gooseberries, and hazel-nuts, and mulberries,
and, indeed, a hundred other forest dainties, that
were rotting for want of the hand to pluck them.

Moreover, to complete the feast, there were
wild fowl for ever flitting in long processions
through the air. Now there would come a flock
of wild turkeys sweeping overhead; then a cloud
of wild pigeons, thick as migrating swallows,
would shadow the plain; and these would be
succeeded in a while by troops of long-necked
geese upon the wing, or long-legged cranes, or
huge wild swans, or else a dark multitude of wild
ducks, or other water fowl.A NEW WORLD. 115

Further, the plains themselves were dappled
with herds of wild cattle. Far in the distance a
black mass of buffaloes might be seen cropping
the luxuriant herbage. Nearer, the deer, startled
by the howl of the prairie dog, rushed, swift as
a sheaf of rockets, across the scene.

In one part were wild horses, thick as at a fair,
grazing together; in another, a.group of long-
billed pelicans wading in the crossing streamlet.

Nor was the lavish luxuriance of the prairie
land to be wondered at; situate as it was on the
banks and near the mouths of the mightiest rivers
in the world. For the soil of which the great
plains had been formed had been worn from moun-
tains and valleys, abraded from rocks and banks,
hundreds upon hundreds of miles away; and this
had been washed and levigated by the waters that
carried it down, till the finer particles alone re-
mained suspended in the current ; so that the soft
fat ‘‘silt” had been deposited there in atoms as
minute as if myriads of ants had borne it thither
for thousands of years. And thus the plains had
grown and grown, layer by layer, and acre by acre,
flood after flood—from the very starting-point of
Time itself—till the alluvial soil had become rich
and black as a bride cake, broad as a desert, and
deep as a lake.

And yet no human habitation was to be seen
amid allthis spontaneous Juxuriance. The patches
of burnt grass, and the litter of bleached bones
here and there, told of some passing Indian camp.
But beyond these, there was no sign of man’s
presence - as if the Lord of the Creation had yet
to take possession of his richest manor ; for ‘‘ there
was not a man to till the ground” throughout the
Eden of the New World.

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YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

CHAPIER acl,
HOW TO BE RICH.

As young Benjamin sat munching his venison-
ham on the grass, with the great prairie stretch-
ing far and wide before him, he noted one after
another the various phenomena of the scene.
First his eyes would be riveted for a moment
upon the endless string of wild fowl, sailing lke
a winged fleet overhead; then he would watch
some antlered elk that stood by itself staring into
the distance; next he would be taken with the
bright balls of custard apples, dangling from the
trees; and the moment after he was plucking a
bunch of the prairie violets, whose perfume came
steaming up from the earth beside him; or else he
was chewing a cud of the honeyed clover at his
feet.

Presently he would be up and hurrying off to
gather the wild plums that his uncle had directed
his attention to; and the next minute he'd
come tearing back from the copse with his little
three-cornered hat full of the fruit, together with
bunches of hazel-nuts and grapes, and with pen-
dants of cornelian cherries dangling from his ears,
as well as a huge tulip-flower, almost as big as a
golden goblet, stuck in his button-hole.

The uncle, however, in the brief intervals be-
tween the boy’s flightier moods, pointed out to
him such of the more latent beauties, connected
with the scene, as might otherwise have escaped
the youth’s less observant eye.HOW TO BE RICH. LT?

It was a long time, however, before the restless
lad was tired of running after every bright butter-
fly novelty of the place—long, indeed, before he
could be in any way sobered down into attention.
The remains of the Indian camp had to be explored ;
the papaw-tree to be half climbed; the deer to be
scared, in the vain hope of feeding them; the wild
ducks to be pelted in the air, in his eagerness to
take a brace back home with him : the tumulus, or
Indian “ barrow,” to be scaled : Jacky, the pony, to
be petted and fondled ; and, indeed, a thousand and
one boyish freaks to be gone through, ere Uncle
Benjamin had any chance of being listened to, for
more than a minute or two at a stretch.

Nevertheless, the uncle knew enough of human
nature to be aware that a boy’s excitement is like
summer lightning playing for a time in harmless
fitful flashes, but lasting only while the heat is
on. So he waited patiently for his pupil to cool
down a few degrees, to something like “ tem-
perate ;” for, hke a true artist, the old man was
anxious to fix his impression while the scene itself
was fresh before the eye. He sougirt to teach,
indeed, as artists sketch, ‘‘ from Nature ;” because
he had long noted how strongly the associations
of place serve to link together ideas in the me-
mory. Hence, in all his counsellings he had ever
one object in view, which was to make the lesson
he desired to inculcate—not a mere flitting phan-
tasm or shadowy ghost of a truth—but a principle,
instinct with all the vigour of life itself; and to
do this he sought to mix it up with some strange
sight and event of boyhood. In a word, he strove
to dramatize, as it were, what he had to teach,
with all the real scenery of time and place; and so
to interweave it with the web of youthful ex-
istence, that the mere recollection of the boyish
adventure snould serve to recall with it, in man-

 

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118 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

hood, the golden rule that he wished to be for
ever tableted upon the mind.

   

At length, however, the bloom had been brushed
off the novelty of the scene; the charm of the
‘‘strange place” had lost its freshness with the
familiarity of even an hour or two; and the lad,
who at first had run wild as a deer, startled by
the strange objects about him, became ere long
quiet and sedate as a lark at sundown.

The tired boy lay stretched at full length in the
tall grass, bedded in it, as if couched in a field of
standing corn. The uncle, who sat with the little
fellow’s head pillowed on his lap, rested his back
against the trunk of a huge “black walnut” tree
that stood by itself on the plain as if it had been
planted there; while through the broad foliage,
the glare of the southern sun came down, softened
into the shade of a cool greenish hght; except
here and there, where the beams trickled between
the leaves, and fell upon the sward in bright lus-
trous goutes that flickered, amid the dusk of the
bosky canopy, like a swarm of golden butterflies
playing about the grass.

The silence that reigned throughout the vast
plain was so intense that it cast a half-solemnity
over the scene. The faint murmur of the distant
Illinois river was alone to be heard, and this came
droning through the air with every gust, like the
dying hum of a cathedral bell. The foliage above
them, too occasionally rustled like silk, in the pass-
ing breeze; and now and then the scream of the
water fowl, or the howl of the prairie dog, or
lowing of far-off cattle, might be heard. But
beyond these, the wide expanse was mute as the
sea itself in the deepest calm: not the click of a
woodman’s axe—nor the moan of a cowherd’s
horn—nor the snap even of a distant rifle—no,aes

  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
  
  
 
  
  
      

HOW TO BE RICH. 119

nor, strange to say, the piping of a single singing-
bird, smote the ear.

“Now, my little man,” began the uncle, “if
you will but listen to me for a while, you shall
learn, as I promised you, how to be rich.”

The boy nodded, as he looked up and smiled in
his uncle’s face, as much as to say that he was
ready for the lesson.

«Well, you remember, Ben,’

?

7 he proceeded,
“that when we went out for our day’s fishing, 1
showed you that work was the prime necessity of
our lives ?”

“Yes, uncle,” exclaimed the youth from out the
old man’s lap; ‘“‘you said one of three things
was unavoidable—either work, beggary, or starv
fae; f remember the words well.”

“ That’s right, my lad,” rejoined the elder one,
as he patted his little pupil’s cheek till it vlowed
again with blushes; ‘ but in such a place as this,
Ben, there is no need of labour, nor any fear of
starving either.”

The little fellow stared with amazement at the
contradiction, and cried aloud, “ Then why doesn’t
father give up that nasty candle-making, and
bring mother and all of us out here to the prairies
to live without working?”

“Ay,” replied Uncle Benjamin, with a sarcastic
chuckle, ‘“‘to live the life of savages, my boy—
that would just suit your mother and Deborah, 1
know.”

“But why, uncle,” again inquired the simple
lad, ‘‘ must we either work or starve in Boston,
and not here ?”

“Why, my son,” the other made answer,
“because here the earth is a natural garden, stored
with more than a sufficiency for the supply of
man’s animal wants. Here, one has but to stretch
his hand out, as it were, to cet a meal ; but in a

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120 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

city, remember, the land bears bricks and mortar
and paving-stones, rather than food. But even if
corn grew in the streets, Ben, the soil of Boston
couldn’t possibly feed the people of Boston ; for in
Boston city there are hundreds crowded upon
every acre, so that each acre, however prolific,
could yield but little more than a loaf a year for
every mouth.”

‘‘Oh! I see what you mean, uncle,” said the
nephew half to himself, as he turned the problem
over in his mind: “you mean to say, I suppose,
that there are so many mouths to feed in Boston,
and so few in this enormous great place, that there
is plenty to be got here without any hard work,
and only just enough there with it.”

‘‘J] mean not only that, my little fellow,” the
old man returned, ‘‘ but what I wish you to under-
stand is, that the very necessity for the hard
work, demanded of man in a civilized state, arises
from the number of people gathered together, in
the different communities, being greater than the
earth can naturally—or, rather, I should say, spon-
taneously —support. Here, however, the land
yields, of its own free will, such a superabundance
of natural wealth that man has hardly thought it
worth his while to begin to appropriate any
portion of it to his own individual use; hence the
only labour required in such a place as this, is that
merely of collecting the riches, which Nature freely
offers up to her uncivilized children. Here the
fruit has but to be plucked, and the beasts of the
field, or birds of the air, to be slain, to allay the
cravings of the stomach; so that a hunter’s life is
sufficient to satisfy the common necessities of
human existence.”

““Oh, yes; and that’s the reason, uncle, why
these prairies are called the ‘Indian hunting-
grounds,’” exclaimed the younger Benjamin, withHOW TO BE RICH. TZt

no little delight, as the true significance of the
phrase flashed across his mind. |
‘You will understand then, my boy,” the elder Wo
continued, ‘ that so long as the children of Nature i
are few in number, and “their mother-earth yields | a
more than enough for each and all of them, there Hy
is NO appropriation, no scrambling for the world’s it
riches, no hoarding of them, no coveting of our ae
neighbour’s possessions, no theft, nor, indeed, any
labour for man to perform, harder than that of | 4
gathering the superabundant ‘food, as he may want
it. Directly, however, the human family begins |
to outgrow the natural resources of the land over !
which it is distributed, then men proceed to ee

 

seize upon the good things of the world, and it | (|
garner them as their own special property ; while 4
others strive to force the earth to yield by cultiva- im 6
tion more than the natural supply; so that the A | 3
more savage members of the tribe fall to fighting fe
among themselves, for the possessions obtained by ti
their-brothers ; and the more peaceable and sedate bi

to raise, for their own use, fruits and grain that the |

soil otherwise would never have borne. ‘Thus,
then, you see, Ben, that as the world becomes
veopled, and tribes pass from a state of nature to
civilization, there are developed two new features
in human life—the one, the appropriation of what 1s

se ee rr
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erowing scarce (for no one thinks of gathering and Bi | al
hoarding that which is superabund: int) ; and the ae.
other, the production of artificial crops and riches, ith it
as a means of remedying the scarcity.” Ul

‘‘T think I can make out now what seemed so
strange to me before, uncle,” young denjamin
ghimed in, as he lay looking up in the old man’s
face ; ‘‘ the only work re juired of the wild Indians
out here is that of gathering the fruits of the earth,
whilst the farmers and others round about us have
to produce them.”

535 REN

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122

“Just so, lad; and whilst collection 1s the
easiest form of work, production is a long and
laborious process,” added the tutor.

‘So it is,” the boy made answer, as the differ-
ence was clearly defined to him; ‘‘it takes
just a year for the harvest to come round, and
a deal of work has to be done before that—eh,
uncle ?”

‘© Well then, Ben, the next thing to be con-
sidered is, how are the labourers to live between
the crops?” said Uncle Benjamin, as he led his
little pupil step by step through the maze of the
reasoning. ‘“ Collection yields an immediate return
to the labour; but in production the producers
must wait for the produce, and of course live
while they are waiting.”

‘© Of course they must,” echoed the youngster ;
“but then you know, uncle, they’ve got all the
last year’s corn to keep them.”

“Yes; but suppose, my little man, some of
them made their corn into cakes and pies and
puddings, as well as bread, and so ate up all their
stock before the harvest came round again—what,
then, would be the consequence?” inquired the
uncle, watching the effect of the question upon
the boy.

«Why, then, they'd have to starve, of course,”
was the simple rejoinder, for the youth was still
unable to detect the drift of the inquiry.

“ Ay, Benjamin, to starve; or else to labour for
the benefit of those who had been more prudent,”
answered the uncle, still gazing intently at the
youth as he lay with his head pillowed on the
old man’s lap; ‘and thus civilized society would
become divided into two distinct classes—masters
and men, rich and poor.”

‘Oh! I see,” pondered the little fellow, as he
woke up to the truth; ‘‘the prudent people in the

YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.HOW TO BE RICH. 123

world become the rich, and the imprudent make
the poor.” But, presently, a doubt darted across
his mind, and he asked, ‘‘.But is it always so in
Boston and other towns, uncle? Are riches sot
only by prudence, and is imprudence the great
cause of poverty ?”

‘‘T know what is passing through your brain,
Ben,” interposed the old man; “and I should tell
you that many persons are certainly born to
riches, while many more inherit a life of poverty,
lad. In most cases, however, the heritage is the
result of their parents’ or their forefathers’ thrift,
or the want of it. If your father, Ben, chose to
make a beggar of himself, not only would he
suffer, but you and your brothers and_ sisters
would become hereditary beggars; and, most
likely, find it difficult in after life to raise your-
selves above beggary.”

‘‘Then the sins of the fathers,’ murmured the
thoughtful lad, “are really ‘ visited upon the chil-
dren, unto the third and fourth generation,’ as it
says in the commandment.”

“Yes, my little man!” the elder Benjamin added,
‘poverty is truly an ‘ estate in tail” It descends
from father to son; and it 1s supreme hard work
to ‘dock the entail’ (as lawyers call it), I can tell
you.. As the mere casualty of birth ennobles the
son of a noble, so, generally speaking, does it
pauperize the son of the pauper. The majority of
the rich have not been enriched by their own
merits, boy, nor the mass of the poor impoverished
by their own demerits. As a rule, the one class
+$no more essentially virtuous than the other is
essentially vicious. The vagabond is often lineally
descended from a long and ancient ancestry of
vagabonds ; even as the proudest peer dates his
dignity from peers before the Conquest. The
heraldry of beggary, however, 18 an unheard-ct

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124 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

science. The patrician’s pedigree forms part of
the chronicles of the country; but who thinks of
the mendicant’s family tree? And yet, lad, the
world might gather more sterling wisdom from
the genealogy and antecedents of the one than the
other. ‘Who was the first beggar in the family ?
How did he get his patent of beggary? and how
many generations of beggars have been begotten
by this one man’s folly or vice” These are ques-
tions which few give heed to, my son, and yet
they are pregnant with the highest philosophy,
ay, and the most enlightened kindness.”

The little fellow was too deeply touched with
the suggestiveness of his uncle’s queries to utter a
word in reply. He was thinking how he should
like to learn from the next beggar he met what
had made him a beggar—he was thinking of the
little beggar-children he had seen with their
father and mother chanting hymns in the streets
of Boston; and wondering whether they would
grow up to be beggars in their turn, and bring
their little ones up to beggary also.

‘“ Moreover, I should tell you, lad,” continued
the uncle, after a brief pause, ‘that in the struggle
of the transition of almost every race from a state
of barbarism to civilization, possessions are mostly
acquired by force of arms, rather than by industry
and frugality; for no sooner does the scrambling
for the scanty wealth begin, than the strong seize
not only upon the natural riches of the earth, but
upon the very labourers themselves, and compel
them to till the land as slaves for their benefit.
But putting these matters on one side, boy, what
I am anxious to impress upon you now is, that
even supposing right, rather than might, had pre-
vailed at the beginning of organized society, and
all had started fairly, producing for themselves,
why, long before the second harvest had comeHOW TO BE RICH. 125

round, some would have eaten up, and some would
have wasted their first year’s crop; and these must
naturally have become the serfs of those who
had saved theirs. Thus, then, the same broad
distinctions as exist now among men would have
sprung up, and the human world still have been
separated into two great tribes—those who had
plenty of bread-stuff, and those who had none ;
while those who had no food of their own would
be at the mercy of those who possessed a super-
abundance ; so that not only would they be glad to
be allowed to labour for the others’ benefit, but
even constrained to work for the veriest pittance
that their masters chose to dole out to them.”

Little Benjamin remained silent, conning the
hard bit of worldly wisdom that had been for the
first time revealed to him.

The uncle noticed the impression his words had
made, and addea, ‘“‘ Such, my little man, are the
social advantages of prudence, and such the heavy
penalties that men pay for lack of thrift in hfe.
But before we proceed any further, Ben, let
us thoroughly comprehend what this same pru-
dence means.”

The boy stared at his uncle as he awaited the
explanation.

‘In the first place, then,” the godfather went
on, ‘‘we must not confound prudence with miser-
liness, nor even with meanness. ‘To be miserly,
my son, is as improvident as to be prodigal ; for
to hoard that which is of use chiefly in beimg
used—in being used as a means of further pro-
duction—is as unwise as to squander it. ‘To do
this is to live a pauper’s life amidst riches, and
thus not only to forestall the beggary that true
prudence seeks to avoid, but to waste the wealth
(by allowing it to remain idle) that is valuable

only in being applied as the means of future

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125

benefit or enjoyment. To be mean, on the other
hand, my lad, is to be either unjust or ignoble ;
and enlightened worldly discretion would prompt
us to be neither; for there is no real prudence in
ignoring the duties, the dignities, or even the
charities of life.”

‘Tell me then, uncle, what prudence really 7s,”
asked the boy, who was half bewildered now that
he had learnt what it was not.

“Why, prudence, my little fellow, is simply that
wise worldly caution which comes of foresight re-
garding the circumstances that are likely to affect
our own happiness. Morally considered, it is the
heroism of enlightened selfishness—intellectually
| regarded, it is the judgment counselling the heart ;
whilst in a religious point of view, it is the divine
| element of ‘ Providence’ narrowed down to the

YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

Ha | limits of human knowledge and human vision. The

learned man, Ben, exists mainly in the past; the
thoughtless one lives only in the present; but
the wise dwell principally in the future. And
as the astronomer foresees the conjunctions of
planets, the recurrence of eclipses, and return of
comets, years ere they happen; so the true sage, in
the great universe of circumstances surrounding
our lives, has a prescience of the coming good or
evil, and makes the benefits of to-day serve to miti-
gate the miseries of to-morrow.”

“Dear me!” cried the youth, amazed
| glowing picture his godfather had given
| virtue, ‘‘ why, I thought prudence merely
He saving, uncle.”

| “Ay, and you thought saving, doubtlessly,”
added the tutor, sarcastically, ‘“‘ but a poor and
paltry good after all. Youths mostly do think so,
ia Ben; for it is but natural that to take any steps
to avert the perils of old age, at a time when they
are most remote, should appear to the inexperi-

 

 

 

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enced as being—to say the least—most premature.
Nevertheless, Ben, saving is one of the means by
which prudence seeks to change unusual luck
into uniform benefit; to make the strokes of good
fortune in the world so temper the heavy blows
and disasters of life, that our days shall be one
round of average happiness, rather than (as they
otherwise must be) a series of intermittent joys
and miseries. But not only is it by saving, lad,
that the enormities of surfeit at one partic ular
time, and of griping want at another, are converted
into the even tenor of general sufficiency ; but
without saving there could be no production of
wealth in the world.”

‘* How so, uncle ?” asked the younger Benjamin.

“ Why, boy,” the other went on, ‘“‘in order to do
any productive work, three things are always
necessary : first, there must be something to go
to work upon; secondly, there must be some thine
to go to work with; and thirdly, something
wherewith to keep the workman while wor kine—
that is to say, the workman, unless duly provided
with materials, tools, and food, can do no work at
all. A tailor, for instance, Ben, cannot make a
coat without cloth, or needles and thread; nora
carpenter build a house without a board, or a saw
or plane; nor a smith work without metal, or file,
or hammer—nor, indeed, can any handicraftsman
continue labouring without ‘ bite or sup’ as well.”

‘“‘ Of course they can’t,” assented the boy; “ but
still I can’t make out what that has to do with
saving, uncle.”

“Simply this, lad,” the godfather made answer.
‘Such things can be acquired only by husband-
ing the previous gains, for if none of the past
year's yield were to be set aside as stock or

capital for the next year’s supply—if none of the
corn grown, for example, were to be saved forSN NOY a Et
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128 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

seed—none devoted to the maintenance of the
smiths while manufacturing the implements where
with to till the soil, and none laid by for the keep of
the labourers while tilling it, there could not
possibly be any further produce.”

“Oh, I see!” the youth exclaimed. “ I’ve
often heard father talk of the ‘ capital’ required to
start a person in business, but hardly knew what
he meant.”

‘Yes, boy, I dare say,” the other added; ‘‘and
now you perceive that your father meant by it
merely the wealth that is required to make more
wealth ; the stock that it 1s necessary to have in
hand before any further supply can be raised.
Capital, Ben, is nothing more than the golden
grain which has been husbanded as seed for the
future golden crop—a-certain store of wealth
laid up for the purposes of further production or
of trade; and such store can be obtained, it is
manifest, only by not consuming all we get. So
absolutely indispensable, too, is this capital, or
stock in hand, for carrying on the great business
of life, that all who would be the masters of the
world must themselves either possess a certain
portion of it, or pay others interest for the use of
it; while those who have none, and can get none,
must needs be the labourers and servants of the
others.”

‘« « Interest echoed young Benjamin, catch-
ing at the word he had heard so often used in
conversation at home; but of which he had
as yet scarcely formed a definite idea. ‘“ But
don’t some people, uncle, live upon the interest of
their property without doing any work at all?
Father has told me so, I think ; and how can that
be, if work, as you say, is the prime necessity of
life ?”

‘“Ay, lad, we must either work curselves er be

 

}? 9?HOW TO BE RICH. 129

able to employ others to work for us,” was the
rejoinder ; ‘‘and those who live on the interest of
their money do the latter—but they do so in-
directly; rather than directly, like the real em-
ployer himself.’’

‘Ido not understand you, uncle,” was all the
little fellow could say, as he knit his brows in the
vain attempt to solve the worldly problem.

‘ Well, Ben,” replied the old man, ‘I will try
and make the matter plainer to you. The fund
that it is necessary to have in hand, in order to
supply the materials and implements (or, maybe,
the machinery) required for producing a parti-
cular commodity—as well as to provide the mainte-
nance of the workmen employed in producing it—
may either have been acquired by our own thrift,
or it may have formed part of the savings of others.
In the one case, of course, we alone are interested
in the result ; in the other, however, it is but fair
and right that they who supply us with the means
of obtaining a certain valuable return should be
allowed a proportionate share or interest, as it is
termed, in the gains. Jf a portion of land be
naturally more fertile than another —if, for
instance, the fields in the valley yield, with the
same amount of labour, a tenfold crop over and
above those on the mountains, such extra fertility
is, of course, a natural boon; and this natural boon
must accrue to some one. Well, if the indi-
vidual who has acquired the right to it do

not till the fields himself, it is self-evident
that he will not part with such right to others
without reserving to himself some share or in-
terest in the after-produce. Now this share or
interest that the landlord reserves +o himself, for
the superior productiveness of certain lands, is
what the world calls ‘rent;’ and your own sense,
lad, will show you that a person possessing
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130 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

many such acres might live merely upon the
interest he has in the crops that are raised upon
them by others, rather than by raising any hin-
self.”

“Go on, uncle, go on; I begin to see it a little
plainer now,” the youth cried, as the fog in his
brain gradually cleared away.

‘‘ Well, my good boy,” proceeded the godfather,
‘“‘capital is as productive as land itself; discreetly
used, it yields crop after crop of profits; and
interest for money is but the rent or share that
the wealthy reserve to themselves for the use of
their property, when applied to productive pur-
poses by others. And as the rent of a large
number of acres cultivated by tenants may, as I
said before, yield a person a sufficient income to
live in ease and affluence without even the cares
of conducting the work, or the responsibility of
good and bad seasons; so a man with many
hundreds of guineas may leave the fructification
of his capital to more active and enterprising
natures, whilst he himself subsists in comfort
upon that mere interest or indirect share in the
gains which he claims for the use of his savings.
If capital were as unproductive as barren land,
no one would pay interest for the one, any more
than they would dream of giving rent for the
other. And as the scale of rent is equivalent
merely to the comparative fertility of different
soils, so the rate of interest expresses only the
value of capital m the market, according to the
individual risk or the general want of money.”

‘“ T see! I see!” exclaimed the youth.

** Money makes money, boy,” the godfather con-
tinued ; ‘it grows as assuredly as the corn grows,
for the growth of the grain is but the fructification
of the capital that has been applied to the land ;
and if a hundred guineas sterling put into the soilHOW TO BE RICH. 13

in the shape of seed, manure, and wages will yield
at the end of the harvest a crop worth—say, a
hundred and twenty guineas—surely, then, the
money (which, after all, is but the ultimate crop
reduced to its pecuniary value) has fructified at a
corresponding rate with the blades themselves.
A guinea allowed to remain idle, Ben, is as bad as
land that is allowed to grow weeds instead of
wheat. Every grain of corn eaten, lad, is a
grain absolutely destroyed; but every grain sown
yields an ear, and every extra ear adds to the
common stock of food. In like manner, wealth
squandered is so much wealth positively lost to
the world; whereas, wealth saved, and used as
capital in some productive employment, serves
not only to find work and subsistence for the
poor, but to increase the gross fund of available
riches in the community.”

‘‘ Jt 1s good then to save, uncle,” observed the
boy.

‘““It is as good to save and use wealth dis-
creetly, my lad, as it is base to hoard and lock it
up, and wicked to squander and waste it. Saving,
indeed, is no mean virtue. Not only does it re-
quire high self-denial in order to forego the im-
mediate pleasure which wealth in hand can always
obtain for its possessors; but it needs as much
intellectual strength to perceive the future good
with all the vividness of a present benefit, as it
does moral control to restrain the propensities of
the time being, for the enjoyment of happiness in
years to come. Again, boy, it is merely by the
frugality of civilized communities that cities are
built, the institutions of society maintained, and
all the complex machinery of enlightened in-
dustry and commerce kept in operation. If
every one lived from hand to mouth, 3en, there
could be no schools, nor lbraries, nor churches,
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nor courts of justice, nor hospitals, nor senate-
houses ; neither could there be any government, nor
law, nor medicine, nor any religious or intellectual
teaching among the people. For as such modes
of life add nothing directly to the common stock
of food and clothing, nor, indeed, to the gross
material wealth of a nation, it is manifest that they
who follow them can do so only at the expense
of the general savings. Further, my lad, a mo-
ment’s reflection will show you that roads, and
docks and shipping, and warehouses and markets,
as well as factories and shops, together with
all the appliances of tools and machinery, can
only be constructed out of the capital-stock of
the commonwealth; so that the chief difference
between the wild luxuriant hunting-grounds be-
fore you and the great town of Boston in which
you live, Ben, is that here even Nature herself
is so prodigal, that nothing needs to be stored,
whilst there everything has sprung out of a wise
economy. ‘There the very paving-stones in the
streets are representatives of so much wealth trea-
sured, literally, against ‘a rainy day,’ and every
edifice is a monument of the industry and frugality
of the citizens; there not a vessel enters the port
but it comes laden with the rich fruits of some
man’s thrift and providence ; there not a field is
tilled but it is sown with the seeds of another’s
forethought, and not a crop raised that is not a
golden witness of the good husbanding of the
husbandman ; there, too, the storehouses are piled
up with treasures brought from the very corners
of the earth to serve as the means of future em-
ployment for the poor, and the banks sparkle
with riches which, rightly viewed, are but the
bright medals that have been won by the heroism
of hard work and self-denial in the great ‘battle
of life.”HOW TO BE RICH. 133

‘““ Has all Boston, then, and all the ships in the
port and goods in the warehouses,” the boy said
half to himself, “come out of the savings of the
people ?”

‘“ Assuredly they have, lad,” was the reply.
“Just think how many pounds of bread and
meat it must take to build a ship, and then ask
yourself whether there could be a single vessel in
Boston harbour if some one hadn’t saved a snuffi-
cient store to keep the woodmen while felling
the timber, and the shipwrights while putting it
together. You see now the high social use of
saving, Ben. It not only gives riches to the
rich, remember, but it provides work and food for
the poor; for the prosperous man who duly hus-
bands his gains benefits at once himself and those
who have been less lucky or prudent than he.
Nor is this all. It is by saving alone that a man
can emancipate himself from the primeval doom
of life-long labour. There are no other means of
purchasing exemption from the ban. We are the
born slaves of our natural wants—-the serfs of our
common appetites, and it is only by industry and
thrift that we can wrest the iron collar from our
neck, If, then, in the greed of our natures, we
wil devour all we get, we must either starve or
become the voluntary villeins of those who have
been more frugal than we. By prudence, Ben,
I repeat, we may become the masters of the
world; by imprudence, we must remain the
bondsmen of it. In a word, you must save—or
be a slave, lad.”

“« Save, or be a slave,” the boy kept on murmur-
ing to himself, for the words had sunk deep into
his soul. ‘‘ Save, or be a slave.”

Presently little Ben woke up out of the dream
into which the burden of the song, so to speak,
had thrown him, and he asked :—‘‘ But, uncle,

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134

can people become rich only by saving. I have
heard father speak of persons having made large
fortunes in a short time; and when you told me
that story about Bernard Palissy the potter (you
remember, uncle,” he interjected with a smile,
“on the night when we were becalmed and I
rowed you to Boston harbour), I thought you said
Bernard made—oh, a great, great deal of money !
merely by finding out how to glaze earthenware.”
‘Well said, my child, well said!” nodded the
oodfather; ‘and that reminds me that | should
tell you there are two different and opposite modes
of becoming rich: the one slow and sure, and the
other rapid and uncertain; the first is the process
of patient industry and wise prudence; the second
that of clever scheming and bold adventure. A
man may certainly invent rather than earn a
fortune for himself; he may stumble upon a gold-
mine, without even the trouble of hunting for 11;
or he may discover some new mode of production,
as Gutenberg, the inventor of movable types did ;
or he may insure a vessel that is supposed to be
lost, and see the ship the next day come sailing
into the harbour; or he may speculate for a rise
in the market-price of a particular commodity,
and realize thousands by the venture; or he may
buy a ticket in a lottery, and wake up some morn-
ing and find himself the lucky holder of a twenty-
thousand guinea prize; or, indeed, he may do a
hundred and one things by which large sums of
money are, occasionally, obtained as it were in an
instant.”

‘¢ Oh, then!’ cried the lad, ‘‘ where’s the good,

I should like to know, of going through years of
hard work, and stinting and saving, in order to
get rich, if it’s possible to make one’s fortune in
an instant, as you say. I know what J shall do,”
he added, as he sprang to his feet, and faced about,

YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.HOW TO BE RICH. 135

elated with the thought—‘‘I shall try and dis-
cover something, as Palissy the potter did, and
get a goud lot of money by it, all in a minute.”

“Ay, do!” gravely responded the tutor, ‘‘ and
you will be a mere schemer your life through,
and find yourself most likely a beggar in the end.”

‘Well, but, uncle,” expostulated the youth,
‘don’t you yourself say some people have done
such things ?”

«Yes, boy, some have, certainly,” was the reply ;
“but in such matters, Ben, success is the one
splendid exception ; disappointment, failure, and
beggary the bitter and uniform rule. In all the
lotteries of life, the chances are a million to one
against any particular adventurer drawing a prize.
Some one will be the lucky wight assuredly, but
then nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand
and nine hundred and ninety-nine others will as
assuredly get blanks. It is only fools who trust
to accidents or chance; the wise submit to rule:
and the golden rule of life is that scheming and
adventure fail a thousand fold oftener than they
succeed ; whereas industry and prudence succeed
a thousand fold oftener than they fail. The one
mode of amassing wealth,” continued the old man,
‘‘may be tempting from its seeming rapidity, but
it is far more disheartening in the end, lad, from
its real uncertainty; whilst the other mode, if
alloyed with the inconvenience of being slow, has
at least the crowning comfort of being sure.”

‘‘T see! I see what you mean now,” ejaculated
little Ben, thoughtfully.

«© Well then, do you understand now how to be
rich, my little man?” the teacher inquired.

“Oh, yes, uncle,” cried the youth, delighted to
let his tutor see how well he had understood him ;
‘‘ by living on less than we get.”

The godfather smiled as he shook his head, as

 

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136

much as to say the lad was at fault somewhere.
‘‘ That is only one part of the process, Ben,”
presently he said. ‘'l’o live on less than we get
is merely to hoard, and hoarding is not husband-
ing. To husband well is at once to economize and
fertilize ; itis not only to garner, but to sow and
to reap also. The good husbandman does not
allow his acres to lie for ever idle; but he uses
and employs all his means with care, and in the
manner best suited to produce the greatest yield.
T'o be rich then, my little man, we must not only
work and get, and live on less than we get, but—
but what, Ben ?”

‘““We must use and employ, as you call it,
uncle, what we save,” was now the ready reply.

‘* hight, lad,” the old man continued ; ‘‘ we must
make our savings work as well as ourselves, in
order to make them useful. Nothing, indeed, can
be rendered productive without work, and a pound
becomes a guinea at the year’s end, merely because
it has been used as the means of giving employ-
ment to those who had not a pound of their own
to go to work upon.”

‘But, uncle,” exclaimed the lad with eager-
ness as a seeming difficulty suddenly crossed his
mind, ‘‘ how are people to live on less than they
get if they don’t get enough to live upon ?”

‘‘Ah, Ben, it is that same phantom of ‘ enough’
which is the will-o’-the-wisp of the whole world,”
answered the old man. ‘‘ The boundary to our
wishes is as illusive as the silver ring of the
horizon to a child at sea: it seems so near and so
like the journey’s end.; and yet, let the bark speed
on its course day after day, and the voyage be as
prosperous as it may, there it remains the same
bright, dreamy bourne—always apparently as close
at hand, and yet always really as distant from the
voyager as when he started. There is no such

YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,HOW TO BE RICH. 137

quality as enough, lad, in the world. We might
as well attempt to wall in all space as to limit the
illimitable desires of human nature. ‘The ca-
pacious stomach of man’s ambition and avarice is
never surfeited. ‘The merchant prince has no
more enough than the pauper; and the man who
delays saving because he has not enough to lve
upon will never have enough to save upon. Let
us get never so little, at least some little, even of
that little, may be laid by, if we will but be frugal ;
and a store once raised, and duly husbanded, will
soon ‘serve to change the little into more. If we
have not sufficient moral control to keep our
desires within our means in one station of life,
depend upon it, lad, such is the expansibility of
human wishes, that there will be the same lack
of self-restraint in any other.* The really prudent
are prudent under all circumstances; and those in
adversity who wait for prosperity to give them
the means of laying up a fund for future ease, may
wait for ever and ever; since prosperity can come
only through the very means they are idly waiting
for. The main object of all saving is redemption
from poverty, and the poorer the people, the
greater the reason for their pursuing the only
course that can possibly bring riches to them, and
emancipate them from the misery that is for ever
hanging over them, like a doom. It may be hard,
Ben, to save under griping necessity, but every
penny husbanded serves to relax the grip; and,
hard as it is, we must ever bear in mind that

* Benjamin Franklin, the hero of the present book, lived
to exemplify how little is required for the satisfaction of
man’s wants. His diet, when he was working as a journey-
man printer in London, consisted merely of 20 Ibs. of bread
a week, or a little more than half a quartern loaf per diem,
with water, as the French say, a discrétion ; and this regimen
he submitted to, principally, in order to be able to purchase
books out of the remainder of his wages,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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ae138 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

there is no other loophole in the world by which
to escape from want to comfort—from slavery to
independence.”

“Ay, uncle, it is as you said, we must save or
be a slave,” returned the little fellow. ‘J shall
never think of the prairies without remembering
the words.”

The lesson ended, it was high time for the
horses to be resaddled; for, already, the long
shadows of the solitary clumps of trees had be-
gun to stripe the emerald plains, the black bands
contrasting with the golden-green of the sward—
burnished as it seemed now with the rays of the
setting sun—till the meadows shone with all the
belted brilliance of a mackerel’s back. And as
the couple set out on their journey homewards,
the little fellow followed, almost mechanically, in
his uncle’s track; for he was still busy as he
jogged along, revolving the hard truths he had
learnt for the first time in life, and muttering to
himself by the way, ‘Save! save! or be a slave.”

 

CHAPTER XIV.
AN ALARM,

Tere was a loud knocking at the shop-door of the
candle store at the corner of Hanover and Union
Streets, in the city of Boston—a knock that
sounded the louder from the lateness of the hour
and the utter stillness of the streets at the time.
The Puritan family were on their knees in the
little back parlour, engaged in their devotions
previous to retiring to rest for the night; so the
summons went unheeded.Se eee erat ee an. eR te aes ee Oe ee ee as

       
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

AN ALARM, 139

‘We pray Thee, O Lord,” contimued the
father, as he offered up the usual extemporaneous
prayer, and proceeded to ask a blessing for the |
last member of his household, before concluding ho] On
the family worship—* to bless our youngest child, i |
Benjamin. Watch over him, O God!—” !

Again the noisy summons interrupted the sup- |
plication, but still the prayer went on. i

“And so strengthen him with Thy grace, that H}t
he may grow up to walk in Thy ways for the rest
of his life; and if his body or his soul be in peril
at this moment, grant, O grant, we beseech 'Thee, A
that the danger may be only for the time.” Hi

‘¢Amen!” fervently exclaimed the mother, pe
raising her head from the cushion of the beehive mt | (i
chair before which she was kneeling.

Again the knocking was repeated, and this time
so vigorously that the mother and Deborah both
started back from their chairs, and would have
risen from the floor, had they not seen that Josiah
paid little or no regard to the disturbance.

Nor did the father move a limb (though the
noise at last continued without ceasing) till he had
besought the customary blessing on all his neigh- ri
bours and friends, and even his enemies too.

Immediately the ceremony was finished, Dame fe
Franklin jumped up and cried, “ Who ever can yf
want admission here at such a time of the night?”

Deborah was no sooner on her feet than she ran
to her mother’s side, and clung close to her skirt
as she watched her father move leisurely towards
the outer shop-door.

‘Be sure and ask who it is before you undo the
bolt, Josh!” screamed the wite in her alarm ; but
the words were scarcely uttered, ere the voice of
Uncle Ben was heard shouting without, ‘‘ What,
are you all gone to bed here, eh a
On the door being opened, the younger Benjamin

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140 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

flung himself into the arms of his father, and
smothered the old man’s words with kisses. while
the mother and Deborah no sooner caught the
sound of the well-known voice than they rushed
forward to take part in the greeting.

hen came a volley of questionings—“ Where on
earth have you been to?” ‘+ What have you been
doing with yourselves all this time?” « Why
didn’t you say you should be so long gone when
you started?” ‘Don’t you think it was high
time for us to get alarmed about you?’ “ What
have you seen, Ben ?” asked Deborah, on the sly.
‘However did you manage for clean clothes?”
chimed in the mother. “ You surely must have
run short of money,” interrupted the father.

But the greeting over, the boy, who since dusk
had been asleep on board the sloop that had
brought him and his uncle to Boston, was too
tired with the long voyage to enter into the many
explanations demanded of him; and though the
mother, mother-like, ‘“‘ was sure he was sinking
for want of food,” young Ben showed such a
decided preference for bed to bread and cheese, that
Dame Franklin at length hurried the drowsy lad
and his sister to their chambers for the night,
while she herself stayed behind to spread the cold
corned-brisket and cider for her brother-in-law.

As the uncle munched the beef, he carried the
parents as briefly as possible through the several
scenes of his long journey with the boy: and
when he had borne them to the Western Prairies,
he ran over the heads of the lesson he had
impressed upon the youth there. Nor did he
forget, as he brought them back home again, to
gladden their hearts by telling them how their
son had profited by the teaching ; how he had
kept continually repeating to himself by the way
the portentous words,—‘ Save, or be a slave;”AN ALARM, 141

how each well-stocked homestead that they passed
had served to remind him only of the thrift of the
inhabitants ; how he had noted too, in every factory,
the long course of industry and self-denial that had
amassed the riches to raise it, as well as the enter-
prise that had devoted the wealth to such a pur-
pose; and how, as some stray beggar that they
chanced to meet on the road, asked them to ‘* help
him to a quarter of a dollar,” the little fellow
(when he had given him as much as he could
spare,) would first want to know whether he was a
born-beggar or not, and then proceed to lecture the
vagabond soundly for liking beggary better than
work, and preferring to remain the lowest slave of
all, rather than save.

‘‘ Bless the boy!” the mother cried; ‘“‘ ’m glad
he gave the poor soul something more than
words, though. ButI always told you, Josh—you
know J did—that you were mistaken in our Ben.”

‘‘ Have heed, brother; have heed!” was all the
father said in reply. ‘‘ Beware lest you beget in
the lad a lust for ‘treasures that moth and rust
doth corrupt.’ ”

‘¢Never fear, Josiah! I have not done with
my little godson yet. I know well what I took
upon myself when I became sponsor for the
sins of the child; and do you wait till my worldly
lessons are ended,” the uncle made answer.

‘Not done with the boy yet, Benjamin!” ex-
claimed the father. ‘ Why, how much lorger will
you keep him away from earning a crust for him-
self? It’s high time he should be out in the
world, for a lad learns more by a day’s practice
than a whole month’s precepts.”

« Ay, send him to sea on a mere raft of loose
principles, do,” cried Uncle Ben, ‘‘ do—child as
he is—without any moral compass to show him
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142 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

knowledge of the heavens either, by which to
shape his course: that’s the way to insure an easy
and prosperous voyage for the youngster, certainly
—that’s the way to start a boy in life:” and the
uncle laughed ironically at the notion.

‘¢ But what else do you want to teach the lad,
Benjamin?” asked the mother, anxious to prevent
a discussion at that hour of the night.

‘* What else, Abiah!’ echoed the brother-in-
law. ‘* Why, I want to make a man of him; as
yet Pve taught him to be little better than an ant.
But do you leave him to me only for another
week, and a fine right-minded little gentleman he

shall be, I promise you.

Now look here, both of

you: I taught the boy first that he must either

work, bee

g, or starve.”

‘“¢ Good!” nodded Dame Franklin.
te When: taught him how to make his work light

and pleasant.”

‘*Good !” repeated the dame.
‘* And after that, | taught him how to make the
produce of his work the means of future ease and

comfort to him.”

‘“‘ Very good!” Dame Franklin ejaculated.

‘‘T’ve shown him, in fact,’ added Uncle Ben-
jamin, ‘‘not only how he must slave in order
to live, but how, by putting his heart into his
labour, he may lighten the slavery ; and also, how,
by continual saving, he may one day put an end
to all further slaving for the rest of his life.”

“Yes, brother,” added the stern old Puritan
tallow-chandler, ‘‘ you’ve taught the boy how to
become a rich man,” and he laid a scornful emphasis

upon the epithet.

“Ay, Josiah, I have,” meekly replied the
other; ‘‘and now I want to teach him how to be-

come a good one.

I have the same scorn for mere
riches and money-grubbing as yourself, brother—AN ALARM. 143

a scorn that is surpassed only by my abomination
of wilful beggary and voluntary serfdom. Is
there not a medium, Josh, between the overween-
ing love of wealth, and the reckless disregard of
it; a middle course between a despotic delight in
that worldly power which comes of riches, and the
servile abandonment of ourselves to that wretched
bondage which is necessarily connected with
poverty ? Surely a man is a dog who loves to be
fed continually by others; and there is to my
mind no higher worldliness that a young man can
Jearn than to have faith in his own powers; to
know that the world’s prizes of ease and com-
petence are open to him, if he will but toil dili-
gently and heartily, and husband carefully and
discreetly. ‘To teach a lad to be self-reliant is to
teach him to have a soul above beggary ; it is to
make an independent gentleman of him, even while
he is labouring for his living.”

‘‘ But have a care, brother, I say again; have
a care of worldly pride and worldly lust,” inter-
posed the primitive old father, gravely. ‘“ I would
rather have my son the meek and uncomplaining
pauper in his old age, than an overbearing purse-
proud fool; the one tired of life and sighing for
the sweet rest of heaven, and the other so wedded
to the world, and all its pomps and vanities, that
he wants no other heaven than the gross luxuries
of the earth.”

‘‘T detest mere worldlyism, Josh, as much as
you do,” returned his brother Benjamin. ‘‘ But
because it is base and wicked to be utterly worldly,
it by no means follows that it is noble and good
to be utterly unworldly. To despise the world
about us, because there is another and a better world
to come, is as wrong as not to value life, because we
hope to live hereafter. And as it is our duty to
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144 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

the laws of bodily welfare; so is it our duty to
conform our pursuits to the laws of worldly hap-
piness—laws which are as much part of God’s
ordination as the conditions of health, or the suc-
cession of the seasons themselves. The laws of
worldly life are written on the tablets of the
world; and the handwriting is unmistakably the
Creator’s own. ‘There was no need of any special
revelation to make them known to us. If we will
but open our eyes, we may read them in letters of
light. And surely they are as much for the guid-
ance of our worldly lives, as the biblical com-
mandments are for the regulation of our spiritual
ones.”

‘« There is no gainsaying your brother’s words,
Josh,’ urged the dame, for she was too an-
xious to get to bed to say a syllable that was likely
to prolong the argument; and then, by way of a
gentle hint as to the hour,.the housewife proceeded
to place the tin candlesticks on the table before
the two brothers.

‘* Well, Ben, the days of monkish folly are past,”
responded Josiah as he rose from his seat; ‘‘ and
people no longer believe that true philosophy puts
up with a tub fora home. There may be as much
worldly pride too in the austerity of a hermit’s
life, as in the pomp of Solomon ‘arrayed in all his
glory.’ Nevertheless, the heart of man is fond
enough of the world’s gewgaws, without needing
any schooling in the matter.”

‘Can that be truly said, Josiah, so long as three-
fourths of the world remain steeped to the very
lips in poverty?” Uncle Ben calmly inquired.
‘* All men may covet wealth, brother, but that few
know the way to win even a competence is proven
by the misery of the great mass of the people.
I want to see comfort reign throughout the world,
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ATHE GREAT RAREE-SHOW. 145

self-reliance, rather than beggary; independence,
rather than serfdom. I wish to teach a man to
get money, rather than want it, or beg for it; to
get money with honour and dignity ; to husband
it with honour and dignity; and, what is more,
to spend it with honour and dignity too. And,
please God, that is the high lesson your boy shall
learn, before | have done with him.”

‘‘ Be it so then, brother, be it so; and may he
prove the fine honourable and righteous man we
both desire to see him,” cried the father.

‘* Amen!” added the mother; and then with a
‘“God bless you,” the brothers parted for the
night.

CHAPTER XV.
THE GREAT RAREE-SHOW.

Youne Ben on the morrow was a different lad
from the tired, drowsy, and taciturn little tra-
veller of the previous night. For no sooner was
sister Deborah below-stairs, arranging for the
morning meal, than he was by her side, following
her, now to the wood-house, then to the pantry,
and afterwards to the parlour—with a shoe on one
of his hands, and a brush in the other, busily
engaged in the double office of disburdening his
mind of the heavy load of wonders he had seen on
his travels, and getting rid at the same time of a
little of the mud he had brought back with him
from the country.

Then, as the girl began to set the basins and
the platters on the table, he fell to dodging her
about the room, as she rambled round and round,
and chattering to her the while of the curious old
French town of St. Louis, but still polishing away

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146 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
as he chattered. And though Deborah insisted
that he must not clean his shoes over the breakfast-
table, on he went, scrubbing incessantly, with his
head on one side, and talking to the girl by jerks,
first of that darling Jacky, the pony they had
borrowed of the French farmer, and next of the
“ark” in which they had descended the great
‘Ohio river.

When too the boy retired with the little maid,
to assist her in opening the store, there he would
stand in the street, with one of the shutters in his
hand resting on the stones, as he described to her
the herd of buffaloes, and flocks of wild turkeys,
and the deer and pelicans that he had seen in the
prairies. Nor would he even cease his pratthng
during the boiling of the milk; for while Debo-
yah stood craning over the simmering saucepan,
the eager lad was close against her shoulder,
jabbering away, now of the lusciousness of the
custard-apples, then of the delicacy of the prairie-
plums and grapes, and ‘‘ only wishing”’ she had
been with uncle and himself at their yipsy-
dinner off venison-hams and wild fruit in the
great hunting-plains.

During breakfast, however, both the manner
and the matter of the boy’s discourse were
changed; for no sooner did the father and mother
make their appearance, than the little fellow grew
graver in tone, and talked only of such things as
he fancied his parents would be glad to hear from
him. In his desire, however, to let his father see
the new man he had become, and what fine
principles he had acquired by his journey, the
boy, boy-like, went into such raptures upon the
art of money-making, and the use of capital in
the world, that the simple-minded old Puritan
kept shaking his head mournfully at his brotherTHE GREAT RAREE-SHOW, 147

Ben, as he listened to the hard, worldly philo-
sophy—for it sounded even tenfold harder and
harsher from the lips of the mere child expound-
ing it. So when the exigencies of the shop sun-
moned the candle-maker from the table, Josiah
could not refrain from whispering in the ear of
the elder Benjamin, as he passed behind his chair,
“You have a deal to do and to undo yet, brother
Ben, before you make a fine man of the lad.”

But once alone with his mother, the little fellow
was again a different boy; for then, as he jumped
into her lap, and hugged the dame (much to the
discomfiture of her clean mob-cap and tidy muslin
kerchief), he told how he had made up his mind to
become a rich man, and how happy he meant to
make them all by-and-by ; how she was to have a
“help” to do all the work of the house for her;
how he meant to buy Deborah a pony (just like
dear old Jacky) with the first money he got; and
how Uncle Benjamin was to live with them
always at the nice house they were to have in the
country, with a prime large orchard to it; and
how, too, he was to purchase a ship for Captain
Holmes (it wouldn’t cost such a great deal of
money, he was sure), so that the captain might
have a vessel of his own, and take them with him
sometimes to any part of the world they wanted
to see. All of which it dearly delighted the
mother’s heart to hear, not because she had the
least faith in the fond plans of the boy ever being
realized, but because his mere wish to see them
all happy made her love him the more.

At last it was Uncle Benjamin’s turn for a téte-
a-téte with the little man (for the household
duties soon called the dame away from the par-
lour); whereupon the godfather proceeded to
impress upon his pupil the necessity of continuing
their lessons with as little delay as possible,

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148 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

telling him that his father had given them only
another week’s grace, and adding that there was
much still for the little fellow to learn in the time.

‘© What! more to be learnt, uncle?’ cried the
astounded youth, who was under the impression
that he was well enough crammed with worldly
wisdom to be started in life at once. ‘Surely
there can be nothing else for a fellow to know.
Why, you've taught me how to get on in the
world, and how to end as a rich man too; and
what more a chap can want, I’m sure I can’t see.”

“ Of course you can’t, little Mr. Clear-sighted,”
replied the uncle, as he seized his godson by the
shoulders, and shook him playfully as he spoke.
‘“T’ve taught you how to get money, lad, but
that’s only the first half of life’s lesson: the main
portion of the problem is how to spend it.”

“ Well, that 7s good!” laughed out young Ben-
jamin, tickled with the apparent ludicrousness of
any lessons being needed for such a purpose.
‘Why, every boy in the world knows how to do
that, without any teaching at all.”

“It comes to him as naturally as a game at
leap-frog, 1 suppose,” quietly interjected the god-
father, with a smile.

“Of course it does,” the youngster rejoined.
“Now you just give me half a dollar, uncle,” he
added, grinning at the impudence of his own
argument; ‘and Ill soon let you see that J know
how to spend it.”

‘Soh! you’d spend it directly you got it,
would you; eh, you young rogue? Is that all the
good that is to come of our long journey to the
prairies ?” ejaculated the godfather, as he cuted
the lad, first on one side of his head, and then on the
other, as sportively and gently as a kitten does a
ball.

‘¢Oh, no—no to be sure, uncle,” stammered. outTHE GREAT RAREE-SHOW, 149

the abashed youngster ; “that is, I meant to Say,

I—I should put it by and save it, of course.”
“What, hoard it, eh ?” drily observed the other,

as he eyed the lad over the top of his spectacles,
that were almost as big as watch-glasses,

“No, no. I didn’t: mean that either. You’re so
sharp at taking a chap up. I meant to say” (and
the boy, to set himself right, shook himself almost
as violently as a Newfoundland dog just out of
the water), “I—I should put the money in the
Savings-bank, and let it grow and grow there at
interest ; just as you said the corn does, you
know, uncle.”

‘“* Well, what then, lad ?” asked the old man.

*“ Why then I should keep on putting more to
it as fast as I got it, and let it all go on increa
together,” was the ready answer.

‘““ Well, and what then 2” again inquired Uncle
Benjamin.

“Why, when I’d saved up enough, I should
use it as capital to start me in some business, and
so make it the means of getting me more money,”
responded the youth, who was now able to recall
the previous lesson.

“Well, and what then?” the old man demanded
once more.

“Why then—then—oh, then, I should get
more money still, to be sure. But what makes
you keep on saying ‘ Well, and what then” in
such a tantalizing way as you do, uncle?’ added
the pupil, growing impatient under the continued

questioning.

‘““Yes; and when your capital had yielded you
“more money still,’ as you say, what then, lad ?”
persisted the catechist.

“Why then I should give up business alto-
gether—and—and enjoy myself! Yes, that’s what
1 should do, I can tell you,’ was the candid reply,

sing

  
   
    
  
   
   
  
  
    
  
  
 
   
   
   
 
  
  
 
 
   
  
 
  
 
  
   
  
 

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150 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

“Ay, boy! enjoy yourself!” echoed the elder
Benjamin, with a sarcastic toss of the head;
“enjoy yourself! that is to say, you'd proceed to
spend the wealth that it had cost you the labour
of a life to accumulate. Or maybe, you'd spend
only the interest of your money, though that is
almost the same thing; for the interest duly hus-
banded would make your stock-in-hand grow even
greater still.”

“Well, there’s no harm in a fellow enjoying
himself after he’s done his work, is there ?” the
bewildered youth demanded, 1m a half-surly tone.

«True, Ben, there is no harm in enjoyment that
brings no harm with it, either to ourselves or
others,” responded the Mentor. © But you see,
my little man,” he went on, © the end of the argu-
ment is the same as the beginning ; the last ques-
tion is buta repetition of the first—‘ When you've
got your money, what will you do with it?’ Spend
it, you say; and spend it you, or some one else,
assuredly will in the long run. Such is but the
natural result of all money-getting. We begin
with saving, and finish at the very point which
we avoid at starting—only that we may have more
money ultimately to spend. Still, therefore, the
query is, how will you spend your money when
youve got it? In what manner will you enjoy
yourself, as you call it?”

The boy stared in his uncle’s face as much as to
say, whatever is he driving at.

However,the old man paid no heed to the wonder-
ment of the lad, but proceeded as follows. © The

means of enjoyment, my son, are infinite in the
world; some of these are purchasable, and others
not to be had for money. OCreature-comforts and
articles of luxury, for instance, may be bought ; but
these are among the lowest and most transient of
human pleasures ; whereas, love, the purest andTHE GREAT RAREE-SHOW. 15E

most lasting of all earthly happiness, is beyond all
price. We can no more bargain for that than we can
for the sunshine which is sent down from heaven
to gladden alike the poorest and the richest of man-
kind. Nevertheless, none but an ascetic will deny
that money is one of the great means of pleasure
in this life; and if the end of money-getting be to
obtain an extra amount of enjoyment in the world,
surely we cannot market well, and get a good
pennyworth for our penny, unless we know some-
thing about the different qualities of the article
we are going to purchase. If we cannot distin-
euish between what is really good and what is
comparatively worthless, how shall we prevent
being cheated? And if we do get cheated of our
prize in the end, after all our toil and trouble, all
our stinting and saving, why then the labour of a
whole life is wasted.”

‘But, uncle,’ young Benjamin interjected,
“surely everybody knows what is pleasure to them
without any teaching at all.”

«They do, Ben—instinctively ; but what they
do not know is, what they have never given per-
haps a moment’s thought to: namely, the different
forms of pleasure of which their natures are sus-
ceptible. In their greed to have their fill of the
first gratification that has tickled them, they have
never paused to weigh one form of enjoyment with
another—never stayed to learn which yields the
purest delight for the least cost, or which has the
smallest amount of evil, or the greatest amount of
good connected with it. What is pleasant to one
person, is often foolish, or even hateful, to another ;
and it is so simply because the sources of happiness
appear different, not only to different minds, but
even to the same mind at different periods of life.
What the child likes, the gray-beard despises ;
what the fool prizes, the sage scorns. You will

     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

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152 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,
understand by-and-by, my boy, that the art of
spending money wisely is even more difficult than
the art of getting it honourably.”

‘T think I can see a little bit of what you mean,
uncle,” added the youngster; and then, aftera
slight pause, he asked, ‘‘ But how are you going
to impress the lesson, as you call it, upon me this
time—eh, unky ?” he inquired in a coaxing tone,
for he was satisfied his godfather had some new
sight in store for him, by way of enforcing the
precept.

“JT am going to show you this time, Ben, a
curious collection of animals. I purpose taking
you through our great Museum of Natural His-
tory,” said the old man.

“Oh, thank you, dear unky! thank you!” ex-
claimed the delighted pupil, as he rose and curled
his arm about his uncle’s neck. ‘‘ Are we to set
off to-day? I’m so fond of seeing animals, you
don’t know. Shall we sce any monkeys, unky,
eh?”

«Ay, scores, boy ! scores! bears and sloths too ;
wild asses and lavghing hyenas; mocking-birds
and gulls; butcher-birds and scavenger-birds as
well,” Uncle Benjamin made answer, with a sly
smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.

The boy chafed his hands together in anticipa-
tion’ of the treat, as he cried, ‘‘ Oh, won’t it be
jolly—that’s all!”

“But, Ben, the animals I shall show you are
not preserved in glass cases,” the old man added.

“Ah, that’s right! I can’t bear those stupid
stuffed things. I like them to be all alive and
roaring, I do,” was the simple rejoinder.

“Nor are they confined in cages, with learned
names, descriptive of the order and family they
belong to, stuck up over their dens. No naturalist
as yet has classified them; none given us a cata-THE GREAT RNAREE-SHOW. 153

logue of their habits, or of the localities they
infest ;” and as the godfather concluded the speech,
the boy looked at him go steadfastly in the face,
that the old man was unable to keep from laughing
any longer,

“Come, come now!” cried the lad; ‘* you’re
having a bit of fun with me, sir; that youare, I
shouldn’t wonder but that they are no animals
after all.”

“Animals they assuredly are, Ben,” responded
the uncle; “ but tame ones, and to be seen almost
every day, in that strangest of all menageries :
human society.”

* Oh! then they’re nothing but men, I suppose.
What a shame of you now, unky, tomake game of a
chap in such a way !” was all that the disappointed
lad could murmur out, as he drew his arm, half in
dudgeon, from round the old man’s neck.

“ Well, lad,” the other remonstrated. “the men
I wish to show you are as much natural curiosities
in their way, as any animals ever seen at a fair.
And as you can find delight in gazing at a monkey
cage, and watching the tricks and antics of crea-
tures that bear an ugly resemblance to yourself ;
So, among the strange human animals that I shall]
take you to see, you may observe the counterpart
of your own character, portrayed as in a distort-
ing glass ; and behold, in the freaks and follies of

each, the very mimicry of your own nature, with
your own destiny, if you will, aped before your
eyes.”ial Nan ac a ee ea ere ee sein aa

 

 

  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

154 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

CHAPTER XVI.
PLEASURE HUNTING.

Tur couple were not long starting on their curious
errand.

Little Ben was perhaps even more bewildered |
than he had ever been. What could his uncle
want to show him a lot of queer, strange men for?
and what could they possibly have to do with
teaching him how to spend his money ?

Still there was some novelty to be seen, and the
sight involved an excursion somewhere ; so there
was stimulus enough to make the boy anything
but an unwilling party to the expedition.

The uncle, on the other hand, was busy with
very different thoughts as the two trotted through
the streets of the town. He had so much to show
the little man, and in so short a time too, that he
was at a loss how to shape the heterogeneous mass
of curiosities into anything lke method.

First the old gentleman would turn down one
street, then stop suddenly in the middle of it,
and after gnawing at his thumb-nail, with his head
on one side like a cat at a fish-bone, dart off, quite
as suddenly, in a diametrically opposite direction.
Next he thought it would be better to begin this
way; ‘‘and yet no!”—he would say to himself, as
he halted a second time, and stared for a minute
or two intently at the paving-stones—“‘ that way
we shall have to go over the same ground twice ;”
so he decided he would take the lad first to see that
old—and yet, ‘‘ stay again !”’ said he, ‘ we ought byPLEASURE HUNTING. 155

rights to see that one last of all.” And accordingly
the route was altered once more, and little Ben
had to wheel round after his uncle for the fourth
or fifth time, and make straight away for some
other quarter of the city.

Then, as the old man kept hurrying along,
sucking the handle of his cane in his abstraction,
and indulging in a rapid succession of steps as short
and quick as a waiter’s, he was continually talking
to himself, muttering either, ‘‘ Let me see! let me
see! where does that queer old fellow live now ?”
or saying to himself, ‘‘ Didn’t somebody or other
tell me that Adam Tonks had left the cellar he
used to rent in Back Street?” or else he was
mentally inquiring in what quarter of the town it
was he had met with some other odd character
some time back?

At length, however, Uncle Benjamin had made
up his mind to introduce the boy to the curiosities
of his acquaintance just as they fell in their way,
and trust to circumstances, as they went the
rounds of the town, either to recall or present to
them such peculiarities as he wished to bring
under the observation of his little pupil.

‘¢ Now remember, Ben!” he said, in a half-whis-
per as he stood on the door-step of the first house he

ras about to visit, with the latch in his hand.
“Remember, I am not going to show you any
human monstrosities, nor any of the more extrava-
gant freaks of nature among mankind, but merely
to let you see some of the broadly-marked dit-
ferences of character in men; to show you, indeed,
in how many diverse ways human beings can spend
their money—or, what is the same thing, their time;
to point out to you what different notions of plea-
sure there are among the tribe of so-called rational
creatures, and how, though all the big babies in the
world are running after the same butterfly, theyed de ee es,

  

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156 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

pursue it like a knot of schoolboys, dodging it ina
hundred different ways, and each believing, as he
clutches at the bright-coloured little bit of life,
that he has got it safe within his grasp.”

RATIONAL ANIMAL.—No. 1.

‘Give me joy, Master Franklin!” cried a little
bald-headed man, who was busy at a table, as the
couple entered the room, unpacking the contents
of what seemed to be an enormous green sand-
wich-box, filled with grass and weeds. Indeed,
so busy was the host with the green stuff spread
before him, that he no sooner withdrew his palm
from the grasp of the uncle, than he set to work
again examining minutely the little wild flower
he held in the other hand. ‘“ Give me joy, I say |
{ have discovered the only specimen of the poten-
tila, or common silver-weed, that has yet been
found in the New World. There it is, sir; and
the old man held it tenderly between his finger
and thumb, as he eyed it with increased pride;
‘and a /—i—lovely specimen it is, I can assure
you. Now you wouldn’t believe it, perhaps, but
I wouldn’t take a thousand guineas for that—
mere weed as itis. Only think of that, my little
chap —a thousand guineas ;” and he laid his hand
upon young Benjamin’s head as he spoke. ‘A
good deal of money that, isn’t it, my little man ?
But Pve been hunting after that same weed for
years—many years, my dear boy—and travelled, I
dare say, thousands of miles in search of it. I knew
it must exist in North America somewhere; and
I was deetermined to go down to posterity as the
discoverer of it,” and the little ferrety man beat
the air with his fist as he said the words. “So
you see what patience and perseverance will do,
my good lad.PLEASURE HUNTING, 137

“What are you going to be, eh?” he inquired.
‘‘ Ha! they should make a botanist of a fine little
fellow like you, with a head like yours. No
pursuit like that in the world; the greatest plea-
sure in life; hunting after the wild flowers and
plants; always out in the open air, either up on
the hills or down in the valleys, or wandering by
the brook-side, or along the beautiful lanes, or
else buried in the woods. You’d have to go fine
long walks into the country then, my little man;
but you like walking, I suppose. Bless you, I’m
out for weeks at a time, and think myself well
repaid for all my trouble if I can only bring
home a rare specimen or two. Look here, little
what’s-your-name,” he went on, talking so fast
to the boy that the words came tumbling one
over the other out of his mouth; ‘here is a little
bit of my handiwork.” And the botanist slid from
the top of an old bureau near him a large folio
volume, consisting of sheets of cartridge paper
bound together, and then spreading it open at
one side of the table, he showed the lad that
there was a dried and flattened plant stuck upon
every page. ‘‘ here,” he cried, exultingly, with
such an emphasis upon the word that it sounded
like a deep sigh, “look at that, my man! but it
hasn’t a twentieth part of the plants I’ve collected
in my time; though where’s the wonder? I’ve
been at it all my life; ever since I was a boy of
your age, and walked thousands and thousands of
miles; ay, and spent hundreds upon hundreds of
guineas to complete my collection. There, my
fine fellow, that’s the Campanula sylvestris,” he con-
tinued, chattering as he turned over the pages be-
fore the boy; ‘that’s the Crambe maritima, or
common sea-colewort, and a very fine specimen
too.” And so he kept gabbling on until Uncle
Benjamin thanked the old gentleman for his kind-Fe ne
Sram. fe Beee

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pete ee

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158 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

ness to the lad, and said they would not intrude
on his time any longer.

RATIONAL ANIMAT.—NO. 2.

«© What, Adam!'! in the old state, eh ?”’ cried Uncle
Benjamin, as he and his nephew descended the
steps of a dark cellar im one of the back streets
of Boston, and found a man there asleep as he sat,
with his unkempt head resting on his elbow, at
the edge of a small deal table, and with a piece of
salt fish lying, untouched, on a broken plate by
his side.

The uncle had to shake the sleeper violently
to rouse him; whereupon the man stared, with his
bloodshot eyes, vacantly at his visitor for a time ;
and then with a scowl flung his head back upon
his arm, as he growled out, “ Well, and if 1 am
in the same state, what’s that to you? You don’t
pay for the jacky, do you? Besides, you like
what I hate—psalm-singing ; and I lke what you
hate—a drop of good stuff—like they sell at ‘ The
Pear-Tree’ round the corner. Dum vivimus vivanius
is my motto, and you don’t know what that
means, Master Franklin, fora pot now. Come, I
say, mate, are you game to stand a quartern for
a fellow this morning—yuck ?’ and as the man
said the words he raised his head again ; and then
little Benjamin (for the boy’s eyes had got used
to the dusk of the place by this time) could see
that the drunkard’s clothes hung in tatters all
about him; while his dark, unshaven beard con-
trasted with his blanched face, as strongly as the
black muzzle of a bull-dog.

‘Task your pardon, Master Franklin, for mak-
ing so free,” the sot added, in a wheedling tone ;
‘but, ycu see, L had a little drop too much last
night,” the man went on, ‘‘and I sha’n’t be quitePLEASURE HUNTING. 159

right till I get just a thimbleful or so of the neat
article inside of me.”

‘“V’d as lef pay for a quartern of poison for
you, Adam,” said Uncle Benjamin, mournfully.

‘‘You would, would you!” roared the other,
springing up like a wild beast from his lair, and
clutching the broken back of the chair on which
he had been sitting; and he was preparing to
strike his visitor down with it, but he staggered
back lumpishly against the wall.

‘The boy flew to his uncle’s side, and whispered,

Oh, come away, pray do, uncle! I have seen
enough here .”

‘The uncle, however, swept past the youth, and
going towards the dram-drinker, said kindly,
‘* Adam! Adam! think of the man you once were.”’

The drunkard’s head dropped upon his bosom,
and the next minute he fell to whining and weep-
ing like a child. Presently he hiccuped out
through his sobs, “I do think of it,—yuck !+—
and then J want drink to drown tke cursed
thoughts. Come now, old friend,” and he vainly
tried to lay his hand on Uncle Benjamin’s
shoulder, ‘‘ send the youngster there, for just a
nogein—only one now—from ‘The Pear-'T'ree,’
and then I shall be all right again.”

The friend shook his head as he replied,
“You won’t, Adam; you'll be all wrong again—as
wrong as ever, man. Isn’t it this drink that has

vervared you, and despoiled you of your fortune,

and of every friend, too—but myself? and yet
you are so mad for it still, that you crave for
more.”

‘“{ do! I do thirst for it; my tongue’s like a
bit of red-hot iron in my mouth now with the
parching heat that’s on me. I tell you it’s the
only thing that can put an end to care, and (sing-
ing) drown it in the bo-wo-wole.Sal et ee ae

a

ee Ne

NE a at OE he elt at aa a et

Sa he nineteen ie arte att ae Te

 

ll Codi eel ee eat ee ee ne oe

 

ae OL ee

 

 

 

 

 

  

160 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

“ Chorus—We'll drown it—yuck !—in the bo-
wo-wole. Ha! you should have seen Adam
lasht night. Blessh you, I was as jolly as a shand-
boy—the light of the whole tap room. i
tipped ’em some of my best songs—vain songs as
you call ’em; and you know I always could sing a
good song if I liked, Master Franklin. Come,
Vl give you a stave now if you'll only send—
yuck !—for that little drop ofjacky. The young-
ster here, I dare say, would like to hear me
wouldn’t you, my dear?’ (but as there was no
answer, he added, ) ‘‘ What! you won’t send for the
gin? Well then, leave it alone—you stingy old
psalm-singing humbug: I wouldn’t be beholden
to you for it now, if you were to press it on me.
But never mind! never mind! never mind! May
—may—what the deuce is that shentiment ?” (and
he rubbed his hair round and round till it was
like a mop;) ‘tut! tut! and it’s such a favourite
shentiment of mine too after a song. Well, all 1
know is, it’s something about, may something
or other —-yuck !—never shorten friendship. But
never mind! never mind! Lawyer Muspratt is
going to sell that little reversion I’m entitled to
‘on my maiden aunt’s death; it’s the only thing
I’ve got left now—but never mind! never mind!
and then won’t Adam Tonks and the boys at ‘ The
Pear-Tree’ havea night of it! Yes, ‘dum vivimus
vivamus’ is my motto,—yuck—if I die for it.”

The man was silent for a minute or two, and
then he said, as if waking up from a dream,

‘‘T wonder who ever it was saw me down the
cellar steps last night. But never mind! never
mind! who’s afraid ?—not Adam Tonks, not he.
Come, friend Franklin—for you have been a right
good friend to me often, that you have, old cock—
if you won’t send for that drop of jacky out of your
own pocket, will you lend me half a dollar to getPLEASURE HUNTING. 161

it myself—yuck? T’ll give it you back again when
the reversion’s shold. Oh, honour bright !—yuck!
—honour bright, friend !”

“Ifit was for food, Adam, you should have it,
and welcome,” was the plain answer.

“Food be cursed !” shouted the madman, again
1oused to a fury ; “there’s that bit of stinking salt
fish Pve had for the last week as a relish, just to
pick a bit; there you can carry it home with you
you can, you methodistical old hunks: take it
with you;” and with a violent effort, the man
flung the piece of dried haddock towards Uncle
Benjamin; but so wide of the mark, and with
such a sweep of the arm, that it struck the wall
against which the drunkard himself kept swaying,

Whereupon the godfather, in obedience to the
boy’s repeated entreaty, took his aeparture.

{ATIONAL ANIMAL.—NO, 3.

The couple were soon in one of the most
fashionable streets of the town; and in another
minute little Ben stood in the middle of a grand
saloon, wheeling round and round as he gazed
with uplifted eyes, first at the huge mirrors, reach
ing from the ceiling to the floor, then at the
pictures that covered the other parts of the walls,
and then taken with the marble busts and ficures
that were ranged in different corners of the room.
‘* ‘The chairs are all gold and satin, I declare: and
the tables and cabinets of different-coloured
woods, worked into the most beautiful patterns ;
and the chandeliers too just like clusters of jewels,”
thought the astonished lad to himself.

‘“Who are we going to see here, uncle?” he
said, in a whisper to the old man, as he twitched
his uncle timidly by the skirt.

Presently the door of an anteroom was flung
MCe a al td ll el alan a

 

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ta oa ee er
Se ee ee

ee eee

tee nn a hee

 

162 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

open, and a voice drawled out, ‘‘ Kem in, Franklin,

kem in; I don’t mind you. TPve only got my

knight of the goose and kebbage here ; and you

would hardly believe the trouble 1 have with

these varlets: half my time is taken up with them,

I give you my wad, Franklin; and that merely to

prevent them turning Me out aw aw—pertfect

skeyarecrow. A man of your fine kimmon sense

knows as well as anybody, Franklin, that appear-

ance igs everything to a man who—aw—aw, the
wald is keyind enough to regeyard as aw—aw—
an arbiter elegeyantiarum, I believe I may say,

Franklin, eh? for, thank the powers, the coarsest-
minded inimy I have in the wald couldn't say that
Tam Skeffington isn’t, and always has been, the
best drest man in all Boston. I know well enough,
Franklin, that with persons of your persuasion (by-
the-by, can I offer you a kip .of chocolate, or a
gless of tokay ? oh, don’t say No), with persons of
your persuasion dress is utterly ignored—ut-ttarly.
But, deah me! witha man in my station—looked
up to as I said befar, as being something like aw—
aw—an arbiter elegeyantiarum in matters of the
tilette—only think now, the kimmotion there'd be
among the superiah clesses of this city, if ‘Tam
Skeffington was to make his appearance in the
streets—you ll pardon me, friend Franklin, I
know you will—in a coat like your own for ex-
emple!’ and the arbiter elegantiarum ‘was so
tickled with the:mere straw of the joke, that he
dabbed the patches on his face with a handker-
chief, that was like a handful of foam, as he
tittered behind it as softly as summer waves
ripple over the sands.

Presently he gasped out, between the intervals
of his simpering, “‘ By-the-by, now, Franklin, do
permit me, there’s a good fellow, just to behold

myself for one minute in that duffle dressing-gownPLEASURE HUNTING. 163 Ht
you've kem out in to-day, and to see how you'd WF |
look in this new plum-coloured piece of magnifi- Hae
cence of mine. I’m sure you'll obleege me,
Franklin, for I give you my wad the double sight

would throw me into an ecstasy of reptchah.”
The motive of Uncle Benjamin for bringing his | , od
godson to the house was too strong to make him Wi 4 |
object to an exchange of costume that, under any ee
other circumstances, he would assuredly have Wee, a
refused ; so, to the intense delight of the fine hi
gentleman, and even the attendant tailor, the old Laila |
}

 

Puritan proceeded to disrobe himself of his own
coat of humble gray, and to encase his body in the ree
gaudy velvet apparel of the beau. Hi | ia

And when the temporary exchange of garments Hi .
had been duly effected, and the elegant Mr. Tam ki he
Skeffington beheld himself in the cheval glass Ni \ Be
attired in the quaint garb of the Puritan, and i
old Benjamin Franklin tricked out in the florid Hh
costume of the exquisite, the sight was more than ‘|
the delicate nerves of the dandy could bear; for :
he had to retire to the sofa, and bury his head for
a while in the squab, or he assuredly would have 4
laughed outright. Whe

The tailor, however, who believed he had never il ;
seen anything half so comic in the whole of his Ri
life, chuckled as loud and heartily as a child at
a pantomime; nor could he stop himself till his
more refined customer had demanded ‘‘ how he
dairh’d to laff in his presence;” and even then,
poor man! each time he happened to turn round
and get another peep at the Puritan in the plum-
coloured suit, the laughter would burst out at the
corners of his mouth, with the same noise as the
froth gushing from beneath the cork of an over-
excited bottle of ginger-beer.

Neither could little Benjamin himself refrain
from joining in the mirth at first, though in a
M 2

i BBR ELINA tat
———=petal Dec elie te pele et ee mae

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164 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

little while the smiles of the lad subsided into
frowns, as the sense that his uncle was ‘ being
made fun of” came across his mind.

In afew minutes the arbiter elegantiarum was
sufficiently himself to rise from the sofa. ‘“ I give
my wad, Franklin,” he said as he twisted the old
gentleman round by the shoulders, ‘‘ you’d punish
a few of the geyirls at a dannsc at the State House
in a coat lke that—you would, even at your
time of life, l give you my wad (Do you snuff,
Franklin —it’s the finest Irish bleggeyard, I assure
you); and I mean to play the same havoc with
the poor things, I can tell you,” he went on as the
tailor helped them one after the other to ex-
change coats once more; ‘for if they can with-
stand ‘l'am Skeffington in that plum-coloured piece
of magnificence, why then they’ve hearts as im-
penetrable as sandbags; and heaven knows I
don’t find that the case with the deah creachyos
generally: for I’m sure they’re good and keyind
to me, Master Franklin, they are indeed, I give
you my wad; though they know, I believe, my
greatest pleasure is to afford them one moment’s
happiness, and there isn’t a lovely woman in the
wald that Tam Skeffington is not ready to lay down
his life for—his life, Franklin. I’m sure only last
year it cost me a fortune in trinkets and essences
and bouquets for the sweet creachyos. But then
you know, Franklin, a man in my position—a man
who is allowed to be—by both sexes I believe I
may say—a person of some little taste, and, thank
the powers, of some little refinement too—a man
lke myself, I say, keyan’t spend his money on ter-
rumpery ; that, you see, 1s the penalty one has to
pay for being an aw—aw—arbiter elegeyantiarum, as
Isaid befar. And yet, after all, surely sucha title is
the proudest that can be bestowed upon a gentle-
man; surely it’s something to have lived for,PLEASURE HUNTING. 165

Franklin, eh? to have gained that much—to be
the admired of all admirers, as Hamlet has it.
For who would not rather be the potentate of
fashion and haut ton—the supreme authority in all
matters of good taste and elegance—the dictatah
of superiah mannahs and etiquette—than even be
like this same famous Petah the Great that every-
body is talking about now—the monarch of a
million savages? But perhaps your. little boy
here,” he added, with the faintest indication of a
bow to young Benjamin, “would like to see the
pictyahs and statues, and objects of vertu and
knick-knacks in the next room.”

And then, as the arbiter elegantiarum opened
the door for them, he continued, ‘‘ You’ll find, I
believe, some rather ch’ice works of art among
them—at least the wald tells me so—and heaven
knows I’ve nearly ruined myself in forming the
kellection.”

Then, still holding the door for the couple to
pass through, he bowed profoundly as they made
their exit, the dandy saying the while, “ Your
obeejent humble servant, Master Franklin, your
humble servant to kemmand.”

RATIONAL ANIMAL.—-No,. 4.

‘“ Who’s there ? who’s there, I say ?” shouted an
old man.

‘* Who-o o-s there? who-o-og there, I say ?” was
screamed out, in the shrill treble of senility and
fright, from behind the garret-door at which Uncle
Benjamin and his little companion were presently
knocking.

‘“Come Jerry! Jerry! we’re no robbers, man
alive ; it’s Benjamin Franklin, of the Hanover
Street Conventicle, come to see you!” shouted theet all ae ae te ee ea eee ek =

 

 

 

 

 

166 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

uncle through the chink of the door, as he rattled
impatiently at the latch.

‘There was a sound of jingling metal and a
hurried shuffling within the room, accompanied
with a cry of “1’ll open the door directly, friend
Franklin—I’ll open it directly,” said the speaker,
with a sniggle of affected delight.

‘¢ The old fellow’s scrambling together his money
to hide it before we go in,” whispered the god-
father in the ear of the lad.

In aminute or two they could hear the gaffer
gasping away as he endeavoured to remove the
heavy bar from behind the door, and saying the
while, in the same forced giggling tone as before,
‘Dear heart! dear heart! I quite forgot the door
was barred to be sure.”

Once within the room, little Ben found the
miser’s garret even more squalid and poverty-
stricken than the drunkard’s cellar. The broken
window-panes were stuffed with bundles of dirty
rags, and the principal light, that entered the little
dog-hole of a home, dribbled in through the cold
blue gaps in the roof. The plaster had fallen in
large patches from the walls, and left huge
ulcerous-looking blotches there ; while the flooring
in places was green and brown as rusty copper
from the soddening of long-continued leakage
through the tiles.

In one corner of the apartment there was a
hillock of mouldy crusts, spotted with white hairy
tufts of mildew ; in another, a litter of half-putrid
bones, mingled with pieces of old ochre-stained 1ron
and nails; and along one side of the room was ranged
the mere skeleton of a bedstead, covered with a
sack stuffed with straw by way of mattress, and
one solitary blanket that was as thin, and almost
as black, as coffin-cloth. The only chair was like

an old bass fish-basket in its rushy rage¢edness ;
ed coc 4PLEASURE HUNTING. 167

and a huge sea-chest stood in the middle of the
room, to do duty for a table; while the whole place
reeked with the same damp, musty, fungusy odour
as a ruin.

The old miser himself was as spare and trem-
ulous as a mendicant Lascar, and he had the same
wretched, craven, crouching, grinning, nipped-up
air with him too, His black and restless little
eyes, with their shaggy, overhanging brows, gave
him the sharp irritable expression of a terrier, and
there was a continual nervousness in his manner,
like one haunted by a spectre. He wore a long
duffle coat that had once been gray, but was now
almost as motley as a patchwork counterpane,
from the many-coloured pieces with which it had
been mended ; and on either cuff of this there was
stuck row after row of pins—that he picked up in
his rounds—as close as the wires to a sieve.

As the uncle and nephew entered the apartment,
the miser retreated hurriedly from the doorway ;
and then scrambling towards the bedstead, seated
himself on the edge of it, with his arms stretched
out, so as to prevent either of his visitors coming
there.

‘‘ Well, you see, Master Jerry, I’ve brought a
fagot of firewood with me this time,” said the
elder Benjamin, as he telegraphed to his nephew
to deposit the bundle of sticks he had been carry-
ing down by the fireplace. ‘I’m not going to sit
shivering again in your draughty room, with the
roof and the windows all leaking rheumatisms,
catarrhs, and agues, as they do, without a handful
of fire in the grate, I can tell you.” And so say-
ing, he proceeded at once to turn up the collar of
his coat, and to pantomime to his nephew to undo
the fagot, and get a fire lighted as quickly as
possible.

The little fellow, however, was too much taken

 

   
 
 
  
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 

 

Bin raven inti aa Die Say peace eo = Ley. eeerIvet168 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

up with the strangeness of the place, and the
quaint figure and odd ways of the queer old
man seated on the bedstead before him, to make
much haste about the matter; so as he knelt
down to do his uncle’s bidding, he kept fumbling
at the withy band round the fagot, with his eyes
now riveted upon the miser, and now fastened
on the mounds of refuse stored in the different
corners of the wretched-looking chamber.

‘* How you can manage to live in such a place
as this, Jerry, is more than I can make out,” con-
tinued Uncle Benjamin.

‘Well, you know, Master Franklin,” responded
the old hunks, in a whining tone, and grinning
sycophantically as he spoke, ‘‘ rents are uncommon
dear, and I can’t afford to pay any more than I
do here. A quarter of a dollar a week for a mere
place to put one’s old head in is a great deal of
money, ain’t it now P”

“Can't afford, man alive! why, you could afford
to rent a mansion if you pleased,” was the scorn-
ful reply.

‘How you do talk, friend Franklin, to be sure!
You always seem to think I’m made of money,
that you do,” returned the miser, with a faint
chuckle, as he pretended to treat the notion of his
wealth as a mere joke. ‘Hah! if I'd only listened
to such as you, | should have been in the poor-
house long before this—he! he! he!” he added,
with another titter.

‘‘And if you had been, Jerry, you would have
been both better housed and fed there than you
are here,” the elder Benjamin made answer.

‘““Ye-e-es! I dare say lshould; a great deal, and
for nothing too,” grinned the old man, as he
gloated for a moment over the idea of the gratui-
tous board and lodging; the next minute, how-
ever, he added, with a sorrowful shake of thePLEASURE HUNTING. 169

head, ‘‘ but they wouldn’t admit me into the poor
house, you see, because they know I’ve always
had the fear of dying of hunger in my old age
before my eyes, and managed to save up just a
dollar or two against it. No! no! it is only the
prodigals and the unthrifts they’ll consent to
keep there for nothing; and a pretty lesson that
is to preach to the world, ain’t it now, Master
Franklin ¢”

‘Well, but Jerry, Jerry,” expostulated Uncle
Benjamin, anxious to bring the miser to some-
thing like common sense; “what on earth is the
use of your having saved up this dollar or two, as
you call it, against that eternal bugbear of yours
—‘dying of hunger in your old age,’ if you con-
tinue to starve yourself, as you are doing now, day
after day ?”

“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Master Jerry in re-
turn, and with as little unction in the laughter as
though he had been a hyena rather than a man;
“and you'd have me spend all my hard-earned
savings in eating and drinking, I suppose. Ha!
ha! and a deal the better I should be for that,
when my money was all gone, and I left without
a penny inmy old age! No, no! friend Frank-
ln; so long as I’ve got a dollar or two by me, I
know no harm can come to me;” and the gaffer
chafed his weazened hands together, as he chuckled
over his fancied security.

“Madman!” muttered the elder Benjamin,
aside; “and yet you suffer, continually in the
present, the very harm you dread in the future.”

‘Do you know, friend Franklin,” the miser
went on, ‘ what is the only delight I have left in
the world now (I don’t mind telling you as
much, for you won’t let any one know I’ve got
a few dollars by me here, will you)? why it’s to
sit and look at the few pieces I’ve managed tolien et De oie er lines ot peed aaaatieiate ee amt ee exe

 

ee ee

 

 

 

170 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

save—though they are but a very few, I give you
my word—for it’s only when I’ve got them
spread out before my eyes, and keep biting ’em
one after another between my old teeth, to con-
vince myself that there ain’t a bad coin among
‘em, that I feel in any way sure that I sha’n’t die
a beggar after all. Ye-e-es, friend Franklin, that’s
the only happiness I have in life, now; but you
won't tellanybody that I let you know I'd got a few
dollars by me here, will you now?” the miser added,
abruptly, in a carneying tone, as a misgiving stole
over him concerning the imprudence of the con-
fession he had made. ‘Oh, ye-e-es, friend
Franklin, ’m sure I can trust to you, and”—
said he, with a cunning whisper, as he pointed
towards little Ben—“ and the boy yonder, too, eh
—eh?”

Lhe latter part of the speech drew Uncle Benja-
min’s attention once more to his nephew, and the
progress he was making with the fire; so he
called out, as a cold shudder crept over his frame,
“Come, I say, Master Ben! look alive and get the
logs lighted” (for the boy had been attending
more to the conversation than the grate); ‘“ I
declare there’s a draught here almost as strong as
the blast to a furnace ;” and, so saying, he set to
work stamping his feet and chafing his palms,
to stir the blood in them, ‘Then drawing his
handkerchief from his pocket he proceeded to
tie it over his ears.

he quick eye of the miser noticed something
fall upon the floor, as his visitor pulled his ker-
chief from the hind part of his coat; so springing
from the bedstead, he began groping on the ground
for the article the other had dropped.

‘Oh! it’s only a piece of string, after all!” the
old fellow cried, as he rose up on his feet again,
with a violent effort. ‘But perhaps it’s of no usePLEASURE HUNTING. Lie

to you, friend Franklin,” he added, with a trne
beggar’s air; ‘‘andifso, Pll just take care of it
mys yself, for I can’t bear to see anything wasted :

besides s, it will come in handy for something some
day.” Whereupon, without waiting tor the other

to tell him he was welcome to the twine, the old
niggard proceeded to wind it into a ficure of 8
on : his finger and thumb, and ultimately to thrust
it into the wallet-like pocket of his coat.

As the miser sat at the edge a the bed, thus
engaged for a while, he said, after 1 shght pause,
‘You haven’t run across that tod my Mary, of
late—have you, friend Franklin ?—the heartless
hussey, curse her !” hag as he spat out the last
words from between his teeth, there was a savage
fury in the tone which it made young Benjamin
almost shudder to hear.

“Come, I say! I say! remember, the girl is
your own flesh and blood, man,” cried the elder
Benjamin, reprovingly.

“[T do; and therefore I say again, curse her !—

curse tive jade for ever and ever!” and the bitter-
hearted old eray-beard ground out his anathemas
with a double vindictiv eness. ‘‘Didn’t she go

away with that fellow she’s married to, and leave
her old father here alone, and almost helpless,
without a soul in the world to attend upon him,
or do a thing for him in his eleventh hour—no,
not unless they're well paid for it, they won Me
the mercenary wretches! I told her to choose
between me and the beggar she took up w ith, and
she preferred the beggar tO her old father; so she
may starve and rot with the beggar for what J
care, for not'so much as ap Stiver of mine does
she or hers ever touch! No,” he added, with all
the intensity of a miser’s Tek and uncharitable-
ness, “not if I have my money soldered down in
my coffin, and take it into my grave with me,ee Se enka ga geet

aa

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2 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

said he, as he ground his fangs and clenched his
bony fists.

This was more than Uncle Benjamin could
bear; so, starting from his seat, he turned sharply
round upon the old hunks, as he cried in the fury
of his indignation, “ Your grave, man! Do yon
think you can take your beastly gold and silver
to hell with you?” adding, half aside, ‘for they
won't have it in heaven, I can tell you.”

‘“Well, well, I dare say not,” answered the
miser, as he shook his head backwards and for-
wards, and half cried over the ugliness of the
reproof; ‘though what’s to become of it all, and
who’s to get it and squander it, after the trouble
Vve had to save it, costs me many an anxious
thought; so sometimes I think that it will be
better in the end, perhaps, to have it buried along
with me, and so have done with it altogether.
Still, come what may, Mary shall never finger so
much as a copper-piece of mine, I’ll take care.”

There was a pause in the conversation for a
minute or two, and then Jerry said, in a widely
different tone, ‘‘ You wouldn’t believe it, friend
Franklin, but the other day the minx sent mea
jug of soup. She thinks to get round me in
that way, the artful bit of goods; but she'll find
herself sorely mistaken, he! he! he! I knew
she sent it,’ he went on, “because the cloth it
was tied up in was marked with her married
name. When I found out who it had come from.
do you know I was going to chuck it out of
window; but then, you see, I can’t bear anything
to be wasted; so I put it in my cupboard there,
and there it'll bide, friend Franklin, till ’m dead
and gone, I can tell you.”

By this time young Benjamin had laid the logs
in the grate; and having taken from his pocket
the tinder-box and matches with which his god-PLEASURE HUNTING. Lis

father had provided him (for Uncle Benjamin
knew well enough it would be idle to look for
such things in the miser’s room), he was begin-
ning to chip away with the flint and steel, as he
knelt in front of the grate.

No sooner, however, did the sound of the re-
peated clicking smite the miser’s ear, than he
darted from the bedstead, as if some sudden terror
had seized upon his soul; and, rushing towards the
lad, laid hold of him by the collar, and nearly
throttled the boy, just as he was in the act of
blowing—with his cheeks puffed out as round as
a football—at a stray spark that had fallen on
the tinder.

“What are you going to do? what are you
eoing to do, boy?” the old miser shrieked, while
he trembled from head to foot, as if palsy-stricken.
‘““You can’t light a fire there; you'll set the
chimney in a blaze.”

“Haugh! haugh! haugh!” roared Uncle Ben-
jamin, derisively. ‘Set your chimney in a blaze,
Jerry! Why it has never had a fire in it since
I’ve known you. There, go along with you, man;
there’s no fear of your having to pay for the en-
gines: the flue’s as free of soot as a master-sweep
on a Sunday, I’ll swear. Besides, I’m frozen,
Jerry : chilled to the very marrow, and must have
just a handful of hot embers in the grate to warm
me—at least, that is if I’m to sit here any longer,
and tell you anything about your Mary; for while
you were raving and cursing just now, I hadn't
an opportunity of edging in a word about the
girl, remember.”

‘¢Well, I dare say! I dare say!’ whined out
the old miser, divided between the fear of fire and
his curiosity as to the “ circumstances ” of his run-
away daughter. ‘‘ But you'll promise not to make
much of a flame, won’t you now, good lad? — Be-il a i i al eet le

 

 

 

1lt4 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

sides,” he added, “I can’t bear to see wood burnt
extravagantly; and you don’t know how close
and hot this room does become with even the least
bit of fire.”

‘“No! nor do you know much about that either,
Jerry, Pm thinking,” giggled Uncle Benjamin.
“There, go back to your seat, man, and listen
quietly to what I’ve got to say about your child.
Come, you shall have all the wood that’s left:
and, bless me! we sha’n’t burn a penn’orth of
it altogether.” |

Lhe niggard suffered himself to be led back to
the bedstead by his visitor; while young Ben,
who had now lighted the smaller twigs, remained
kneeling in front of the stove, blowing away at
the burning branches, in order to kindle the mass.

‘Well, you know, Jerry,” proceeded the uncle,
“T saw your Mary at the Conventicle last sabbath
morning ?”

“Did you! did you!” cried the old fellow;
“and what did she say? Is she sorry for her dis-
obedience? Does the jade repent, and want to
come back again to me—eh—eh ?”

There was no time for Uncle Benjamin to answer
the questions; for a loud cry from the boy at the
fire made the pair of them start to their feet in an
instant.

he dry twigs, with which the grate had been
nearly filled, had—with young Ben’s continued
pufiing—become ignited all at once: and ag the
long tongue of flame licked into the narrow mouth
of the flue, the little fellow looked up the chimney,
and fancied he could see something a-light there ;
so the next minute he cried aloud, “ The chimney’s
a-fire, ’m sure! I can see something burning in
Bali”

“Something burning in the chimney !—what!
—what!” roared the distracted miser, as he torePLEASURE HUNTING. 175

his gray locks, and gesticulated as wildly as a
maniac.

I'he boy, who was still on his knees, with his
head twisted on one side, as he watched the smoul-
dering mass up the flue, seized one of the largest
logs that he had placed against the wall, and
thrust it far up the chimney, so as to rake down
the ignited mass.

‘“What would you do, boy? what would you
do? it’s my bag—my bag of money that’s burn-
ing there, I tell you!” and no sooner had the
miser roared out the words, than a golden shower
of guineas poured down the mouth of the chim-
ney, and fell in a heap into the very midst of the
blazing logs and embers.

The miser was fairly crazed, as he saw his trea-
sure descend, in a cataract as it were, into the
very heart of the fire; and, in the frenzy of the
moment, he thrust his bony hands into the midst
of the burning wood, and dragged the heated
coins, handful by handful, from out the flames ;
till, writhing with the agony of his burnt palms,
he was forced to fling the pieces down on the
floor: and there they rolled about, some falling
between the chinks of the planks, and others
strewing the boards so thickly that the wretched,
squalid little garret seemed at last to be paved
with gold.

Then the old hunks fell upon his knees, and
scrambled after the coins, crying like a child the
while; but presently, roused by a sudden fury,
he sprang wildly to his feet again, and seizing one
of the flaring brands he had just thrown under the
grate, screamed as he whirled it madly in the air,
“Begone, robbers! thieves! begone with you!
It was Mary that sent you here to do this; she
told you where my money was hid. Curses on
you all! begone, begone, I say !”

 

 

 

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oe

 

 

 

 

 

 

176 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

Jt was no time to parley with the frantic man ,
so Uncle Benjamin pushed his nephew out of the
miser’s reach, and then, as he thrust the boy into
the passage, closed the door before the maniac
had time to harm either little Ben or himself.

And as the couple descended the creaking stairs,
they could hear the old niggard in his frenzy,
raving and sobbing, while he barred and bolted
his garret door; and then counting the pieces,
as he collected the remains of his treasure, crying,
‘One, two! curse the girl! three, four, five! curse
her and hers, for ever and ever!”’

LATIONAL ANIMAL.—WNO. 5.

‘What is money to me, my friend ?” exclaimed
the inmate of the next garret they visited, after
Uncle Benjamin had narrated, to the young man
they found alone with his books there, the scene
that had just occurred at the lodgings of old Jerry
the miser.

“T care not to hive any of this human honey,
Master Franklin; for it is honey that the golden-
bellied wasps of the world distil only from weeds
and tares. The sweet yellow stuff may be tooth-
some to man in his second childhood; but to
me there is a sickliness about it that clogs and
deadens the finer tastes, and natural cravings of
mankind.”

Young Ben gazed in all the muteness of deep
wonder at the speaker. Everything around him:
the dingy and cheerless attic—the cold, empty
grate—the scanty bedding—the spare and crazy
furniture—the lean cupboard, with its solitary
milk-can and crust of bread—all told the boy,
even inexpert as he was at deciphering the sundry
little conventional signs as to a person’s “ cireum-
stances” in life, that the poor garreteer had noPLEASURE HUNTING. Ith

more of the world’s comforts to console him thaa
either the drunkard or the miser.

And yet the poverty seemed to invest the man
with all the moral dignity of a hermit; whereas
it had appeared to steep the others in all the
squalor of habitual mendicancy. How different,
too, was he in look and tone from either of those
they had previously visited! There was a gentle-
ness and a music in his voice, as if his very heart-
strings vibrated as he spake; and a high-natured
expression in his features, that lighted up his
blanched countenance, like sunshine upon snow.
His forehead was fair, and round as an ivory
dome ; and his full lhquid eyes were intensely
blue, and deep, as the sea far away from land;
while, as he talked of the world’s vanities and
glories, there was the same passionate play of
nostril, and the same proud working of the neck,
as marks a blood-horse’s sense of his own power,
when pawing the ground at his feet.

“But the long-eared Midases of the world,
Master Franklin,” the poet continued, “ they who
rejoice in the power of transmuting all they touch
into gold—must be ever deaf to the grand harmo-
nies of life and nature ; ay, and blind as corpses,
too—having their eyes for ever closed with pieces
of money—to the beauty which floods the earth
with light, colour, and glory ; as though it were
the very halo of the Godhead shining over crea-
tion. Such as these affect to speak with pity of
the poor poet; but, prithee, friend, who so poor
in heart and soul as Dives himself ?—as Dives,
who cannot taste a crumb of the ideal feast that is
spread even for the mendicant Lazarus P—Dives,
in whose leathern ear the seashell sings not of
the mighty mysteries of the ocean-deep, and to
whom the Jittle lark never warbles of the crimson
grandeur of the sky, the air, and earth, at oreak
Neel hel ell eid nes dae he ae ein ee ae etal aa eee ee

 

  

172 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

of day ?—Dives, in whose dull eyes the wild
flowers show no grace, nor the tiny insects the
least touch of art?—Dives, the veriest pauper,
amidst the richest of all riches—he of the stone
heart and leaden brain? Was Andrew Marvel
poor, think you, when the libertine Charles sought
to bribe him into silence? Not he; for he was
richer than the king in honour and dignity—rich
enough to be able to spurn the royal bribe, even
though he was so poor in pocket as to be forced
to borrow the means for a dinner the moment
after.”

Little Ben had never heard such utterances be-
fore ; and as he sat there, still staring intently at
the speaker, he was marvelling which was right—
his uncle, who taught him that he must either
save or be a slave; or this young man, whose very
dignity and independence of spirit seemed to
spring from his contempt for mere worldly wealth.

The elder Benjamin could almost guess what
was passing in his nephew’s mind; nevertheless,
it was neither the time nor the place to clear up
the difficulty; so he remained as silent as the lad
himself, and. merely nodded his approbation as
the poet continued.

‘* Nor would I have the world’s wealth, friend,
at the world’s price,” the young man ran on,
“What if the stomach will sometimes crave for
food, at least I have an ethereal banquet here in my
little stock of books ”»—pointing to the few shelves
slung against the wall—‘ a banquet that the gods
themselves might revel in ; ay, and a banquet, too,
that the pampered belly has seldom any zest for.
These are the men, Master Franklin,” he cried,
his eyes glowing with the fervour of his soul, as
he turned to his favourite authors, ‘“‘ who are the
blessed comforters of the poor, if the poor but
knew them, as poor I do; these the worthies thatPLEASURE HUNTING. 179

care not how humble the dwelling they enter;
these the true hearts that have a good and kind
word to whisper in every ear. As Francis Bacon
says, they are the ‘interpreters’ between God and
us—the ‘interpreters’ of that subtle myth which
makes the soul of man a mere grub here and a
butterfly hereafter; the great translators of the
mighty poem of creation—each rendering, as did
the Septuagint of old, some special canticle, or
glorious passage in the Book, and each catching
the sense and spirit of the great Original, as if by
inspiration. Can a man be poor, friend,” he
asked proudly, “when he can find any amount of
treasure in these volumes, merely by digging a
little beneath the surface for it? Have I no
jewels, when in this casket there are gems, brighter
and more precious than ever adorned a monarch’s
brow? Have I no possessions, when such an in-
heritance as this has been bequeathed to me ?—no
grounds, when I have these interminable gardens
and academic groves about me to wander in as I list
—gardens that are planted with exquisite taste,
and filled with all the flowers of the Elysian fields
of immortality—flowers that bloom for ever in the
bosom after they are plucked, and whose perfume
blends with the soul, till the mind itself becomes
sweetened with their grace ?”

The boy was entranced as he listened. He had
never before heard words uttered with such ardour:
they came ringing in his ear, and stirred his soul
like a trumpet. ‘The only zeal he had ever seen
displayed as yet had been among the fanatics
of the conventicle to which his father belonged ;
but here was a man speaking with all the fervour
of the most devout religion upon the grandeur
and glory of mere poetry; a man loving poverty
with all the enthusiasm of an ascetic—not from
any superstitious delight in the daily martyrdom
N 2

 

 

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180 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

of the flesh, but because his taste found more re-
fined joy in the sublimities of nature and thought,
than in the sickly sweetmeats of the world; a
man worshipping the divine element of beauty
and truth in all things, and loathing the world’s
vanities and sensualities as the great uglinesses of
life. It was impossible not to have faith in him.
His creed was manifestly not a mere affected sen-
timent, but an all-absorbing passion—a passion
that flashed like lightning in his eyes, and stirred
his limbs like branches tossed by a hurricane.

‘«‘ How different,” presently he continued, talk-
ing half to himself till he became fired again with
his subject, ‘‘ does the possession of such wealth as
this make us, from what the world’s wealth does!
Your money-riches are sure, sooner or later, to
transform the heart into a mere iron chest ; a coffer
that no human key can open. ‘They breed only
lust and greed, as the muck-heap hatches vipers,
and case the soul in an impenetrable armour of
selfishness ; whereas the treasures of the mind are
as generous as wine to the spirit, unlocking the
heart and the whole nature. Did these noble
fellows,” he cried, as he seized the volumes that
lay on the table before him, and hugged them
fondly to his bosom, ‘‘ play the misers with their
precious possessions? Did these lords of Wis-
dom’s broad manor fence in their estate, and keep
the ever-green fields of their fancy and philosophy
to themselves? or did they give them as a park
to all the world, for even the poorest to ramble
and sport in? Yes, they shared their gifts and
gems freely with such as me, and so made poor
me almost as rich as themselves. And what
would J do now? why, I’d fall upon my very
knees to you, if I could but get you and this lad
here to share this same wealth with me in return
—only to make you feel the same foretaste ofPLEASURE HUNTING. 181

heaven as I do, when communing with these great
souls, spirit to spirit, and giving back love for
love.”

Then he paused for a moment; and suddenly
tossing his head till his long hair shook like a
lion’s mane, he scowled at some imaginary social
jackanapes, as he asked indignantly, “‘ Who dares
taunt me with lack of fortune or want of fine
friends, when I have Will Shakspeare here day
after day by my side, humming the sweet music
of his sonnets in my ear? Why, if I knew all the
high and mighty carriage-folk of the town, could
it be half as grand to ride out with them, as it is to
travel with the spirit of John Milton into the very
heavens themselves, and hear the blind old poet
pour forth his wondrous pean on the light? Can
such as I feel it a privation to be denied the fel-
lowship of empty-headed lords and dukes, when
here, in my garret, I can have the best of all good
company—the very pick of the noblest blood that
ever flowed in human veins? Am I sad? then
can I not have Butler here to make me laugh
with the quaint wit and odd logic of his Hudi-
bras? If the hours hang heavy with me, are not
Herrick, Carew, and Suckling ready to sing to me?
Do I want to learn how the world wags? why
Massinger, and Ford, and Webster, and Beaumont
and Fletcher, ay, and Shakspeare himself will come
at my beck to show me how the puppets are moved
by every passion, and to lay open my own and every
other heart before my eyes—as if poor human
nature was but a piece of clever clockwork. Or if
I long to travel, is there not brave Raleigh wait-
ing to take me with him round the world? Or if
my mood be more sedate, can I not invite old
Burton here to charm me with his wonderful
lore of melancholy? ay, and even if I please, get
Newton, or Bacon, or Hobbes to talk philosophy182 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

with me, and lay bare the subtle mechanism of the
universe itself? Ah, my friend!” he added, as his
face beamed with all the refined pride of his heart,
“this is the royal prerogative of intellect—the
blessed privilege that comes from a devout love
of books. It can make the poorest among us
richer than the richest; grant luxuries to those m
want, that even the beef-witted Croesus himself
could not purchase; and give the most luckless in
the world the right of fellowship with the most
eifted and most illustrious of mankind.”

RATIONAL ANIMAL.—NO. 6.

Again the scene shifted, and the lad and his
uncle were away in the suburbs of the town, at
the shooting and hunting “ box” of one who
thought ‘‘sport” to be the great charm of life.
Here, as they entered, a kennel of fox-hounds
made the woods ring with their cries; and dogs of
every breed met them at every tum. There
were spare and high-haunched greyhounds, ready
coupled for coursing; gentle-looking and docile
pointers and setters, with their eyes ever fixed on
their master; and shock-coated water-dogs, and
wiry little rat-dogs, with their teeth glistening
like gintraps, as they snarled at the new comers ;
and ugly-looking bandy-legged bull-dogs, too,
with mouths and jowls lke prize-fighters. In
one of the outhouses was a long backed ferret,
with hair as white and eyes as pink as an
albino, ready for the next day’s sport at the rab-
bit warren. In another there were globular wire
cages full of brown rats, restless as a knot of
worms, that had been trapped to settle some im-
portant wager as to how many of the vermin
little ‘‘ Wasp,” with the gintrap-like teeth, could
kill within the hour.PLEASURE HUNTING. 183

The stables were filled with as many different
kinds of horses as the yards swarmed with different
breeds of dogs. Here was the satin-coated hunter,
with limbs almost as slender as those of the grey-
hounds ; the sturdy little shooting-pony, whose legs
seemed as short and thick as those of a fourpost
bedstead ; and the fast-trotting cob, that had done
its fifteen miles within the hour, and won no end
of money in its time.

The interior of the house, too, was as typical of
the tastes of the owner as the outbuildings them-
selves. The little hall bristled with antlers and
buffalo horns jutting from the walls, and from the
hat-pegs hung huge jack fishing-boots and hunt-
ing-whips; whilst the rooms within were literally
crowded with tokens of the ‘‘ sporting character ”
they belonged to. ‘The sides of the chamber
into which they were shown were covered with
prints of celebrated winners of races; and paint-
ings of favourite horses, with some favourite
groom standing at their head; and representa-
tions of far-famed fast trotters, with a gentle-
man in a tall skeleton gig with big misty wheels,
in the act of scrambling through some prodigious
feat of velocity. There were engravings, too, of
sundry shirtless heroes, in knee-breeches and
‘‘ ankle-jacks,’ with muscles as big as cannon-
balls under the skin, striking an attitude of self-
defence ; and memorials of some illustrious encoun -
ter between two chestnuty and fiery-faced game
cocks, as close cropped as felons, and with spurs
as long as cobblers’ awls fitted to their legs. ‘hen
there were coloured sets of pictures representative
of “going to cover,” ‘‘ breaking cover,” in “‘ full
cry,” and ‘‘in at the death ;” with others of “ part-
ridge shooting,” and ‘‘ wild-duck shooting,” and
bits of ‘still life ;” together with a huge illustra-
tion of some extraordinary leap at a “steeple184 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

chase,” where a few of the horses and riders were
floundering in the brook, others flying through
the air, and others scrambling with their steeds
up the opposite bank. Moreover, there were glass-
cases filled with two or three stuffed partridges
feeding among some imitation stubble; and ano-
ther enclosing an enormous preserved pike, with
his scales as highly varnished as a coach-panel.
Upon the table lay foxes’ brushes, set in silver
handles, and made into little whisks for dusting
knick-knacks; and foxes’ heads mounted as snuft-
boxes; and stags’ feet, with little silver hoofs,
fitted to the blades of knives; while high above
the mantelpiece was stretched a huge wild swan
with widespread wings, that measured goodness
knows how many feet from tip to tip, and which
had been shot by the owner of the establishment,
in the winter of such and such a year. In the
different corners of the room, too, stood the several
implements of the sportsman’s art: fishing-rods,
and double-barrelled guns, and powder-flasks, and
leathern wallets covered with netting, and riding
and driving whips, and dog-whistles, and spears
for otter-hunting, and felt hats with the crowns
wound round with all kinds of lines and flies,
and brown leathern leggings, and shooting-boots
as heavy and clumsy-looking as navigators’, ay,
and boxing-gloves, basket-hilted single-sticks,
targets, and cases of duelling pistols too.

The sportsman himself was busy at his morning
meal of bread and chine, with a tankard of foaming
home-brewed ale by his side. The manner in which
he scrambled down the food—coupled with the
scarlet coat and black velvet cap in which he was
costumed—told that he was in haste to join the
hounds somewhere; and as he munched away, he
described to his visitors, with his mouth full,
what a glorious day he expected to have; as SquirePLEASURE HUNTING. 185 |

So-and-so had recently bought a score of foxes,
and turned them all loose on his estate, for really
their subscription pack had pretty well cleared the i
country before that. Then he remembered some |
particular magnificent run they had had some ‘1. 9
seasons back, and gave the couple a vivid de- Hi
scription of the chase, as he filled his pocket flask ie |

with brandy from the liqueur-case. Next, as he wn
sat down to exchange his slippers for the highly-
polished top-boots that stood beside the fireplace,
he wanted to know whether the young squire
there, alluding to little Ben, had ever been at a
hunt, and told the lad, as he screwed his mouth
up, till his face looked like a knocker, and tugged
away at the boot-hooks, that a good run was the
finest thing in life, and that there was nothing like
fox-hunting in the world. After that he fell to
hastily admiring the boy’s figure, asking how old
he was, and calling him a nice little light weight.
‘hen he wanted to know whether he had ever been
licked at school, and whether he had taken any
lessons yet in sparring; and said he wished he
could stop and put the gloves on for a minute, and
have around or two with him. Presently he asked
Uncle Ben whether he had heard of the match that
he had coming off shortly: he had staked a hun-
dred pounds that he would bring down nineteen
pigeons out of twenty—and he was sure to win,
for he had bagged thirty brace of birds in a few
hours only a few days back, and, what was more,
he could snuff a candle with his duelling-pistols
at twenty paces, three times out of four. ‘Then,
as he bustled about the room (rummaging among
the litter of fish-cans, bullet-moulds, boxing-gloves,
and books of flies, now for his riding-gloves, and
now for some particular pet whip that he wanted),
he told the boy that if he would come over some
day, he’d give him a ride on the pony; and takeSialic tattetl nacelle ae nar eeatne Porat atin eee

 

 

186 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

him out for a day’s coursing, and then he should
see some prime sport if he hked, when the dogs
slipped their couples. Why, he had one of the
finest greyhounds in the world, the sporstsman
said, and had refused a hundred guineas for her
over and over again. But he only wished he could
stop longer with them, he added, as he slipped
his greatcoat over his scarlet jacket; though he
wouldn’t miss the meet that day not to please his
own father, that he wouldn’t. So he shook them
both heartily by the hand, and then hurrying to the
door, leapt into the saddle on the hunter young
Benjamin had noted in the stable but a few
minutes before; and digging his spurs into the
flanks of the steed, dashed down the road, waving
his little nut-shell of a hunting-cap to young Ben
as he turned round in his saddle, and cracking his
whip shouted, ‘‘ Yoyicks! Yup! Yup! Yoyicks!”
to the delighted and astonished boy.

RATIONAL ANIMAL.—wNo. 7,

The next character they visited differed again
from all they had seen before.

It was neither ‘“‘sport,” nor poetry, nor gold,
nor drink, nor yet flowers that delighted this one,
but merely “antiquities,” as they are called. A
mere bit of old brick—a tile marked with the
stamp of one of the Roman legions was sufficient
to throw the old antiquary into an ecstasy of
enthusiasm. <A ‘“ celt”—an axe with a rude flint
head—had greater joy for him than the finest
work of art in the world. Huis house was filled
with cabinets and glass-cases, in which were stored
heaps of what a good housewife would have deno-
minated ‘‘rubbish,” but which in the antiquary’s
eyes were far more precious than gold. ‘The old
oak chairs here were so knubbly with their carv-PLEASURE HUNTING. 187
ings, that it was impossible to rest either the back
or arms against them, without their leaving a series
of lumps and bumps on the flesh; the spoons were
all ‘‘apostle spoons,” as they are called, and so
knobby that they could not be held with any
comfort ; the walls were hung with bits of tape-
stry that were as ragged as a beggar’s smock ;
the pictures, queer old things, with gilt back-
grounds, and figures of saints as limp looking as
your ‘lean and slippered pantaloon ;” the China
too was of the queerest shapes and patterns,—while
the ornaments consisted of small bits of tesselated
pavement dug up from some ancient Roman
station, and which seemed like fragments of petri-
fied draft boards; besides little green crusted and
worn bronze-urns, and small Egyptian clay figures
that had been found buried with mummies,
together with cracked Etruscan vases, and noseless
Grecian busts, and statues without arms, that had
much the look of Greenwich pensioners “in the
abstract.” Then there were satin cases filled with
coins that had no more impression left on them
than a charity boy’s metal buttons; copies of
hieroglyphic inscriptions, and models of the Par-
thenon, and Colosseum ; tiny copies of Cleopatra’s
needle, and Trajan’s Column, and an infinity of
odds and ends besides : all of which had cost no end
of money, time, and patience to collect, as well as
study and learning to comprehend; and which the
queer little old gentleman (who was only too
delighted to exhibit them to little Ben) frankly
confessed, as he led the couple round the place,
that he had nearly ruined himself in getting to-
gether, and he had serious thoughts, he said, of
leaving it all to the nation after his death.

 

 

 

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
     
 
  
  
 
 

 

 
 
  

 

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188 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

RATIONAL ANIMAL.—WNo. 8.

After this the lad was conducted to an inventor's
house, and here he found the rooms filled with
curious models of machinery, and working-draw-
ings and plans of the queerest looking apparatus ;
while the doors and windows were fitted with the
strangest contrivances by way of fastenings.
Here were extraordinary kinds of pumps, and novel
arrangements of water-wheels, and ships with re-
volving sails, like windmills, and flying machines,
and velocipedes, and vessels to travel under the
water or along the bottom of the sea, and boats to
sail upon land, and plans for heating houses too by
flues sunk into the earth to sucha depth as always
to insure an equable temperature without the cost
of fire. Besides designs for perpetual motion, and
projects for discovering the longitude, and new mo-
tive powers, and plans for obtaining an inexpen-
sive and inexhaustible force by taking advantage
of the magnetism of the earth.

“This notion alone,” said the sanguine schemer,
as he pointed to some pet notion, ‘‘ 1s worth twenty
thousand guineas at least ;’’ then ‘‘ that,” he told
them, ‘“‘ was a sure fortune to any one,” whilst if
another ‘‘ only answered,” it would be impossible
for any one to estimate the amount of money it
would realize.

Little Ben looked with inordinate wonder at
the individual, as he heard him speak of the im-
mense value of his projects one after another; and
marvelled how, if he was the possessor of such ex-
traordinary wealth, there should be so poverty-
stricken an air about his dwelling.

Nor was the boy’s astonishment in any way
decreased when he heard the man—as he stood on
the doorsteps assuring them that he wouldn’t takePLEASURE HUNTING, 139
a hundred thousand guineas, if.any one would lay
the money down on the stones before him, for even
a half-share in his flying machine—whisper imme-
diately afterwards in his uncle’s ear, just before
leaving, that he’d consider it a great favour if he
would let him have half a dollar for a day or two.

 

RATIONAL ANIMAL.—NO, 9.

From the inventor the couple wended their
way to the chief astronomer of the town; and this
man they found scarcely able to speak to them,
for he was busy sweeping the heavens for a new
planet which, after years of laborious calculation,
he had ascertained should exist somewhere be-
tween the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. He had
been engaged in making observations upon this
matter almost night and day, he said, for the last
twelvemonth, and had laid out hundreds upon a
new reflecting telescope—the speculum of which
alone had cost more than half the money—for he
was determined to make the discovery all his own.
To him there was no pleasure but in watching
the stars—no use for money but in the purchase
of equatorials, astronomical clocks, transit-instru-
ments, artificial horizons, mural-circles, and mi-
crometer-glasses, etc. etc.

RATIONAL ANIMAT.—No. 10,

The visit to the astronomer was followed by a
peep into the household of an entomologist, where
the boy found the study of the stars replaced by
that of insects.

It was no longer distant worlds, but the tiniest
things on earth that absorbed the entire time and
means of this individual. Here cases of spitted
butterflies and cockchafers delighted the bighat ae og a a eae

ae

 

 

 

 

190 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

baby, christened ‘‘ philosopher.” Here the tele-
scope was laid aside for the microscope, and the
every-day world of human passion ignored for
the hidden one of animalcular life and habits.
The inhabitants of a drop of water were, to the
magnified vision of this particular sage, creatures
of the liveliest interest; whereas those of the next
street were hardly wortha moment’s thought. To
see the blood circulate in the web of a frog’s foot,
this worthy spent pounds and pounds upon an
“eighth,” but to know how the heart of man was
stirred he would not give a doit. What an ex-
quisite charm there was to him in enlarging the
dust of a butterfly’s wing to the magnitude of an
ostrich’s feathers, or in looking at the proboscis of
a blue-bottle under a ‘high power!” but how
“stale, flat, and unprofitable ” to bring even a “low
power” to bear upon the parasites of society, or
to scrutinize the economy of the human blood-
sucker! Ina word, to brother man not the slightest
heed, nor even a penny was given; whereas to
brother tadpole an entire life and a small fortune
were devoted.

Hiven little Ben, as he was whirled, so to speak,
from one house to another by his uncle, and intro-
duced to the most opposite characters in rapid
succession (for the old man strove to bring out
the ‘‘ high lights” of the picture of human life, in
all the black and white of strong contrast), could
hardly help philosophizing, in his own simple way,
upon the puzzling problem that had been brought
under his notice.

‘« How strange,” mused the lad to himself, as he
jogged along, ‘“‘one man finds no pleasure but in
studying the stars, another no delight but in con-
templating insects; one in perpetually spying
through magnifying glasses at little specks ofPLEASURE HUNTING. 191

light, which are ‘millions of miles away; the
other for ever looking through the same kind
of glasses at tiny creatures that are almost as
far removed from himself! One declares there
is no happiness in the world like that of sport-
ing; another vows the only true joy is to be
found in books; a third that it lies in show and
dress. One sacrifices everything to get drink,
another to get money; this one to collect weeds
and wild flowers, and that man to collect bits of
old pavement, old tiles, and vases. How odd
it is! and one and all, too, are ready to give
up their lives and fortunes to their particular
pursuit.”
The view of life seemed as inconsistent to the
little fellow as the jumble of scenes in a dream.
‘Ha! my man,” smiled Uncle Benjamin,
delighted to listen to the boy’s reflections, ‘‘ I dare
say the riddle of human nature does puzzle you a
good bit ; and, to tell the truth, it occasionally puts
me to my wits’ end to comprehend it—even old
stager as I am, and up to most of the antics of the
mummers too. To run the round of one’s ac-
quaintances in this way, lad, and see the different
characters one meets with in his journeys from
house to house, is to my mind very much lke
‘going over a large lunatic asylum, and learning, as
you pass from cell to cell, the various queer manias
with which the several inmates are possessed.”
But there was no time just then to reason on
the matter: the first object was to see and observe ;
to draw conclusions was an after consideration. So
on the old man and boy hurried to mspect some
more of the shows in the great “ Vanity Fair.”
“Walk up! walk up!” cried Uncle Ben to the
lad as they approached the next human curiosity,
‘‘and see now the most celebrated epicure in all
the town.”

 

Scans

 

 

 

 

——lied ll Incite indiana’ i oar eaine eat aah, eletentmeetee

a ne

ee

 

 

 

 

 

YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

RATIONAL ANIMAL.—NOo. 11.

They met the worthy, hobbling along with a
punnet of tomatas in his hand (with one elephan-
tine foot done up in flannel, and encased in a huge
list slipper), on his way to the fishmonger’s at the
end of the street where he lived; and there, as he
stood picking out a prime bit of salmon—‘ just
a pound or two from the thick part of the fish ”—
he told them how he had been suffering from his
‘‘old friend the gout; though he was happy to
say his dyspepsia was a leettle better, for he had
been dieting himself a good bit of late. He had
cut off his ‘night cap” of maraschino-punch after
supper, he said; for he had found out at last that
that had been doing him a deal of harm, though,
it was delicious tipple to be sure. Then he had
given up his toast and caviar in the middle of the
day ; for his medical man had told him caviar
was too rich for him, and that really his stomach
was so weak that he must be most careful about
what he ate—most careful.

‘“ You see, Franklin,” continued the gourmand,
ashe jerked at his acre of waistcoat, that was dappled
with gravy spots all down the front, and tried to
force it over the huge wen of a stomach thate
bulged out lke the distended crop of an enormous
pouter pigeon—‘‘ You see, Franklin, I make flesh
so fast that, do what I will, I can’t prevent myself
running into corpulency. Why, I’ve evenreduced
my quantum of Madeira, I give you my word, to
half a pint per diem; and if there’s one thing I
like more than another,” he added, by way of
parenthesis, ‘‘ it certainly 7s a glass of good Ma-
deira—but it must be good, you know, Franklin
—good, or it’s apt to turn acid with me; for my
medical man assures me all fermented liquorsPLEASURE HUNTING. 193

make fat. But though I go on with my dinner-pills
(and my doctor, I must say, has given me one of
the best pills of that kind I ever met with), and
take more exercise than I used, still, the deuce is
in it, I can’t keep the bulk down—can’t keep it
under, Franklin, anyhow ;” and again the worthy
gave another twitch at the waistcoat, that would
keep rucking up over the rolls of his abdomen.

Then, having at length settled about the fish,
he slipped one arm into that of the elder Benja-
min, and resting the hand of the other on the
shoulder of the younger one (for he had given
the boy the little basket of love-apples to carry ),
he began hobbling back to his house between the
two, stopping every now and then to writhe with
the agony of some passing twinge.

‘“ Why I should be plagued with this infernal
goutas | am,” he exclaimed, as he stood still in
the street, and screwed his face up till it assumed
the expression of a compressed gutta-percha head,
‘I’m sure I can’t tell. My doctor says it’s all
stomach; and heaven knows no man can be more
particular about his feeding than I am. Indeed, I
never could bear coarse food, Franklin—never.
I think every one of my friends will allow that.
But the misfortune is, you see, I have such delicate
nerves, though few persons would think it, per-
haps, in a man of my build; but I can assure you
my belief is that it’s nerves—nerves—or I may
say, indeed, a natural want of stamina—that is at
the bottom of all my sufferings. The least thing I
take seems to disagree with me. Now what was my
dinner yesterday: why, nothing could have been
simpler in the world, Franklin—nothing. First
I. had just a little vermicelli soup, with a sprink-
ling of grated parmesan over it. By-the-by, Frank-
lin,” he asked suddenly, as he stopped and looked
Uncle Benjamin full in the face, ‘‘ did you ever try
O

 

 

   
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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194 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

the grated cheese with the vermicelli? Well, do! I
give you my word it’s a marvellous improvement
—m-m-mar-vellous! Then there was a little water-
souci; and you know there’s nothing lighter than
water-souci in the world; but it’s a favourite dish
of mine, Franklin, for, pon my honour, ft think it’s
the most delicate flavour in life: and with this,
of course, there was just a simple glass of Madeira
to wash it down. Well, after that came a small
dish of lamb chops, breaded, with sauce piquante,
for you know I am quite alone, Franklin,” (he
added, parenthetically,) “andcan’tindulge in heavy
joints, even if my poor stomach would allow me;
or else, I must confess, I certamly should have
preferred a kibbob of mutton—did you ever eat
a kibbob, Franklin? Well, take my advice, and
have one im-me-diately, and you'll live to bless me
for the counsel—and besides these things, there
was just a couple of kidneys sautéed with cham-
pagne, and a field-fare or two stuffed with
juniper berries, and served with juniper sauce
——the latter a thing that my cook does divinely,
I can assure you—dee-vinely! And then for
sweets—though Vm not much of a sweet-eater,
certainly—there was a—let me see, what did I
have yesterday?” and again he made them both
stand still as he reflected—‘‘ cocoa-nut pudding,
was it? no, no! that was the day when Tom
Skeffington dined with me, and he went into such
raptures about the dish, and would make me give
him the receipt for it. Oh yes, I know now, it
was” (and he screwed his face again into all the
distortions of a gorgon’s head, as he interjected—
‘¢ Hang the gout !)—it was-—what is such a special
favourite of mine—a cranberry tart, with a cus-
tard or two. You see, Franklin, the custard takes
off the roughness of the cranberry; and if it has
just a dash of vanilla in it, by way of flavouring,PLEASURE HUNTING.

 

195

I give you my word it’s most luscious—most 1—]—
luscious!” he repeated. ‘You try 1t, Franklin;
now do, just to oblige me, for I’m sure you'll think
it one of the greatest treats in life,

“ Well, now, although that—with just an olive or
two, and a griddle cake to relish my wine, with a
thimbleful of cherry-water as a digester to finish
—constituted the whole of my yesterday’s dinner,”
the epicure went on, “and I’m sure, as I said
before, nothing could be simpler or lighter ; still,
you'd hardly believe it, sir, but when I got up this
morning, my tongue was furred—quite furred, I
give you my honour; and it wasn’t until I had
taken a glass of brandy and soda-water, that I
could touch the least bit of the delicious cold
partridge-pie I had got for breakfast.”

By this time they had reached the gourmand’s
house; and as Uncle Benjamin was preparing to
depart, the epicure held his hand firmly locked in
his, as he kept shaking it while he said, “No, no,
Franklin; I couldn’t think of letting you go in
this way. You really must come in now; why, I
thought you'd stop and take pot-luck with me to-
day. I should make no stranger of you, you
know. ‘There’s only that little bit of salmon you
saw me buying—(though it was a splendid fish, to
be sure; and with a little cucumber, I should
think, would eat superbly—su-perbly !) and just a
wild duck, with a few little kickshaws, of course,
besides; and something or other by way of pastry
—such as some pine-apple beignets—to wind up
with. Well, I can’t offer you anything better
to-day. But Vl tell you what, Franklin, if
you'll promise to honour me another time, and
only let me know forty-eight hours beforehand,
why, Pll have something recherche for you—truly
ree-cherché, I will, indeed.”

But Uncle Benjamin only shook his head ;
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196 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

whereupon the other added, “‘ Oh, I don’t mean to
say I should put myself much out of the way for
you; but we will have just a nice little dinner—
that’s all—one of the bachelor téte-a-téte affairs,
that I believe I can manage as well as most people.
Say, for instance, a few smelts and a canvas-back
duck stewed with turnips. By-the-by, did you
ever taste the canvas-backs that way? ‘They’re
simply delicious, I can assure you—dee-licious !—
especially if ycu insist upon the cook browning
the turnips well before he stews them. Ay, and
then, my boy,” he cried, as he tapped the other on
the shoulder, ‘‘ you shall taste my new sauce. Dear
me! I quite forgot to tell | had invented a new
sauce—how oblivious of me, to be sure! Well,
you know, Franklin, l’'ve been after the thing for
years—indeed, for years and years I may say ; but I
never could get it to please me exactly, somehow.
However, at last just one little condiment extra
settled it ; and now everybody pronounces it to be
—perfection !—simply per-r-fection!” he shouted,
and enforced the merits of the article with so
vigorous athump on Uncle Benjamin’s collar-bone
that the old gentleman fairly staggered under the
blow. ‘Oh, it’s the most exquisite flavour in life,
I give you my word. I’m going to call it,” he
ran on, ‘*‘ Sauce @ la’—what’s his name? Lord
bless me! J shall forget my own name next. You
know—lI call it after the celebrated French cook
of Louis the Fourteenth’s time—the cook, you
remember, who committed suicide because the
fish, poor fellow! didn’t arrive till long after the
hour the dinner was ordered for. Sad thing,
wasn’t it? and you know they dosay, Franklin, his
bashawed lobster was a thing to eat and then die.
But you'll come in and have just a glass of my
Amontillado, with a teaspoonful of orange bitters
in it—just one, now—to give you an appetite forPLEASURE HUNTING. 197

your dinner, man,” he added, pulling at the arm
of the uncle as he struggled to depart. ‘‘ Well,
well, if you will go, you “must, I suppose :” and
then, as the epicure e knocked at the door, he turned
round and cried, ‘‘ But, by-the-by, Franklin,
would you mind, as you pass the corner of the next
street, ‘calling i in at the greengrocer’s there for me
—you know the nice afore Ww here they have always
the window stocked with such a superb show of
the better kinds of fruits and vegetables—and tell-
ing een to send me a punnet ‘of their very best
sea-kale Please to say it must be the very best,
and that T ve made up my mind I won’t give more
than half a dollar the basket for it; for that’s
quite enough money, I’m sure, at this time of
year. Iw vouldn’t trouble you, Franklin, but
really this gout,” and he made another ugly face
as he emphasised the words, ‘‘is the most ex-
eruciating torture, J can assure you—ex-x-croo-
ciating !”

 

RATIONAL ANIMAL.— No. 12

Nor did the gallery of character portraits cease
here. Uncle Ben was anxious that his little
pupil should see every phase of human eccen-
tricity of which he could muster a specimen
among the circle of his acquaintance. So now he
took the lad to some inveterate politician, and let
him see how this man’s thoughts and time were
entirely absorbed in attending vestries, and de-
nouncing the overseers of the parish as the
‘robbers of the poor, ” in opposing rates, influ-
encing elections, in declaiming at public meetings,
and holding forth to the fuddled frequenters “of
bar- -parlours i in the evening, on the rascalities of all
governments, the dishonesty of ministers, and the

 

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198 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

rights of man, as well as the iniquities of the
taxes.

RATIONAL ANIMAL—No. 13.

Next he would lead the little fellow to some
gentleman turner, who spent hundreds upon a
lathe, his rose-engines, and eccentric chucks;
and who passed his days in amateur carpentering
and cabinet making, with a French polished ma-
hogany tool-chest, and the most elegant rosewood-
handled chisels and cimlets ; turning now ivory
cups and balls and chess- men, and now fanciful
needle-cases and thimbles and tobacco- -stoppers
for his friends; or else fashioning marquetry-work,
or buhl work-tables, or mounting fire-screens for
the more favoured ladies of his acquaintance.

RATIONAL ANIMAL. — NO. ie.

And after this the boy would be introduced to
some experimental chemist, and find this strange
specimen of humanity surrounded with retorts,
alembics, stills, crucibles, and furnaces; gasome-
ters, thermometers, and pyrometers; together
with specific gravity scales, and acetometers;
barometers, hygrometers, and eudiometers; blow-
pipes, and test-tubes; electrifying machines and
magnets; and, indeed, such an infinity of necro-
mantic-looking apparatus, that made little Ben
regard the proprietor of the laboratory more as
sorcerer than sage.

Then here the youth would learn that the grand
object of life and study was to separate some ‘lump
of earth, or bottle of liquid, or jar of air, into its
elements - or to compound some new body out of the
different kinds of matter existing in the world.
Here he was told that the pursuit of truth for truth’ 8PLEASURE HUNTING. 199

own sake was the noblest thing in life ; that poetry
was mere pr ettiness, and added nothing either to
man’s knowledge of the world in which he was
placed, nor to his progress in it; that there was
a profound charm in hghting on a new discovery,
or evolving some new fact or law in nature, which
transcended all other forms of happiness; that
the study of the subtle forces of creation—the
secret affinities of things—the strange sympathy
of this bit of matter with that, and its inexplicable
antipathy to some other substance—the continued
contemplation of those wondrous powers in the
world, lying as they did at the very heart of the
great mystery of nature and life, yielded a de-
light—the philosopher assured the boy—that at
once satisfied, enlightened, and elevated the mind,

RATIONAL ANIMAL—No. 15.

3ut scarcely had the words of the natural
philosophe r died in the little fellow’s ear, than he
st as in the studio of a young artist; and him he
found as enthusiastic about art and its glories as
the philosopher had been about science, or the
poet loud in his praises of poetry ; for the young
painter spoke of the old masters with all the vene-
ration of a zealot and the affection of a son. Now
it was ‘‘ magnificent old Michael Angelo;’ then,
‘‘elorious old Rembrandt ;” and ‘dear old Ru-
bens;” and ‘fine old Titian.” He loved them,
and worshipped them, every one, he said, with
all the intensity of a woman’s affection; and
when he had gone into raptures at the mere
remembrance of the special excellence of each, as
the vision of their works flitted one after another
before his mind, he asked, ‘‘ What is all art but
the highest type of power in man, even as the
Almighty himself is the Great Artist above all,

 

 

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200 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

because He is the All-powerful? Are not ths
works of God signal evidences of God’s tran-
scendent art? and is not this art the chief evi-
dence we have of His transcendent power? We,
lad,” he said to the boy, ‘‘are but the poor copiers
of the one great work—the one grand tableau of
creation, and He the Great Original: we but the
mere shufflers of the infinite varieties of form
about us into new arrangements, and He the
Great Inventor of all forms ard figures: we but
the petty balancers of hght and shade, He the
great Creator of the clear and the obscure through-
out the world. And whilst it costs us poor painters
inordinate pains and study to compound our colours
and give luminousness to our works, He, by the
mere craft of His will, illuminated His handiwork
with infinite brightness in an instant; and made
the lovely landscape of the new-born earth flash
into a thousand difterent hues with but one touch
of the wondrous pencils of light as they fell upon
the woods, the fields, the mountain-peaks, and the
sky, for the first time of all. Ifthen,” said the
artist, “there be art in divinity, at least there
must be some touch of divinity in art.

“The Divine attributes,” the painter went
on, ‘‘are goodness, wisdom and power, and the
human exponents of these qualities in the world
are the clergyman, the philosopher, and the
artist;. but the artist transcends all. Art, for
instance, must take precedence of science; for
what is all natural science but the explanation
of God Almighty’s art as seen in the works of
creation ; even as all criticism is but the expound-
ing of human art as displayed in the works of man’s
imagination ? Human wisdom comes from experi-
ence, but art is intuitive, lying in the innate
perception of the beautiful, and the inherent
faculty to render it either pictorially, musically,PLEASURE HUNTING. 201

or poetically. Again, without a sense of art
there could be no worship; for the feeling of wor-
ship comes only from the admiration and the
reverence that a sense of the mighty power mani-
fested in all objects of creation naturally begets
inthe mind. ‘There is indeed,” he said, “ a sponta-
neous worshipfulness naturally upspringing from
the love and appreciation of art; for who could
be conscious of standing in the august presence of
a power infinitely superior to his own, without a
feeling of veneration for the All-powerful over-
shadowing and humbling his soul ?”

‘Pid not the zealous old painters pray ’—he
asked—‘‘ pray as few pray now-a-days, before
they dared to try and hobble after the great cre-
ative power? and who but a man accustomed to
be continually thinking of the Artist in all the
works he looks upon—to have an ever-abiding
sense of the prompter, as it were, behind the
scenes—could contemplate nature with half the
reverence in his eye and mind that a true and
high artist really does? 'To such a one a glorious
picture is not a mere piece of prettily-coloured
canvas, nor a noble statue only an elegant toy
in stone. No!” the painter exclaimed, with all
the enthusiasm of his ardent and reverent spirit ;
“the exquisite counterpart of nature hanging
against the wall is, to the artistic sense, radiant
with all the glory of the counterpart of the divinity
that created it; and the marble bust, animate with
all the fine intelligence and power of the divine
spirit that made the stony bosom heave with
life. Even so the world of beauty itself, which,
to the blear eyes of the vulgar, the prosaic, and
ascetic, is but a prettiness, or utility, or a vanity
at best, appears to the artist, who is ever thinking
of the Artist in all he sees and admires, as a
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which the unspeakable grandeur of the Godhead
is everlastingly beaming with infinite love and
grace upon mankind.”

RATIONAL ANIMATA==No, ‘L6.

The musician, whom the boy saw soon after-
wards, discoursed nearly to the same tune, though
with some slight variation. ‘T’o him there was a
lovely melody for ever flowing through all crea-
tion; the very succession of the seasons—the
passage from night to day—the revolution of the
planets—the rush of comets—the stately proces-
sion of the clouds—the mighty surging of the
tides—the pulsing of the human heart—all this
was but the latent music of the world. For to the
finely attuned ear and mind it suggested a corre-
sponding rhythm of melodious and stirring sounds,
that seemed like the distant hum of the great
angelic choir, heard in the soul; even as one hears
the murmuring of the waves in the shell after it
has been cast out of its ocean-home. ‘There was
no joy, the musician told the youth, so pure, so
entrancing, so transporting as that of music. It
fell like an ethereal dew upon the fevered spirit
of man, and flowed lke the softest and subtlest
balm into the wounds of the bruised heart. It
was the manna of the mind—a kind of honeyed rain
from heaven, sent down to sustain us in the wil-
derness of life and trouble. ‘*‘ What would the
voice of man be without its natural tones P” the
musician inquired. ‘‘ Why, words,” he answered,
‘‘were the mere black and white of speech; it
was tone and expression that gave its true colour
to language. Was there not an innate and special
rhythm to each particular feeling—a different key-
note to almost every different passion in our souls?
Fear shrieked in discord; whereas love alwaysPLEASURE HUNTING. 203

fad

lisped in music. Then the universal harmonies of
things that philosophers and poets spoke so much
about—what was this but the light melting into
melody as it fell on Memnon’s head? All science
was but the music of reason—the harmonizing of
different passages from the great opera which was
for ever being performed about us; while all art
was but the attempt of a few fiddlers to “‘ render”
the grand organ-peal of the universe—to GIVE ex-
pression to some stray little bit of special beauty,
that the spirit fancies it has caught up from the
works of the Great Master. Everything was music,
music everything.”

Little Ben was bewildered beyond utterance
with what he heard. ‘“ Which was right?” he
kept wondering; ‘which was right?’ But
before he could give vent to anything beyond the
crudest astonishment, the uncle had brought him
to some fresh ‘“‘rara avis” among men—some new
version of lite’s whims and oddities.

And when the boy had been taken to see tra-
vellers, and philologists; tulip-fanciers entomo-
logists and meteorologists; chess-players, and
physiognomists (there were no phrenologists nor
mesmerists in those days), old book collectors
and statisticians, or mere fact and figure collec-
tors ; amateur actors, amateur sailors, and amateur
stage coachmen as well; ay, and almost the whole
army of your hobby-horse volunteers in existence,
the tutor and his pupil at length returned home,
fairly tired out with their excursions in quest of
the pleasure-seekers of human life.

*-But: uncle,”’ said littl. Ben, .for..the:. dune
dredth time of asking, as they sat resting their
outstretched limbs in front of the wood fire in the
little back parlour of the candle-store; ‘ of all the
queer people we have seen, and the many queer

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204 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

tastes and fancies we have found them indulging
in, which do you really think now is right ?”

“Well, lad,’ answered Uncle Ben, ‘‘1 look
upon them all, as I told you long ago, as a lot of
big boys, chasing one and the same butterfly.
If they were so many puppets, Ben, with a wire
up their backbone, and pulled by some invisible
hand, they couldn’t be made to play up greater
antics, or be more assuredly set in motion by one
and the same cause.”

“Yes, uncle, I know,” replied the impatient
youngster; ‘but you haven’t answered my ques-
tion. Now, which of all the many different
pursuits we have seen, 1s, In your opinion, the
most rational ?”

‘“‘ Hah! my little man,” returned Uncle Ben, with
a philosophic sigh, “there are so many different
roads to happiness in this life, that, unless we
have the ground we are to travel over clearly
mapped out before our eyes, it is difficult to say
off-hand which is the shortest cut, or even the
cleanest or most agreeable way to it. Unfor-
tunately, too, there is no sign-post set up at
the point where the different cross-roads meet, to
direct us along the right path, or to say, ‘THs
LEADS TO. MISERY ’—‘ THIS IS THE ROAD TO RUIN’—
‘THIS IS THE NEAREST WAY TO SHAME’—‘ THIS IS THE
HIGHWAY TO FOLLY,’ and so on. So that when
we come to this juncture in our journey through
life, and stand deliberating as to which of the
many turnings we had better take, why, we may
be led by an infinity of circumstances to strike
into the wrong path, and find out, when it is too
late to retrace our steps, that what we fancied at
starting to be a perfect palace in the distance,
surrounded by the most extensive pleasure-
grounds, is merely the poor-house, or the county
jail, or some great lunatic asylum after all.”

’oe!

THE RIGHT ROAD, 205

‘Bat uncle,” gies the eager lad, deter-
mined not to be put off, “you must have some
opinion yourself on the matter. Which of all the
persons we saw do you think, now, was going the
right road as you call it ?”

“Ce Which do J think—was going—the right road,
lad ?”? echoed the old man, w ith the most tanta-
hzing tediousness. “Is that what you want to
know, Ben ?”

‘‘Yes, uncle! which do you say—which?” the
boy inquired again, as he leant forward in his
anxiety to catch the answer.

‘Well, then, let us see! let us see!” wag the
sole reply.

 

HHAPTER.X& VET.
THE RIGHT ROAD.!

“WELL, uncle,” said little Benjamin, after a
slight pause, ‘‘go on: which is the right road as
you call it ?”

“Ay, but wait awhile Ben; wait awhile!” said
the other, as he knit his br ae and nibbled away
at his thumb-nail with all the vigour of a mouse at
a cheese-paring, muttering to himself the while,
‘‘There’s nothing like making an impression while
the waxis warm.” ‘hen he suddenly looked up,
half-vacantly, at his nephew, and inquired ‘“ What
kind of a night is it, Ben?”

‘¢ Oh, quite fine and bright starlight, I declare,”
answered the boy as he thrust his head between
the curtains of the little back-window. “But
pray what has that got to do with the right road,
uncle ?”

‘¢ Yes—nothing like making an impression while
the wax is warm,” he mumbled again to himself;Sete eine eh eet eee at oa alia ae eat eel eaten ca

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206 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

and then asked aloud, ‘‘ And which
wind, lad ?”

“The wind, uncle!” echoed the youngster,
more and more puzzled; ‘‘ why it’s as near as
possible due south,” he called out, as he went
again and peeped between the window curtains.
‘““T can see by the smoke yonder coming out of
old Mr. Brownwell’s chimney. But what are you
up to uncle, eh?”

“Southerly, is it!” was the reply, ‘‘so much the
better—so much the better, for then it’s sure to be
warm. Give me my hat and spencer, Benjamin,”
he said, starting suddenly from his chair.

“Why, youre never going out at this hour ?”
exclaimed the godson, in utter bewilderment.

‘There, never mind, lad! but do you go and
get your top-coat, and come along with me:” the
godfather went on, ‘‘there’s no possibility of going
over the matter here, with that shop-bell tinkling
away every minute, and the people dodging con-
tinually in and out,” he kept mumbling half to
himself, as he stood with his arms stretched out
behind him, waiting mechanically for the boy to
slip the sleeves of his spencer over them. And
then, as he turned round suddenly, and found
his nephew had never stirred from the spot, but
was still staring at him in wonder as to whether he
could really be serious in what he was doing, he
cried out: ‘“‘ Why, you young rascal, I’m not going
to carry you off to the prairies again, never fear!
You're a bit tired, I dare say, Ben, but we’re not
going far. So look alive! or we shall have your
father putting up the shutters before we start.”

way’s the

Some half-hour afterwards the uncle and his
nephew were seated on a solitary. lump of rock
that jutted just above-the sands on the sea-shore,
scarce a mile beyond the town of Boston.THE RIGHT ROAD. 207

the night was almost as bright as day; and
had it not been for the silvery rays of the full
moon, which seemed to cover the earth with a
sheet of snow, one might have fancied, from the
Juminousness and transparency of the air, that it
was the cold blue twilight of an early summer’s
morning.

Ihe sky was frosted all over with “star-dust,”
and sparkled like the sea at night in the tropics
with its million points of fire. Down the centre
of the firmament streamed the broad phosphores-
cent band of the ‘‘milky way;” with its “fire-
mist” of stars, looking almost as fine and infinite
to the naked eye as the minute particles that oo
to make up the bloom on a butterfly’s wing; and
seeming as though the curtains of the heavens
were parted there, and one could just catch the
dazzle of the countless multitude of lights about
the Godhead’s throne. On either side of this, the
bright figures of the more marked constellations
shone out in lustrous lines—solemn as the symbols
traced by the Unseen Hand in strokes of fire upon
the wall; and here and there, some larger star or
stray planet arrested the eye, as it was seen
shining alone in the pale violet air—a little ball
of white light; bright as a glowworm in a hedge-
row. Not a cloud was to be seen; the moon,
which had not long risen, hung’ a little above the
horizon, like a big pearl upon some Indian
prince’s neck; and poured from out her opal urn
such a flood of virgin beams that the white lustre
ame streaming across the ocean to the shore in a
narrow rippling rivulet of molten silver! flowing
as it were through the parted waters of the sea;
and as the billows fell languidly upon the beach,
the very moonbeams seemed to curl over there, and
then spread themselves out into a broad shallow
sheet of splendour far along the sands.

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208

The earth itself was almost as lovely as the sky
and sea. Though all colour had faded from the
world, and Nature looked sombre as a sister of
charity in her sad-coloured garb—though the
woods had no more tint in them than black clouds
of smoke welling up out of the ground—though
the roadways were white as snow-drifts with the
moonlight—and the fields like plates of steel,
with the cottages glistening in the beams as if
they had been cut out of marble—still, what
exquisite ‘“‘ value” did the neutral tones and half-
dusk of the night give to the little specks of light
that were seen shining, here and there, in the
distance; now alone from out the windows of
some solitary homestead, and now thick as a
swarm of fire-flies from amidst the haze of some
far-off village !

The neighbouring town of Boston itself, with
the moonlight drenching its endless ridges of
roofs, so that they appeared to be positively wet
with the beams; and the dusky forms of the tall
steeples and towers melting, spectral-like, into the
cold gray background of the sky—was indeed a
noble sight at such an hour. The million window-
panes were like so many squares of burnished
gold with the multitude of the lights in the houses;
and these were reflected in the tide that washed
the peninsular pedestal of the city, so that the
water seemed ablaze with the long bright streaks
of fire mirrored in it; and there they kept flashing
with every ripple of the waves, till they appeared,
now like so many fiery snakes diving deep into
the ocean, and now like a flight of rockets shooting
downwards in long meteorlike trails.

There was hardly a sound to be heard. The
hppling of the waves upon the sands was as gentle
fsa summer-breeze rustling through a forest.

The clatter of the workday world had ceased ;

YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,THE RIGHT RGAD.

 

209

the hum of the town was hushed; the country
silent as a tomb. ‘The only noises that came
fitfully upon the ear were the occasional barking
of some startled farm-dog far away in the country ;
or the muffled throb and splash of some poor
fisherman’s oars at work in the offing; or else the
bells of the many church clocks of the town tolling
the hour, one after another, in a hundred different
tones.

‘‘ Now, my little man,” said Uncle Benjamin, after
he had sat for a while silently contemplating the
grandeur of the exquisite scene before him, ‘‘ here
at least we shall be secure from interruption ; and
here, lappedin the very sublimity of creation, let
us try and find out which is the right road to
worldly happiness.”

The little felow curled his arm about the old
man’s neck, and looked into his face, as muchas to
say he was ready and anxious for the lesson.

‘“ Well, then, Ben, of course you have never
asked yourself how many different kinds of plea-
sure there are of which human nature is suscep-
tible,” began the tutor.

‘‘ No, that I haven’t, I’m sure,” was tho frank
reply ; ‘‘ but, bless me, uncle, I should say, from
the specimens we have seen, that there are as
many different pleasures as there are men in the
world; for each person we visited seemed to find
enjoyment in almost the very opposite pursuit to
that of his neighbour.”

‘‘Ay, my son, but those you saw,” said Uncle
Benjamin, ‘‘ were each a type of a large class in
hfe. JL showed you, purposely, but one member
of each different order of characters among man-
kind. But had we, instead of picking our way
through the town, gone regularly on from house
to house, you would have found that there are
many misers in society like the one we saw; and

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FLO YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

a whole multitude of drunkards differing but little
from the individual drunkard we visited ; as well
as a host of poets, and a large family of gluttons,
philosophers, and fops ; besides innumerable sports-
men, musicians, amateur-mechanics, artists, and
antiquaries; and that they have all, more or less,
the same peculiarities and propensities as the
types I introduced you to. So that, though geo-
graphers divide the several branches of the great
human family into nations, according to the mere
patch of earth they are located upon, there is,
nevertheless, more difference of nature often to be
found between African and African, or Spaniard
and Spaniard—or even between Yorkshireman
and Yorkshireman, than between miser and miser,
or drunkard and drunkard.”

‘‘How strange it would be then, uncle,” re-
marked the boy, smiling at his own idea, ‘if all
the misers were made to live together, and parted
off into a separate nation; as well as all the
drunkards, and poets, and philosophers, and
sportsmen, and others too. Then we should have
the kingdom of Misers, and the empire of
Drunkards, I suppose ; or, Hunksland, and Sctland,
as they would be called perhaps—as England and
Scotland were, you know, after the Angles and the
Scots ;” and the boy laughed outright at the notion,
as he said, ‘‘ wouldn’t it be droll, eh? and I’m
sure it would be a much better arrangement than
now, for then all of the same tastes and dis-
positions would be gathered together, like one
family in the world.”

“But youll find out, my lad,” rejoined the
uncle, ‘‘ before you have lived many years longer,
that ‘birds of a feather do flock together,’ as the
saying goes; your drunkards hob-a-nob with their
brother drunkards in the tap-room ; gluttons frater-
nize with gluttons at public dinners and feasts ;—THE RIGHT: ROAD. 21

fops with fops at evening parties and balls ;
scholars with scholars in colleges and learned
societies ; sportsmen with Sportsmen in the field
and at betting places: and philosophers with
philosophers in scientific academies and institutes,
Lhe world is broken up into sects as much by
the ‘non-conforming’ of tastes as of religion, Ben,
and each difference of creed is the same heresy to
those who have a pet faith of their own. But we
must keep to our point, lad,” he added. “J asked
you how many different kinds of pleasure human
nature is susceptible of, and mind, I say ‘ kinds,’
not species ; but classes, which include a large
number of different varieties of pleasure within
them.”

‘I’m sure I can’t say,” the little fellow replied,
with a shake of the head; “TI can hardly under-
stand the words you use, uncle.”

‘“Well, then, let me explain,” continued the
other. ‘Every state into which our mind can be
thrown must be either a sensation, a thought, or
an emotion; hence it follows, that any pleasurable
State of mind must be either a pleasure of the
senses, a pleasure of the intellect, or a pleasure of
the heart, so to speak, supposing the heart to be
the organ of the emotions.”

‘Oh! I think I see what you mean now,uncle,”’
returned the youth with considerable quickness,

jumping as he did at once at his uncle’s idea,
‘You would say, I suppose, that all pleasures
must belong to one of those three kinds of pleasure ;
they must be either sensual pleasures, or intellec-
tual pleasures—or—or—what’s the name for the
other ?”

‘Moral pleasures,” said the old man, ‘‘ though
it is but asorry title at best; still, as it is the
term usually applied, we will not stop to split
hairs, or quibble, like lawyers, about yore
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O12 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

“Qo then all the different pleasures that we
found the persons pursuing in our journey
through the town,” the lad went on saying, half to
himself, delighted now that he had got hold of
something like a clue to the mystery, ‘“‘ were either
sensual, intellectual, or—or moral ones. Let me
see! let mé see!” he continued, musing,
‘whether I can make it out by myself. The
drunkard’s was a—a—sensual pleasure, of course
_—and go was the epicure’s; and the poet’s was an
intellectual one. Yes, of course, it was, and so was
the philosopher’s too ; and the miser’s was—was
what would you call the pleasure the miser found
in his money, eh, uncle? It can’t be intellectual ;
f should think it’s sensual, isn’t 1¢ ?”

‘No, lad; the love of money belongs to the class
of moral pleasures,” was the answer.

“Why there’s nothing moral about that, Pno
sure,” returned the pupil, with more frankness
than deference to his teacher.

‘There is no more true morality in money-
er ubbing, Ben,” added the old man, ‘“ than there
is profound intellect in collecting bits of old
pavement and old tiles ; and yet it is avarice that
makes the one pleasure congenial to the miser,
even as knowledge gives a zest to the other with
the antiquary.”

“ But avarice is greediness after money, isn’t it,
uncle? and if the greediness of the epicure 1s
sensual, why shouldn’t the miser’s gluttony for
the guineas be called the same?” argued the boy.
who was not at all pleased to hear the passion of
the old hunks dignified into a moral pursuit.

“Why, my lad,” answered Uncle Benjamin,
‘simply because it is not the senses that enjoy the
money, as the palate does the food or drink, but
the sordid heart that finds delight in it. Granted
the greed of the one 1s no more enlightened orTHE RIGHT ROAD. Diba

refined than that of the other,

grading moral pleasures as well as degrading

sensual ones, Ben; but the delights of human na-
ture are simply sensual, intellectual, or moral,

I say again, according as they are enjoyed either

by the senses, the mind, or the heart of man.”

“Oh, I understand now,” responded the pupil.
‘“‘ But, uncle,” he cried, the moment afterwards,
“ what’s the use of these grand names and nice dis.
tinctions? they don’t seem to me to give a chap
any real knowledge of the nature of the pleasures
themselves after all.”

‘‘ Well said, my son, well said!” the old man
replied, as he pressed the pet boy to his bosom.
‘‘1’m glad to see you are not to be put off with
mere big words, Ben. But it so happens in this
case that the grand terms are not simply hard
names invented to confound the vulgar ; but they
mark distinctions which enable us to study a
number of different things at once, to group toge-
ther a large variety of human pleasures, and thus
find out what is common to all of that same kind,
instead of our having to criticise each isolated plea-
sure successively. So that when we have once
parcelled out all the delights of mankind into the
delights either of the senses, intellect, or heart,
we can ascertain the peculiar attributes of each
distinct class of delight merely by attending to
the peculiar characteristics of sensation, thought,
and emotion in all mankind.”

‘Ah, I see!” exclaimed the boy, thoughtfully ;
“but isn’t it very difficult to find out what
are these peculiar characteristics, as you call
them ?”

“The knowledge can be gained only by pro-
found reflection and long attention to the matter,”
was the answer. ‘‘ However, let us begin at once
with the sensual pleasures, and see what worldly

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214

wisdom we can gather from even a cursory revicw
of them, my little man.”

The boy again placed himself in a convenient
position for listening, as he said “ Yes, uncle, go
on!”

YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

THE PLEASURES OF THE SENSES.

‘In the first place, then,” commenced the god-
father, ‘I should tell you that a sensation, accord-
ing to the strict meaning of the term, always
requires an external cause to give rise to it ; whereas
a thought has always an internal origin, being
excited in the mind, in every case, by some pre-
ceding mental state. Jor instance, this rock pro-
duces in me a sensation of roughness as I draw
my hand along it, and this makes me think of the
texture of other rocks, and then inwardly com-
paring the one with my remembrance of the other
impressions, I judge what quality of stone it is by
the mere touch. ‘The external body thus excites
the sensation in my mind, and this inward sensa-
tion produces the thought of other bodies like it,
and that thought again induces the comparison
and ultimate judgment. ‘The first impression had
an outward origin, the ideas which followed it
were all excited within me, the one mental state
giving rise to the other.”

‘<T understand,” said the attentive listener. ‘‘ A
sensation ’—and he went over the distinction so
as to impress it the better on his memory—
‘comes from something outside of us; a thought
is excited by something within.”

‘‘Well then, my boy,” continued the other,
‘this being understood, of course it follows
that we can have as many different sensations as
we have different means of communicating with
the outward world, or,as there are, so to speak,THE RIGHT ROAD. 215

different doors and inlets to our mind. Now, how
many different organs of sensation have we, lad ?
you know that, Ben, I suppose ?”

‘“Qh yes, uncle, we have five senses, I know,”
repled the youth. ‘ Let me see, what are they ?
Seeing” (and he told them off, one after the other,
on his fingers as he spoke), ‘hearing, tasting,
smelling, and feeling ; yes, that’s the five, all told.”

“True, my man,” added the uncle, ‘“ but a per-
son may have many other sensations than such as
come in through the organs of sight, sound, smell,
taste, and touch. These are the five principal
gates to the brain, certainly, but beyond them
there is the general sense of heat and cold, as
well as the several appetites of the body; all
of which have an external origin as much as any
other sensations of which we are susceptible. The
gastric juice, for example, from the action of
which on the stomach the feeling of hunger is
raid to proceed, is as much external to the mind
as the soft, warm breeze which I feel now as it
sweeps past my cheek.”

‘“Go on,’ said the boy, as the old man paused
for a minute to see whether the little fellow could
follow him.

«And besides these, Ben,” the godfather pro-
ceeded, ‘‘there is that indefinite sensation which
comes from the natural and genial action of every
function throughout the human frame when in a
state of absolute health, or the sense of con-
valescence, as it is termed; and which has no par-
ticular organ to develop it, but arises from the fit
operation of all the different parts of the system
at once. Then again, lad, there is the sense we
have of physical exercise, or that peculiar feel-
ing which arises in the mind on the contraction
of our muscles and play of our limbs; as well as
the sense of effort that we experience when we en-

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216 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

deavour to exert our power in any great degree.
And further, there is the sense of ease or satisfac-
tion that we feel either after resting from fatigue,
or on the allaying of any appetite, or the relief
of any bodily pain. Lastly, there is the sense
of stimulus or inordinate excitement, such as
we experience when the particular functions of
our body are performed with unusual vigour,
as upon the quickening of the circulation, or
upon being thrown into that peculiar vivid state
called mental emotion, and which seems to
affect the body almost as much as the mind. The
same sense of stimulus also manifests itself in that
peculiar impression of increased liveliness of sys-
tem which is usually called ‘animal spirits.’ And
here, so far as I know, Ben,” concluded Uncle
Benjamin, “ ends the catalogue of the distinct sen-
sations of which mankind is susceptible.”

““ Very good! very good!” cried the little fel-
low ; ‘‘and now let me see whether I can remember
them all. First come the five principal sensa-
tions of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and
feeling; and then—let me see, how did you go
on? Qh yes! then there is the sensation of heat
and cold, and of the bodily appetites; and after
that you mentioned the sensation with the long
name, you know—the sensation of—of perfect
con—con—convalescence—yes, that’s it; and—
and—what’s after that ?—don’t you tell me, uncle.
Oh, ay! I’ve got it—of exercise and of effort ; and
then there is the sensation of ease or satisfaction :
and lastly, that of stimulus or—or—whatever was
it you called it ?—some hard word or another, I
know it was.”

‘“Or inordinate excitement,” prompted the
teacher.

‘“Oh yes; inordinate excitement, so it was,”
cried the boy (clapping his hands as the remem-THE RIGHT ROAD. 217

brance of the words started back into his brain),
‘“Do you think I went over those pretty well,
uncle ?”

‘“‘ Excellently, my lttle man; and I am the
more pleased, because the ease with which you
recalled my words shows the intentness with
which you must have listened to them,” returned
Uncle Benjamin, as he again fondled the little
fellow, and told him, more by caresses than flat-
tery, how delighted he was with his long pa-
tlence.

OF SENSUOUS PLEASURE ITSELF.

‘‘ Well, Master Ben,” the old man resumed, “as
we know the different sensations of which human
nature is susceptible, we are now in a position to
begin studying the pleasures connected with
them ; for each organ of sense, I should tell you,
boy, is not only capable of giving us some pecu-
liar perception like those of hight, heat, sound,
odour, flavour, and substance, but it is also
endowed with a fundamental capacity for convey-
ing pain and pleasure, delight and disgust, in
eonnection with such perceptions; and thus the
light and heat, &c., which we perceive may be
either painful or pleasant, agreeable or disagree-
able to our feelings. Now it is with these addi-
tional or superimposed qualities that we have to
deal, lad; rather than with the mere abstract
perceptions or impressions themselves.”

‘“T see.” murmured little Ben.

‘But first let me point out to you, my son,”
the old man went on, ‘‘ the bounty and the grace
of this addition or extra endowment to our senses.
The simple perception of light and colour only,
for instance, or even of sound alone, would, it is
obvious, have been quite sufficient for all thelea ae oes

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218

purposes of mere sight and hearing ; but the adding
of the wsthetic qualities, as they are called, the
making of light and colour beautiful, and sound
melodious to us, is surely an act of high and spe-
cial benevolence—a touch of gratuitous and lavish
kindness which, as it adds nothing to the utilities
of life, but is a source of some of the purest and
most generous of all earthly happiness, is a signal
evidence of the goodness of God to us. Again,
even the institution of pain itself, which has so
puzzled the controversialists as to ‘the origin of
evil,’ is, when physiologically considered, merely
another motive to action in man. You know I
told you before, Ben, nothing can move without a
cause, and that there is a reason for every one of
the actions among human beings and the lower ani-
mals, which are continually going onin the world.
With mankind, as you have seen, the chief stimulus
to action is the pursuit of pleasure ; it is the sense
of dehght to come that generally leads men to act
inthis way or that. But while the love of pleasure
draws us almost insensibly along by the silken
cord of our innate desires towards that which is
agreeable to us, our inherent aversion from pain
makes us instinctively shun that which is noxious
tous. Like the two poles of a magnet, the one
attracts and the other repels, but both act to-
wards the same end: the repellent force not only
drives the body away, but it turns it at the same
time towards the attractive one. And as the op-
posite poles of the magnet, when it is bent into the
form of a horse-shoe, so that they may both operate
simultaneously, act and react on each other, and
have thus more than double the power of either
force singly, so, lad, with pain and pleasure ; they
are but two causes instead of one to produce the
same effect; a double motive power to induce us
to seek the good and avoid the evils of life. Then

YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.a ee ee

     
 
  
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
   

a

THE RIGHT ROAD. 219

surely if it were benevolence to make us delight
in goodness, as the means of drawing us by the
insensible attraction of our own instincts towards

that which is fit and proper for us; so was it even i own
still greater benevolence to give us a natural ee
loathing for what is hurtful to us, and thus to al
create in us an involuntary aversion from the a | i

several ills the flesh is heir to. Viewed in this
light, lad, evil is the very counterpart of goodness
itself, and pain the twin-sister to pleasure.”

‘So it is,” exclaimed the little fellow; ‘‘ though
I must-say it does seem at first sight like as if pain,
misery, and want had been created by an evil
spirit rather than a good one—doesn’'t it, uncle ?”

 

THE PLEASURES OF THE FIVE PRINCIPAL SENSES,-

«And now, Ben, primed with this knowledge
as to the fundamental use of pain and pleasure in
the world, we will proceed forthwith to the con-
sideration of the pleasures of the senses,’—the i
eodfather went on. ‘Well, then, my boy, as
each sense has been made susceptible of a certain
form of pleasure and delight, it follows, of course, iP
that there must be as many different forms of sen- 4
sual pleasures as there are distinct sensations in
mankind.”

“Ah, I begin to see now why you wanted to
make me acquainted with the different sensations
themselves first,” ejaculated little Ben.

‘¢ There are, of course,” added Uncle Benjamin,
“the pleasures of the five principal senses to
begin with. Above all, there are the pleasures
of the eye : and these mostly consist in the natural
charms of lustre and splendour, bright colours
and graceful forms; and hence the delight of all
nations in pomp, show, and dazzle, as well as
gaudiness and gewgaws. Hence comes the loveSa bia

2 ON apse

 

 

220 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

of the precious metals, as being the more pleasing
to the sight ; and the love of those pretty crystals
called jewels, as being the brightest-hued and most
brillant little lumps of matter in the world about
us; hence, too, the Jove of fine robes, grand halls,
gilt carriages, and gay liveries among the rich,
as well as among monarchs and lord-mayors, and
of tinsel and frippery even among chimney-sweeps ;
ay, and of bright beads and peacocks’ feathers
among barbarous nations and savages. Nor is
this all: the natural delight that even the most
educated and refined feel in the contemplation of
nature when decked in all the glory of summer
vegetation; in beholding—the golden corn—the
purple clover —the green meadows—the jewelled
orchards—the bright blue sky—the snow-white
clouds—the crystal waters-—-the sparkling foun-
tains—the many coloured flowers, and the rich
lustre of the sunlight as well as the blanched splen-
<lour of the moonlight, and fiery fretwork of the
stars—all is due principally to that wondrous palate
of the eye, which makes such perceptions more or
less pleasurable to the sense of vision in all man-
kind.”

“Go on, uncle, I like to hear this,” exclaimed
the boy, delighted with the crowd of pleasant
associations now called up in his mind.

‘Then, lad,” he continued, “there are the
pleasures of the ear, such as the warbling of the
birds—the sweet plaint of the cuckoo—the rich
notes of the nightingale, and the dulcet rapture of
the lark ; the sound of woman’s gentle and kindly
voice—the laughter of infants—the murmur of the
brooks—the hum of busy insect life—the buzz of
the waterfall—the drone of the far-off sca—the
chiming of the church-bells—the ‘soughing’ of
the wind, and even the negative delight which
the same sense finds, in the stillness of evening,TIIE RIGHT ROAD. 22%

the quietude of the sabbath, and the solemn
silence of the forest.”

The boy nodded as much as to say, “ proceed !”

‘““Next we have the pleasures of the palate,
Ben,” said the uncle; “‘and these are made up of
the sweets and fruits of the earth, and the choice
flavour of spices and ‘ sweet herbs,’ as well as the
peculiar and grateful sapid qualities of the dif-
ferent kinds of meat, roots, and grain that con-
stitute our food. Besides these, too, there is the
delicious freshness of a draught of cool and spark-
ling spring water—the softness of milk—the rich-
ness of wine, and the pungency of spirits. Nor
should we here forget the strange perverted taste
for tobacco, which, from being loathsome even to
nausea at first, becomes, if long persisted in, not
only pleasant, but generates an absolute craving,
as hunger does in the system.

‘ Further,” he added, after a shght pause, ‘ there
are the pleasures of the sense of smell; and these
are not less manifold than the others. To this
sense man owes a great part of his delight in
flowers and fruits, and also his taste for the cloy-
ing luxury of artificial perfumes—the fine aroma
of spices—the rich fragrance of incense; while
among the daintier charms of the same organ may
be included the delicate natural odour of early
morning—of the new-turned earth—of new-mown
hay—of burning weeds—of the nutty smell of the
woods, and the fresh redolence of the sea; more-
over, even the negative delights of pure air and
cleanliness spring partly from the like faculty.”

“Again, my boy, there are the charms peculiar
to the sense of touch or feeling, that sense which
is confined not alone to the finger-ends, but dif-
fused over the whole skin. Among these may be
ranked the delight we find in softness and smooth-
ness, as well as in elasticity or yieldingness. It

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222 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

is this sense which makes man feel pleasure in fine
linen and velvety textures—in easy chairs—soft
couches, and beds of down; and it is the peculiar,
fresh, and glibsome feel of the skin, in a state of
perfect cleanliness that constitutes one of the main
inducements to personal ablution. Further, it is
doubtlessly in the delight that the hand experiences
in the palpabilities of finely rounded and gently
swelling forms, that hes the very foundation of
our notions of beauty in lines, and figures.”

‘“Now that’s all the five senses, uncle,” re-
marked the boy, as his godfather came to a pause.
‘* But then, you know, there’s the sense of heat and
cold, and the sensations of the different appetites,
and the sense of perfect what d’ye call it—perfect
con—con—lI[ never can remember that name ;” and
but for this httle hitch in his memory, the lad
would assuredly have run through the whole
catalogue once more.

“Ay, boy! but one thing at a time, Ben,” cried
out the uncle, who was getting anxious to bring
this part of the lesson to a close. ‘The pleasures
derivable from the sense of heat and cold are
chiefly such as are afforded by warm clothing in
winter, and cool, hght garments in summer. It
is this sense that makes a fine warm spring day
so intensely delightful to us all; this which
renders the sea-side, with its fresh invigorating
breezes, so pleasant in summer, as well as the
cool shady lanes of the country, and the exquisite
umbrage and subdued light of the forest, so agree-
able to every one at the same season. In the
winter, on the other hand, the same sense makes us
find pleasure in the shelter of our house and the
cosiness of our own fireside; and when the keen
and stinging east wind is heard whistling without,
or when the earth is white as an infant’s pall with
its sheet of snow, and we think of the wretchedTHE RIGHT ROAD. 293

shoeless wanderers with nothing but their rent
rags of clothes to cover them, and no roof to shelter
their heads, why then, like the hypocrites of old, lad,
we thank God we ‘are not as one of these + and
then our natural love of warmth makes us find a
special blessing in the comforts of our own home,
and the bright substitute for the sunshine that is
glowing in the centre of our own hearth.”

THE PLEASURES OF HEALTH.

‘* And now for the pleasures of the bodily ap-
petites!” exclaimed little Ben as soon as his vod-
father had finished with the other.

“Nay, child, all in good time,” was the answer,
‘“‘ they must stand over for a while, till we come to
the pleasures we experience from a sense of ease
or satisfaction. ‘The next subject is the pleasures
of health, or those which arise from our sense of
perfect convalescence.”

‘¢ Ah, that’s the word I wanted!” shouted Ben,
intensely pleased to get hold of it once more.
‘* Perfect convalescence—perfect convalescence ;
I won’t forget it in a hurry again, I warrant.”

‘“Well, lad,” said Uncle Benjamin, “the
pleasures of health are of so indefinite and sub-
dued a character, that 1t is only when they are
brought out by the contrast of a long illness, that
we are fully sensible of the great natural delight
there is in a state of convalescence. ‘hen, as the
blood begins to tingle again softly in the veins,
and to setevery nerve sparkling as it were with the
returning circulation, while the whole skin becomes
alive with the faint tickling of its revived action—
then as the warm sunshine is felt to sink into
the frame like a, honeyed balm, and to pervade the
body as if it were in an absolute bath of light, and
the fresh breeze seems positively to play and fondleSe ee

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QA YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

with the cheeks, softly as a woman’s hand, as it
sweeps past them, and to breathe the very breath
of life into the frame with the refreshing fanning
of every gust—then, and then only, are we tho-
roughly conscious of the fine sensuous delight
that health affords us. Itis the same principle of
contrast, again, which gives the sense of health
such charms in the memories of the old—ay, and
even in their imaginations, too—when they be-
hold the stout Limbs, the plump and rosy cheeks,
the pinky and smooth skin of hearty children; and
see the little things run and frisk with all the
sportiveness and springiness of lambs; and hear
them laugh with the fine wild joy of utter care-
lessness; full of hfe even to overflowing, and
cushing with spirits; and with every fibre of
their frame glowing and quickened with the
delightful enlivenment of thorough bodily sanity.
Ah, then what would not the aged and decrepit
give for one hour’s enjoyment-of this same sense
of perfect health again !”

THE PLEASURES OF EXERCISE.

‘Now are you going to do the pleasures of the
appetites, uncle ?” inquired the boy, who seemed
to be still anxious that his teacher should keep
to the order which he himself had laid down.

‘No lad,” the other made answer; ‘“ the next
sensual pleasure [shall touch upon is the natural
delight of physical exercise—though in the slight
glance I have ’:just given at the enjoyment
children find in‘their sports and gambols, Lhave
somewhat forestalled the subject. The delight of
exercise (apart from the charms of external nature
and that enjoyment of change of air, which always
serve to increase, more or less, the pleasure we find
in walking or riding), the delight of exercise, ITHE RIGHT ROAD. 225

say, Seems to arise principally: from the ‘ working
off’ of that muscular irritability which is called
‘fidgetiness,’ when it becomes excessive in the
system. ‘The blood, as it travels through the
body, tends to irritate every fibre of the flesh and
nerves, and this irritation gives the muscles a
natural tendency to contract, in the same manner as
if they were excited with the mere point of a pin;
and hence the allaying of the uneasiness occasioned
by the muscular irritability, becomes a source of
no slight pleasure to mankind. Again, in the act
of exercise the whole system becomes quickened,
and every function stimulated, while the health
is improved as well as the spirits enlivened. So
that even were there no special delight of its own
connected with the sense of exercise, the mere
pleasures of increased health and excitement
would be sufficient to make it agreeable to us.
But the delight that youths find in what are called
athletic sports and games—the fine manly pas-
times of cricket, rowing, running, leaping, climb-
ing, skating, riding, and even the more effeminate
amusement of dancing—all owe the greater part of
their charms to the natural love of exercise in
human nature. Again, the enjoyment of travelling
(though of course the pleasure of seeing strange
countries and customs enters largely into that
kind of gratification) borrows not a few of its
delights from the same sense; and even that love
of wandering, which is termed ‘ vagabondage ’
(in those who cannot afford to pay hotel bills)
may be referred to the same cause. Indeed, it
admits of a great question, too, whether that high
principle of freedom, which is called ‘ the love of
liberty,’ is not part of that natural vagabond
spirit in man, which, springing from an instinctive
delight ™m exercise, makes us averse from all
restraint, and ready to burst: through any impedi-
)

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226 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

ment that may be opposed to the free use of our
limbs or the natural exercise of our will,”

THE PLEASURES OF THE APPETITES,

‘And now, I suppose, you’re going to touch
upon the pleasures of the appetites ain’t you,
uncle ?” again inquired the youth, after another
pause ; for, boy-like, he was not a little taken with
the subject.

‘““ Yes, my boy, they come next,” the godfather
returned; ‘but the pleasures of the appetites—
now that we have gone over those of the palate,
which gives to eating and drinking the main part
of their 7 positive gr atification—are mostly of a purely
negative character. ‘That is to say, the pleasure that
essentially belongs to them consists chiefly in the
removal of that pain or uneasiness, and consequent
craving, which is the characteristic feeling of the

appetite itself; and in the substitution of a state of
perfect ease and satisfaction in its stead. As I
said before, Ben, if hunger had been made a plea-
sure, man would have sat still and starved with
delight; and as the pain of hunger, or want, is
one of the chief ills in the world, we have here
another marked instance as to the benevolent
origin of what is called ‘evil. But though our
appetites, lad, have been made pains—or at least
uneasinesses—and that merely with the view of
exciting us to seek the things necessary to appease
them, the act of appeasing them has assuredly
been rendered a special delight to us; for not only
has taste been superadded to the appetite, so as to
make the food agreeable to the palate, but the feel-
ing of satisfaction, ease, and contentment—which
follows in the mind immediately the craving is
stopped—has been rendered one of the most tran
quil and yet enjoyable states of which our natureTHE RIGHT ROAD. 997

is susceptible. Indeed, the delight that all men
find inasense of ease and satisfaction 1s perhaps one
of the strongest ‘cues to action’ in human nature ;
for not only does this pleasurable state of negation
from pain or uneasiness immediately succeed in
the mind, on the allaying of the craving of the
bodily appetite ; but it follows every other state of
bodily or mental disquietude that man can suffer,
and makes the sense of relief from physical torture
as intense a pleasure as any in life. The sense of
effort, for instance, I have before told you is
always irksome, and hence the uneasiness of what
is called hard labour; and this is what all the
vorld is endeavouring to escape from, and ulti-
mately settle down into a state of ease and comfort
in their old age. Noman in existence likes work,
though there is a cant abroad that industry 1s
pleasant; for work is essentially what 1s irksome,
whereas, directly the work becomes pleasant 1t is
‘play’ or ‘amusement.’ But man must work, as I
said, to live ; and all prefer even the irksomeness of
toil to the agony of starving; while most men
put up with the uneasiness of their present labour
and strife, for the purpose of acquiring the means
of future ease and rest. But effort is not only
irksome, lad, even when exerted in a slight degree,
but it is absolutely painful when prolonged to a
creat extent ; and it is always fatiguing when long
sustained, and ultimately is overpowering. Now it
is this sense of fatigue which invariably follows any
long-continued series of efforts, that makes the ease
of rest and repose a source of intense delight to
the weary. You, yourself, Ben, remember how
you enjoyed your bed after that long pull at the
sculls, when we were becalmed in the offing yonder;
and every one who has felt the fatigue of a very
long walk, and known what it is to have every
muscle positively sore and tender with the pro-
Q 2

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228 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

tracted exertion—the limbs stiff and cramped,
and the joints seeming to grate against the bones
with every bend—knows also that there is perhaps
no luxury in life like rest. To many a labourer,
lad, who is forced to be working hard all the week,
and to whom even the sleep of the se’night is
insufficient to take the crick out of his back, and
aches out of his arms, the Sabbath is often a
sabbath of mere bed; or, at least, a large slice of
the enjoyment of the blessed day of rest, with such
people, consists in a sleep in the fields. But not
only does the natural delight in ease,” he went
on, ‘show itself in this way among the poor and
hard-working portion of society, but the same
principle is also strongly developed in the rich and
indolent members of every community. It is this
love of ease that makes your fine folk delight in car-
riages, so that they may be dragged along through
the air rather than be put to the exertion of walk-
ing ; and it is the same feeling which makes them
delight in a retinue of servants, to save them the
trouble of doing the least thing for themselves.
Again, the nice charm there is in what are called
the ‘comforts’ of life, derives its pleasure from the
same source; for such comforts are but the means
of removing certain little household uneasinesses :
and the very delights of home itself may be referred
to this same love of ease and quietude. To every
English heart, home and comfort are the main en-
joyments of life ; and yet it is but the love of ease
and quietude that makes the peace and coziness
of our own hearth so acceptable after the day’s
labours, the day’s cares, and the day’s hubbub.
And finally, it is this very love of ease, rest, and
tranquillity, that makes the tired pilgrim through
life (when the limbs are aching with their long
journey, the back is crooked with the heavy
load of years, and the ear is deaf with the noiseTHE RIGHT ROAD. 229

and strife of the world) sigh for the long rest and
sweet repose of heaven itself—the peaceful home
of the spirit—the blessed comfort of the soul.”

THE PLEASURES OF PHYSICAL EXCITEMENT.

“And now,” said the httle fellow, ‘‘ you’ve
got to do the pleasures that come from what d’ye
call it ?—that other long word you used.”

‘s Inordinate excitement, Ben,” added the old
man. ‘‘ Yes, my boy, and these will not take us
long to specify ; for I have already, while speaking
of the delights of health and exercise, pointed out
to you how large a share of those pleasures are
due to the increased stimulus given by them to
the circulation, as well as to every function of the
body. ‘There is, of course, a strong physical
enjoyment in feeling the blood go dancing through
the veins, andin having a fine glow of new life, as
it were, diffused throughout the entire frame ; to be
conscious of a new vigour being infused into every
fibre, and a fresh energy thrown into every limb ;
to find the animal spirits suddenly rise.and gladden
our nature, like a burst of sunshine upon the earth ;
to see the mist of the megrims gradually melt away
from before the eyes; to have bright and happy
thoughts come bubbling up, one after another, into
the brain, and feel the heart-flutter with the
very thrill of' the invigorated system. Every one
delights in the gentle excitement of cheerfulness,
as much as they dislike the wretched depression
of melancholy—or ‘low spirits,’ as it is called.
And it is the sensual charm, which is to be found in
a state of increased bodily excitement, that leads
your drunkard and your opium-eater to fly to
potions and drugs as a means of producing it;
whilst the gourmand, whose stomach and palate
have grown dull and dead from long indulgence
in the highly-seasoned food of epicurism, resorts

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230 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

to the strong stimulus of sauces, spices, and shal-
lots, cayenne, curries, and ‘devils’ as the means
of stinging his over-worked gustatory nerves into
something like liveliness. It is the more remark-
able, too, that 1t is only with weak and diseased
appetites and natures that such stimuli or inor-
dinate excitements are required. The drunkard,
whose stomach is jaded and spent with the
continued goading of his ‘drams,’ must have a
‘relish “—some salt, savoury snack—before he can
bring himself to touch any solid food; the sick
person, recovering from a long illness, is always
more or less squeamish in his taste, and requires
the httle that he does take to be cooked in some
peculiarly dainty manner; in order that the rare
delicacy of the dish may ‘tempt’ him, and so serve
as a gentle stimulus to his flagging appetite. The
same delight in excitement, indeed, prevails in
every one of the senses. The eye loves the extra
vivid impressions produced by the contrast of
opposite colours—the juxtaposition of black and
white, red and green, for example; and even the
natural antipathy we have from darkness, and the
desire to revel in a ‘blaze of light,’ have their
origin in the same tendency to delight in unusual
vividness. ‘l’o this principle, too, may be referred
the charm we find in the solemn grandeur of the
thunder-storm: in the instantaneous flash that
lights up the whole heavens and the earth at once,
and then suddenly leaves it in pitchy darkness ;
in the unnatural stillness that reigns throughout
all nature before the storm, to be broken at last by
the wild clatter of the thunder-burst, that seems
like the roar and tremble of an earthquake in the
heavens themselves. These are not only the
brightest and loudest effects in the world, but
contrast serves to render them even brighter and
louder than they naturally are. Again, lad, inTHE RIGHT ROAD. 2al

the sports and games of youth, it is the excitement
of the play that lends as great gratification to the
amusement, as even the exercise itself.”
THE PLEASURE OF HABIT.

‘¢ And now you've done, uncle, haven’t you?’
said the boy as the old gentleman came to a pause,

‘‘ Not quite, my lad,” the other made answer,
‘‘for there is still the sensual pleasure of habit to
be mentioned in order to complete the catalogue.
This pleasure, again, like those of health, exercise,
ease, and excitement, has no particular organ to
which it can be referred; but is rather a delight
that admits of being connected with any or all of
the more special sensations themselves. Of the
strange pleasures which habit has the power ot
developing in us—of its power to transiorm what
is naturally irksome and even painful into delights,
and to change aversions into propensities, I have
before spoken. I have pointed out to you that all
which is required to work this marvellous change
is long-continued repetition, and that, too, at fre-
quent and regular intervals ; but the change once
wrought, the pleasure we derive from the object
or practice to which we have become habituated
is, perhaps, as great as any of our natural enjoy-
ments. For instance, there is no doubt that the
taste, and maybe even the smell of tobacco, 1s
innately repulsive ; and yet, let any one persevere
‘a the use of it—let him continue either smoking,
chewing, or snuffing it, and after a time habit is
sure to set in, and transform the instinctive
loathing into a cultivated longing—the natural
abomination into an artificial delicacy. It is the
same with the cating of opium and the drinking
of neat spirits. With the muscular actions of the
body, again, as well as the objects of the senses,
the same principle of transformation holds good.pedi iieadtaaediant ol at et nat ae ae itt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
   
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
 
    
  
 
 
  
   
  
 
 
 
   
  
 
  
  
  
 
   
  
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
   
 

230 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

You have already been told how the irksomeness
of labour, Ben, can be converted into a comparative
pleasure by habit ; and it now only remains for me
to draw your attention, lad, to some few other
pleasures of the same kind. The pleasure of
exercise, we all know, is so much increased by
the habit of walking daily, that perhaps the chief
punishment in imprisonment lies in the mental
and bodily irritation which ig felt when indulgence
in the habit is prevented. Again, as I said before,
there is pleasure even in whittling or paring sticks
with a sharp knife, as you see the people con-
tinually doing in this part of the world; and,
indeed, the simple habit in children of biting the
nails produces so strong a desire to continue the
practice, that their hands have occasionally to be
muffled, or their arms strapped behind, to prevent
them indulging in the practice. Further, there is
the well-known story of the barrister, who always
kept twiddling a piece of string when he was
pleading, and who could be most eloquent while
habitually engaged in unravelling the twine; but
who couldn’t get a word out, if some wicked wag
only stole the string before he began his address
to the jury.’ Nor is this all: ‘so strong a hold

does habit lay upon the mind, that the national

customs of a country are often as much revered as

even the national religion itself; and not a few

revolutions have been caused by the attempts of
rulers to alter the habits and ceremonies of a

people; Where, now I fave done, Master Ben,”

added the uncle, “and given you, I believe, a full

list of the purely physical pleasures that our

nature 1s capable of enjoying.”

THE RESULT : THE BUSINESS OF LIFE,

“Thank you, uncle,” said the lad, as he rose
from the rock on which he had been seated; “andTHE RIGHT ROAD.

233

now, I suppose, we can go;” for, to tell the truth,
though little Ben was a good listener for his years,
he had almost had enough lecturing for one

sitting.

‘“ Go, boy!” echoed the elder Benjamin, with
pretended disdain; ‘‘ why, what did we come for,
you rogue? We came, Master Ben, to put you on
the right road; but as yet we haven’t advanced a
step. We are only staring up at the sign-post
still, and haven’t even decided whether it will be
better to go the way the senses would lead us, or
whether we shall follow the path the intellect
points out, or take the road the heart would

counsel us to pursue.”

‘Oh, ay! no more we have, uncle. Do you
know, I had forgotten all about that,” answered
the frank lad, who was too little skilled in the
subtleties of dialectics to be able to keep the point
of the argument always in view. “ Well, then,
I suppose now that you’ve explained all about the
sensual pleasures, youre going to show me next
why they’re not so good as the intellectual, or

moral ones.”

‘T never yet gave you to understand, lad, that
they were not as good, in their way, as the others,”
was the gentle reproof. ‘When kept within due
bounds, and held to their proper objects, there is
assuredly no harm in the pleasures of the senses.”

“ Yes, but what are those due bounds, as you
call them, uncle?” inquired the youngster.

«© The bounds of nature, boy ; the bounds of the
fitness of things,” the teacher replied. ‘‘ See here,

Ben, and mark well what I say.

The three main

objects of life are these : business, amusements,
and duties. It is the chief business of life to get
food. and clothing for the body; to provide

ourselves

ard those who belong to us with shelter,
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234 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANICLIN.

well as to lay by such a store as shall insure us
the means of ease, if not affluence, in our old age.
The main business of hfe then, you perceive, lad,
is merely to minister to the wants and delights of
our senses; or, in other words, not only to prevent
the pains and uneasinesses of the flesh, but to
obtain some small share of the animal pleasures of
existence. ‘I’he addition of the feelings of delight
and disgust to the mere perceptive faculties of the
senses, Ben, I have before shown you, is a signal
evidence of God’s goodness to his creatures. IT'ood
is necessary only to reinvigorate the body, and
allay the pains of appetite. No other quality was
required for the mere purposes of continued animal
existence ; but the Almighty has made food agrec-
able to the palate also. Light and colour were
all that was wanted for vision, but He has made
them beautiful as well: sound alone would have
been sufficient for hearing, but He has superadded
melody and harmony; and it is only an ascetic
bigot, therefore, who is insensible to the bounty
of God’s benevolence in the world, that believes
he is leading a righteous life in shunning all the
graceful charms of sentient nature.”

The boy stared with astonishment to hear his
half-Puritan godfather give vent to such scnti-
ments, and inquired, ‘‘'Then why, uncle, were
the epicure and the drunkard such offensive
characters ?”

‘‘ Because, my lad, they ignored the stern
business of life, and gave every thought of their
mind, every affection of their heart, to mere
animal pleasure. That form of pleasure which,
kept within its own natural bounds, is, remember,
an after-grace, they made a primary pursuit of;
the sensual delights, which have been superadded
as a graceful reward after the hard business of life
has been done, they made the whole and solei048 RIGHT ROAD. 235

business of their lives; in other words they strove,
like dunces, to get the reward while they shirked
the task,” was “the response. ‘‘ The rudest form
of animal life, Ben,” he went on, ‘‘ the last link
in the long chain of sentient existenc e, 1s a polype,
without eyes, limbs, heart, nerves, or indeed any
organ of sense, and hardly of motion; a mere
animated stomach; a living thing that you can
turn inside out, and which still goes on performing
its one function of eating and drinking as com-
placently as ever; an animate creature that is
all belly and nothing else. The epicure and
the drunkard, lad, are human polypes; the ‘ gas-
tropods’ of mankind, whose belly is the only organ
‘that moves them; and stirred by which, like slugs
hey go crawling and slavering along through
the brief term of ‘hum: in existence. The business
of life, my son, is to get the means of living ; but
the means of living are wanted not merely to
tickle the palate, but to enable us to satisfy all the
cravings, requirements, and aspirations—all the
duties, affections, and yearnings of our nature.
The grand object, Ben, is to make the business of
lite a pleasure, and not the pleasures of life a
business.”

‘“T think I understand what you mean by the
business of life now; and see why the drunkard
and the epicure are not worthy pe ople.” _

“There is but one other point now,” said the
old man, ‘‘and then I have really pee) my
ehild.”’

‘¢ And what is that, Uncle Ben P” the boy asked,
as he orew a little fidgety.

“Well, lad,” the eodfather went on, ‘‘ you re-
member I pointed out to you at the beginning of
the subject, that our sensations all come from
without ?”

‘¢ Oh, yes!

oa

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Sele itd oid

 

 

  

236 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

always had an external cause, and thoughts an
internal one—those were your words, unky dear,”
exclaimed the little fellow, roused by the pride of
having an opportunity of showing how attentive
he had been.

‘They were, Ben; and such impressions, coming
from without, of course do not depend upon our-
selves,’ added the uncle. ‘ We must go and hunt
in the world for such objects as we desire to act
pleasantly upon our senses. But these objects are
often to be procured only by extreme labour on
our parts, or at great cost, in order to induce
others to part with them for our benefit. Hence
sensual pleasures are always the most costly of
all pleasures. The delights of the palate, for
instance, are found chiefly in the more expensive
viands, fruits and wines; as well as the rare deli-
cacies which are either brought from the farthest
corners of the earth, or forced into maturity by
great care and trouble, at unusual seasons of the
year. For the luxurious gratification of the eye,
again, we need the show of superb services of
plate—the dear finery of jewels, and silks and
satins, velvet and lace—the magnificence of stately
halls, elegant furniture, and splendid decorations
—the prettiness of gay gardens, and the noble
grandeur of parks. And it is the same with every
other sense appertaining to human nature: for
the highly-prized objects of delight to each of the
physical faculties are sure to be highly priced
also. Indeed, the only means of sensual enjoy-
ment that we have really within our own power,
and which does not require some external object
for its gratification, is that of exercise; for the
objects upon which exercise expends itself are our
own limbs and the muscles of our own body.
Hence the games and sports which make this
physical indulgence so agreeable to men as wellTHE RIGHT ROAD. 257

as youth, are sources of harmless and healthful
pleasure, always within our grasp; and hence the
very exercise of labour itself, when quickened
by the excitement of will or ‘purpose, or trans-
formed into a propensity by long habit—of labour,
which is not only necessary to our independence,
and even continued existence in the world—is a
faculty that les literally at our fingers’ ends; and
which may be made to contribute at once to our
well-being and to our happiness. Finally, I should
impress upon you, my boy, that with the undue
indulgence in any mere physical delight, there is
always some peculiar bodily evil connected.
Over-indulgence of the palate brings gout, dys-
pepsia, apoplexy, and the utter ruin of bodily
health ; over-drinking causes delirium tremens,
softening of the brain, and the soddening, even to
fatuity, of the mind. Over-work, on the other
hand, produces premature old age and decay; and
over-ease, in its turn, begets indolence, corpu-
lency, and positive helplessness. These, my lad,
are the worldly punishments instituted by the
Great Judge over all—the brands which the
Almighty prints on the brows of the fools and
human beasts of the world, and that are intended
to whisper ‘ Beware,’ in the ears of the more wise
and prudent.”

‘‘ Well then,” said the little fellow, “I think
sensual pleasures are but sorry pleasures after all,
uncle.”

‘*'T'hey are, as I said, lad, designed to render
the business of life agreeable in the end ; and hence
were never intended to be made the primary pur-
suit of man’s existence; and those who wrest
them from their true purpose, and seek to trans-
form them into amusements, must suffer for their
folly. If men have no want of food, and will yet
eat, for the mere pleasure of eating some savoury

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238 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

dish, they not only lack the natural relish of food,
but they break a natural commandment, which
ordained that hunger should stir men to seek food,
and that the pleasure of eating it should be the
reward of getting it. And the breach of this
natural commandment brings, sooner or later, its
own peculiar natural punishment—bodily enfee-
blement instead of strength and vigour—injury
rather than well-being—suffering and disease in
the place of happiness and health.”

Ihe words were barely uttered, when Uncle
Benjamin started as he cried, “Hush! what
o’clock’s that?” and the sound of the big bell of
the state-house clock was heard booming, in the
silence of the night, resonantly across the water.

‘One! two! three! four!” counted the old
man, following each stroke as it burst upon the
alr’.

“It’s nine, I’m sure, uncle!” interjected little
Ben.

‘Five! six! seven!” continued the other.

‘It must be nine,” added the boy, “for we
can’t have been here more than two hours; and it
wasn't quite seven, you know, when we started.”

“ Hight! nine!” . Uncle Benjamin kept count-.
ing as the other talked, and then, holding up his
finger, as he reckoned the ninth stroke, he waited
for a moment or two, and at last shouted out, as
he rose hastily from his seat, “Ten! as ’m a
living sinner. Come along, Ben! come along!
we shall have them all in bed before we get
home, I declare!”CHAPTER XVIII.
THE NEXT TURNING.

Tue following night the same couple were seated
on the same lump of rock, looking at the same
bright moon and stars, and engaged in solving the
same subtle problem—‘ Which is the right road
through life ?”

‘* Now, then, Master Benjamin,” began the good-
natured old tutor, as freshly as if he were never
tired of counselling his little godson as to how to
live a righteous and sober life; “we have seen
where one of the roads leads to; we have learnt
that if we follow the path of mere sensual plea-
sure, we must expect to pay heavy tolls and taxes
by the way, and shall come to only disease and
anguish at the end. So let us take a peep down
the next turning, and see what looms in the dis-
tance there.”

“The next turning, as you call it, uncle, looks
like a nice, quiet, shady lane to me,” remarked the
pupil, only too pleased to carry out the figure.
** It’s the path of intellectual pleasure, isn’t 1t ?”

“It 1s, my son,” the other answered; ‘and as
the main object of the business of life is to stay
the cravings and relieve the uneasinesses, as well
as to contribute to the natural delights of the
senses: so with the amusements of life, intel-
lectual pleasure is, or should be, more directly
connected. ‘The physical word for amusement,
Ben, is recreation; and a fine term it is, aS ex-
pressing that re-enlbyvenment and re-invigoration

 

Ber ae ee ESEQAO YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

of the jaded powers of body and mind which come
from mental diversion. Hnhghtened amusement
really mental refreshment—a cooling draught from
a shady spring, that sobers and revives the soul
after the heat of the work-day world, far more
than any of the fiery stimulants which the senses
delight in. J told you, lad, you remember, when
treating of the sense of effort, that it was always
irksome, occasionally painful, and if long con-
tinued, fatiguing, and ultimately overpowering,
for us to make any severe exertion. Now the
natural means of removing fatigue is by rest; for
the sense of weariness, which oppresses the limbs
after protracted labour, is merely the Almighty’s
voice whispering, ‘Hold! enough!’ and warning
us not to overtax the powers He has conferred upon
us; and when this weariness sets in, the craving
for rest, which He has implanted in us, tells us
that mere repose alone is sufficient for the recruit-
ment of the spent animal strength and spirits.
But the change that rest produces in the frame
passively; amusement, or mere diversion of the
mind from the Jaborious pursuits, brings about
actively. ‘The action of diversion recreates and re-
invigorates, as much as positive inaction or repose ;
and hence amusement, after the day’s business
and labour have been done, is as healthful as rest
itself; ay, and as necessary too, for the restoration
of that elasticity of energy—that spring of body
and mind—which is requisite for the doing of the
business and labour of to-morrow.”

Little Ben was delighted to learn the philosophy
of amusement, for, boy-like, he was quite suffi-
ciently in love with recreation to be glad to hear
that there was not only an excuse, but really a
reason for indulging in the pleasant pastimes of
life; so he chimed in, “Yes, uncle, I’ve often
heard you tell father that ‘all work and no playTHE NEXT TURNING, 241

makes Jack a dull boy ;’ and now I know the truth
of the saying.”

‘“Ah, lad! but always bear in mind the con-
verse of the proverb,” was the rejoinder, ‘‘‘ that
all play and no work makes Jack a beggar-boy.’ ”

THE PLEASURES OF THE INTELLECT.

“Well, Ben, with this little preface,” the
uncle resumed—“ we now pass on to consider the
several intellectual pleasures themselves. To cach
intellectual faculty of our nature, then,” he began,
‘there is of course some special associate mental
delight attached ; in the same manner as there is
some peculiar kind of animal pleasure connected
with the various organs of sense; and I might
proceed with this part of our subject by explain-
ing to you, in due order, all the particular pleasures
of the memory—the pleasures of the imagination
—the pleasures of the judgment—the pleasures of
reason—the pleasures of art—the pleasures of
abstraction, andsoon. But this mode of procedure
would convey to you, comparatively speaking, but
little knowledge as to the mainsprings or sources of
such pleasures; and I want to give youa deeper
insight into your own nature, my child, than
comes of mere classification or orderly arrange-
ment. J want to let you see that the general
capacities for enjoyment in man, are really the
same in the intellect as in the senses themselves ;
and that the only difference is, that with the
various forms of mental delight, the pleasure comes
in through the operation of the thoughts ; whilst
in the various kinds of animal delight, the grati-
fication enters through the action of some
organ of sensation. Now, lad, let me hear whe-
ther you can enumerate the different kinds of
sensuous pleasure of which human nature 1s sus-
ceptible; over and beyond those which belong to
Ralia alle Da aa ea a eet ek ee ee

 

 

 

  

242 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

what are called the five Senses, and also that of
heat and cold ; for these we have done with.”

Young Ben put his head to one side, and rubbed

away at his scalp, as hard as a cat does. occasion-
ally at its ear, as he exclaimed, ‘‘ Let me see!
there’s the pleasure of the sense of perfect con-
valescence; I remember that, because of that
plaguy hard word. And then there’s another one,
with a long-winded title, too, but he comes at the
last, [know ;” the boy went on talking away, as he
tried to recall the sensations in the order his
uncle had gone over them. ‘Oh yes! then there
is the pleasure of exercise, and the pleasure of
ease and satisfaction ; and then comes Mr. Crack-
jaw, and he’s called the pleasure of —of—don’t you
tell me now-—of—inordinate excitement. Yes,
that’s it!’ he added, as the thought came out with
a pop, like the cork from a bottle of soda-water.
‘Qh! but wait a minute,” he cried, as he saw his
uncle still looking at him, as much as to say he
had forgotten something—“ and then there’s the
pleasure of habit as well.”

‘Bravo, little may‘ bravo!” cheered the old
boy, for really the uncle was as pleased with the
feat as the little fellow himself. «And now,
omitting the pleasures of health, I want to show
you, Ben, that we find the same delight in mental
exercise, aS in the exercise of our bedies; the
same pleasure in the satisfaction of our minds,
and freedom from any state of mental uneasiness,
as In the allaying of any bodily craving or unplea-
santness ; the same gratification in vivid thoughts
and perceptions, as in extra-lively sensations and
bodily stimulants; and the same enjoyment in the
indulgence in particular habits of thinking, as well
as feeling.”

“How strange!” murmured the Jad Ss my Orga |
can't see how you'll ever make it all ont though,”THE NEXT TURNING. 243

‘‘The delights of exercise, satisfaction, mordi-
nate vividness, and habit,” continued the god-
father, ‘‘ are as strongly marked in the mind as in
the body; and as the corresponding physical im-
pressions appear to come in through no special
organ of sense, but to be impressions that admit
of being associated with all or any of our physical
faculties ; so the capacity for these kinds of plea.
sure would seem to be general capacities that are
capable of being united to the operations of the
mind as well as that of the senses; and to be the
means of enjoyment, as it were, underlying all
our bodily and mental powers at one and the same
time.

THE PLEASURES OF MENTAL EXERCISE.

Let us begin with the pleasures of mental
exercise,”

The lad nestled up close to his godfather, and
curling the old man’s arms about his neck, ar-
ranged himself in a comfortable posture for list-
ening.

‘The principle of the ‘ association of ideas,’ as
it is called,” commenced the tutor—‘ that prin-
ciple by which thought is linked with thought in
the mind, and which causes conception after con-
ception, and remembrance after remembrance to
keep on for ever sweeping through the brain (like
the endless procession of clouds across the sky,
or the interminable succession of waves over the
sea) is the principal means by which the mind
is moved from object to object, and made to appear,
even to the individual himself, to pass through a
series of images and recollections, rather than the
images and recollections seeming to flit succes-
sively throughit. It is this movement of the mind,
this transition from one state to another, which

R2os

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 

Q44 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

borresponds with that gradual change of place
and play of limb which is termed exercise in the
body; and as we are conscious of a continued
action going on within our physical system every
time we move our muscles (apart from the mere
by Sensations of the flesh), so are we sensible of the
Pa | same kind of action perpetually occurring within
Pate il us, during the process of mental exercise. Indeed,
i as our lmbs move, whether voluntarily or in-
| il stinctively, only in answer to some preceding
a ii mental state, it is probably nothing more than the
ial succession of these different mental states—the
| continued acts of volition or series of instinctive
Hh impulses felt in the mind—that impresses us with
| the sense of bodily exercise itself.
| ‘‘ Well, lad,” Uncle Benjamin went on after a
a brief pause, ‘‘ having now settled that the sense of
HH exercise 1s one and the same feeling, whether the
Hi action be in the body or mind, let us pass on to
i} the enumeration of the mental pleasures which
proceed from it. That there is a natural charm
i in the mere exercise of the mind—in the continued
i gradual transition from one mental state to another
i —1is shown in the delight that is generally felt in
|

 

indulging in those kinds of ideal panoramas ; those
long trains of flitting fancies, that pass half-pic-
| tured before the ‘ mind’s eye,’ even in our waking
| ii moments, and which are termed ‘ day-dreams,’ or
| ‘reveries,’ or ‘ wool-gathering.’ Again, the plea-
| mil |} sures of contemplation and meditation—of ‘ brown
Pu | studies,’ as they’re termed—are due to the same

| principle ; and so is the delight that some find in
WI planning and inventing, and even in building
WH what are called ‘castles in the air’ Indeed, any
Hi | mental process that excites thought after thought
Bill || readily and steadily within us, produces (as the
! Wt |] ideas keep sweeping through the mind) a kind of
mellifluence as it were in the brain, that is essen-

 

VPS

 

atl a a ala ee ee eh ele enTHE NEXT TURNING. 245

tially agreeable to our nature. Again, the plea-
sures of conversing, discoursing, and reading, may
be all referred to the hke cause; for, apart from
any special charm there may be in the different ideas
thus introduced into the mind, there is a delight
in the mere mental occupation and exercise that
such acts afford us. Further, it is in the sugges-
tiveness of certain subjects and ideas, as well as of
certain objects in nature, and consequently in the
exercise they afford to the mind, that a great part
of natural and artistic beauty inheres. It is also
on account of this suggestive property, that
keepsakes, relics, heir-looms, portraits, and me-
mentoes generally, make up the most highly-
prized portion of every person’s treasure ; serving,
as they do, to revive or recall a long train of happy
associations in connection with some beloved object
and that with a vividness and force that mere
memory, without some such suggestors, could not
possibly attain. For the same reason the favourite
old haunts of former days, or the birthplaces or
residences of the illustrious dead, and the ruins of
ancient countries, castles, or abbeys, are objects of
more or less beauty in the eyes of every one; and
they are so principally for their power of suggesting
to us the thoughts of all the glory of the times
connected with them. Again, many of our mental
pastimes are sources of pleasure only as affording
exercise, or acting as springs of suggestion to the
mind. This is the case especially with the light
amusement of riddles, and those tantalizing charms
called ‘puzzles. Moreover, many forms of wit—
the wit of inuendoes and inferences, for instance—
derive their delight simply from this principle of
mental exercise, 7. e., by leaving the mind to suggest
the thought intended to be conveyed. ‘Thus, m
the old joke, we are told that a townsman said to a
countryman, who was leaning listlessly over a246 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

 

gate, that he looked as if he couldn’t say ‘ Boh toa
| goose ;’ whereupon the chawbacon shouted ‘Boh’
ii at the other in reply. Now, in this ‘ lively sally,’
I as it is called, it is obvious that the liveliness lies
Ha il not alone in the readiness of the retort, but in the
Hit Hl sly way in which it suggests to us that the townsman
ani is one of the silly old birds that are sometimes
a ul caught by chaff. So too in the anecdote.”
Hi ‘* Yes, uncle, that’s right,” interposed little Ben,
i who was still chuckling over the relish of the last
i jest, and all agog with delight at the prospect of
Hi another anecdote. ‘Go on; isn’t it prime, that’s
Hi all!”
Wa il ‘In the anecdote, I say, lad, where a would-be
We th witty officer is said to have asked a Roman Catholic
Hi I priest, why the papist clergymen were like don-
Wh tt keys, and to have answered when the priest
HH ‘ gave up ’ the riddle, ‘ because they all had crosses
an on their backs; whereupon the sly old papist,
HT who was determined not to be outdone, demanded
Hl in his turn, whether the soldier could tell what
Hi was the difference between a military officer and a
Hit il jackass ; and on the other shaking his head, and say-
Ma {ii ing he ‘ couldn’t see it,’ the priest. added simply,
WL ‘No more can I!’—in this anecdote, I repeat, we
aN } have another illustration of the same kind of sug-
1 vi i gestive wit: namely, in the sly inference of the
et IH priest that he couldn’t see any difference between
the two creatures.”
Pil |i “Oh, I take it now!” exclaimed the lad, thump-
| mt |i ing the air with his fist as his godfather threw in the
PNT | explanation. ‘The priest was a sly rocue of a fel-
Panel ii low, wasn’t he, uncle?” the boy added, while he
| || 1 rolled about, and went into such convulsions of
a il | positive horse laughter, that the chuckle sounded
a | very much like a neigh,
Wy ‘‘ Ay, Ben, and the delight you find in such sly
| aa | Toguery, shows you the pleasure there is in suggest-

———— -
* «

aided sak, alh-t_oe af

areTHE NEXT TURNING. QAT

ing or inferring, rather than saying what we have
to say ; and thus leaving it to the mind to take up
the sense by some act or exercise of its own. In
irony, moreover, the very opposite is said from what
is meant to be understood, and the true sense im-
pled only by the tone and manner of saying it; as
when [ call you ‘a young rogue’ and ‘a little rascal’
by way of endearment, Ben” (and as the old man
uttered the words, he shook the pet boy playfully
by the ear). ‘In poetry also, the like principle of
suggestion is often made to act as a stimulus to the
imagination, and to give bysuch means a high
beauty totheart. Milton, for instance, in speaking
of death, says very finely—

‘““* And on what seemed a head he wore a crown.’*

‘Indeed, a hundred such examples of the beauty
of the suggestive principle in art might be given.

* The same beauty of the suggestive principle in picto-
rial art is shown in shrouding with the hands the features of
figures in extreme grief; while in musical art, Beethoven's
pastoral symphony, and Gliick’s overture to ‘ Iphigenia,
and Mendelssohn’s ‘Midsummer Night's Dream,’ are illus-
trious instances of the suggestivity of the works of the
highest composers. :

+ The three most suggestive poems, perhaps, in the
English language are Wordsworth’s ‘ We are seven, Cole-
ridge’s ‘ Ancient Mariner,’ and Edgar Poe’s ‘Raven;’ and
they may be said to take precedence as to beauty in the
order in which they are here set down. The little un-
adorned gem of Wordsworth is assuredly the finest thing of
the kind ever penned. The opening prelude, as to the great
mystery of death to a little child, and then the exquisitely-
innocent and touching manner in which the wee thing
numbers the dead brother as one of the family still living, and
the sweet, tender, and yet profound grace of the recurring
burden “ We are seven,’ is such a masterly opening-up of
the highest supernatural speculation, in connection with the
simplest and prettiest little bit of nature conceivable, that
the mind after reading the verses oscillates between the

c

tender and innocent rustic beauty of the child, and the

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 

—— ee ae ae ne —Seranoenemantenamell
AS
Shes, es 28 Deo. eetSd et thea at ae a ee a a

iat aah oh toe oh

acme

 

 

 

  

248 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

So that there can be no doubt, Ben, that exercise of °
the mind is as grateful as that of the body; and

 

mystic shadowy sublimity of death, rapt in a profound day-
dream of delight and wonder. How differené, on the other
hand, and yet how grand, is the weird curse-like tone of
Coleridge’s preternatural ballad! It wants the gentle
beauty of Wordsworth’s little morsel to charm us, but it has
at the same time an almost Shakspearian power about it to
awe us. Coleridge carries the terror and grandeur of nature
to the very verge of the imagination. He takes the mind, as
it were, to the far end of the earth and ocean—to the edge
of the great precipice, and gives us just a peep of what lies
beyond ; he lets us look down, so to speak, into the dizzy well
of infinite space. But Wordsworth lifts us above all natural
things. The spirit flies with him away out of space alto-
gether, and is lost in the lovely dream-land of the immaterial
world to come. We are set thinking of the angels, and
listening to angel music, by the innocent words of one who
seems like a little earth-angel herself. Edgar Poe’s poem,
on the contrary, derives its force from its overcasting the
mind with a totally different feeling. There is a fine
haunted sense left upon the soul after reading it. We have
an oppression of fatalism, such as will come upon us (despite
all our philosophy) after reading about death-fetches,
omens, forebodings, and ugly dreams that seem to have been
fulfilled. Nevertheless, despite the fine suggestions induced
by the American poet, the poem itself is very thin and
feeble after Coleridge's noble imaginative work, and does
not admit of being compared for a moment with Words-
worth’s graceful cherub strain. I have heard great musi-
cians (such as my old friend and teacher, John Barnett) say,
that the peculiar charm of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony
is its wonderful suggestivity also; that it lulls the finely-
attuned musical mind into a pastoral reverie, as it were ;
carrying it away, and lapping it in the very bosom of nature
itself—now in the fields, now in the woods, and now by the
brook side—and yet lighting it up softly with that reverent
tone which the contemplation of Nature in her quietude, or
even in her grandeur, always induces.

Mr. Dickens has often recourse to the suggestive form of
wit, or making a part stand for—or rather convey a sense
of—the whole, to produce some of his happiest effects. Sam
Weller’s well-known description of the inmates of the White
Hart Inn in the Borough, by the boots he had to clean,THE NEXT TURNING. 24Y

that whatever serves to stir the thoughts, and give
play to the faculties within us, tends to gladden

 

affords us as graphic a picture of the persons staying in the
tavern as an elaborate painting of the characters themselves.
«“There’s a pair of Hessians in 13,” said he, in answer to an
inquiry as to what people they had in the house; “ there's
two pair of halves in the commercial; there’s these here
painted tops in the snuggery inside the bar, and five more
tops in the coffee-room, besides a shoe as belongs to the wooden
leg in No. 6 ; and a pair of Wellingtons, a good deal worn,
together with a pair of lady’s shoes in*No. 5.”

Again, the Shepherd with his “ Wanities,” and Sam’s in-
quiry as to which “ partickler wanity he liked the flavour
on best,” is another happy illustration of the intellectual
charm that lies in the suggestive process of wit or humour.

“*Wot’s your usual tap? asked Sam—of the red-nosed
gentleman.

“«¢Qh, my dear young friend,’ replied Mr. Stiggins, ‘all
taps is vanities.’

“* Well,’ said Sam, ‘I des-say they may be, sir ; but wich
is your partickler wanity. Vich wanity do you like the
flavour on best, sir?’

«©¢Qh, my dear young friend,’ replied Mr. Stiggins, ‘ I de-
spise them all. If, said Mr. Stiggins, ‘if there is any one
of them less odious than another, it is the liquor called rum—
warm, my dear young friend, with three lumps of sugar to
the tumbler.’ ’—Pickwick Papers, p. 376.

Further, the wooden leg alluded to by Mrs. Gamp, is another
fine graphic use of the same figure. “As to husbands,”
says the monthly nurse, * there’s a wooden leg gone like-
wise home to its last account, which for constancy of walk-
ing into wine vaults, and never coming out again ’till fetched
by force, was quite as weak as flesh, if not weaker.”

There is good, strong, humorous painting in the above ex-
amples,though perhaps the touches are those of the ten-pound
brush of the scene painter, rather than the delicate Shak-
spearian strokes—the fine sharp lines of the true artist. Never-
theless it is preposterous for a class of critics to pretend
that the author of ‘Pickwick,’ ‘ David Copperfield,’ and
‘ Martin Chuzzlewit,’ has no claim to serious consideration as
a writer of fiction. The man who has created Sam Weller,
Old Weller, Mrs. Gamp, Squeers, Pecksniff, Skimpole, and a
host of other beings—that are as real to every reader

throughout the country as their own friends and acquaint-

 

 

 

   

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200

and inspirit us, as much as the movement of our
limbs themselves. To the delight of mere mental
exercise, then, may also be referred the charm that
all find in mere change or variety. This love of
change, indeed, is so marked a feature in human
nature, that it is perhaps the most active of al]
principles within us. It is this which in the lone
Succession of ever shifting scenery, characters
and circumstances constitutes the great enjoyment
of travelling; this which makes the revolutions of
the seasons, the passage from night to day, the
ever-varying aspect of nature throughout every
minute indeed of the same day, give such lively
beauty to the external world. “What an exquisite

YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

 

ances, and, indeed, in many cases better, and more intimately
known, even than one’s own relatives—is surely worthy of all
acknowledgement as the Shakspeare of caricaturists. Let
the reader mentally contrast the Nurse in ‘Romeo and
Juliet’ with Mrs. Gamp—old Weller with Falstaff—his gon
Sam with the fool in ‘Lear’—or Pecksniff with Malvolio—
and he will understand why the distinction is drawn. If
Mr. Dickens had been but wise enough to eschew the
fatally-facile trick of sentiment ; if he had never written
the profound rubbish of ‘The Chimes,’ nor the fatuous
drivel of the ‘Cricket on the Hearth,’ nor the Adelphi
thodomontade of the ‘Tale of Two Cities,’ ct id genus, he
would beyond doubt have been as great a literary genius,
after his kind—as fine a painter of the broadly marked
characteristics of human life and out of the way places—
as England has seen for centuries. He, however, has too
strong a dash of the “real-domestic-drama ” blood in his
veins to allow himself to do himself even common justice.
What is true and good in his nature, he must for ever be
marring by affecting what is false and fustian in dramatic
art. If he had only left the “Terry and Yates” prepara-
tory school, and finished his education at the Shakspearian
University, assuredly he might have taken honours as a
“double first.” One always feels inclined to say to the indis-
criminate admirers of such a man, what Rousseau told the
friends who were lauding the “ collected edition ” of his works

to the skies: “Ha! they should see the books he hadn’é
written.”THE NEXT TURNING. Pht

charm, for instance, is there in the contemplation
of the continued flitting of the clouds and the
moving shadows upon the earth and water; the
bright bursts of sunshine, and the sudden over-
shadowing of the land; the endless trooping of the
waves, on and on towards the shore, and the
everlasting curling and dash of the billows, one
after another, upon the beach ; the capricious shift-
ing of the swallow’s flight, forked and swift as
lightning; the ceaseless whirl of the windmill
sails, with their long shadows, coursing each other,
upon the sunny greensward below !”

‘Go on, uncle, go on, I like this very much,”
interposed the youth, growing pleased himself with
the rapid change of thought.

‘‘The continued pulsing of the water-wheel,”
resumed the old man, ‘‘ with the white foam of the
mill-sluice for ever tearing along, like a drifting
snow-wreath in the dark shade of the overhanging
trees; the headlong little brook, with the water
scrambling along its rugged bed, and curling like
liquid glass about the edges of the opposing rocks
and stones; the waterfall, for ever descending in
long pellucid lines of iridescent light, and sheets
of the thinnest and purest crystal, and pounding
the pool beneath into a mass of snow ; the fountain,
weaving the water-threads into forms of the most
exquisite beauty, and curves of the softest grace, as
it showers its million sparkling jewels into the
air, and on to the ground; the rich ripe corn-field
undulating in the breeze, as if it were a lake of red
gold; the farm cart, with its high-piled load of
new-mown hay, surging and toppling as the team
goes jingling along, rattling the bells upon their
collars; the mist at early morn gradually rising
from the earth, like the lifting of an angel veil ;
and the fitful crimson glare of the blacksmith’s
forge, flashing up, with every different heave of

 

  

  

Sa eae

Ky sree

 

ramenDi? YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

the bellows, in the dusk of a winter's evening—all
these, and a thousand others, derive their natural
charms from that principle which makes change
or variety,—the change of life. and action,—-so
grateful to the minds of all. Indeed, the mere
tedium, Ben, that invariably accompanies anything
bordering on monotony ; the overpowering and in-
sufferable weariness of one unvarying state of mind,
when long protracted; of one and the same object
ever before the senses; of one eternal note contin-
ually sounded in the ear, or of one everlasting idea
or subject presented tothe imagination: as wellas
the innate antipathy we have from what is called
prosiness, or what is ‘boring’ to us, or even ap-
pears ‘slow ’—all this is sufficient to assure us that
variation is not only a delight, buta positive craving
ofour intellectual nature. Itis the intuitive know.
ledge that artists have of the charm afforded by
mere change, and the tedium induced by monotony,

that makes painters love to ‘ break up’ long straight
lines and large masses of colour in their pictures,

and to find picturesqueness in the tumble-down
and weather-stained old cottages of the peasantry,

as well as the shaggy coat of the jackass, and the
jagged lines of rocks and ruins. So again, in the

plays of Shakspeare, Ben, the more passionate
and beautiful speeches and scenes are broken up

into a hundred fragments of different feelings ; and

thus they have not only a wonderful truth to nature
(for strong emotion is ever fitful and discursive),

but display intense art, in that fine dramatic play
and sparkle of the passions which is derived from
the principle of transition or rapid change.* Ah,

* The illustrations to which Uncle Benjamin more particu-
larly alludes are the soliloquy beginning—“ Oh, that this
too, too solid flesh would melt,” (where one feeling is sel-
dom sustained for more than five consecutive lines; the
entire speech being full of disjointed utterances and abruptTHE NEXT TURNING. 253

when I was a boy, Ben, I would much rather have
seen the mummers act ‘Hamlet’ or ‘The Mer-
hant of Venice’ over at Northampton, than have
had a plum-cake any day. Further, my boy, i
the tricks and transformations of conjurors, and
even in the pantomimes of the mummers, it is the
curious changes produced that render such exhi-
bitions so delightful to youth ; whilst in works of
fiction we are charmed by the rapid succession of
‘neident and adventure, and the variety of cha-
racter and scenes presented to the mind. In con-
versation too, it is the exchange of opinion and
sentiment, the crossfire of the different ideas and
different views expressed by the different charac-
ters assembled, the occasionally lively repartee in
answer to some grave remarks, that serve to make
social intercourse one of the special delights of
human existence.* Sucharea few of the pleasures

 

digressions, as well as parenthetical bursts of some passing
passion) and the first scene of the third act of ‘The Mer-
chant of Venice,’ where Tubal brings Shylock news of his
runaway daughter, and also of Antonio’s loss at sea, and in
which the Jew is tossed about in a tempest of conflicting
emotions ; one moment savagely gloating over the details of
Antonio’s misfortune, and the next, bursting into a frenzy at
the particulars of his daughter's flight—the transitions from
the one feeling to the other admitting not only of the finest
dramatic rendering, but glittering with all the richness and
lustre of the highest art.

* The great master of every form of literary beauty gives
a choice instance of the charm we derive from the grouping
together of a large variety of circumstances in the speech of
Dame Quickly, when she reminds Sir John Falstaff of his
promise to marry her, and cites a number of minute con-
eomitant incidents, in order to overwhelm him with the
truth of her assertion; and prevent the possibility of any
pretence of oblivion on his part.

« Falstaf. What is the gross sum I owe thee?

‘«¢ Hostess. Marry, if thou wert an honest man, thyself, and
the money too. Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt
goblet, sitting in my Dolphin-chamber, at the round table,

omer a ror — — - = x
ar ee ne BE aa er oaar ae RE EM EE ta

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254 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

of mental exercise, lad ; and you will see by-and
by, that as the irritability of the young muscles

by a sea-coal fire, upon Wednesday in Whitsun-week,
when the prince broke thy head for liking his father to a
singing man of Windsor; thou didst swear to me then, as I
was washing thy wound, to marry me, and make me ‘my
lady,’ thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not goodwife
Keech, the butcher’s wife, come in then, and eal] me
gossip Quickly? coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar ;
telling us, she had a good dish of prawns; whereby thou
didst desire to eat some; whereby I told thee, they were ill
for a green wound? And didst thou not, when she was
gone down stairs, desire me to be no more so familiarity
with such poor people; saying, that ere long they should
call me madam? And didst thou not kiss me, and bid me
fetch thee thirty shillings? I put thee now to thy book-
oath; deny it, if thou canst.’—Srconp Parr Henry try.
Act 1. ScENE I,

How beautifully fit, too, are many of these little pictu-
resque “surroundings,” and how delicately are they thrown
in—e, g.; “the parcel-gilt goblet,” “the Dolphin chamber,”
“the singing man of Windsor,” “the mess of vinegar,”
‘the dish of prawns, whereby thou didst desire to eat some me
then the reference to the “wound” is a fine touch, as
is the desire that she should be no more so familiarity with
such poor people. But the grandest stroke of all among
the long list of accusations lies at the end—so exquisitely
true is it to Falstaff’s character. ‘‘Didst thou not kiss me,’’
adds the Dame, “and bid me fetch thee thirty shillings?”
This is a little morsel of artistic humour that has perhaps
never been equalled, and certainly never transcended.

How beautifully marked and various again is the group of
concomitants in Dame Quickly’s description of Falstaff’
death !

“*°A made a finer end, and went away, an it had been
any christom child; ’a parted even just between twelve and
one, e’en at the turning of the tide: for after I saw him
fumble with the sheets, and play with the flowers, and
smile upon his fingers’ ends—TI knew there was but one
way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and ’a babbled of
green fields.”

Here the “ smiling upon the fingers’ ends” is a wonderful
bit of death-painting—the jumbling with the sheets, too, is
finely illustrative of the state of mental vacuity at such a
time ; and when all these exquisitely-artistic associations areTHE

NEXT TURNING.

295

naturally sobers down, and the intellect, becomes
more and more developed with advancing man-

put together,—the christoim child—the turning of the tide—
the sheet-fumbling—the flower-playing—the finger-tip scan-
ning—the nose sharp as a pen—and the babbling of green
fields, what play is there in the transition from one associa-
tion to the other—and yet what a choice and cunning picture
it is! what fine variety in the colour—still how soft and
sombre the colouring ! and above all how truthful, and more

than truthful, how typical the tone of the whole!

In Rabelais, again, may often be found curious grotesque
instances of the amusement that is connected with the asso-
ciation of a number of diverse particulars with one subject,
though here the charm is more verbal than ideal,—e. g. :—

. . transported himself to the lodging
of Gargantua, driving before him three red-muzzled beadles,
and dragged after him five or six artless masters all thoroughly
bedaggled with the mire of the streets—prattling gabblers,”
proceeds the author, “licorous gluttons, freckled bitters
(beggars), mangey rascals, lubberly louts, cozening foxes,
sycophant varlets, scurvy sneaksbies, fondling fops, idle lusks,
scofting braggards, jobbernol goosecaps, woodcock slangams,
noddipeak simpletons.”

But the delight afforded by mere literary variety or change
in the current of thought is often dexterously brought about
by Charles Lamb, who was perhaps better skilled in the use
of the parenthesis than any English writer that ever lived.
In a true artist’s hands, of course, the parenthesis, or even
that modern off-shoot—the dash—is the means of what land-

“ Master Janotus .

scape painters call “ breakin

e up” lines and masses ; it is a

kind of literary “ shunting,” as it were, or temporary shifting
of the train of thought on to another line, and, finely used,

Q

cives the mind one of those slight jogs or jolts that serve
to wake up the faculties, and which constitute perhaps the

chief sense we have of movement in mere passive exercise.
The following example is from Elia’s “ complaint as to the
decay of beggars in the metropolis :--

«A clerk in the Bank was surprised with the announce-
ment of a five hundred pound legacy left him by a person

whose name he was a stranger to.

Tt seems that in his

daily morning walks from Peckham (or some village there-

abouts), where he liv

for the last twenty years
hat of some blind Bartimeus, that sate b ;
wayside in the Borough. The good old beggar recognized

ed, to his office, it had been his practice
to drop his halfpenny duly into the
egging along by theSe Delgo ee at ee eae ee

 

= a _

oe RS Loa

 

 

 

  

256 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

hood, the athletic sports and games of youth pass
gradually into the mental diversion of books,

his daily benefactor by the voice only ; and when he died,
left all the amassings of his alms (that had been half a
century perhaps in the accumulating) to his old Bank friend.
Was this a story to purse up people’s hearts and pennies,
against giving an alms to the blind? ornotrather a beautiful
moral of well-directed charity on the one part, and noble
gratitude upon the other ?

**T sometimes wish I had been that Bank clerk,

“T seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of creature,
blinking, and looking up with his no eyes in the sun.

‘*Ts it possible I could have steeled my purse against him ?

“‘ Perhaps I had no small change.

“Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words, imposi-
tion, imposture, Give, and ask no questions, ‘ Cast thy bread
upon the waters.” Some have unawares (like this Banik
clerk) entertained angels.”

The parenthesis in the last line is set like a jewel with
the nicest art, serving, as the little hard bit of crystal truth
does, to assure the mind that the beggar and the angels are
somewhat kin.

Mr. Dickens, too, often uses the interposed sentence
between dashes very adroitly. In the following choice little
bit from the ‘Pickwick Papers, the interjected sentence is
not only finely discursive, but so exquisitely su¢gestive of the
affected humility of the red-nosed shepherd’s character, as to
be an admirable stroke of art.

“Sam felt very strongly disposed to give the reverend
gentleman something to groan for, but he repressed his in-
clination, and merely asked (with reference to old Mr.
Weller), ‘ What’s the old ’un been up to now”

“*Up to, deed! said Mrs. Weller, ‘oh, he has a hard
heart. Night after night does this excellent man—don’t
frown, Mr. Stiggins: Iwi say you are an excellent man—
come and sit here for hours together, and it has not the least
effect upon him.’ ”—Pickwick Papers, p. 218.

Again the little domestic interpolation, as to the price of
red kidney potatoes, in the evidence of Mrs. Cluppins, in
the celebrated trial scene of the same unctuous book, is a
very happy touch, admirably characteristic as it is of the
housewife, and yet deliciously comic from the very inappro-
priateness of the piece of household information conveyed to
“my lord and jury,” by the lady, who found such difficulty
im “composing herself” on her entry into the witness box.THE NEXT TURNING. 257

meditation, and converse ; nevertheless, it is still
the same love of exercise that makes the occu-
pation delightful in both cases ; for it is this which
gives its special charm not only to the physical
pastime, but to the intellectual amusement as
well.”

THE PLEASURES OF MENTAL EXCITEMENT.

‘““ What are you going to do next, uncle ?” asked
little Ben.

“Why, next we have to explain the pleasures
of mental excitement,” was the answer.

‘“But, uncle, you did the pleasures of ease and
satisfaction after the pleasures of exercise last
time,” suggested the lad; “and why don’t you 20
on as you began ?”

‘‘ Because, Ben, here the one subject naturally
passes into the other,” returned Uncle Benjamin,
‘‘and in the other case it did not. You see,
the love of change,—the love of those gentle and
gradual transitions of mind (which are all that is
meant by the term mental exercise) is intimately
connected with the pleasure that we derive from
the more violent alterations in the natural course
of our thoughts, and such violent alterations are
mainly concerned in producing that state which is
called ‘mental excitement.’ Indeed, excitement
is but an exaggerated form of exercise in the mind,

 

“« What were you doing in the back room, ma’am?’ in-
quired the little judge.

““« My lord and jury,’ said Mrs. Cluppins, with interesting
agitation. ‘I will not deceive you.’

“* You had better not, ma’am,’ said the little judge.

“<«T was there,’ resumed Mrs. Cluppins, ‘ onbeknown to
Mrs. Bardell. I had been out with a little basket, gentle-
men, to buy three pound of red kidney purtaties—which was
three pound tuppence ha’penny—when I see Mrs. Bardell’s
street-door on the jar.’ ’’—Pickwick Papers, p. 283.
S258 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

and, intellectually speaking, requires only an ex-
aggerated form of the same conditions to produce
it. Ordinary change merely exercises the mind,
| but extraordinary transition, you will find, inordi-
Weal nately excites it. To produce that change or
| play of thought which constitutes mental exercise,
nothing but a succession of slightly different per-
ih | ceptions is necessary ; but to throw the mind into
eT a state of excitement intellectually, it is essential
Pe ty) | that some widely different impression, or even
Mt | one that is diametrically opposite from our previous
expectations, should be made upon us. Indeed,
Wt | the difference must be so marked as to produce a
Wy | startling effect upon us; and it is the love of these
Lil | startling effects, and the pleasure we derive from
the extra-vividness of the impressions produced
by them, which constitutes the great charm that
many find in the principle of mental excitement.
The delight, for example, that is felt in contemplat-
ing—at a distance—the extraordinary phenomena
of nature: the grandeur of the wild rage of the
storm ; the convulsive throes of the heaving earth-
quake; the mighty fountain of fire poured forth
by the burning volcano, and the crimson cascades
of liquid lava streaming, like the earth’s hot blood,
down the mountain-sides; the jewelled stalactite
caverns of the world, their roofs glittering with
their deep fringe of pendant crystals, as though
they were huge petrified icicles; the giant caves,
with their monster columnar rocks, that are lke
ail the council-halls of devils; the immense icebergs
Pn il floating in the arctic seas, and lurking there, like
eal lil tremendous white bears, ready to crush the bones
Pu i of any stray vessel that may chance to fall within
| tH their adamantine grip; the thick daylight-dark-
Ail ||| ness of the eclipse, that affrights the cattle in the
! jal fields ; the ominous-looking fire-mist of the comet ;
Wal the flaming dart of the falling star, that seems

 

 

al a a ea a a el ocTHE NEXT TURNING. 259

to streak the heavens with a line of fire as it
descends; the never-ending flood of the cataract,
with its flashes of silver lightning and roar of
liquid thunder ; these are the natural stimulants
of the innate wonder of our souls, and which, awful
as they may seem in all the terror of their reality,
yet become the grandest and loveliest objects
when ideally regarded by us. It is the same
mental propensity that leads the more sluggish
intellectual natures among mankind to find delight
in those gross monstrosities, and wild freaks of
nature, which are usually found in shows at fairs,
and which act as drams upon the languid current
of thought and Imagination among the vulgar.

Again, it is the natural delight of man in wonders
and marvels that makes us all, more or less, have

a trace of the grandmother and the child for
ever stamped upon our mind ; finding, as we do, a

strange winsomeness in those nursery tales of giants

and ogres, fairies and pixies, hobgoblins and bogies,

that we hear almost in our cradle; as well as in

those mystic stories of ghosts and death-fetches,

presentiments, omens, and witchery, which are

only the hazy foreshadowings of ‘that Strange

supernatural life and sense which we must carry

with us to our grave.”

‘““ How beautiful it is, uncle! Do you know,
I fancy I can just begin’ to see now 4 little bit
into my own nature?” exclaimed the boy, in a
more serious tone than he had yet spoken,

“There is but little light yet, Ben,” returned
the old man. “At best, we are but prisoners in a
dark dungeon, and we must look, and look for a
long time into our own souls, before we can dis-
cern anything in the obscurity. Still, with long
looking, the mental eye becomes at last acclimated.
as 1t were to the darkness, and begins to make out
first one little object, and then another. But we

s 2Sal a a ee a ee ee -

   

 

260 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
want the light of heaven, lad—the light of heaven !
to illuminate the insect, before even the highest
microscopic vision can see it clearly. We mustn’t
wander, however, from our purpose. Now, not
only does our love of extra-vivid impressions,
Ben, make us find delight in the marvellous, as well
as in the wonders of the world, and also in the ex-
traordinary, or even strange, phenomena of nature,
but it causes us likewise to derive a special pleasure
from the astonishing and surprising events and
objects in life, nature, and art too. When anything
occurs, or is presented to us, that is entirely dit-
ferent from what we have expected, we are astonished;
and when it comes upon us utterly unexpected,
we are surprised. If any one, for example, were to
come behind you at this moment in the dark,”—
and as the uncle said the words, the boy looked
round half frightened, so as to assure himself that
there was no possibility of such an event occur-
ring to him, ‘and to seize you suddenly by the
nape of the neck, you would experience a sensa-
tion, something like to an electric shock, all
through your frame, and which would convulse for
the moment every limb in your body. And then,
if you were to turn round and discover that it
was only brother Nehemiah or Jabez, after all,
who had found out where you were, and crept
softly up to you, so as to have a bit of fun with
you ; why then, lad, the alarm would cease in an
instant, and you would fall to laughing at what
is termed the ‘ugreeable surprise’ you had ex-
perienced.”

The little fellow, indeed, -smiled at the mere
imagination of such an incident occurring to
him.

« Again, if you were to go, over to England, say,
and suddenly discover, in the person of the Lord
Mayor of London, let us suppose, your own long-THE NEXT TURNING. 261

lost brother Josiah, who ran away to sea in oppo-
sition to his father’s will; why then of course you
would be mightily and agreeably astonished to find
the outcast, who, you fancy, is now leading a half-
savage life somewhere in the backwoods, had
become transmogrified* into the first civic func-
tionary of the first city in the world.”

‘“So I should, of course,” interjected the lad.

‘* Now these feelings of surprise and astonish-
ment, Ben,” the uncle went on, ‘are feelings that
serve to give intense vividness to the objects or
circumstances which produce them; that is to
say, they throw the mind into a state of violent
excitement for a time, which is very different from
the gentle stimulus produced by the mere exercise
of it; and this violent excitement of course tends
to impress the causes of the emotion with increased
force upon the brain. They are true mental stimu-
lants, suddenly giving increased vigour to all the
faculties and sensibilities of our nature—like wine,
or even opium,—and if indulged in to excess, they
tend at last, like the physical stimulants them-
selves, to enfeeble rather than strengthen the
natural powers. Thus, then, we come at the
reason why the highly-spiced works of fiction and
the tricky dramas of the stage (though it’s many
a long year now since I saw any of them), which
are filled with extravagant incidents and startling
surprises, as well as such extraordinary cha-
yacters as are the mere caricatures of human fri-
volities and singularities, rather than types of
human passion; these productions are not only

 

* The young reader should be warned that the common
colloquial expression here made use of by Uncle Benjamin
isa vulgarism. A little reflection will show that there 1s
no such root as “ mogrify”’ existing in any language. The
term is evidently an ignorant corruption of the word “ trans-
modify,” to change the mode, or form of a thing.ee Re ike _

a
=

aad

ERE OPE
see

EL ree LE Ue

 

 

 

  

Dez YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

contemptible as works of art, but baneful to
healthy mental digestion—that digestion which
is wanted to exert itself upon less fiery and more
solid food, and has often to put up with the dry
and hard cud of philosophy which requires to be
chewed over and over again, lad, before it can be
swallowed ; such romantic trash, I say, is as detri-
mental to sound taste and mental sanity, as your

hot peppers, sharp sauces, and your drops of raw

spirits are destructive of the natural functions
of the stomach. Nevertheless, lad, though the
feelings of.surprise and astonishment go to make
up the glitter and finery of trashy and extrava-
gant art, they are after all, in a subdued form, the

great enliveners of mental existence ; and serve to

add the finishing stroke, when touched with true
artistic delicacy, to all works and objects of high
beauty. They give, as it were, that gloss and lustre
of varnish to the picture, which brings out-all the
colours with finer force—the polish and sparkle of
many facets to the jewels—the sunlight that at
once brightens and warms up the landscape. The
feeling of admiration, indeed, which all true
beauty inspires, has so much of wonder and asto-~
nishment in its nature, that one cannot but feel
that the loveliness, even of perfection itself,
would be only a kind of platonic loveliness, if 1t
did not at once astonish us with its transcendent
grace, and set us wondering at the marvellousness
of its consummate excellence. The beauty of
nature and high art has always something extra-
ordinary about it. Though we have looked upon
the magnificent glory of the clouds, and gazed
upon the very sumptuousness of gold and crimson,
with which the sun drapes the heavens and tints
the air at morning and evening, some hundreds of
times in our lives, yet there is nothing old and
familiar about the sight: the grandeur of to-dayTHE NEXT TURNING. 263

is not the worn-out grandeur of yesterday ; for the
scene is still so entirely novel in the grouping of
the forms of the clouds, the splendour and tone of
the colours, and the very tint of the pinky hght
itself—that we cannot but wonder and wonder on,
day after day, even till we gaze at it for the last
time of all. So, too, with the works of high art.
It is the peculiar quality of all force, lad, that
there is no principle of decay in it (a ball once
made to move would keep moving on to all eter-
nity, Ben, if there were nothing to stop it), and
it is the same with the force of immortal genius.
It is at once self-sustaining and indestructible. A
truly grand work is young, fresh, and vigorous to
the end of all time. Study it never so often—scan
it till the mind seems to know every fragment of
it, as well as the mother knows every little linea-
ment of her infant’s face; and yet come to it
again, and a new world of beauty and wonder will
still burst out once more from the weil-thumbed
page, or old familar canvas; even as that mo-
ther can see the well-scanned face of her in-
fant light up with anew expression with each new
smile.”

Young Ben was mute with the contemplation
naturally begotten by the charm of his uncle’s
theme; and he sat thinking in silence of the great
books he had read over and over again—of old
John Bunyan’s ‘ Pilgrim’s Progress,’ and Butler’s
‘Hudibras,’ and Milton’s mighty epic, and Shak-
speare’s wondrous plays (Uncle Ben had had a
hard fight with Josiah to allow the boy to read
the plays), and, last of all, of De Foe’s simple
‘Robinson Crusoe,’?—and thinking, too, how
strange it was that he should never tire of read-
ing them ; whilst there were others at which he
could not look, after he had had his fill of the
mere story contained in them; even though hisi al Da ad ea

 

264 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

mind had travelled never so pleasantly over the
pages at the time.

‘In wit as well as beauty,” added the old man,
‘‘it is the gay surprise, the happy astonishment
begotten by the unexpectedness of the lively re-
partee or sally-—of the quaint idea, or odd simile
—or of the choice grotesque expression, thattickles,
while it startles us, with the novelty, and yet
with the queerness and aptness of the thought.* In
the anecdote of the dull and prosy clergyman, who
was reproving his flock for their habit of going to
sleep during the sermon, and who sought to shame
them by reminding them that even Jimmy, the
wretched idiot in the free seats, could keep himself
awake ; whereupon a wag returned that ‘if Jimmy
hadn’t been a wretched idiot, he would have been
asleep too:’—in this anecdote, of course, it is the
unexpectedness of the retort—the sharp backward
cut of the foil, that startles us as much as anything.
So, too, in that pinchbeck kind of wit called pun-
ning, we are taken aback by the double meaning
of the term on which the pun is made, and thus
pleasantly startled again by the use of the word in
a different sense from what we expected. When
King Charles the Second, for instance, bade
Rochester make a joke, and Rochester asked the
monarch to name a subject—the ready reply of
the wit, on the king’s naming himself, that his
majesty could not possibly be a ‘‘ subyect,” startles
us slightly, when we first hear it, from the
widely different sense given to the word subject
itself. Moreover, it is to the vivid impressions

* That curious style of “ funniment,” called Americanisms,
also depends upon the pleasure the mind finds in extremes
for the greater part of its amusement. For instance, when
we are told that “ there is a nigger woman in South Carolina,
who has a child so black that charcoal makes a white mark
upon it, the fancy is carried almost to the very verge ofTHE NEXT TURNING. 265

produced by widely different and diametrically
opposite ideas and objects, when made to succeed

 

common sense ; and the effect produced is a vain endeavour
to comprehend the incomprehensible, in connection with a
mean instead of a grand idea—the same as if we were
trying to realize a funny infinity. Again, the peculiar
blunders called *‘ bulls” are funny to us, because the mind con-
trasts the meaning with the sense expressed ; as, for example,
when we are told that an Irish gentleman had a small room
full of pictures, which he was about to show to a number of
his friends at the same time, but on finding that they all
made a rush to the door at once, be cried out, as he endea-
voured to restrain the more impatient, “Faith, gintle-
min, if ye will go in together, it'll nivir hould the half of ye :”
here-we know well enough what the Irish gentleman meant,
but this is so different from what he really said, and the
contradiction of all his guests going into a room that wouldn’t
hold half of them—all this is so marked that it is impossible
not to laugh at the inconsistency under such circumstances.
Further, there are the verbal blunders—those odd mistakes
«f words—which are styled “ Malapropisms,” after Sheridan's
celebrated character in ‘ The Riyals.’ It is this form of wit
which delights us so much with the letters of Winifred
Jenkins, by Smollett, or those of Mrs. Ramsbottom by Theo-
dore Hook, and others by Thomas Hood ; for who can help
smiling when they hear an old citizen extol the virtues of
‘industry, perseverance, and acidity,” or a vulgar old dame
declare that a bright dry winter’s day is “fine embracing
weather”? Moreover, there are the inconsistencies of those
intentional mistakes which belong to the class of “ Ana-
chronisms,” and where the small modicum of fun lies, as in our
modern burlesques, in putting Minerya into blue stockings
and blue spectacles, and giving Mars a shell jacket and
Piccadilly whiskers, or making Diana smoke cigars and talk
slang; or else it is expressed in that strange and ingenious
nonsense which consists of a kind of anachronous farrago,
where the several events of history have been as it were
rattled together in some droll kaleidoseopic fancy, and made
to tumble into the queerest possible forms. Akin to these
intentional anachronisms, or ‘‘cross-times,” as it were, are the
“ cross-readings,”’ or those curious jumbles of sense that either
startle us to laughter with the oddness of the ideas that are
thus brought into juxtaposition, or else set us wondering at the
ingenuity of the arrangement. There are a few specimens
of this form of fun preserved in the “ New Foundlingi el ae

 

 

266

one another immediately in the mind, that such
lively delight is found in the principle of contrast,
as I before explained to you, lad; though then
T enforced upon you the charms that belong, prin-
cipally, to contrasted physical objects. In art,
however, the extremes of contrast are often effec-
tive for a while, though your mere black and
white style of painting generally belongs to that
coarser kind of effect which is requisite to enliven
duller perceptions and tastes. The figure of anti-
theses, nevertheless, is always brilliant in hterary
composition ; for there is a natural sparkle in the
collocation of any two directly opposite ideas: as,
for instance, in the two terms of life—the cradle
and the grave; the two extremes of human emo-
tions—smiles and tears ; the two opposite types of
wealth and want—Dives and Lazarus; of worldly
power and helplessness—the monarch and the

YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

Hospital for Wit,’ the principal of which are extracts from
the old *“ Public Advertizer,’ and the drollery of which
consists in the odd associations that are frequently brought
about by reading a newspaper across two adjoining
EE ial eg than down each column singly in the usual
manner, ¢. g.:

Last night the Princess Royal was baptized— Mary, alias Moll Hackett, alias Black Moll.
Yesterda ay the new Lord Mayor was sworn in— afterwards tossed and gored several persons.

Again, in the double letter attributed +o Cardinal Riche-
lieu “(which when read in single columns expresses one
sense, and when read across has a totally different significa-
tion), there is enough art to make us marvel at the skill,
and yet such a sense of labour with it all, that our admiration
is alloyed with the idea that it was hardly worth while
taking such pains, as the author must, to compass so trifling
an end; to wit : —

Sir,
Mons. Compeigne, a Savoyard by birth, a Friar! of the order of St. Benedict,
is the man who will present to you as his passport to your protection,

this letter. He is one of the most discreet, the wisest, “and the least
meddling persons I haye ever known, or have had the pleasure to converse with,
etc, etc, etc, ete, etc, etc.THE NEXT TURNING. 267

slave.* Again, as the high lights of a picture
are always in the foreground, and the greatest
depth of shade to be found there too, so even
Shakspeare himself often resorts to the principle
of contrast, to throw up the brilliances of some of
his foremost characters. ‘Thus, in ‘Romeo and
Juliet,’ the old nurse is an exquisite foil to bring
out all the lustre and richness of the young ripe
love of Juliet; and even in the contemplativeness
of the old Friar, sworn to celibacy and the life of
an ascetic, and yet who is sufficiently human to
delight in matrimony and the beautiful world about
him, what a charming set-off have we to the hot-
blooded young Romeo, now moody in woods, and
now burning with the flame of his first real pas-
sion; and what a lively relief, again, is the merry
and voluble light-heartedness of the fairy-spirited
Mercutio, even to Romeo himself! Moreover, in
‘ Lear,’ what exquisite, contrasted force is there in
those extremes of demention—the two opposite
and widely distant verges of mental eccentricity
-—shown in the wild madness of the king, and the
cunning foolery of the fool! And so in ‘ Hamlet,’
we have the touching and tender madness of the
young, broken-hearted girl, as depicted in Ophelia,
contrasted with the ‘insanity of purpose ’—the
mental wandering and vacillation of a weak and
noble nature—exemplified in Hamlet himself.
The grave scene, too, in the same play, is resplen-
dent with the same brilliance of contrasted idio-
synerasies ; for here we have the quaint logical
merriment of the old gravedigger played off
against the fine philosophic utterances of the
young Danish prince ;—all these are sufficient to

*-The delight that some find in paradoxes, and even in
what the vulgar will call “ contrayriness,” may be referred
to the same principle.ere

 

 

 

  

268

show you, lad, that the principle of contrast,
when nicely and skilfully handled, can lend some
of its highest and most lustrous beauties to the
picture. And with that ends the list of the chief
pleasures that arise from mental excitement, my
sony’ *

YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

THE PLEASURE OF MENTAL SATISFACTION,

‘And now you're going to do the pleasures of
mental satisfaction, ain’t you, uncle?” asked the
boy.

* The best example of the literary glitter produced by the
figure of contrast is, so far as we know, the collocation of the
wonders revealed by the telescope and microscope, penned
by Dr. Chalmers, and which is certainly a brilliant instance
of its kind. There is perhaps a leetle too much art apparent,
in the balance of the sentences and continued vibration of
the mind from the infinitely great to the infinitely small ;
and perhaps it is just a taste too saccharine to fully satisty
the highly educated palate. Nevertheless, as an illustra-
tion of the charms of this rhetorical form, it is at once signal
and salient.

“The one led me to see a system in every star ; the other
leads me to see a world in every atom. ‘The one taught me
that this mighty globe, with the whole burden of its people
and of its countries, is but a grain of sand on the high field
of immensity ; the other teaches me that every grain of sand
may harbour within it the tribes and the families of a busy
population. The one told me of the insignificance of the
world I tread upon; the other redeems it from all its insig-
nificance, for it tells me that in the leaves of every forest,
and in the flowers of every garden, and in the waters of
every rivulet, there are worlds teeming with life, and num-
berless as are the glories of the firmament. ‘The one has
suggested to me that beyond and above all that is visible to
man there may be fields of creation which sweep immeasur-
ably along, and carry the impress of the Almighty’s hand to
the remotest scenes of the universe; the other suggests to
me, that within and beneath all that minuteness which the
aided eye of man has been able to explore, there may be a
region of invisibles ; and that, could we draw aside the mys-
terious curtain which shrouds it from our senses, we might
there see a theatre of as many wonders as astronomy has un-THE NEXT TURNING. 269

‘¢ Yes, lad!” was the answer; ‘for, the con-
sideration of the love of change, inherent in our

 

folded—a universe within the compass of a point so small
as to elude all the powers of the microscope ; but where the
wonder-working God finds room for the exercise of all his
attributes, where He can raise another mechanism of worlds,
and fill and animate them with all the evidences of his
glory.”

The only fault here, we repeat, is the obviousness of the
art (“ars est celare artem’’), so that the reader is led to see
the trick, as it were, by which the effect is produced, The
fairy piece which enchants us from the front of the theatre
is but poor tawdry clumsy work, viewed from behind the
scenes; and hence the verses of Pope and Tommy Moore,
exquisitely artistic as they are, become mere elaborations of
wit rather than flashes of true poetic fire—choice specimens
of mental handicraft from the very excess of art that has been
wasted upon them, rather than those fine facile creations
which precede rule instead of following it; so that to pass
from the dead level of the perfect polish of such work to
the rich, rough, and forcible fervour of true poetic genius, as
shown in Shakspeare, is the same as shifting the mind
from the contemplation of mere filigree work to the stu-
pendous achievements of modern engineering,—from look-
ing at a Berlin bracelet in spun cast-iron to the massive
grandeur of the tubular bridge, or the dizzy triumph of the
“via mala.”

But if the quotation from Dr. Chalmers is hardly a perfect
specimen of this form of literary beauty—because the artistry
of it is just a shade too marked, what can be said of the
following extract, where we have not a seintilla of beauty,
but merely clap-trap artifice and extravagance instead? Here
the form which, with a person of true taste, can be made to
yield such exquisite delight, becomes positively ugly as an
oilman’s shop front, from the patchwork of glaring colours in
which it is tricked out. The effect is consequently merely
“loud,” not “ tasty ;” and that black and white, which in a
Rembrandt's etching is a world of beauty, becomes as vulgar
and inartistic as the sign of the “ Chequers” on a public-
house door.

“Tt was the best of times; it was the worst of times ; it was
the age of wisdom; it was the age of foolishness ; it was the
epoch of belief; it was the epoch of incredulity ; it was the
season of light; it was the season of darkness ; 1t was the
spring of hope; it was the winter of despair; we had every-

 

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270 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

mental nature, cleared the way for the explanation
of our delight in those vivid impressions which

 

thing before us ; we had nothing before us; we were all going
direct to heaven; we were all going direct the other way; in
short, the period was so far like the present period that some
of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for
good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison
only.”—TALE or Two CITIES.

Such fatal blemishes as the above are really like rash
attempts at literary suicide, in a man who has no necessity to
stoop to trick to produce an impression. But who can
forget the wretched “ artful dodges” of “ the kettle began it ;”
no, “the cricket began it,” in the ‘ Cricket on the Hearth,
and the raving melo-dramatic rubbish of “up, up, up,” and
“down, down, down,” and “round, round, round,’’ in the
‘Chimes.’ Such overdoing as this surely “cannot but make
the judicious grieve.”

Now compare the crudity of the above piece of verbal
trickery with the high polish and sparkle of the following
bit of elegant artifice from Sheridan’s wonderful elabora-
tion of wit, ‘ The School for Scandal.’ It will be seen that it
is still the contrasted figure of speech that gives the fine
relish to the subjoined dainty morsel of literary luxury ; and
though it has all the studied artificiality of wit, and wants the
honest geniality.of delicate humour to give it the true ring
of spontaneous, rather than affected, merriment, nevertheless,
it must be confessed that the play‘and oscillation of the
antithesis is kept up in a masterly manner, and that the
whim vibrates as airily and elegantly as a shuttlecock be-
tween the battledores in skilful hands.

“Sir PETER TEAZLE.—When an old bachelor marries a
young wife, what is he to expect? ’Tis now six months
since Lady Teazle made me the happiest of men, and I have
been the most miserable dog ever since! We tift a little
going to church, and fairly quarrelled before the bells had done
ringing. J was more than once nearly choked with qali
during the honeymoon, and had lost all comfort in life before
my friends had done wishing me joy. Yet I chose with
caution—a girl bred wholly in the country, who never knew
luxury beyond one silk gown, nor dissipation above the
annual gala of a race-ball, though she now plays her part in
all the extravagant fopperies of fashion .and the town, with as
ready a grace as if she never had seen a bush or grass-plot
out of Grosvenor Square!’’—Scuoot ror Scanpat, Act 1,
ScENE IT.THE NEXT TURNING. 2tt

are connected with states of mental excitement ;
and the understanding of the latter subject has,
in its turn, fitted us, in a measure, for the due com-
prehension of the charms which spring from our
instinctive. longing for a state of mental ease.
Before we can desire or feel the delights of ease,
however, we must exist in some state of uneasiness.
Rest and repose are pleasurable to us only after
violent exertion and consequent fatigue; even as
exercise itself is especially charming after long
rest and consequent tedium. So, again, before
we can feel satisfied, we must have hungered ;
there must have been a precedent craving, in order
to enjoy that thorough contentment of soul which
is a necessary consequence of the perfect appease-
ment of the previous longing. We must therefore,

Ben, set about discovering what this state of mental
uneasiness is, that corresponds with the bodily un-
easiness of appetite, as well as with the wearisome-
ness of physical fatigue ; we must do this before we
can get thoroughly down to the source of the delight
which comes from the allaying of the uneasy feel-

ing. Now, though we are gladdened by change,

or slight differences, and agreeably astonished by

the perception of extreme differences among things,

we are, on the other hand, disgusted by any mere

heterogeneous chaos or confused tangle of ideas

 

The “luxury ” of the “ one silk gown,” and the “ dissipa-
tion” of the “annual gala of the race-ball,” as well ag
the “bush or grass-plot out of Grosvenor Square,” are nice
delicate touches of wit, though out of the contrasted form.

As another illustration of the contrary form of wit, we
may cite those paradoxical maxims which startle us with
their opposition to common opinion, and yet with their
truthfulness to a certain kind of debased nature: as for in-
stance, when Rochefoucauld defines gratitude to be “a lively
expectation of favours to come,’ and Talleyrand explains
Speech to be the faculty given to man as the means of
concealing his real thoughts and feelings,headin ie a a

 

 

 

    

 

272

and objects. The transitions from one state of
mind to the other, which make us so delighted
with change and variety, must, in order to delight
us, be essentially rhythmical as it were; that is to
say, there must be a mellifluence, or nice gradation
about it, or else it would not correspond with that
series of gentle and congenial muscular actions
which is termed physical exercise. Again, the
inordinate vividness of the impressions, which
causes us to find so much mental pleasure in the
more astonishing phenomena of nature, is pleasur-
able principally because this same inordinate
vividness serves, aS it were, to let in a sudden
burst of light upon the brain ; and so to render the
astonishing objects themselves more distinct than
they would otherwise be to our hazy perceptions.
But though those things, which are extremely
different, thus become extremely distinct, when
presented to the mind with all the force of colleca-
tion and consequent astonishment, nevertheless
such things as are utterly heterogeneous in nature
—that is to say, totally separate and disjomted—
are merely rendered indistinct and confused when
juxtaposited; and thus, instead of gaining extra
light from the juxtaposition, they really appear
even more confounded than they naturally are,
and so become more obscure; whilst the increase
of the natural obscurity serves to make such per-
ceptions as hateful to us as darkness itself. There
must be some principle of coherence, lad—some
slight thread on which to string the beads of our
thoughts and perceptions—some fine connecting
bondof common sense to unite the series— otherwise
the irrelevant sequence has all the incomprehensi-
bility of nonsense, and the wild chaos of ideas all
the incoherence of madness ; than which, perhaps,
there is nothing so maddening to attend to. True
mental uneasiness, then, springs from that state of

YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.THE NEXT TURNING, 210

perplexity and bewilderment, that sense of con-
foundedness and distractedness of mind, which we
experience whenever the thoughts appear to run
wild, as it were, and to crowd upon the brain with
all the inconsequence of delirium and all the
disorder and unconnectedness of over-excitement or
phrensy. Thus, lad, you perceive by what fine
shades and gradations the rainbow hues of the
emotions pass into one another. A slight difference
or change produces the pleasurable feeling of
mental exercise. A wide and marked difference
or contrast occasions the livelier pleasure of mental
excitement; whereas total dissimilarity and discon-
nection give rise to over-excitement and that con-
sequent uneasy state, which is termed mental per-
plexity or bewilderment.”

‘“‘ Yes, I can see it as you explain it now,”
ejaculated the youth.

‘¢ Well, it is often the case, Ben, when anything
very extraordinary is presented to the mind, that
the astonishment occasioned’ by the perception
of it, is succeeded by a state of wonder ; and this is
literally the dwelling or fond and lovely lingering
of the soul over the object which has excited its
admiration.* But this tendency to linger over the
admirable and extraordinary, naturally sets the
intellect speculating as to the cause or special
excellence of the rare event or object before us;
and then, if the wonder cannot be satisfied, if the

* The primitive meaning of the Latin root miror in ad-
miratio is to be found in the Armorie word Mirez—to hold,
stop, dwell; and whence comes the Fr. Demeurer, and our
Demur, and Moor (as a ship). So the Anglo-Saxon Won-
drian, to wonder, is connected with our old English word to
wone, to dwell (Sax. Wennan); and Wont, custom. The
primary sense of astonishment, on the other hand, is that
stunning of the mind which is produced by any loud noise or
din—such as thunder and other astounding phenomena,

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eee974 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

marvel cannot be explained, if the rarity be utterly
unlike anything ever seen before, and there be no
apparent means of learning whence it came, or how
it happened, or to what type it belongs then, I
say, such a veil of mystery seems to us to envelop
it, and such a jostling crowd of idle speculations
concerning it, keep rushing into the brain; such a
chaos of incoherent conjectures at once encumber
and confound the reason, that as the mind attends
to one vague surmise after another, and still finds
no clue to the tangle, no resting-place in the wil-
derness, and sees not a solitary star-speck of light
glimmering through the darkness of the clouds—
why then the wonder-stricken are lost in a worry-
ing maze of bewilderment, as it is called, and
grow restless under the unesiness of the per-
plexity that, fetters their understanding ; while
they are devoured by a positive craving of curiosity
that keeps gnawing and gnawing at the soul,
like the eagle at the heart of poor struggling
Prometheus chained to the rock. The mental
action which accompanies a state of perplexity,
then, you will perceive, lad, is essentially different
from the movement of the mind in a state of
exercise: in the latter state the thoughts flow
naturally and steadily onward; but in perplexity
there is no advance, but merely that mental oscil-
lation or vacillation—that continued shifting back-
wards and forwards, to and from the perplexing
object, which is always connected with doubt and
distraction. Itis this protracted flutter of the mind,
this unpleasant palpitation of the soul, as it were,
this spasmodic throb of thought in the state of
doubt that makes the feeling so distressing to us
all, and which gives it its principal uneasiness;
while the uneasiness itself excites in us the same
yearning and gnawing as a bodily craving to
appease it. It is indeed a mental appetite, thatTHE NEXT TURNING. 275

hunger of the intellect for some object that will
satisfy it ; that yearning for knowledge and enlight-
enment, which is termed curiosity when stirred by
the more trivial riddles and puzzles of life, and
philosophy, when moved by the great mysteries of
nature itself. Hence you can easily understand,
lad, that whatever serves to allay the great intel-
lectual want of our minds becomes as palatable to
our brain, as even food or drink to the hungering or
thirsting body ; ay, and it leaves behind it the same
sense of satisfaction and contentment, as we feel
when the bodily appetite is thoroughly appeased.
Anything, therefore, which tends to clear up our
doubts; to unravel, be it never so little, the
tangled skein of circumstances encompassing our
lives—to give us the least enlightenment in the
pitchy darkness of the world’s mysteries, is as
delightful and comforting to the bewildered and
troubled intellect, as the allaying of bodily anguish
and bodily fatigue ; for it brings sweet relief to the
aching brain, blessed mental rest to the mentally
weary.”

Strange, isn’t it, uncle, that there should be
the same appetites in our mind as there are in our
body,” remarked the little fellow, ‘‘and that we
should feel the same want for knowledge as we do
for food !”

The old man scarcely heard the boy’s remark,
however, for he was too much absorbed in his
subject to be diverted from the continuity of his
own thoughts, so on he went: “Now it is the
delight and soothing repose of the soul that we
feel in states of mental satisfaction, that is the
main cause of the transcendent charms we find in
the contemplation of perfection itself: a perfect
circle even, for instance ; a perfect crystal without
flaw or speck ; a perfect face, with all the features
in due proportion, finely chiselled, and radiant at

T 2276° YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

once with health, cheerfulness, intelligence,
and kindness; a perfect human form, exquisitely
modelied, perfect in its symmetry and the fine
flowing outline of the limbs, and perfect in the
grace of its gestures, and the lithsome ease of
its actions; or, indeed, a perfect anything, even
up to the one ‘Transcendent Perfection—the
perfection of all perfection—God himself. In-
deed, not only does the feeling of perfect mental
satisfaction give rise to the pleasure we find in
perfection of all kinds, and hence le at the
very root of our love of beauty; but it is evident
that we never feel mentally satisfied with any
thing so long as we can discover any imperfec-
tion, any defect or blemish in it. And the dis-
satisfaction we feel at the perception of any
defect or blemish is a state of mental uneasiness
that-greatly annoys and irritates the mind. Even
a button off a coat is particularly vexing to the
eye; a thing out of straight, out of square, or
out of truth, as carpenters say; a book with a
page of the text torn out; a set of some great
author’s works wanting one volume, and so on;
these are things that it 1s impossible to be pleased
with, and that simply because the mind cannot
exist in a state of satisfaction and contentment, so
long as the sense of the want is impressed upon
it. There must be absolute integrity of all the
parts, otherwise the detection of the smallest de-
ficiency will be sure to change the beauty into an
ugliness, the paragon into a deformity; for de-
formity itself is only an excessive variation from
that type which is considered to be the perfect
form of things. So again, we delight in anything
which seems to give us that perfect understand-
ing, or grasp of all the parts, or thorough sense of
a subject which is called the comprehension of it ;
even as, on the contrary, we hate what conveysTHE NEXT TURNING. ae

no sense at all to us, or, in other words, is utter
non-sense to our minds. It is, indeed, from the
mental satisfaction that we feel upon the solving
of any mystery, and the removing of the natural
uneasiness of perplexity, that such high delight is
found in the study of natural philosophy by those
minds which are struck by the mighty mystery of
the world about them; and even though the light
afforded by the study be but as feeble as that
cottager’s lamp yonder, shooting the golden
spider-threads of its rays far into the darkness of
the distance, yet there is the same charm in the
study to the thoughtful man, as that earth-star has
to the wanderer in the night ; for to the intellectual
miner, working deep under the surface, the faintest
ray is sufficient for continuing the toil. Besides,
there is a fine, rich and sombre beauty, lad, in the
‘clear obscure ’—in that mere glimmer of light
which simply serves, as Milton grandly says, to
make the darkness visible ; and if philosophy does
but make out to us the black background of infi-
nite space and infinite distance, frowning between
the tiny star-points of its small discoveries—like
the vast endless cavern of the incomprehensible
—there is still a solemn and deep beauty in con-
templating the fine, massive, and unfathomable
darkness, that walls in the world of man’s know-
jedge, and looking into it, as one loves to try and
fathom with the eye the unfathomable depths of
the great ocean itself; even while we wonder,
wonder, and wonder, as we strain the sight till
the tears come, what is at the bottom of it all.
Again,” he proceeded, ‘‘the pleasure that is
found in clever theories and lucid explanations,
in happy illustrations and apt examples, pro-
ceeds from the same source—the love of light
in darkness, the love of rest after weariness.
Now I pointed out to you before, Ben, that a

 

ER ts en = anne ce ne aeal al ll ee

ana ENR

ee

 

 

 

 

    

YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

 

278

sense of incoherence and disconnectedness, among
a number of consecutive things, distracts and, in-
deed, half maddens us ; even as a sense of heteroge-
neousness and confusion among a multiplicity of
co-existent things tends, in its turn, to throw the
mind into almost the same confusion as the ob-
jects themselves. So, on the contrary, a sense of
coherence and natural order in the succession of
events and ideas, or a sense of systematic ar-
rangement and fitness among co-existent objects,
inordinately delights us; and it does so simply by
removing the distress of mind which is necessarily
consequent upon the opposite impression. What
tidiness is among housewives, classification is
among philosophers: the mere orderly arrange-
ment of things. A large part of natural science
consists merely in grouping objects together into
genera and species, orders and varieties ; and
these are merely so many separate pigeon-holes,
as it were, for the convenient sorting of the
‘notes’ of the brain, so that one may be able to
lay hold of any missing memorandum in a mi-
nute. By these means the mental and natural
chaos of the world to ignorant eyes, is brought
into something like the order that the Almighty
has impressed wpon creation; and the mind
enabled to look down, almost from the very
altitude of heaven itself, and take something like
an angel’s broad view of the universe and its infinite
variety of phenomena. And it is the vast com-
prehension and clear-sightedness, that the mind
thus obtains from philosophic teachings, which
serve to give the highest mental satisfaction to
the student. By this means the very rocks
and stones have been, as it were, numbered and
labelled; every beast in the field and forest,
every bird, and, indeed, every tiny insect in the
air, and among the grass; every fish, ay, andTHE NEXT TURNING. 279

had §

almost every animalcule in the water, has been
studied and allotted its due place in creation;
every flower in the hedgerow, too, in the garden,
in the desert, and on the mountain-top ; every
tree, shrub, and herb on the earth, down even
to every little piece of moss and weed on the
rocks and ruins; every shell upon the shore;
every little star in the sky; every lump of matter
in the world; every crystal form found in the
caves; every bit of metal in the mines ; every gas
in the atmosphere ; every colour, every hue, and
every form; every bend and motion of the light;
every force and power at work in the universe :
every country, every sea, and almost every river,

mountain, and town, over the whole globe; every

bone, muscle, blood-vessel, nerve, gland, and organ
throughout the body, ay, and almost every feel-
ing and faculty that there is in the mind,—have all
been noted, scanned, described, and duly mapped
out ; and that so lucidly, that the intellect can see
with an eagle glance, as it soars high into the air,
the whole of the world, the whole of life, ay, and
almost the whole of the universe at once. Nor is
this all: the very order of events themselves, the
secret machinery and almost mainspring of the
movements of the planets, and our own. earth
and moon, have all been laid bare ; and the endless

chapter of accidents of which life and nature appear

to the vulgar to be composed, have been shown to
be part of one mighty system, where all is harmony
and proportion, law and order; and where the
music of the spheres is but the resonance of the
universal concord of things—the very breath of
heaven, breathing a fine suggestive sweetness into
the thrilling chords of Nature’s grand Allolian
harp.”el ll ad a te

 

 

 

 

 

    
  
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
   

280 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

THE PLEASURES OF MENTAL HABITS.

“And now, uncle,” said the boy, as his god-
father paused once more on coming to the end of
the subject, ‘“‘you’ve got only the pleasure of
mental habit to explain—haven’t you ?”

The old man answered, ‘‘Yes, lad! that
follows next, certainly ; but after that, there will
still be the pleasures that proceed from our per-
ception of artistic power, both in man and the
great Creator of all things. Now, my little fellow,
do you remember what I told you was the special
function of habit—let me hear ?”

‘‘Qh, yes, uncle!” spoke out the boy, as he
turned round and looked his godfather full in the
face, smiling the while with the simple pride of
his heart at the knowledge he felt within him ;
‘you said habit rendered that which it was at
first irksome to do, pleasurable after a time to
perform, and you said, too ~

‘That will do, good fellow,” interrupted the
tutor, with a pressure on the boy’s plump palm
that whispered a volume of fine pleasant things
into his heart ; ‘‘ that is sufficient for us to bear in
mind at present—except, indeed, you should re-
collect also, what I told you at the time, was the
wondrous character of the change wrought by
habit. You should remember that the mere con-
tinued repetition of an act can render it—however
difficult and distasteful at first—easy and congenial
to us at last ; that 1t can transform pain into plea-
sure, labour into comparative pastime, and give to
the most arduous voluntary actions all the sim-
plcity and insensibility of mere clockwork.”

‘*] remember it well, unky dear,” added young
Ben.

‘‘ Well then, lad,’ proceeded the old man,THE NEXT TURNING. 281

‘‘what we have now to consider, is the mental
pleasure that we derive from the mere principle
of repetition, of which habit—or the propensity to
repeat—is the special consequence. The first
distinctive mark of the repetitive principle, then,
is its sedative influence on the system; that is to
say, its power to allay, or rather to deaden the
pain or uneasiness connected with any violent
or unusual exertion. Hven the most agreeable
impression continually iterated and reiterated, for a
certain length of time, eventually palls upon us ; for
the pleasure connected with it becomes gradually
weaker and weaker with the continued repetition,
and ultimately passes, by fine and almost insensible
degrees, into disgust and tedium ; while it occa-
sionally finishes by being absolutely overpowering
in its offensiveness to the surfeited nature. This
is the case, not only with the sweets, that to a
child’s palate are morsels of solid melting delight,
yet gross sickly stuff to the more mature and refined
taste of manhood ; but it is the same also (as I before
pointed out to you) with what is called ‘mono-
tony. For, no matter how intrinsically beautiful
the thing iterated may appear at first to the mind,

the continued reiteration of it is sure, sooner or

later, to produce tedium and weariness; and that
even until the mind feels the same fatigue, almost
as the body does after long exercise, and the same
disposition to lapse into that slighter form of mental
coma—that soft swoon of the tired senses, from
which the patient can be roused with comparatively
little difficulty, and which is commonly denomi-
nated ‘sleep.’ Hence the sedative effect of certain
continuously-recurrent sounds in nature: the
murmur of the brooks, for instance, the throb of the
water wheel, and the lullaby of the mother; and
hence the means of producing sleep artificially are
all made to depend upon the lulling power of thelaa ed ee eee ee

 

 

 

 

   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
    
 
 
 
 
 
  
  

282 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

continued repetition of the same idea; such as
fancying one sees a flock of sheep going through a
gate, one after another; or imagining oneself to
be counting some hundreds of nails successively.*
Now the sense of pleasure and ease, which the
mind obtains from this same principle of mere
repetition, appears to lie at the base of a consider-
able number of our purest mental delights. There
must surely be an innate gratification in the
simple recognition of an object; else why the
special charm of an old familiar face, or even an
old familiar tree, or of that group of old familiar
objects which makes up the happy integrity of
some old familiar haunt? Granted every such
object is mantled with green associations, as thickly
as the old church with its clustering ivy; and
that the sight of them revives some bright and
lovely memory, one after another, till the brain
buzzes with the golden bits of life, like to a hive
of bees; and granted, too, that this mere move-
ment of the associations in the mind is, as I said
before, sufficient to account for a large portion
of the mental delight felt under such circum-
stances. Still, that the simple recognition of
the old things and places has a charm of its own,
apart from any pleasure associated with the
objects themselves, is proved by the attraction
that the mere repetitive processes of art have for
even the commonest minds. This is shown in
the delight the vulgar feel in mere imitation—in
the shadow of the rabbit on the wall, in which

* The sleep induced by what is called “‘Mesmerism,” or
‘Animal Magnetism,” or “ Electro-Biology,” may also be
cited as an instance of the comatose tendency of the long
persistence of one and the same object before the mind. The
hypnotic “ fluid,” which is supposed to pass from the agent to
the patient, under such circumstances may be extracted
from a prosy book—a dull sermon—a boring lecture—et id
genus omne.THE NEXT TURNING, 283

the. baby itself finds pleasure; in mimicry of
manners and tones—in pictorial representations
of ‘still life ’—in ‘ striking likenesses ’—in perfect
copies of any kind, or models—and even in the
continually-recurring chorus to a song, as well as
the impressive burden of some plaintive ballad,
or the perpetually reiterated ‘ gag-words’ of the
mummers on the stage. Again, we all know how
intense a pleasure there is in the repetition of a
favourite air, and how the people of some countries
are stirred, to the very depths of their souls, on
hearing some pet piece of their national music,
when far away from their home and fatherland.
Indeed, the mere enforced repetition of a word, in
literary or poetical composition, can often lend in-
tense beauty to a passage.*

 

* But not only is the repetition of the same word when
finely worked, so as to enforce some one idea upon the
mind, a source of great intellectual delight, but even the re-
petition of the same initial letter, when it is used as a means
of linking together, or giving the fancy some faint notion of
resemblance between ideas that are diametrically opposed,
has a small charm appertaining to it. Pope, who perhaps
was the greatest poetic artist the world ever saw, and that
without even a twinkle of high poetic genius in his composi-
tion, often made fine use of this alliterative trick, e. g., he
says, : :

‘* But thousands die, without this or that,
Die and endow a college, or a cat.”
Further, in his ‘Imitations of Horace,’ the same author
says :—
“ Fill but his purse, our poet’s work is done,
Alike to him, by pathos or by pun.”

In another place (‘Moral Essays’) he treats us to the
following couplet :—

““Or her whose life the church and scandal share,
For ever in a passion, or a prayer.”

However, in ‘The Rape of the Lock,’ he describes the
apparatus of Belinda’s toilet in one neat alliterative line, as—
“ Puffs, powders, patches—bibles, billet-doux.”

 

 

 

 

 

de sno ah

 

 

RRMA Nie anNe ee ee ee

Sl i ae eae ee a

 

 

 

  
  
 
  
 
    
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
  
 
   

284 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

“<Tfit were done, when ‘tis done, then ’twere well
It were done quickly,’
says Macbeth, with a fine ring upon the doing of
the deed that appalls and absorbs his whole soul.
Further, what exquisite pathos and tragic power

 

So again in the Nursery Rhymes, the alliterative process
is used asa means of tickling the brain even of children them-
selves, as in ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pepper,” and
“Roderick Random rode a raw-boned racer,” &c. Further,
entire poems—poems of hundreds of lines in length—have
been written in which the feat has been to make each word
begin with the same initialletter. The old ‘Papa pariens,
and ‘ Pugna Porcorum’ are curious instances of this :—

“Plaudite Procelli, Porcorum pigra propago
Progreditur, plures Porci pinguedine pleni
Pugnantes pergunt, pecudum pars prodigiosa
Perturbat pede petrosas plerumque plateas,

Pars portentosa populorum prata prophanat
Pars pungit populando potens, pars plurima plagis
Preetendit punire pares, prosternere parvos, ”
&e. &e. &e.
** Pugna Poreorum,
“ Per P. Portiwn Poetam, 1690.”

Again, Anagrams and Acrostics are other curious examples
of the simple mental delights that can be associated even with
mere letters themselves in literary art. In anagrams, how-
ever, where the letters of the original word are so transposed
as to express some idea that is intimately connected with
the subject, the mind is occasionally thrown into a form of
wonder at the extraordinary character of the apposition,
and set speculating upon what the old philosophers called,
the “universal fitness of things :” and this adds greatly to
the literal pleasure itself. As, for example, when we find
that the letters in the name of Horatio Nelson admit of being
transposed into the words, “ Honor est a Nilo,” the secondary
idea is so strangely apt, that it strikes the mind that it must
have been foreseen, even from the very invention of the
uphabet itself. Again, there are many literal enigmas that
have a fine artistic charm withthem. The one on the letter
h, which is generally attributed to Lord Byron, is perhaps
the genius of this kind of mental turnery—this intellectual
ingenuity which seems so akin to nice handiwork that one
is led to fancy it depends upon the very fingers of the brain--THE NEXT TURNING. 285

is produced by the same high artistic use of the
same simple means, after the murder in this play
has been committed !
“*Qne cried, God bless us! (says Macbeth) and, Amen, the
other ;
As they had seen me with these hangman’s hands,
Listening their fear—I could not say, Amen,
When they did say, God bless us.’
And the great Master then goes on to give usa
wonderfully touching and grand sense of the
incessant haunting of the guilty conscience. Now
mark, Ben, in the passage 1am going to quote
to you, with what fine force, owing to its continued
recurrence, the term sleep seems to strike upon the
ear, and to keep ringing in the mind, as solemnly
as a tolling-bell.
““* Methought, I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep, the innocent sleep ;
Sleep, that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great Nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.
‘ Lady Macbeth. What do you mean?
‘Macbeth. Still it cried, Sleep no more! to all the house:
Glamis hath murder’d sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more !’
‘“There is not perhaps a grander instance of
poetic and tragic power to be found in the litera-
ture of any age or any country, than this, lad,”
added Uncle Benjamin. ‘“ The sleeplessness of
the murderer is here enforced in so masterly and

 

some delicate cerebral touch as it were, rather than the
vigorous grasp of true intellectual force.
“Twas whispered in Heaven, ’twas muttered in Hell,
And echo caught faintly the sound as it fell.
On the confines of earth ’twas permitted to rest,
And the depths of the ocean its presence confess'd.
"Twill be found in the sphere when ’tis riven asunder ;
’Tis seen in the lightning, and heard in the thunder,”
Ke, &e, &e,ll a a ee oe

 

 

286 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

 

vigorous a manner—and there is such a fine super-
natural and ghostly tone given to the words with
which the murderer’s brain is ringing—together
with a dash of such exquisite beauty to relieve it,
in the lovely images of the continually-recurring
sleep ! sleep !—that it becomes at once as touching
and terrible a passage as was ever penned by
human hand.”

The uncle had been so rapt in the beauty of his
favourite author, that he was obliged to reflect for
a minute, as to ‘‘ whereabouts he was,” before he
could take up the thread of his argument. ‘ Oh,
yes, I remember,’’ he exclaimed, half to himself.
‘“‘ | was pointing out to you, lad, the delight we
experience from the mere repetition of the same
impressions upon our minds. Well, Ben,” he went
on, as cheerily as ever, ‘‘ it is the mere pleasure of
recognizing the same quality or thing under dif-
ferent circumstances, that makes us find such a
special charm in the perception of resemblances ;
either in poetic figures or scientific analogies,
or even the fables and allegories of literature, and
the parables of Scripture. In the vivid state of
astonishment, you know, we are struck by the
same thing appearing to us under widely different
circumstances, or in association with something
that is diametrically opposite from what we ex-
pected; so that the perception of the marked dif-
ference seizes and impresses itself upon the mind
with all the vividness of an emotion. In the per-
ception of resemblances, on the contrary, it is not
the unexpected difference of the association with
one and the same object,. but the perception of an
unexpected resemblance between two different ob-
jects ; the detection of one and the same quality
inhering in two things that were utterly distinct
in our minds; the discovery, of a point of unity
where there is apparently such utter.variety, thatTHE NEXT TURNING. 287

fastens itself upon us with such force and startling
beauty. Take for instance,” said Uncle Benjamin,
after a moment’s consideration, ‘“ Shakspeare’s
lovely figure of early morning peeping over the
hills, as given in the line

“*Jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-top,’

What a fine bit of painting is this, and what ex-
quisite delight bursts upon the brain with the per-
ception of the analogy! Still, I must quote to
you, lad, the sweetest simile that is to be found
throughout the entire range of poetry, and which
gives us the most graceful conception of unity in
diversity, that was ever achieved by art. Mark,
too, how beautifully the idea of oneness in two dis-
tinct beings is enforced by the continued echo of
the word.
“QO, and isall forgot ?
(says Helena, in the Midsummer Night’s Dream, )
We: Hermis. > veer! &
Have with our neelds created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key.
As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds,
Had been incorporate. So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted ;
But yet a union in partition,
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem;
So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart.’
‘‘Moreover, it is this perception of agreement
between two different notes—the felt union of the
vibrations, at frequent and regular intervals, be-
tween two musical sounds beating different times
—which makes up the delightful perception of
musical harmony : even as proportion among num-
bers is but the same perception of agreement
between the different ratios ; the expression 2 : 4
6: 12, for instance, signifies merely that four
is double two, and twelve double six; or ratheral el a a

 

[CREO SATE OTe

 

 

 

 

   

YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

288

that the same multiple (2) is common to each of
the two ratios. Again, order among a number of
co-existent objects is merely the perception of a
certain agreement about their arrangement; or,
in other words, a sense of uniformity as to
different positions they occupy; and this may be
either the order of regular intervals, regular
lines, regular figures, or of what is called con-
oruity, that is to say, of that fit and proper
collocation which belongs to natural or con-
venient association. And so, in the succession
of events, it is but the same perception of
agreement in the sequence of different pheno-
mena, that constitutes what is called the order of
nature; for even the perception of cause and
effect itself, so far as the natural beauty of the
idea is concerned, is but the mental conviction
we feel, that the sequence of the two distinct
events will be the same to the end of all time.
Further, it is the like faculty of perceiving the
analogies of things, that gives us our sense of law
in nature, and which confers upon us that power
of generalization in science which is the high-
minded equivalent of idealization in art; that
power of typification rather than individualization,
or realization, as it is termed (for the latter belongs
to the imitative and reproducing form of talent
rather than the creative faculty); that inward
referring of all things to the spiritual ‘form’ that
exists in the imagination ; that mental regarding of
the particular thing or event, not as a disjointed or
disconnected and isolated individual body, but as
part of avast and grand whole—a single thread
unravelled from a mighty network ; a little frag-
ment, let us add, out ot the great kaleidoscope,
which, if we will but twist and turn it over and
over with the rest, is sure to tumble into the most
perfect form—the choicest symmetry. Indeed,”THE NEXT TURNING. 289

the old man proceeded, ‘it is this perception,
lad, of uniformity in variety,—this simplification
of complexity—this senso of universal oneness
pervading even universal infinity itself —which
enables the mind almost to comprehend the in-
comprehensible. It is, as it were, the one indivi-
sible and unalterable soul, giving the sense of
identity and perpetual unity, amid all the changes
of years, to the entire body of the universe. The
faculty of comprehension enables us to grasp—even
in the narrow compass of our nutshell skulls—the
endless expanse of the universe itself, and to stow
away, within the tiny honeycomb cells of our
brains, all the infinite variety of worlds beyond
Our own, and all the same infinite variety of dif-
ferent objects, elements, forces, and forms of life

and beauty, that make up the vast complex globe

on which we live. Then, as if the very conference

of this wondrous power on our souls was not suffi-

cient bounty, the Almighty has superadded the

mighty sense to enjoy it, and to feel the exquisite

mental delight that has been made to spring from

the use of the faculty itself—to find delight in that

wondrous and delicious state of ease and rest, of
satisfaction, contentment, ay, and thankfulness,
which laps the spirit in a perfect waking trance
of admiration.

“But though the faculty of comprehension can
do this for us, the faculty of analogy, or the percep-
tion of uniformity in variety, in no way lags be-
hind. It is this which is the mental sunshine of
the world—for it is not alone the light, but the
very beauty of the brain; this which puts together
the disjointed fragments of the great puzzle, and
makes a lovely picture of it after all; this which
tunes the jarring strings of the instrument into
the grandest harmony; this which blends the
little broken bits of colour scattered over the

U

  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sean ene ed reat290 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

earth into a rainbow ring, where the greatest di-
versity melts by insensible degrees in the sweetest
unity ; this which sets the house in order, and de-
corates it with its choicest ornaments; this which
is the golden thread of light stretching from heaven
to earth, and uniting the world of wonder in a water
drop even with the world of wonder in the stars ;
this which wreathes the straggling wild-flowers
of seeming accidents into a cunning garland of
exquisite design; this which gives the fine touch
of nature that makes the whole world kin, and links
all men, nations, and races, into one band. of
brotherhood, hand joined to hand, till the globe 1t-
self is circled with the human chain : this, in fine,
which makes the charm of all reason, the delight
of all poetry, the grace of all philanthropy, the
elory of all chivalry, the dignity of all art, and,
indeed, the very beauty of all the beauty that en-
compasses the world.”

THE PLEASURES OF ART.

‘The pleasure produced by works of art comes
now, I think you said,” observed the youth as he
found his uncle pause for a minute or two.

‘Tt does, Ben; and to understand this we must
revert for a short while to the special qualities of
the sense of effort,” replied the oldman. “You
remember, my boy, that I told you effort was
mostly irksome, and occasionally painful ; whilst,
if long sustained, it was fatiguing, and ultimately
overpowering ; for effort means that violent or labo-
rious exertion of our powers which is necessary to
master some heavy task, or overcome some great
difficulty. The moderate exercise of the power
within us is, however, by no means disagreeable
to us; as, indeed, we have seen, in the simple
pleasure derived from gentle physical exercise 1t-THE NEXT TURNING, 29]

oe

self. There is assuredly an innate delight -in
making our muscles answer, as they do, imme-
diately to the dictates of our will—the same kind
of delight as you find, Master Ben, in making a
boat answer readily to its helm, or a steed to the
bridle; and this inherent gratification can often
be noted in the smiles ofa baby, as it begins to learn
the use of its tiny hands, and in the little peals of
hearty laughter that burst out when it begins to
find it can toddle a few paces alone. It ig this
delight in one’s power, too, which makes up the
large human pleasure of success ; though success
itself is so often connected with the attainment of
seme worldly good, that the simple charm of suc-
ceeding is generally inflamed into an exulting
emotion of joy at our own worldly prosperity.
Nevertheless, our sporting friend could have told
you, lad, the pleasure there is to be found in
merely hitting the mark one aims at ; In sending
an arrow pat into the bull’s-eye: in throwing a.
penny piece into the air, and striking it with a
bullet as it falls: in snuffng a candle with a
duelling-pistol ; in walking along particular cracks
in the pavement, or balancing a straw upon the
nose—or even in mastering the slightest possible
difficulty. It is the simple stimulus of gain-
ing such poor triumphs as these that stirs people.
to take to practising the arduous physical feats
indulged in by your tight-rope dancers, posturers,
equilibrists, circus-riders, sleight-of-hand men,
and so on; and this also which makes the
vulgar find such intense delight in the exhibition
of such feats of bodily agility. Indeed, every
one is charmed with any work of ‘skil]’ or
subtlety—either of fingers, limbs, or brain : for
we are pleased, not only with the exercise of our
own power, but even with the display of power
in others. Nevertheless, to be impressed with
v2ee

    
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

292 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

the full force of this kind of enjoyment, two
things are essential :—one is, that we should have
| a perfect sense of the difficulty of the task; and
the other, of comparative ease in accomplishing
hee it. If there be no sense of difficulty, of course
PT | there will be uo sense of power in the mastering
ew) | | of it; for it is merely the opposing force without
| it | that makes us conscious of the action of the
| force within. Indeed, it is this feeling of opposi-

Wd tion from without, which gives us our sense of
We | effort itself. But this sense of effort-—this sense
which is made up of the double consciousness of
| ine bard external resistance to our will, and of strenu-
Cra tt ous internal exertion and determination to crush
| WH | | the obstacle to our wishes—is by no means an agree-
|

i | able feeling, or one that consorts with our nature ;
1 | | nay, it is obvious that it must be antagonistic to it.
Ht | Hence the enjoyment we derive from the exercise
nM | | of power lies, not in the act of overcoming the diffi-
wd culties, but in the fact of their being overcome ;
| and therefore, the easier the work is done, that is
| | to say, the greater the work which has been done,
Lit WY | and the less sense of labour we have in the doing
Ni al of it, the greater the enjoyment we experience

regarding it. This is the reason why a sketch is
| | often more beautiful to us than a highly-finished
| | miniature or elaborate Dutch painting ; for, in the
. one the effect is often gained by one bold stroke,
| ) Hy as it were; whilst in the other, we can see the
a 1 WT million finnikin touches that have been niggled
.

 

 

 

mW | into it. It is this sense of ease, combined with
al i power, that makes freedom of execution always so
a il pleasant ; even as it is the opposite idea of fatigue
| | that renders elaboration so disagreeable to us;
Mi as well as the performances of posture-masters and
WT | tight-rope dancers so unpleasant to refined natures,

| | owing to the sense of painfulness or danger that they

force upon us. Do youunderstand, my little man a

al i ee ee oeTIE NEXT TURNING. 293

fond

‘I think I can, a bit,” was the diffident reply.
‘* But, uncle, what has this to do with the plea-
sure we get from looking at works of art? There
isn’t any power wanted for art, is there? for
I’m sure the artist we saw was a weak little
man enough.”

‘The meaning of the word art, my dear boy, is
simply power; even as an in-ert man means a man
without power or energy,” answered the tutor.

‘But I thought art meant cunning,” urged
young Ben.

The uncle replied, ‘‘ And so it does; like craft,
which, however, signifies literally creation or
sagacity.* But cunning, my lad, is simply
kenning, or knowing ; and knowledge is power—in-
tellectual power—the power within us; the innate
power of our souls and will, made to act through
the muscles of our mind, rather than through
those of our body. ‘The muscles are merely the
instruments with which we work—the visible and
palpable tools we employ to overcome some phy-
sical difficulty; whilst the intellect, the imayina-
tion, the wit, the reason,—are the invisible and
impalpable weapons with which we conquer mental
obstacles.”

‘“Oh, I see now,” murmured Ben.

‘Well then, lad, to appreciate—to thoroughly
and fully enjoy any work of high art,” the god-
father went on, “we must be conscious of the
inordinate power of the artist; that is to say, we
must feel at once the inordinate difficulty of doing

* The Saxon word Creft signified power, force, intelli-
gence. ‘Ihe Germans, Swedes, and Danes have the same
word, written Kraft, and meaning power, strength, or energy.
The British equivalent for this is Crev, strong, and this is
connected with the Welsh verb Créu, to create (Lat. Creo),
and with Crafu, to hold, comprehend, perceive; whence
Crafus, sagacious, of quick perception.te ee ee en ee

SaaS

 

 

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
   

294 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

such work, and the inordinate ease with which
the work has been done.”

‘But how can I feel all this, uncle, if 1 don’t
know what the difficulty was that the artist had
to get over, and whether he did the work readily
or not,” argued the pupil.

“Of course you can’t feel it, if you have no
knowledge of the matter, Ben; and if you are in-
sensible to the high art of the artist, of course you
can’t expect to have any high enjoyment from his
works; such was the simple reply. ‘It is the
same with the vulgar, my little man—and there
are vulgar rich, remember, as well as vulgar poor
—they are utterly dead and numb to one of the
purest, sweetest, and cheapest delights of human
life, and that simply because they have no sense
of art or artist in the great artistic works of
the world. To them a gallery of fine paintings
is merely a collection of pretty eye-toys, and it
delights them about as much as a child is delighted
with the pictures of a magic-lantern; a fine work
of fiction is to them nothing more than a pleasant
dream; a fine poem, simply a mellifluent succes-
sion of pretty images and flowery figures; anda
fine piece of music, a mere agreeable tickling of
the tympanum. Such folk have no more elevated
gratification from the contemplation of works of
art, than they have from the taste of a dainty dish
set before them. They see the canvas only, Ben,
and not the artist at the back of it; they look
upon the bright bits of nature, without any sense
of the God that created them; and hence the
tendency of all art, with low artists who work to
please the vulgar, is to sink into mere pretty
subjects.* With the higher craftsmen, however,

 

* This subject-painting, rather than art-painting, is the
great pictorial vice of the day, and a signal evidence of
mediocrity in the painters who resort to it. Of course, if aTHE NEXT TURNING. 295

prettiness of subject obtains little or no consider-
ation. ‘The artistry of a thing—that is to say, its

 

man have notinnate power enough to impress others with that
admiration of his genius which makes up the true art-reve-
rence, he must adopt some eztrinsie method of producing an
effect—seeing that he has no intrineie merit of his own
whereby to compass it. <A tricky subject is chosen merely
as the means of hiding impotent art. When a painter finds
he cannot paint to please the choice critical few who demand
the display of something like power in a picture, why then
he begins to paint to please the vulgar, purblind many, who
have no sense of artistic power even when it is set before
them, and to whom a picture is only a picture.
“A primrose by the river’s brim,
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.”

It is the same with the powerful subjects of the French
school. Details that are naturally disgusting, of course
stir the soul more or less on being contemplated; and the
emotion thus produced by the mere natural action of the
disgusting details themselves, the indiscriminate mind fancies
to have proceeded from the power of the artist himself ; where-
as, such subjects as are naturally “powerful ” and “stirring ”
are a sure sign of weakness in the man who selects them.
Depend upon it, the individual who has, and feels he has,
the true artist power within himself, always strives to bring
the power of his picture out of himself, and hates to produce
a “powerful” effect by resorting to subjects that are “ power-
tul” peripsa. ‘The trickster, however, who has no capital to
trade upon must get credit by hook or by crook ; and if he
cannot have what he wants, by honest means, out of the ex-
perienced and knowing, why he must, perforce, fly to the
“vyokels,”” and obtain his fame under false pretences. As
examples of this tawdry, trumpery, loathsome, canting, snivel-
ling, drivelling, “stirring,” “charming,” “elevating,” “ re-
fining,’ teachy, preachy, inert kind of art, we may remind
the reader of the band of abbey singing-boys in night-gowns,
represented as bawling, “ WE PRAISE THEE, O Lorn.” Then
there is the sublime bit of devotion in false colours, called
‘‘ READING THE SCRIPTURES,” where we have a Quaker and
his wife seated at a loo table, on which is an outspread Bible
and a glaring sinumbral lamp! “The ELEVENTH HOUR” is
another specimen of the modern Cantesque style of painting.
Then there is also the Sentimentesque school of art, doneee ee

ll le ee ee ee

 

 

 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

 

  

296 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

fitness for displaying the peculiar power of the
artist—is sufficient for them; and hence even

 

to please the young ladies and their dear mammas; such as
we find in the sea pieces of ‘* My CuiLp! My Cup,” and its
“lovely companion,” entitled, “THEY'RE SAVED! THEY'RE
SAVED!” and also “ THe WANDERER’S RETURN.” The last,
however, is really too rich, as an illustration of the snivelling,
drivelling sehool of painting, to pass by with merely a cursory
notice. ‘This picture consists of a weeping young lady on her
knees in a churchyard beside a mound of earth, at the head of
which is a gravestone inscribed as follows: “SACRED TO THE
Memory oF SARAH, THE BELOVED WiFE of the REV.
HABBAKUK BELL, MANY YEARS RECTOR OF THIS PARISH,”
&e. &c.; so that by this clever and delicate stroke of sug-
vestive art, we are made to understand that the pretty young
lady on her knees, with her bonnet half off, and a tear-drop on
her cheek as big as the pendant to a French fish-woman’s
earrings (in order to give us a double idea of the intense
mental anguish of the poor dear), is Miss Rosa Matilda Beli
herself. Then we are further let into the pictorial secret by
means of a bouncing babby—which Miss R. M. Bell has, in
the fury of her grief apparently,thrown headlong (poor thing !)
upon the gr ound beside her—that this same young lady is not
only Miss Bell of the bouncing tear-drop, but Miss Bell of the
bouncing babby too ; and thé uf she is no less a person than the
“ Wanderer ’”’ to whom the picture refers. Now the artist, in
true parsonic style, having divided his pictorial text into
three words, and illustrated two of them, proceeds in due
form to—‘ thirdly, and lastly ’—illustrate the final word of
the “title,” viz., to make out the return. This is achieved
also in the highest style of true Sentimentesque painting.
In the background of the picture is shown the open church-
yard gate, with the path leading to the darling old ivied
Tonio in the distance ; and down this pathway we see an
elderly clerical-looking gentleman, with long silver hair,
and apparently a touch of gout in his left leg, coming along,
with his head bent and his eyes shut, as if he were about to
say “grace before dinner ;” and whom we no sooner set eyes
upon ‘than we feel satisfied, though we never saw the rev.
gentleman before in all our lives ‘(and never wish to do sa
again, we may add aside), that it isno less a person than the
Rev. Habbakuk Bell himself; fur the black hatband so
dexterously thrown round his broad brim tells us, or rather
let us say hints to us, in the most subtle and poetic manner,
that the rev. gentleman is free to indulge in a secondTHE NEXT’ TURNING. 297

ugliness itself is often selected as the material to
be adorned by them ; for, in the fairy-work of true

 

marriage Bell if he please; and that “Sarah, the beloved,”
whose virtues are recorded on the tombstone that sticks up,
like a sign-post, right in the front of the picture, was his be-
loved Sarah. Noristhisall : accompanying the disconsolate
and gouty Rev. H. Bell (“ many years rector of this parish”),
is a young lady whom the same pictorial instinct assures us,
directly we see her, is another of “ them blessed Bells,” as
the servants say ; and that she has discovered her naughty
sister Rosey in the churchyard, and induced the silver hair-
Bell to hobble down there and forgive her : now that she has
“returned—”’ after an absence of eleven months at least.
Now this is the worst possible style of art—this, we repeat,
snivelling, drivelling, loathsome, canting, stirring, charming,
elevating, “refining,” preachy, teachy style as it is; and
compared with which the fine honest old tea-board school
is a manly achievement. Belonging to this class again, are
the “ pretty-story” pairs of prints, such as “' THE DEPARTURE,”
and “ THE RETURN ;” as well as “‘ GOING WITH THE STREAM,”
and ** GOING AGAINST THE STREAM.’ Under the same trashy
category, too, must be named “THE HeArt’s MIsGIvines,”
and the ‘‘ Last APPEAL,” and “‘ Cross Purposes,” et id genus
omne. Such pictures again as “* WAITING FOR THE VERDICT,’
and your “ RAmsGATE SANps,”’ and ‘“ Derby Days,” and
*“ FouND DROWNED,” are no more painting than reporting
all the minute incidents of Her Majesty’s trip to Scotland
is either a poem, a drama, or a romance. Again, the
“orofound” touches of other artists belong to the same
kind of trick-art; such as Holman Hunt's cut apple lying
in the foreground, which is shown to be rotten at the core,
(how subtle!) ; and Herbert’s “ Curist IN THE CARPENTER’S
Suop,” with the fallen planks arranged in the form of a
cross at his feet (how suggestive !)—all which we are told
is so ‘wonderfully deep.’ Such clap-trap stuff as this
has no more right to rank with the achievements of high
art, than has one of Tom Hood’s rude sketches, where the
pencil was always made to convey an idea of some sort;
ay, and oftener a much more cunning idea than such mere
surface tricks as those above described. How different was
it with the really grand men of former times! In Rubens’
“ DESCENT FROM THE Oross,” for instance, that we see at
Antwerp Cathedral, there is no petty artifice to give us a
show of profound thinking, but only a display of profound
picturesque perception, and profound power and grace ina ae oes

eed

ed

ee ee

 

Set all le i ae ae eg ee

 

 

 

298 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

art, the Beauty can be wed to the Beast, and yet
none feel offended at the marriage. ‘Take the works

 

rendering it. The man straining over the top of ‘the cross,
with the end of the winding-sheet between his teeth, as he
helps to lower the dead body from above—the huddled form
of the calm and dignified corpse itself—and the soldier on
the ladder assisting to support the heavy, powerless limbs;
these are all given with such intrinsic force, and such utter
absence of extrinsic trick, while the “ powerful”’ details,
that in the hands of a poor painter would have been ex-
aggerated to loathsomeness, are here so finely subdued and
veiled, that we feel, the instant we look upon it, we are stand-
ing in the presence of a mighty artistic mind. So again,
what wonderful vigour of drawing and portrayal of the
human form—in a position that it was impossible to have had
a model to sit for, mark—is exhibited in the “ Crucrrrxion
or Sr. Perer”’ with his head downwards, by the same
master! and yet the end is compassed without a touch of
revolting or “stirring”? minutie in the means. Further,
what subject can be less pretty or even nice than Gerard
Dow's “Water Docror”! and yet, wasit the prurience of
such a subject, think you, that tickled the great Dutch
artist, or the fine play of light in the beam through the
window—the lustre of the upheld bottle as the sun falls on
it—and the wonderful scrutiny in the upturned face of the
old doctor himself? Such subjects are purely picturesque
ones, and those who see only the opposite in them have no
sense of the picturesque in nature, nor any soul for art,
either in the works of man or God. The same thing may be
said of Rembrandt’s grand picture of “ THE Dissecrion.’ No
subject could be more innately repulsive, and yet to an artistic
eye none could be more picturesque, and no painting at the
same time more forcible and less offensive; for the details
that a French artist would have revelled in, and done to
gangrene, as we have said, are finely kept in the background ;
the dead recumbent body being thrown a-slant across the
picture, and half concealed by the figures of the doctors
grouped in front of it, and the raw muscles of the arm only ex-
posed to bring out the fine rich contrast of the crimson flesh
with the black gowns. Whatis your pre-Raphaelite pictorial-
reporting beside such mighty visions as these? If the paint-
ing of every particular blade of grass, and making out of the
several stamina of each little flower in the foreground, and
giving the peculiar geological texture to all the foremost bits
of rock; if to be “ botanically and geologically true” is theTHE NEXT TURNING. 299 A

of Shakspeare himself: why, the mere subjects WH
of his finest plays,—‘ Macbeth,’ ‘ Othello,’ ‘ Lear,’ Wipe

great art-object, why then the wonderful literality and
texture-work of the photograph must be infinitely finer than
any landscape ever painted by Turner, Gainsborough, Hob-
bemer, Poussin, or Salvator Rosa himself. But the fact is, Wa
this “truth” of detail is no truth at all, but downright ina
pictorial falsity. Why, it may be asked, should artists make We
out the separate blades of grass—each flower-stamen, and i
the peculiar rock-granulation in the foreground only? Why
not in the distance also? (Do not laugh at the absurdity of
such a question, but proceed.) The answer, of course, will
be: the eye could not possibly see distant objects distinctly.
No more, we add, can it see objects distinctly in the fore-
ground either, when tt is fixed or focussed (for they are opti-
cally the same things, and metaphysically something more)
wpon the principal object of attention. If a true picture of some
one scene in Nature is to be painted, rather than a thousand
and one portraits of the thousand and one minute and in-
significant details that go to make up such a scene in the
broad view of the landscape, then every collateral object must
be toned down to the one on which the eye is meant to rest, and
where, and where alone (from the very focussing of the eye
upon it), the great intensity of light and shade, and conse-
quently the distinct making out of particulars, will be visible.
Iivery artist is aware that the great difficulty is to prevent
making out the forms and colours of known objects in the dis-
tance; or, in other words, the difficulty is to paint them as
they are seen in the general view, rather than as they are
known to be, when studied by themselves. And so we say

 

 

artists have yet to paint the objects in the foreground as they
really wre seen when viewed in harmony with the principal
object in the picture ; and not as they are seen and known to
be, when studied specially and separately. But, as it is, the
foreground of your pre-Raphaelite pictures is as untrue to
nature, ay, and as barbarous too, as Chinese backgrounds.
This portrait-painting of each simple thing in a complex mass ;
this reduction of all the details of a composite living land-
scape—that has always a special feeling underlying and,
spiritualizing, as well as substantializing the whole—down to

 

 

the senseless literality of so many distinct items of still life ; Wh
this giving us a hundred different isolate pictures of a |
hundred different isolate objects, where only one picture of Wp
one compound object is needed; this painting of heaven Hi

knows how many disjointed groups of people in “ Ramsgate300 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

‘Hamlet,’ the ‘ Merchant of Venice ’—are morally
revolting, and such as if enacted in the world about

Sands,’ for instance, and giving to every one of the mani-
fold faces making up all the manifold little cliques there,
each the same marked distinctness of feature and expression
as the other, and making them out to be all doing and mean-
ing something apart from the rest (even down to the mode}
Italian boy with the model white mice themselves), and ther
calling it @ picture of the place, when it isno more one picture
than is the succession of conjoint “ flats” which make up a
theatrical diorama—and believing that it is anything like a
composition, when there is not even the vaguest attempt at
fusing and interblending the rude and undigested mass or
pertect chaos of divers and diverse particulars into the broad
and harmonious entirety of perfect creation ; in fine, this giving
to accessories and subordinates the same luminous and chro-
matic importance, the same black and white distinctness of
detail, and the same delicacy of manipulation and finish—as
the principal object itself; this servile copying of model legs
of mutton (as Wilkie used) for pictorial legs of mutton that
were merely wanted to break up the formality of the rack
under the eciling, and which the eye could not possibly have
seen while looking atthe main characters on the ground below ;
—all this,we urge, is another of the crying pictorial vices, and,
indeed, general artistic vices of the time. And itis one which
the false doctrine of modern art-preachers is tending to drive
even further still into the mere literalities of reality ; rather
than to lead young artists into the ideal beauty of ceneral
nature as opposed to particular truth. Such false doctrine
is a mistake, which proceeds from the fundamental mistaking
of the very nature of truth itself—confounding, as it does,
that which is mere fact, or mere particular, bare, bald letter

truth with law and harmony or order and fitness, which
is the universal and enlightened spirit-truth of things. It is
this modern artistic fallacy, and consequent falsity, that makes
our pictures of the present day (with hardly one really grand
exception) such gaudy fluttering butterfly bits of colour for
the eye to look upon, instead of being the fine steadfast and
satisfying points of visual rest like the grand paintings
of old. Compare, for instance, the sublime repose and,
harmony of Rembrandt's picture of the “Woman taken in
Adultery,’ that one sees at Rotterdam, and the rich clear-
obscure of its foreground with the pictorial riot, chaos,
and hard chalkiness of McClise’s “ Robin Hood ;’ and then
surely none but the purblind and the tasteless will doubtTHE NEXT TURNING. 30]

us now, would stir even the dullard to the highest
pitch of indignation. And yet, graced by the
touches of this mighty, masterly hand, the moral
monstrosity becomes transformed into a high in-
tellectual beauty; the natural loathsomeness into
the finest artificial feast : even as the manure itself
is changed by the subtlety of mysterious nature
into food and flowers, or as ‘blood is used in certain
industrial processes to produce the highest possible
refinement. So again, I have heard the Dutch-
men in our town, Ben, say that Rembrandt’s great
picture of the Dissection is a perfect visual ban-
quet of colour; and even though it is the most
repulsive of all subjects, they assure me that the
eye forgets the mangled corpse upon the canvas,
and sees only, in the wondrous contrast of the
erimson hues of the raw muscles of the arm, and
the yellow, cadaverous complexion of the body,
contrasted with the black gowns of the doctors
grouped about it,—the soul of the painter, revel-
ling in the fine chromatic harmony. The lollipop
school of art, my boy, is the most sickly and
childish of all, and tickles the taste of those only
who admire a picture as they would a paper-hang-
ing, for being a sightly covering to a blank wall.”

“ But, uncle,” asked young Ben, who was still
at a loss to compr ehend why so few should be
able to have a knowledge of art, ‘‘ how do people
ever get to be impressed. “with a sense of this power
and ease, as you call it, in an artist. They haven't
seen him doing the work; and they surely can’t
tell whether he found it hard or easy to do it
then ?”

‘‘Indeed, Master Ben! Well, let us see,” said

 

 

for an instant that our own great artists have for many ay
iong year “ erred and strayed from their ways like lost sheep ;”’

and, moreover, that the Shepherd of Modern Painters is not
exactly the man to bring the flock back to the fold.302 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

the uncle, in reply. ‘The strong men you have
seen, boy, in the shows at Boston fair, whirl-
ing hundredweights about their heads, with the
same ease as you would so many bladders, and
bending bars of iron as if they were twigs,—you
knew to be men of great muscular power, because
you were conscious that you yourself would have
broken your little back before you could have
lifted the heavy masses of metal they did; and
moreover, because you were eye-witness to the
comparative ease with which they lifted them —
that is to say, so far as your eye could detect,
there was no straining to compass the elteet, aor
any ostensible sign of heavy labour in the work.
Every one is a natural critic of such feats as these,
my boy, because they know, from their own every-
day experience, how infinitely the task surpasses
their cwn physical powers. And then, if they
think physical power in man an admirable thing,
they will admire the mighty strong fellow: they
will look up to him with a kind of half-reverence
and half-love, not only because the might that is
in him is so much greater than their own might,
but because of the ease, and therefore the com-
parative grace, with which he accomplishes the
mightiest tasks.”

“I begin to see what you mean now,” mut-
tered the youth, as he chewed the cud of the pro-
blem.

‘Well, lad,” the other proceeded, “ of physical
feats most people are born critics, because the
physical power in such matters is often self.
evident. We all feel and know, almost instine-
tively and intuitively, that we couldn’t swallow
sabres, or jump through hoops off a galloping
horse’s back, or dance the Highland fling upon a
wire some hundred feet high in the air amidst a
shower of fireworks.”THE NEXT TURNING, 303

The boy couldn’t help smiling at the obvious
truths of the argument.

“Again, Benjamin, there are other feats of
skill, rather than art, that almost every person
can appreciate naturally ;” and as the old man
said the words, the boy turned towards him, eager
for the illustration. “Almost every one, for
instance,” said Uncle Ben, “can appreciate the
art or skill of simple imitation. I do not mean
merely enjoy the resemblance produced (since that
depends, as I have shown you, on an entirely
different susceptibility of our nature); but I do
mean that they can have a feeling at the same time
of greater or less admiration for the person pro-
ducing the enjoyment; for it is this feeling of
admiration—this turning of the mind towards the
human cause of our delight, and having a sense of
greater or less wonder at his superior power, that
makes up the feeling of artistry—that is to say, of
respect, and even reverence, for the artist-power.
The child, when it perceives the shadowy like-
ness of the rabbit on the wall, Ben, and finds out
that the long black moving ears, and bright white
eye that keeps winking at it, are produced by its
father’s fingers, depend upon it, looks into its
parent’s face with a mixture of love and wonder,
ay, and of awe and worship, as it feels its first
spasm of admiration, for what it doubtlessly be-
lieves then to be a work of prodigious craft and
skill. The misfortune is that half—nay, lad,
more than three-fourths—of the world, never
advance in artistic knowledge and sense beyond
the faculty of that little child, fascinated with the
wondrous piece of imitation, and thinking that
work a high artistic effort which is but a mere
trick of the fingers after all.”

‘“ And how do others acquire a greater know-
ledge, Uncle Ben?” inquired his nephew.al al a ee a ae

 

 

 

 

 

 

304 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

“Why, boy,” the answer ran, ‘“‘ when they
have had their fill of the various imitative pro-
cesses in art, and wondered till they have no
longer any wonder left, for the once-wonderful
artists who delight in bits of ‘still life,’ (an the
painted slice of cheese, for instance, with the
mouse about to gnaw it, and the jug of foaming
ale with the crusty loaf behind )—-for the musicians
who excel in the reproduction of the cries of the
entire farm-yard on the fiddle (the braying of
the donkey—clucking of the hen—-cackling of the
eweese—gobbling of the turkeys, and crowing of
the cocks) ;—for the ventriloquists who glory in
conversations with invisible old cellarmen far
underground, and imaginary bricklayers up chim-
neys, knocking out imaginary bricks, who delight
in frying imaginary pancakes, and in sawing
through imaginary logs, and uncorking and decant-
ing imaginary bottles of wine ;—when, lad, we
have been surfeited with these mere tricks and
antics of human cunning, and found out that the
powers and processes which we once believed so
transcendent, because we knew and felt they were
far beyond what we oursalves could compass at the
time—are no such very extraordinary powers after
all; but that, on the contrary, in the wide range
of human nature, the faculty for imitation, or the
simple outside re-presentation of a thing, is one that
mere ordinary power of mind and manipulation is
sufficient to compass : when we have made this dis-
covery, I say, we go on continually widening the
circle of our experience, and comparing one signal
evidence of human power with another in each of
the different arts; until at last we come to distin-
euish the giants from the pigmies on stilts—the
creators from the mere reproducing creatures ; and
end by regarding those only as high artists who
display the most inordinate power of conceptionTHE NEXT TURNING. 305

and execution in their works—power that can
triumph over difficulties that would be overpower-
ing to ordinary human minds, and yet triumph
over them with the greatest apparent ease and
srace. As you knew the power of the strong man
in the show, Ben, instinctively and intuitively,
by comparing the exhibition of his power with
your Own power, and also with that of the most
powerful men with whom you were acquainted,
and then feeling that he infinitely transcended them
all; so with the mental athlete ; directly we are
conscious of his power—directly we know and feel
that he can snap the iron chain of events in nature
as easily as a silkworm’s thread—that he can
crush the adamantine wall of circumstance hem-
ming in our lives, as readily as a wren’s nest in
his grasp—that he can make the most rigid and
inflexible difficulties in his path as supple as the
stems of harebells—and, indeed, that like Atlas
himself, he can stir the entire world with the
force of his mere will, as though it were a soap-
bubble in the air driven by his breath—directly
we know and feel all this, we also know and feel
that we are the little motes, and he the bright and
sunny beam from heaven, at once stirring and en-
lightening us.”

“I see! I see!” exclaimed the boy, thought-
fully, as he inwardly pondered upon the high
theme.

‘‘The pleasure we experience, my little man,”
the uncle went on, “in contemplating works of
high art, arises not only from the intrinsic beauty
of such works themselves, but from that fine
enjoyment which springs from the conception of
the highest power exerted with the greatest ease,
and therefore with the greatest grace; for high
art may be defined to be! the voluntary exercise
of high power with little or no effort,—even as
x

Se306 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

the highest art is that sublime exercise of the
Almighty’s power, which makes creation the im-
mediate consequence of the mere expression of the
Almighty will. ‘And God said, Let there be
light; and there was light.’
) | “This is the very majesty of all art, Ben. It
a || is impossible for the mind to conceive anything
| requiring greater power to achieve, and yet any-
| 1 | thing achieved more readily, or more sublime in
Pe Te its achievements. ‘The, stupendousness and love-
| liness of the work—the flooding of all creation
in an instant with that pellucid fire-mist, which
forms the broad-sheet of luminous matter diffused
throughout the world—the stirring of the entire
universe with the undulations of the luminous
ether-waves, from one end of space to the other,
circling and circling round the central point of
vest, like the rings in a pool, and flashing heht
everywhere immediately, in response to the great
Will—immediately, remember !—without any 1n-
tervening event !—without any intermediate work
or labour to compass the end !——-without any ma-
chinery !—without any delay !—the grand outward
result following as momentarily upon the inward
determination, as the passing thought illuminates
the countenance of man:—this gives us, lad, not
only a sense of the highest art, but the highest

 

|
||
| |
|
||
i
1 |
1 |
| |

 

 

 

; } | i | sense of art which the human intellect can ever
1} ) |

| a hope to comprehend.”
a The couple sat silent for a while, looking at the

| | |) broad sheet of silver moonlight spread before
Vial | them—looking at the million star-specks above-—
| Wid looking at the lights on the shore, and rapt in the
me WT great artistic wonder of light itself.
a HAT | “The pleasure we derive from the love of art,
| nT | therefore, my boy,” resumed Uncle Ben, after a
Hi] a time, “is the highest intellectual enjoyment of
which the mind of man is susceptible. It at once

lat A ee eeTHE NEXT TURNING. oUF
humiliates and elevates the soul :
with a true sense of its own inferior powers and
short-comings ; and elevates it also with a sense of
the perfection and excellence of the artist, who Wl
has overwhelmed it with admiration. It fills the at
mind with all the glory of the highest conquest—
the noblest triumph; not the conquest of man
over man, but of man over nature: the triumph
of heroic genius over difficulties, Nor is \there
in the true love of art any envy of rivals, or
dread of victors: for those who are made the
slaves of the conquerors are the most willing of
all slaves—the most reverent of al] children—the
most loving of all friends. The wonder that it
begets in the soul is not the wonder of mere
ignorance, child; but wonder informed by all the
enlightenment and beauty contained in the won-
drous work itself, and made fervent, almost to ik
worship, by the sense of perfection and power ie
in that which overpowers it. There is no power |
on the earth so mighty, and yet so spiritual—so
kindly and so noble, as the creative power of
genius. The world’s riches and nobility are
weak as bubbles beside it; heroism and martyr- |
dom are alone kin to it in force of soul. What ||
if the rich man is able to appropriate a manor
or a park ?—can he appropriate the sunlight and
the shade—the colour, the form, and expression
of nature? He may take a goodly slice of the
earth to himself, certainly; but he cannot pos-
sibly buy up the beauty of the landscape; he
cannot, with all his riches, arrange so that he .
alone shall enjoy that; for that is God’s dowry to |
all who have an eye and a soul for art; and it is i
only the artistic sense that can thoroughly appre-
ciate it. What if the noble can have a legion of
toadeaters to fawn and flatter, fetch and carry for
him! cannot the great artist, in every ups have
x ond

humiliates ita

— nee ge Oe rere

al aaa ae ae ee

 

 

 

 

SERENE

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
   
 
 
   

308

all the intellectual spirits in the world for his
admiring vassals, and make them at once his very
slaves and worshippers? And does the glory of
a nation, think you, lie in its Buckinghams and
St. Albans—-the pet creatures of a foolish monarch’s
favour; or in its Shakspeares, Newtons, Bacons,
Miltons, Lelys, Purcells, and those grand patrician
souls that got their patents of nobility from the
Great Creator himself? No, lad: there is no equi-
valent power in the world to the power of genius,
unless it be the moral power of the hero and the holy
power of the martyr; for these three, indeed, are
but kindred forms of one insuperable and tran-
scendent foree—force of mind—force of spirit—
and force of soul. There is the same self-sacrific-
ing spirit in art as in heroism; the same sacrifice
of worldly riches and worldly enjoyment to the
one absorbing love—-ihe love of the beautiful and
the grand ; the same bravery of nature shown in the
artist’s sturdy fight for success; the same prowess
in carving his way through the host arrayed
against him, and the same chivalry displayed
in his ardour to do battle for honour and beauty.
Nor is true genius deficient on the other hand in
the fine martyr power to suffer for what it devoutly
believes and reveres; to suffer itself to be gib-
beted by the rest of the world as a madman or
a prodigal; to suffer itself to be crucified with
the sccrn of purse-pride and the tyranny of
worldly authority: and yet amid all to lift its
eyes to heaven, and see only the bright spirit of
perfection that it delights to suffer for.”

YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

THE PURPORT OF INTELLECTUAL PLEASURE,

The theme was no sooner ended, than young
Ben threw his arms about his godfather’s neck,
and hugged him enthusiastically, as he cried:
‘‘Qh, thank you, uncle! thank you for the finewe)

09

feelings you have given me ;” but though the poor
little fellow tried to speak on, his heart was too
full for utterance ; and hysteric sobs burst out
instead of words, while Uncle Ben felt a tear-
drop fall warm upon his hand. Then, as the
lad hid his face upon his uncle’s shoulder, the
old man soothed him with fondling, while he
said: ‘There, don’t be shamefaced, Ben! give it
vent, lad, give it vent! and it will soon pass away.”

‘““T feel as if [had got a ballin my throat,” cried
the little man, in a minute or two, starting up
and pressing his fingers on his windpipe.
Presently he began walking rapidly up and down
in front of the rock on which they had been
seated, and, after afew turns, stopped suddenly in
front of his godfather, as he exclaimed, with a
thump of the air to enforce the speech: ‘I shall
be an artist, uncle—lI shall.”

“Tad! lad! lad! how you talk!” returned the
other. “Have I been speaking only to create a
phrensy in you, when all I wanted was to beget a
love. Say you'll be a king, boy: it’s easier far;
since no special genius is required for that. Say
youll be a giant, even though you are born a
pigmy; you might as well. Ah, Ben! like a
hundred others in the world, you mistake a taste
for a faculty, a mere developed liking, for an
inherent power—the power to conceive finely and
execute gracefully; and this is a widely different
thing from the function of merely perceiving and
enjoying. All the world, if duly educated, may have
the enjoyment awakened and developed in them ;
but the power can never be given to them; any
more than one could give them the power of soar-
ing like eagles, when they lack the special organi-
zation of the eagle-spirit and the eagle-wings.”

The boy hardly relished his uncle’s demolition
of his conceit, so he merely murmured by way of

YHE NEXT TURNING.310 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

reply, ‘‘ Now I suppose we have done for to-night,
eh? Besides, I want to get home, and think of
all you’ve said.”

“Well, my good lad, I won’t keep you long
now,” returned the godfather; “but we mustn't
¢o without giving a thought respecting what we
came for, Ben. You forget; what you wanted was
to be set on the right road, little man; but as yet
we have only surveyed the quiet shady lane, which
you called the path of intellectual pleasure ; so we
have still to decide whether that will be the
cleanest, or the most agreeable, or even the
shortest way to worldly happiness.”

‘No more we have!” ejaculated young Ben, as
the omission flashed upon him; and then he sud-
denly added, “but my mind’s quite made up
though! I mean to go that way through life, I can
tell you, unky.”

‘“‘Gently—gently! gently over the stones, boy,
as the coachmen say,” cried the uncle, in a tone of
warning.

This made his little godson turn sharply round,
and inquire: ‘‘ What d’ye mean by that, Uncle
Bene

‘Why, I mean, Jad,” he went on, “that you'd
find, before you got half through your journey,
that it was sore hard travelling. It’s but a by-
way at best, Ben; and if you want to make it the
high road, you'll find, sooner or later, you'll stick
deep in the mire, like many others who have made
the same mistake.”

“JT don’t understand you, uncle: after all the
grand things you’ve been saying about it, too,”
interposed the little fellow, growing half peevish
at the crossing of his purpose.

‘‘Why, look here! what did I tell you were
the three main objects of human life?” the old
man asked.THE NEXT TURNING. oll

‘Let me see! what did you say they were?”
young Ben inquired of himself; “though I’m
sure you've told me so many things, 1 can’t
exactly remember them just now.”

‘‘ Business ”—began the other.

But before he had time to finish the sentence,
the boy had added “‘ amusements, and duties.”

‘“Well, then, lad,” the uncle proceeded, “as
sensual pleasures (or rather the relief of the wants
and uneasinesses begotten by the senses) make up
the main business of life, so the intellectual plea-
sures should form the basis of man’s mature
amusement: and kept within their due sphere,
they are the lovely, grand, and pure enjoyments
of our soul. If, however, we will make a stern
business of what should be merely a fine amuse-
ment ;—if we will be at play, lad, when we should
be at hard work—no matter how graceful and
refining the play may naturally be ;—if we will try
to live on flowers (and remember the flowers are
the most useless, though the most beautiful of all
natural objects, Ben), and won’t seek bread, why
of course we can’t expect worldly welfare. De-
pend upon it, my boy, we have only to burst
through the regular rourd of nature at any time,
for a whole legion of ugly imps and evil spirits to
rush in upon us directly the magic circle is
broken.”

‘“‘Qh then, I suppose, you mean to say, uncle,”
interposed Master Ben, ‘‘that was the reason why
the poet had taken the wrong road ?”

‘¢Of course it was,” said the old man. ‘He
was one of the many poor fellows who try to live
on flowers, and who starve rather than live at the
business. For let a man be as busy as a bee,
3en—ay, and as thrifty as a bee too,—he cannot
hive much of what the poet called the world’s
hone., out of the buttercups and daisies strewn inSe en ae ek el

 

 

 

 

BL? YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

our path. If the exigences of human nature
rendered poetry as crying a necessity as food and
raiment; if the love of the beautiful and the good
had been made an appetite, and had bred in us all
the pangs of an appetite when not satisfied (instead
of being merely one of the many bountiful after-
enjoyments that we have been fitted to feel, on
the assuagement of the appetites themselves) why,
then, to have made poetry a business would have
been high and noble worldly wisdom. But since
the butcher will not take a lovely sonnet in
exchange for a lovely leg of mutton, nor a tailor
accept the finest possible ode for a superfine suit
of clothes, why the larder must be empty, Ben,
and the back be poorly clad, if we will continue
toying with the beautiful, and at the same time
warring with the wise.”

“But, uncle,” put in the little fellow, ‘“ Shak-
speare was a poet; and yet, I think, I read up in
ycur room, that at the end of his life he wasn’t at
all badly off, either.”

‘‘He was simply the finest and wisest poet,
perhaps, the world ever saw, my good lad,” the
answer ran; ‘“‘and just one of the few profound
geniuses that can ever make a fortune out of an
art. You see, Ben, the great drawback of the
artistic passion is, that it leads so many to do
what you were about to do just now: mistake the
mere love of art, begotten in them by the grand
works of others, for an inherent power existing in
themselves. ‘I'he intense admiration that is ex-
cited by all works of high art, begets an
enthusiastic love for the art-creators: and this
passion again begets, in its turn, a fervent desire
in the breasts of those who feel it, that others should
have the same enthusiastic love for them. So, as
each art-worshipper longs in his soul to be trans-
lated, from the humility of the devotee, into all theTHE NEXT TURNING Bis

glory of the idol, or, in plain English, to be regarded
as a genius by the world—why it is not a very dif-
ficult matter for him to cheat himself, at last, into
the belief that he 7s what he wishes to be. Hence
hundreds of mere clever folk are led to make a
business of that which should be merely an elegant
amusement to them; but, alas, (as in all arts
it is only genius, or inordinate natural power, that
we admire and value) mere cleverness—which is
simply ordinary educated power—becomes utterly
valueless to all who have any sense of high art
itself. Consequently, your mere clever folk find it
very difficult to get a market for their wares ; and
thus those who should have remained amateurs—
that is to say, simple art-lovers—rather than aspired
to be artists or art-creators (and who would have
thriven as carpenters, builders, or smiths, or as
house painters, sign painters, or indeed at any
calling where more skilled or educated handicraft
has a value in the world), have to pay a long and
heavy penalty for their folly, in the shape of
want, disappointment, and envy.”

‘‘Oh, I understand you now, and see what a
narrow escape J have had, uncle,” murmured the
youth. ‘And that was why the artist we went to
was almost as poor as the poet, eh?”

The answer was: “Ay, Ben, he was truly an
art-lover, and should never have been an art-
creator. The poor fellow could reproduce fairly
enough, lad; but reproduction in art is, unfortu-
nately for such as he, the counterfeit coin that
every true judge of the sterling metal rejects with
disdain, as a sham and a cheat.”

‘Well, but science you said, uncle, was wis-
dom,” urged young Ben; ‘so I suppose the gentle-
man who passed all his time in collecting msects,
and in looking at them—under the telescope, I

think it was—”’}
1 }
||
1 |

}
|
| |
i |

i
; |

 

314 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

‘‘Nay, nay! the microscope, lad,” prompted
the uncle.

‘‘Well, the microscope, then,’ continued the
boy, ‘‘and who spent ever such a lot of money
upon the little tiddy lenses to it, I suppose he was
wise, wasn’t he? Besides, you know, he was a
rich gentleman, and could afford to indulge in
such an amusement.”

“So could the epicure, lad; and the one only
differed from the other 1n the fact that the
pursuit was less animal and less gross,” was the
rejoinder. ‘‘ With the epicure, eating was a lust ;
with the entomolgist, the study of animalcular life
was a hobby.”

The boy inquired, ‘‘And what’s a hobby,
uncle P”

Uncle Benjamin gave the folowing answer.

‘A hobby, my son, is any dry stick that big babies
like to get astride, and go prancing and curveting
through the great highway as proudly as if they
had a genuine bit of blood to carry them along.
The fools in the old May-games were always
shown riding some childish wooden hobby-horse ;
and the fools of modern time—who see life only as
a May-game—must have their hobby to ride too.
Originally the hobby-horse was a hack-horse, that
used to carry the same everlasting pack upon his
back, and to be perpetually travelling the same
everlasting road. ‘Then the fool got astride wooden
hobbies, and rode them with all the airs of a knight-
errant, eager to win his spurs in the world; and
after that babies took up the amusing foolery, and
went a-cock-horse on their granny’s crutch, antick-
ing along as though the wretched hobbling thing
fulfilled all the functions of life. Hence, my boy,
a hobby came at last, to stand for any kind of sense-
less dead horse that will bear any amount of over-
riding; indeed, it is a sort of dilettante clothes-THE NEXT TURNING. old

horse—a thing for philosophic fops to hang their
mental frippery upon. Hence, too, hobby-riding
is mere childish gambolling, rather than the true
manly exercise of the intellect: the monkey-trick
of wisdom, trying to crack the hard nuts of the
world ; as if the ape himself had learnt to play the
philosopher, and delighted to put on the sage’s
spectacles, and try and look wise by staring hard
at the puddles and the stars through the thinker’s
glasses.”

The lad was tickled with the figure, but too
intent on solving all the difficulties of the problem
his uncle had set before him to do more than smile
at the image it conjured up; so he said—

“Still, unky, dear, I can’t understand why, if
there’s no necessity for a man to follow any
business, he mayn’t continually pursue some
intellectual amusement without being looked upon:
only as what you call a big baby or a world’s fool.”

‘<'There’s only one excuse, Ben,” the tutor made
answer, ‘‘ for a man labouring day after day at the
same occupation—to the exclusion of almost every
other object in life ; and that is, because it is a bus?-
ness with him : that is to say, because the exigences
of human nature at once demand and enforce it.
But the man upon whom nature has relaxed her
grip; who has drawn a prize in the strange social
lottery ; who, in the great conscription for ever
going on to recruit the standing army of life, has
escaped entering the ranks, by being allowed to
find a substitute to do the hard work of the battle
for him; for such a man to make an amusement 3
business ; for such a man to toil and labour day after
day at unnecessary work, as if he were toiling and
labouring for dear hfe itself—and that also to the
exclusion of every other object in the world—this
is to reverse the wise ordinations of nature, and
give play all the austerity of hard work; as wellSP Ser

 

 

 

 

  

spilio YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

as to transform what was intended to be a sweet
and graceful relief, into an ugly sore and a source
of endless irritation.”

“But if he likes to make play hard work,
uncle,” again urged the pertinacious little fellow,
‘¢ why shouldn’t he do so ?”

‘‘Because, Ben, life should never be entirely
sacrificed to play; or indeed to any one pursuit
except that of work,” the tutor responded. ‘‘ And
there is no earthly reason why we should persist
in working at this one pursuit day after day, but
that we want food day after day; ay, and shall
want it daily when we are too old and feeble to
continue daily work. Besides, my boy, if Provi-
dence, by some special and inscrutable act of grace
towards us, has exempted us from the hard labour
of life, and struck the iron collar of want’s bitter
serfdom off our necks, He has not exempted us, at
the same time, from the duties of life; but rather
ordained that from those to whom much is given
much is expected. Consequently, he who rides a
hobby, rides roughshod over all the soft ties of
nature, tramples under foot—like the reckless
hunter dashing through a corn-field in the wild
chase that he calls sport—all that was meant to
comfort and sustain the suffering; and wastes, in
the phrensy of his amusement, the golden means of
relief to those who want. ‘T’o ride a hobby, lad
(even though it carry us like Pegasus up to the
very grandeur of the starry universe itself), is, after
all—if we are for ever in the clouds—merely to
sweep the cobwebs from the skies, and to soar, like
an old witch upon a broomstick, far away from all
that is required of us on earth itself.”

‘But, Unele. Ben,”, ingiired his pupil, “if
such pursuits are not hobbies—if they are really the
business by which people live, then there is
nothing wrong in them, I suppose ?”THE NEXT TORNING. olT

“So far from there being anything wrong in
them, when not made the one over- -weening and, all-
absorbing amusement of a life, lad,” he answered,
‘they are studies that make every one, who has
the faculty to comprehend the wonders revealed by
them, feel an everlas sting port in his brain, far
beyond the power of even Milton himself to shape
into w ords; and those with whom they are a
business rather than a passion, depend upon it, find
such studies—even grand as they are when oc-
casionally contemplated in the lull of the work-
day world — often harden into toil that makes
the brain ache again, after long labouring at
them; and as the mill-horse, who was kept grind-
ing for ever in one eternal circle throughout
the week, found ease and delight only in un-
winding himself, as it were, on the Sabbath, by
turning in precisely the contrary direction ; so the
study of the revolutions of the heavenly bodies
lends, in its turn, an inordinate delight and grace
to the round of intellectual pleasure on the earth.

‘And now, lad, we have but to note how these
same intellectual pleasures are distinguished from
the pleasures of the senses, to have exhausted this
part of our subject. What did I tell you, Ben,
were the peculiar characteristics of sensual en-
joyments ?” and as the old man asked the question
he rose from his seat, and taking the boy by the
hand, commenced walking homewards along the
shore.

‘Why, uncle, you said,” cried the little fellow

“for I fede it ead me strongly at the
beet as a sensation was always caused by
the operation of something outside of us—”

‘Yes, those were my wor ds, Ben,” interposed
the codfather. “ Goon

i know what you meant, but it’s sv hard to
say it as you did, uncle,” the boy added, after a318 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

pause; and then with a little stammering,
jerked out, ‘“‘ Why, you said we must go hunt for
the objects of sensual pleasure in the world about
us; yes, and you said we must often have to pay
dearly for them too.”

‘That's perfectly right, Ben ;’ and the kindly
old teacher shook his little godson by the hand as
he said the words. ‘And on the contrary, the
intelectual pleasures are comparatively inexpensive
ones; lying mostly within ourselves. The very
perception of beauty (which is perhaps the largest
intellectual sense of all, being connected with
almost every source of mental enjoyment) is a
faculty that admits of continual gratification with-
out cost. The whole world—if we will but open
our eyes to it—is one vast temple of beauty, filled
with works of the choicest art; and this the very
beggar or pauper is as free as the prince to enjoy :
for it is a luxury that is priceless in a double sense,
costing nothing, and yet being beyond all cost.
Look here, lad—” and he stopped and turned to-
wards the moon that was flooding the bay with all
the soft splendour of the silver sunlight of its beams.
‘“‘Look here! What pomp of kings was ever
equal to this? What palace was ever so gorgeous
with its million lights as this vast starry hall ?
and yet is lighted up even for the vagrant and the
outcast, as well as for you or me. Who can ap-
propriate this magnificent scene, boy? Who can
buy this up so that he alone may enjoy it? And
yet, lovely as all this now is, what a mighty trans-
formation—what a new beauty will be brought
about in a few hours! Think how the now
colourless earth will then leap into a million hues
with the first flash of the daylight; how these
dark fields will suddenly glitter in the sun with all
the golden-green lustre of the peacock’s plumage ;
how the stars above will fade one by one from the

?THE NEXT TURNING. 319

skies, and the bright-coloured little stars of the
earth begin to peep out from the hedgerows and
the meadows! How this broad ocean, which is
more like one immense floor of silver, will then be
red as wine with the ruby light ; and thunk, too, boy,
that this is a feast spread for us all, day after day,
and a feast which never cloys—never surfeits,”

The boy kissed his uncle’s hand in gratitude
for the pleasant knowledge and high percep-
tions he had given him. He was like a youn
bird whom the old one was teaching to fly, and
he found no little difficulty in keeping on the
wing after him; so he rested in silent admiration
till the other continued.

‘But not only is there the usual beauty of
nature, Ben, ever open to us, but there is the
beauty of the peculiar trains of thoughts and feel-
ings, begotten by the peculiar nooks and corners
of the earth: the beauty of the solemn mood
inspired by the woods—the calm contemplative
spirit engendered by the quiet lanes—the gentle
cheerfulness begotten by the brook-side — the
sweet serenity of soul impressed by the sea-shore.
Again, in the very associations with which the
mind is for ever strewing our path through life—
like flowers scattered as we go—there is a large
fund of delight elways stored within ourselves.
Our home is home only from the cluster of sweet
associations that hang about the old house—thick
and pleasant asa cloud of jasmine at the porch; not
a tree in the fields where we sported in our youth,
but.is entwined all round with the tendrils of many
a sweet-scented memory ; not an old friend’s face
that is not lighted up in our eyes with the recollec-
tion of all the happiness, and all the many little
kindnesses rendered to us. So too with the imagi-
nation: we have here also in our power a mighty
principle of delight. Jiven with the very young,I SED BODIE IIE IE me ES en me regrreren G en per Tk

ae

Se ee

   

 

 

a0) YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

their plays-—their little pretendings—their sham
feasts—their mock battles—their love of fairy
stories—-all owe their pleasure to the charm of the
fancy within us; while even to the more mature,
the frost on the window- pane which the mind loves
to shape into so many grotesque pictures, and the
glowing sea-coal fire that we love to sit and look at,
and trace faces, and mountains, and what not, amid
the redhot coals, can give the fancy many an hour's
pleasant play : even as to the poor prisoner, barred
and bolted in his hving tomb, the imagination
is the great liberator ; for this at any time can set
him free in mind, and carry him, in fancy, home to
his friends again. Indeed, lad, the world within
—if we will but wander in it—is as richly stocked
with beauty and treasures as the world without ;
and with beauty and treasures that are all our
own too. li is im our bram the fairies dwell,
and the flowers they nestle in, bloom there too;
there the gorgeous land of romance and en-
chantment is to be found; there, and there only,
can we find Utopia, the island of perfect hap-
piness; there the wood nymphs and the water
nymphs are ever lurking in the mythic streams
and groves, and waiting but for one wave of the
fancy’s wand, to summon all to life; there les the
realm of all ideal excellence and beauty , and there
1s no perfection to be found on the earth but there.”
Again the teacher paused, while he mentally
scanned the details of his subject. The boy hadn’t
a syllable to say. Haus little stock of words, he
knew, was too scanty to trust himself to speak on
such a matter; but his young heart was full to
overflowing with that fine reverent fervour, that
iris-like emotion (made up of all the brightest and
warmest hues of the soul—love, wonder, gratitude,
and veneration) with which the mind always turns
to any one that has awakened grand thoughts andTHE NEXT TURNING. S71

perceptions in it; and which Uncle Benjamin had
called, in contradistinction to the moral sense and
the common sense, the art-sense: the admiring,
worshipful sense of human nature.

Presently the uncle resumed, as they walked
on by the shore, ‘‘ But even, lad,” said he, ‘“‘ when
we have to hunt for the objects of intellectual
pleasure, outside of ourselves, and to buy them
of others in the world about us, they are to be
had for nothing, in comparison with the costly
luxuries of the senses. A dainty dinner would
have cost me more than I gave for my copy of
Plutarch’s lives—the book you're so fond of, Ben,
you know; yet see what a number of grand feasts
you and I have had out of it, and still it has left
not a twinge of gout in the brain behind it either.
For what I gave for my Shakspeare, I couldn’t
have got a diamond bigger than a speck of hoar-
frost, lad; and yet, if I could have had one ag
big as the knob of a beadle’s staff to stick in
my shirt frill, or as brilliant as a firefly to flash
about upon my finger, do you think the pretty
petrified dewdrop would have done other than
have made a big baby of me? But, on the other
hand, see what a man I’ve become by prefer-
ring to bedizen and bejewel my mind with the
bright thoughts and fancies of those volumes.
For what gem in the world is there that can
compare with that lovely crystal book! Was
ever a bit of earth so exquisitely transparent
as even human nature itself is there made to
appear! Was there ever such play of colour, as
there you see twinkling in all the hundred hues
of human character! Was there ever such fire, as
there, where every page is aflame with human
passion, and every line scintillates with human
genius! Was there ever such dazzle, such sparkle
in a mere stone, however precious! Why, twist

=nen Sh

 

   

ae YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

and turn the bright adamant bit of art as you
will, in every different light you look at it you
shall see fresh flashes, fresh delicate tints and
touches, fresh glitter and richness, and fresh
beauty, too. A good book, lad, is at all times a
wonderful thing. Itis said that savages, when they
first discover that a person has the power of com-
municating his thoughts to another at a distance,
by means of a few marks made upon a blank sur-
face fall down and worship the writer as a divine
being. My boy, a book is naturally but a few
pages of paper, scratched over with a few fine
biack lines; and yet those magic lines are the
means of enabling us to hold communion with the
very dead themselves—to think as they thought,
feel as they felt, hundreds of years ago. ‘T'o read
Shakspeare, my dear Ben, is to think Shakspeare,
to be Shakspeare for the time; it is to have the
same bright fancies flit through our brain, the same
passions stirring our soul, as he had while pen-
ning the book itself. To lift the cover of such a
work is, as it were, to roll the stone from before
the sepulchre, and have the immortal spirit rise
from the tomb—quick again with the very breath
of life and genius. But though this is the natural
marvel of a great book, its natural and spiritual
beauty lies, not more in the fine mental enjoyment
it gives us, than in the fine moral comfort it affords
the soul. There are times, lad, when we are
worldly-tired, when the spirit is footsore, as it
were, with the fatigues of worldly care and
worldly struggle; and it is finely ordained that it
should be so. But then, ay then, what balm is
the mental rest and the mental ease of a fine book
to us! Jt comes as refreshing as dew in drought ;
as sweet and grateful as manna in the wilderness.
It is like the very rest of heaven itself to get far
away from the world at such times; and then theTHE NEXT TURNING. goo

wizardry of a really grand and thoughtful work
is felt to be the very power of enchantment.
When we are sick of the world’s fools, lad, and
the world’s cheats, and the world’s heartlessness,
and the world’s trumpery, what intense delight
then to sip away to our study, or to some pretty
bubbling brook-side, and turn to the fond com-
panionship of a good book; so as to get a smack of
the world’s wisdom, the world’s greatness, the
world’s truth and goodness too! Could we have
known the great spirits that have delighted and
ennobled mankind with their works, we should
have thought it a high privilege to have had com
munion with them; a signal grace to have gained
their counsel. Still they were human like our-
selves, Ben, and had more or less of the weakness
and pettiness of humanity, amid all their strength
and greatness; but in the noblest books, lad, we
see only the noblest part of humanity ; its inor-
dinate power rather than its ordinary frailty ; its
unwonted grandeur rather than its everyday mean-
ness; and thus by means of the best books we get
to know the best natures that ever lived, and to
know them in their best and happiest moods, too.”

There was still another point to enforce before
the lesson was completed; so after a brief rest,
Uncle Ben continued—‘‘I have now only to im-
press you, my child, with a sense of the general
unselfish character of true intellectual enjoyment ;
and then my worldly sermon is finished: I want
you to mark well the distinction between the plea-
sures of the senses and those of the mind in this
respect. With sensual pleasure, there is almost
always a desire to appropriate the thing that
pleases us; that is to say, to take it and keep it to
ourselves, so that we alone may enjoy it; and
some mean natures find a small delight even in

exciting the envy of others, by the display of the
re

SS Seer ie ne eeoot YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

 

worldly valuables they have been lucky enough to
obtain ; so that the love of pomp and show, dress
| and finery, is often found to be closely connected
EAN tt with the poor glory of worldly riches. But with
MT the objects of intellectual pleasure, there is seldom
Pa any such draw-back. As I said before, a man
a cannot appropriate the beauty of the landscape:
indeed, so far from any such greed, any such crav-
| ie ing to monopolize what pleases us, coming upon
| Wt) the soul in a state of intellectual enjoyment, the
Ri Wt id very contrary feeling is awakened, and the same
Bi , propensity for proselytism sets In, as even in religious
Ht fervour itself, and we grow eager to make others
| see, think, and feel as we do. Who that was ever
i tired with the beauty ofa noble or graceful thought,
a grand discovery, or a lovely scene, has not felt a
positive yearning of the spirit to communicate the
PT HH delight awakened in him to some congenial bosom!
a TT If it were not for this exquisitely generous cha-
Pn i racter of our mental nature, Christianity itself
would never, probably, have travelled beyond the
walls of Jerusalem; for if there were the same
Pa | | greed to monopolize a high mental enjoyment,
SUE: as there ts to keep a sensual one all to ourselves,
i\ Ni
;
}

 

aH what desire could ever have stirred the early Chris-
a | tians to seek to turn the -hearts of those far dis-
A LT tant, from all the horrors of paganism to the sweet
, benevolence of the ‘newcommandment’? Again,
Ren, if it were not for this innate love of sharing
Hd our mental delights with others, there could have
a been no philosophy, no teaching in the world.
| A When you come, boy, to look into those wonderful
Hl elaborations of mental mosaic-work which make
| q up the several natural sciences, you will learn how
AN ih i they have been built up, like the huge coral reefs
! wT in the ocean, by an infinity of distinct and minute

Wy workers, all labouring away far beneath the surface,
and each intent on adding his little mite of extra

 

 

 

OO Ne ee re

 

sew eTEASING. 325

work to the mass, so as to give it ultimately the fine
proportions of a great and mighty whole. You will
then see, Ben, how little each has added, even after
the labour of along life: and how many had to
contribute their quota of industry, before the whole
assumed anything like the grandeur and solidity
ofarock! And yet, lad, if each of these profound
and minute labourers hadn’t shared with the rest
what he had been able to accomplish—if each had
kept to himself the little bit of vantage-ground
he had gained instead of letting it go to swell
the common heap, why, what progress could any
have made, or how could any have raised themselves
above the mire ?”

‘“And now, lad,” concluded the man, as they
approached the harbour of the town, ‘‘ we have
reached the port we made for; and after our
long voyage of discovery, you'll feel at least the
delight of treading with a firmer-footing, and
learn the pleasure of standing upon terra jirma at
last.”

 

CHAPTER XVIII.
TEASING.

THE lesson of life was nearly ended. There was
only one more chapter to be got by heart; but it
was a difficult one to study, and required close and
peculiar observation of the world to learn.

Uncle Ben had to think for a time how he
should dramatize the story he had to tell—how
he should put life and action into it, and give it
all the vividness that scenery and incident in-
variably lend to a subject.

However, at last he saw his way; so, early the
next morning, the boy and his godfather were outie i

    
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
   
   
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

326 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

sn the streets of Boston, going the rounds of the
city once more.

‘© Where, in goodness, are you going to take
me to now, uncle?” asked little Ben, as he trotted
along at the old man’s side, all agog again with
the excitement of curiosity.

But old Benjamin Franklin was too cunning a
teacher to blunt the edge of what he wanted to
cut deeply into the memory, by satisfying the
lad’s desire at once ; so he rather strove to fan the
flame than damp the ardour of the boy’s wonder
and consequent inquisitiveness. Accordingly, he
asked in his turn, “* Where do you think, Ben?
You've been taken out fishing—you’ve gone out
boating —you’ve been to the hunting-plains in the
far west—you'’ve been round the town to see the
oveat human menagerie, and the strange rational
animals collected in it—you’ve been on the rocks
by moonlight ; and all to havea peep at the world,
and find out how to grope your way through it;
and now—”’

«¢ Yes, uncle, what now ”” cried the lad, on the
very tenter-hooks of suspense ; and then added
petulantly, as the old man stopped short, ‘‘ There,
you won't go on. How you do like to tease a fel-
low, tobe sure! I call it very unkind of you, that
I do.” But presently he said, coaxingly, “ Where
are we going to, unky, eh? You might as well
tell a chap; besides, what difference can it make,
for I shall know it all in a short time ?”

‘© Well, then, why can’t you wait that short
time, Ben?” and the old man smiled as he played
like a cat with the little mouse in his power, now
letting him run on a few paces, and now pouncing

down upon him, only to tighten the erip and in-
crease the poor thing’s torture.

“ That’s the way you kept tantalizing me all
the way to the prairies,” muttered the boy, as heTEASING. ae

walked doggedly on beside the other. ‘I declare,
all you did then was to keep knag-knaging away
at me, for all the world as one sees mother twitch
and jerk away at the knots in a tangled skein of
thread ; asking me now, ‘where I thought I was
going to?’ and then, ‘what I expected I was to be
shown next? and after that, ‘why I fancied you
took me all the trips you did? and only saying,
when I begged of you to tell me all about it,
‘There, there, patience my little philosopher,
patience! you will know all in good time:’ just
as you do now.”

The old man couldn’t help laughing outright,
as the boy mimicked his voice and manner while
repeating the reply; for he himself could tell
how pat the little fellow had taken him off. Then
he said, ‘‘ Well, Ben, I had an object for with-
holding the reason at that time; andso I have
now. It is merely a trick I have, lad; just a trick,
that’s all. But come, Master Ben, where do you
think we are really going to this time?” he began,
again pricking the little fellow’s curiosity with a
small packet of mental pins and needles. ‘ It’s
such a queer place to take a boy like you to, you
can’t tell.”

The lad was on thorns again. He had turned
away half in dudgeon at the idea of his uncle
laughing, as he thought, at his eagerness; but the
smallest glimmer of coming information was suf-
ficient to bring him back close to the old man’s side.
‘«« A queer place, is it, uncle, eh? Whereabouts is
it? What do you call it? What shall we see
there ”’ he inquired, all in one breath.

But, poor fellow, the only answer he got was,
« All in good time, my lad, all in good time! we
sha’n’t be very long before we get to ra :

The little chap could readily have cried with
the irritation of the continued teasing; but he bitlaa ae ll ee a ee ee

 

 

 

 

putnam a iE

 

 

en

  

328 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

his lip, so that his godfather shouldn’t have the
satisfaction of seeing how vexed he was. He
knew there was some sight in store for him, and
he was almost frantic with the rage of the appetite
that the old man had roused in hin.

Uncle Benjamin, however, knew well how far
to go. He knew that overstrained curiosity, like
the overtension of any other faculty, will often
end in the snapping of the very chord that had
once so tight a hold of the mind ; and that disgust
or indifference are apt to supervene, if the desire
be too long foiled of its object. So he began to.
relax a bit, and allow the poor struggling fish he
had hooked, a little play of line, just to prevent his
breaking the mere hair which held him. ‘‘ Come,
Ben,” he said in a tone that sounded as if he
was relenting, ‘“‘ I won’t tease my little man any
more,” and he drew the lad towards him as he
spoke ; ‘‘ so where do you think now I am really
going to take you to?”

Poor Ben wanted to turn away again, for he
expected the same question would bring only the
same evasive reply; but the old man held him
fast. “ There, you're beginning your teasing
again, uncle, I declare,” cried the boy, half angry,
even though he couldn’t help laughing in the
midst of it.

‘‘ No, ’m not, lad, indeed I’m not,” answered
the playful old boy, who couldn’t keep from
laughing too. “ Pm going to tell you, for | know
you'll never guess. It’s such a queer place you
can’t think; the queerest place in the world to.
take a boy hke you to, as I said before.”

“Yes, I know you said it before, and what’s
the use of repeating it over and over again?” he
exclaimed with a quick toss of the head that ex-
pressed whole volumes more than my Lord Bur-
leigh’s celebrated shake.TEASING. 399

me

‘* How can you say so, Ben, when I’m going to
tell you, I say again?’ the uncle pretended to
expostulate.

‘* Then why don’t you do it, and have done
with it ?” shouted the boy, savagely.

The godfather saw that he had gone the full
length of his tether. It was plain the lad could
bear no more trifling with ; so uncle Ben said, as he
stood still in the street, and looked the little fellow
in the face, ‘‘ ’'m going to take you, Ben—”

The boy couldn’t wait for the information that
he now knew was on the tip of his uncle’s tongue,
so as the old man paused for a minute to give the
words extra force at the end of the sentence, he
cried ‘‘ Where ?”

‘“ Why, to jail, lad—to jail!” was the reply.

‘* Ah, now you are only making a fool of me!”
and the indignant boy turned upon his heel, as.
his uncle fell to laughing outright at the httle
fellow’s exhibition of incredulity.

‘¢ Hoi! what are you up to, boy! where are you
going to?” Uncle Ben cried through his chuckles,
as he saw the youth marching back home again:
but finding the youth paid no heed to his cries,
the old man set off running after him, his sides
still shaking with the fun the while, so that he
went along wobbling like a jelly when it’s moved.

‘*Come back, you rogue,” he gasped out, as at
last he got close up with the boy, and seized him
by the collar; ‘‘I tell you I’m going to take you
to jail,” and then as he stared in the face of the
astonished lad, he burst out giggling again so.
heartily that Ben himself—for honest good hu-
mour is always infectious—was obliged to take
the frown out of his little brow and pucker his
cheeks into dimples instead. And there the pair
stood for a while laughing at each other in the
middie of the street.330 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

“You're only having a game with me, ain't
you now, uncle ?” inquired the pacified youngster,
| when the whim was over, and they turned round

Hh i to resume their way.

MHI | “ T tell you, Master Ben, you are a little unbe-

i} | lieving Jew, you are. It’s as true as gospel, lad—
Vn '|| i and you know I wouldn’t say that in jest,” the old

Pa i man replied. ‘“ I’m going to take you to the jail.”
P| a “The jail!” echoed young Ben, in his wonder.
| “ Ay, boy, the jail!” repeated the other. ‘‘ Pm
HH |] going to show you the end of the road to ruin in
PWT || | this life. I’m going to let you see what wisdom
TT there is in the poor-house—as well as the prison.”
Hil “No! are you really, uncle ? Well, do you know,

Ht a I’ve long wanted to see what such places are
MH || ia like,’ added the boy, who was now himself
MN avain, and fully satisfied that his gvodfather’s fit
a of fun-poking was over. ‘‘ But still, as I don't
Wt mean to go to ruin, Uncle Ben, 1 can’t see what
Ma | good there can be in your pointing out to me the
| road to it.”
| ‘“‘T have no such object in view, my boy,” went
| WW on the old man; ‘‘My scheme is not the paltry
Nt Ht) i nursery trick of frightening you into rectitude,

i

|

 

 

 

AS by showing you the death’s head and bare bones
Ne i | 1 ‘ oO »y ;
ml i of worldly vice and folly. I don’t want to make

 

4 squalor and infamy mere moral bugaboos; but,
|i | rather, I do want to let you learn what kindly
| i and touching things they can whisper in your
tT | heart’s ear, if your heart will but turn to them. If
LT want to use the ugliness of life as a means of
OL giving you a sense of the highest beauty in the
| : Hil world, lad.”
AL “Oh, I thought you were going to let me see
Ri in| these places, so that I might learn where I should
| Wy || a get to at last, if I was foolish enough to take the
i in| wrong road,” said the youth, still harping on the
old figure.

 

 

peter doi oe,TEASING. ao

Uncle Benjamin shook his head and smiled as
he said, ‘‘ The artifice has been tried a thousand
times, and failed just a thousand times too.
People see thus much of life made out in the
trashy melo-dramas of the playhouse, night after
night, Ben, and yet persons of my way of
thinking—even though I do read and delight in
Shakspeare ’’—he put in parenthetically—“ believe
that the morality of the playhouse is poor, power-
less stuff after all. Even in the silliest works
of fiction, virtue is always rewarded and vice
punished, and yet the silly people who read them
will be vicious, and won’t be virtuous, despite of
the teaching. There is always a moral, too,—some
wretched drivelling copy-book platitude,—tacked
on the tail of every fable ; and yet, lad, what boy
was ever cured of saying ‘don’t care,’ because
that wicked Harry, in the spelling book, was
eaten up alive by a roaring lion for it—even
though the punishment is so tremendous, and the
fault so trivial ?”

Young Ben smiled as he remembered the
appalling illustration of wretched ‘‘ don’t care”
Harry, in the act of being devoured by the
hungry beast, in the primer he had used at Mr.
Brownwell’s school.

“The best moral lesson we can ever hope to
give a person, Ben, is a truthful insight into
human nature ”—the uncle went on. ‘The idle
scholastic method of connecting a prize or a
thrashing with good-conduct, or the reverse, ex-
hibits the crudest knowledge of the motives of
mankind; for it makes the object to be gained, or
avoided, something extrinsic to the thing itself;
and thus, while it leaves the propensity to err the
same as ever, it leads the mind to indulge in all
kinds of cheatery to win the one or escape from
the other. - There is but one certain and sound

 

 

Seine

ee

aeoe YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

way to bring men to good, and turn them from
the evil that is in their hearts; and that is by
attacking the erratic propensity itself, and bring-
Ht ia ing them to love the goodness for mere goodness’

a A sake, and loathe the evil simply because it is
ae: morally loathesome. Once awaken this sense of
Pal ii moral beauty and moral ugliness in a human
a being, and you are sure of your man; for it is
this same beauty, either of the senses, the mind,
PGE WL LT aah the heart, or the soul, that all are perpetually
Pa pursuing. But appeal to the mere brute greed of
man’s nature; teach him that he can get some-
thing by being good, or avoid something that he
dislikes by respectable conduct, and depend upon
it he is certain to remain innately bad at heart;
Hi} | and instead of our reaping a goodly harvest of
| golden grain in the end, we shall find that we
TT have raised merely a vile crop of weeds and tares,
Hl in the shape of worldly cunning, lying, and

 

 

 

 

yO ai ee
| hypocrisy.
a YL A
i | Vii Hi j
ma || i
t u\ i CHAPTHR XIX.
$ 1) Salil i} i
eT |
Rr Ue THE LOWEST ‘‘RUNGS” ON THE LADDER.
WL iG
me Wt Oxip Benjamin Franklin had barely finished ex-
if 1) , -
; |

| plaining to his httle nephew what was his object

LT in taking him to see the sights he was about to

M1} show him, when they came in view of a large,

MN i ugly, overgrown building, that stood just at the
UT a outskirts of the town.

tl ‘That is ‘the house,’ Ben,” said the uncle, as

| they halted in front of it; ‘“ ‘the house,’ as the

| Vi | poor always call it, for they seem to think there is

a TT no other house worthy of note in the whole town,

BW and always speak of it as the particular thing of

moe serene ar seepsTHE LOWEST ‘‘ RUNGS”’ ON THE LADDER, 333

its kind; as we do, indeed, of the sun, the air, the
sea, or even as we say, the House of Commons,
and the Bank.”’

The building itself was of the bare, long, dead-
wall, many-windowed style of architecture pecu-
har to factories, barracks, prisons, hospitals, and
madhouses. A huge light-house-like chimney,
with a long black plume of smoke rising above
the roof, would have made one fancy it was an
immense workshop ; a few soldiers in their shirt-
sleeves at the windows, and sundry pairs of regi-
mental trousers hanging to dry outside of the case-
ment, with’a’sentry pacing in front of the gate,
would have rendered it the perfect type of a military
depot; or had the long lines of windows been
trellised with thick iron bars, it might on the
other hand have stood for the county jail or the
lunatic asylum; while it only wanted the long
board announcing that it was ‘SUPPORTED BY
VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTIONS,” and the little money-
box let into the wall beside the door, to have con-
verted it into an institution for the cure of certain
diseases.

Uncle Benjamin knocked at the gate, and
immediately the little square wicket was opened,
and the round, fat, ruddy face of the old soldier,
who acted as porter to the establishment, appeared
behind the gridiron-like bars. The man recog-
nized the features of the elder Benjamin, and
knowing him to be a friend of the ‘‘ Master,” the
gate was duly opened, and the couple entered the
yard.

" GClose beside the gate stood the square box of
the porter’s lodge, which gave one the idea of its
being an enormous dog-kennel, placed there to
guard the entrance; while the yard itself con-
sisted of an acre or two of mere bare gravel ; and
this was kept so tidy, and had been swept so even,er

 

a eer
Tom

 

 

 

 

 

 

oot YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

and rolled so flat, that it seemed like one large
sheet of sand-paper spread over the ground, whilst
in the middle of it strutted some dozen or two
of pigeons, as pompous and gorgeous as beadles.

Lo cross the threshold of the poor-house ap-
peared to the boy lke stepping into another
country. He had never seen such a collection of
old people before, nor indeed people so very old;
for the inmates were far older and weaker than
any met with in the street, while the younger
folk were, many of them, either blind, crippled,
or idiotic.

Little Ben had heard the deacons of his father’s
chapel complain, as they sat chatting with Josiah
in the little back parlour in the evening, of the
heaviness of the parish rates, and speak of the
paupers as ‘‘a pack of lazy vagabonds;” and his
prejudice had been rather increased than lessened
by his uncle’s exordium upon work and thrift, as
the only means of avoiding penury.

But once within those walls, the little fellow
was staggered with the amount of worldly help-
lessness focussed, as it were, in that “ dark
chamber” of the town. There was every variety
of senility, imbecility, and infirmity gathered to-
gether there, as if it had been a natural museum
for the display of all the peculiar ‘‘ specimens”
of bodily and mental inefficiency. Some of the
old went toddling about in their suits of granite-
gray, along the white border of flag-stones in front
of the building itself, with all the ricketiness
of babyhood ; others scambled and shuffled on, as
if palsied with weakness; and other poor crooked-
back things staggered onwards, pace by pace at
a time, with a stick in either hand to prop them
as they went. Some again sat shaking on the yard
benches in places where the sun fell, basking in the
warm beams, in the vain hope of being warmed byTHE LOWEST ‘* RUNGS” ON THE LADDER. 335

them; and not a few had their white nighteaps
shining under their Greenwich-pensioner-like hats,
as if they were ever ready for sleep, and waiting
for the last, the long profound slumber of all,

Then the big owl-like spectacles of some of the
aged creatures—the mumbling, toothless tones
and gasping wheezy voices of others—the con-
tinued asthmatic coughings of almost all—and the
occasional shouting of some hale official into the
ear of some one of the crew, as the gaffer stood
with his face turned from the speaker, and his
veiny, shrivelled hand at the side of his héad and
close against the mouth of the other, straining to
catch something like the meaning of what was
said—all impressed the mind with such a sense
of bodily and mental decay, that 12min seemed
stamped upon everything; not merely worldly
ruin, but the ruin of every human faculty too.

The boy couldn’t help wondering whether Uncle
Ben, or himself, could ever come to be like one
of those.

Many of the young things in gray, on the other
hand, were almost as powerless in body and mind
as the old. Some had that peculiar dropping of
the lower jaw—that dangling of the hands from
the joints of the wrists, and that strange dragging,
scuffing gait, as they went about, that are the
outward visible signs of an utter want of an
inward and spiritual everything. Some again
were blind, and sat in the sun with their faces
upturned, smiling vacantly as they rolled their
white opaque pupils restlessly and uselessly about,
now turning them, up half into their heads, and
now wiping away the tears that kept streaming
from them; not a few went hopping along on
crutches, or crouching down nearly to the ground,
while others were bent almost double with some
horrid spinal deformity.i

 

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33H YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

Then there was so curious and marked a shame-
lessness, or apparent callousness in the faces of
all, that this characteristic perhaps struck the
mind with greater force than anything else, after
the first impression of the utter helplessness of so
large a number had faded a little from the mind.
Young Ben naturally expected to find that all
who had a thought or feeling left, would exhibit
some sense of worldly disgrace or sorrow at being
inmates of such a place; and he even fancied that
wretchedness and misery would be seen in every
countenance; so that the decent-minded lad was
half shocked when he saw the “able-bodied young
women” stare and grin in his face, as they went
by in their duster-checked aprons and large white
caps. And though he looked all around, he could
not discover one dejected head, one abashed counte-
nance, or one tearful eye throughout the whole of
that wretched pauper town.

The boy twitched his uncle by the skirt, and
said in a whisper to him, ‘‘ Don’t they feel, then,
uncle—don’t they really care about being here?
They don’t seem to think it any disgrace that I
can see.”

‘No, lad; they soon get settled down to their
lot ; and such as do chafe under it, suffer more
from a sense of persecution and wrong in the
world, than from any idea of worldly degrada-
tion,” answered the old man in an under tone as
he drew the lad to one side. ‘If you were to go
into a debtor’s prison, Ben, yowd be struck to
find that not one was confined there, according to
his own story, for any just debt of lis. So it is
here, lad; for the mind never likes to see, and
therefore never sees, its own errors. All these
poor people are here, they believe, from misfor-
tune; and many assuredly are so too, boy: not a
few are impressed with a full sense of their rightTHE LOWEST *‘ RUNGS ” ON THE LADDER. 337

to the place, and are ready to assert it lustily, I
can tell you; but none fancy they are here,
depend upon it, from any imprudence or vice of
their own : though if you were to listen to my
friend, the master, he’d want to make out to you
that that was the sole cause of every one of them
being inside the gates,”

‘| wish I hadn’t come, uncle,” exclaimed the
honest lad; “I shall never think well of the poor
again.”’

‘Don’t be hasty, boy!” was the mild reproof.
‘We are every one of us apt to sentimentalize
about such matters. We always come to sucha
place as this with some preconceived view—some
extreme notion, either that the poor are pitiable,
persecuted angels, or else lazy, drunken and un-
grateful scoundrels; and if the real poor don’t
happen to square with our lmaginary poor, why,
we'll have nothing to do with them. DoasI do,
boy—strike the mean!—strike the mean! Don’t
put thorough faith in the injured air and misfortune
of the paupers themselves, nor yet in the austere
and uncharitable views of the master ; but strike
the mean! Every employer believes that he
overpays his workmen; and every workman
believes that he is underpaid by his employer—
strike the mean! Every mistress is under the
impression that her servant doesn’t do half what
she ought for her; every servant is satisfied that
her mistress ‘don’t do nothink at all for her.
Strike the mean, I tell you, lad! always strike
the mean! And there is but one way, Ben, of
teaching either party its errors. Jet them change
places for a while; let one of the paupers here
become the master, and the master be made a
pauper, and rely on it, the master himself would
take up the very same ill-used and right-demand-
ing air of the pauper; and the pauper, on the

Z338 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

other hand, adopt the same harsh and uncharitable
views as the master. It is but human nature,
after all, Ben. Under the same circumstances
the generality of people become the same as
others.”

At this moment the master of the pcor-house
himself made his appearance, and walked with
them over to the other side cf the yard.

“My little nephew,” said the uncle, turning
to young Benjamin, after the greeting was over,
‘ig rather astonished to find that the poor crea-
tures here exhibit no signs of shame, and has just

‘been asking whether they really feel for their
situation.”

‘Heel, indeed!” cried the master, with a toss
of the head that made the heavy bunch of keys he
carried jangle again in his hand. “They hav'n't

-got the feelings of ordinary flesh and blood, sir.

I've been master of this here house, and my good
woman the matron of it three-and-twenty year

-eome next Michaelmas, and think I ought to have

learnt a little about the inmates of it in that time —

-eh, friend Franklin ?”

‘Perhaps you have been here a little too long,”
mildly suggested old Benjamin. “ A surgeon, after
Jong practice at a hospital, hardly believes that
there is any feeling in people under the knife—
and perhaps it’s better it should be so.”

« Bless you now! just look here, Master Frank-
lin. You see that young gal there,—the one
with the pail, slouching along as if she hadn’t a
bit of life in her—don’t let her see you a-p’inting
to her, my boy,” interjected the master, turning
in the opposite direction, as young Ben was about
to raise his finger towards the quarter indicated.
‘‘ Well, she’s one of a long generation of paupers.
We've got her mother here now ; and only buried
her grandmother the t’other day. Now, if that there.THE LOWEST ‘‘ RUNGS ” ON THE LADDER, 33°

family has cost the parish a penny, they must have
put it to several thousand pounds—yes, several—
thousands— of pounds expense!” he repeated, em-
phasizing each word; “and do you think there’s
the least bit of gratitude in’em for it?—no; not so
much as a ‘thank you, sir:’ why, they’ve even
impudence enough to look you in the face, and
tell you it’s their rights '!—their rights, sir! And
she’s not one alone, friend Franklin; but one of a
very large class, I give you my word,—a very
large class, sir.”

Uncle Benjamin merely nodded, and the other
went on.

‘‘T have to look about me pretty sharp, I can
tell you, friend Franklin: and though I’ve been
here three-and-twenty year, come next Michael-
mas, as.I said before, I assure you these people
he1e are as well up in the law of settlement and
passes, and ail that there sort of thing, as I am
myself. Ay, and they know the dietary scale by
heart, from beginning to end, I give you my word.
But what annoys me more than all, Master Frank-
lin, is the way in-which these people can impose
upon our Chaplain—who is a nice, kind, easy
sort of gentleman enough. Idon’t know whether
you are acquainted with him—but he’s no man of
the world, you see, sir—no man of the world ;”
and the master put his forefinger right down one
side of his nose, and bent the organ slightly “out
of straight,” as he looked shrewdly out of the
corners of his eyes in the direction of the elder
Benjamin. ‘Oh, he is shamefully tricked by
them; and often places me in a very awkward
position indeed; for sometimes, when I’ve been
obliged to report some gal as riotous and dis-
orderly, for—for pelting me with the suet dump-
ings, say, as was the case only last board-day
with Mary Collins, because she said the flour
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was musty and the suet stinking!

340 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

     

Well, the

overseers, as I was a-going to say, will turn to
the chaplain’s monthly statement to see what he
says about the gal’s general behaviour ; and there
they find, agin Mary Collins’ name, either that
she is ‘a-going on very satisfactorily indeed,’ or
else that he’d ‘every reason to be gratified with

her conduct,’ I forget which.”

Uncle Benjamin loved a joke well enough to be
able to laugh at the discomfiture even of his
friend the master; and merely chuckled out, that
such conflicting statements must be awkward,

certainly.

‘‘Yes; the deceit of these people really sur-
passes belief, sir, I give you my word; and our
poor chaplain isn’t a match for them by a long
way. Now, to give you another instance, there’s
Elizabeth Davis—I saw her. in the yard just
now,” he broke off, looking all about to find the
woman—‘‘ well, I suppose she’s gone into the
laundry again, but never mind—as I was a-saying,
about Elizabeth Davis—you'd fancy butter wouldn't
melt in her mouth, sir; and she has a tongue
that would wheedle a charitable donation out of

a pawnbroker.

Well, sir, she’s engaged in our

laundry ; for of course I needn’t tell you we do all
our washing here ourselves; and we allow the
women engaged at the washtubs, and a few other
perquisite women, who do the hard work of the
house, just half a pirt of porter, after they've done
their work. Now our porter, Mister Franklin, is
sitch porter as it’s impossible to buy in the town.
It comes to us, you see, direct from the brewery,
and is the real genuine article, I can assure you.
It wasn’t certainly the correct thing when the
Phoenix brewery had the contract; but since we
accepted the tender of the ‘Star,’ there hasn’t

been a fault to find with it, 1 give you my honour.THE LOWEST “ RUNGS” ON.TEE LADDER. 34]

Oh, it really is a su erb glass of beer; indeed, our
beadle declares it’s the best class of beer he ever
tasted in all his life. Well, sir, le ; me see, where
was I ?—oh, I was saying thu that there Blizaboth
i is—Ha ! there the woman is 10w,” he broke
off ; ‘‘ just come out of the ‘ old women’s ward,’ with
her sleeves tucked up, and her hands all white
and shrivelled with the washing—D’ye see ; there,
she’s dropping us a curtsy, for she ‘takes you for
one of our select vestry, I dare say. Well, sir,
that there woman had her half: pint, sarved out
after her work the other day; and shortly after
that, in she bounces into my room, with the
pannikin in her hand, and says, as she slaps it
down on the table afore me, ‘This here beer’s
not fit to give a pig! ‘W hat’s the matter with
it, Davis?’ says I, quite gently. ‘ Matter with
it!’ says she; ‘why it’s warjus.’ Yes, that’s
what the woman called it; she did indeed, sir.
‘Verjuice, Davis!’ says I, quite gently, but still
impressively ; ‘you ought to be ashamed of your-
self to apply such wicked terms to the good
things that the Almighty and the parish over-
seers provide for you, to comfort you in your
poverty and time of tribulation.’ «The parish
overseers be shot,’ she exclaims. Did you ever
hear such terrible language, friend Franklin ?
‘It’s them as pays rates,’ she goes on, ‘like my
poor husband did for more than ten long year, as
finds us in what we're allowed; and my dues is
what I’ll have, too, I can tell you, old un’—yes,
sir, she called me ‘old un;’ she did, upon my
honour! ‘ Well,’ says I, still quite ge but
firmly, you know, ‘there’s no other beer for you
than this here, Davis ; and as for its being in the
least pricked, it’s all idle fancy” = Pricked ! roars
she: ‘what's that?’ * Why, sour, ’ says I, never
losing myself a bit. *l tell you it? 4 sour,Bo YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

she bellows out. ‘I tell you it is not sour,’ I
answers, still mildly, but more firmly than ever.
‘Taste it yourself, then,’ says she ; whereupon,
like a fool, I did raise the pannikin to my lps;
but I no sooner got it there, than the artful, spiteful
hussey gives the tin a knock at the bottom, and
sends the whole of the beer right into my face,
all down my neck and over my clean shirt-front,
till, I give you my word, my frill was lke a piece
of soaked brown paper.”

Uncle Benjamin tried to look serious; but it
was more than either he or Ben could do: so they
had resort to their handkerchiefs, and smothered
their laughter in the linen.

‘Well, friend, of course that there was a breach
of discipline,” continued the poor-house master,
‘that I couldn’t possibly pass by unnoticed; so
I not only stopped the woman’s snuff and her
weekly ounce of sugar, but I reported her to the
overseers at the very next meeting; and when
they had heerd my case, and agreed that it was
something more than disorderly and refractory,
and amounted almost to open rebellion—yes, re-
bellion, Friend Franklin, they referred as usual
to the chaplain’s book, to see what kind of a
general karackter the woman had, before making
their award; and there, agin her name, were
these here very words—let me see, how did it
run? for I’ve no wish to spile it, I can tell you :—

“6 ¢ Hizabeth Davis—conduct exemplary—obeys cheer-
fully—works hard and willingly—is regular at her devo-
tions, —and altogether her moral and religious deport-
ment of a very pleasing and consoling character.’ ”’

Ben hardly knew which he disliked the more—
Elizabeth Davis, or the master of the poor-house
himself; and he was not at all sorry when Uncle
Ben proposed, in «rder to stop the long list of
grievances that the wretched, ill-used master wasTHE LOWEST “‘RUNGS” ON THE LADDER. 343

about to treat them to, that “the youngster there”
should be allowed to inspect the ‘‘ boy’s side” of
the establishment.

As the master led the way, the elder Benjamin
nudged the younger one with his elbow, and whis-
pered under his little three-cornered hat, ‘‘ Strike
the mean, Ben! strike the mean !”

Once in the passages, the smell of pauperism
was marked and strong. . The whole place reeked
with the true poor-house perfume, which was a
compound of the peculiar odour of bread, eruel,
treacle, corduroys, pea-soup, soft soap, boiled rice,
and washing; and as Ben and his uncle followed
the master, who went along with his keys jangling
like a waggon-team, the yellow sand kept serunch-
ing as though it were so much sugar under the
feet; for not a board nor a flagstone in the place
but was as scrupulously clean and carefully sanded
as the entrance to a livery stable.

They had not proceeded far, however, ere one
of the pauper officials—an_ ‘‘ in-doors’ man,” who
had been promoted to the post of wardsman—came
hurrying after the master, saying, ‘‘ Oh, if you
please, sir, there’s three ounces of port wine
wanted for the infirmary ; and quick, please, sir,”
So the two Benjamins had to be thrust into the

bare and empty board-room; there to wait while
the master retired to the store-room, to see the
quantum of wine duly measured out.

The boy was no sooner in the large, desolate-
looking apartment, than he began staring up at
the walls, and wheeling round and round, like a
countryman in a strange city—now reading the
large painted table of ‘‘ rules and regulations con-
cerning disorderly and refractory paupers,” and
now studying the printed and varnished broad-
sheet, headed ‘‘ Dietary table,” and which, with a
surveyors plan of the parish and its boundaries,

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and an enormous map of the city, that was mounted
after the fashion of a window-blind, were severally
made to do duty for pictures against the walls.
Then the boy ran off to look at the only painting
in the room, which hung above the mantelpiece,
and which proved to be the portrait of ‘‘ Mar-
GARET FLEMING,’ who, as the inscription said,
“DIED IN: THIS HOUSE, AGED. 103.” ‘Next he was
counting the number of mahogany chairs that were
drawn up in single file along the skirting-board all
round the room, and so finding out how many
‘“select vestrymen”’ were in the habit of sitting,
on full board days, at that big horse-shoe table,
that was as green and bare as a billiard-board,
and which, with the high-backed chair, standing
alone, throne-like, at the upper end, seemed al-
most to fill the entire apartment.

But in another minute the master was with
them again, and telling them, as he went jangling
along the corridors, that he was afraid “ the port
wine would be utterly wasted, for the poor old
thing it was wanted for was turned seventy, and
had been sinking for many days; but their surgeon
was such a fool, and really seemed to fancy they
got their port from the pump.”

Then as they passed throngh the women’s ward,
a hundred old crones in blue-check gowns and
big, white caps, suddenly rose from the forms,
and kept curtsying one after another, as the
visitors walked along between the deal tables, and
bobbing away like so many floats experiencing a
rapid succession of nibbles. Here too, Ben saw
the sleek and fat poor-house cat curled up asleep
in one of the old women’s aprons; while the arms
of another were laden with. “little Roger Con-
nell,” one of the children out of the poor-house
nursery that the hirsute old female pauper had
begged the loan of to mind for a while—and

YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.THE LOWEST “RUNGS”’ ON THE LADUCSR: 345

whom she was fondling as if it had been her own,
even though the poor pretty-featured little thing
was a mass of sore with the scurvy.

‘Yes, Master Franklin, you can get these here
old things to do anything if you'll only let ’em have
one of the little children out of our nursery to pet
for an hour or two,” said the master, as he passed.
out of the ward, and came to the door at the

bottom of the yard that led to the ‘ boy’s side’ of

the building. ‘Bless you, ugly or pretty is all
the same to “them, so long as they’ re young ; that’s
the only beauty in their eyes,” he went on, while
he found the proper key for the lock, and then
paused for a minute before turning it. “I do
verily beheve now, that, selfish as they are to one
another, they’d even give a goodish part of their
week’s hounce of sugar away to the young ones, and

that the allowance might just as well be cut off

altogether, leastwise for the matter of good it is
to the old people theirselves.”

The yard door was then opened, and instantly
there burst upon the ear a shrill babel of voices.
lfere the air above was spotted over with a perfect
covey of half-developed tadpole-hke kites; while
the branches of the trees outside the walls of the
large quadrangle were festooned with the tattered
remains of the tails and wings of others, that had
got entangled among the boughs.

“ There they are, my lad,” “cried the master, as
he threw open the door, and hardly moved beyond
it; ‘* this is their hour’s play: there they are, sir,
of all ages, and sizes, ay, and shapes, too; though
we keep the most hel pless of the young, ‘sitch as
the blind and the hidiotic, on the other side of the
house, as yousaw. Some, you perceive, can hardly
walk steadily, and others are big enough to be
ont and knocking about in the world for their-
selves, instead of heating the bread of hidleness,

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346 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

which is the very ‘best seconds’ as they get
here. There they are, my lad, and a greater puck
of young wagabones there isn’t to be found any-
where else in the world, I can safely say.”

‘‘ Where are their fathers and mothers?’ asked
little Ben, timidly, for he was almost afraid to put
a question to the man.

‘Fathers and mothers! Lor’ bless your hinno-
cence, child! why, the greater part—ay, two out
of every three on ’em, never knew sitch luxuries,”
answered the master, with a chuckle. <‘“ Lhey’re
orphans—horphans in the fullest sense of: the
word” (for extra emphasis always involved an
extra aspiration with the master); ‘and even
the parents of them as has got either a father or
a mother ain’t nothing to brag about, I can tell
you, for they’re either in the poor-house their-
selves, or else they’re ablebodied, and getting their
shilling a week and their gallon loaf ont-door relief
the most on ’em,”

Uncle Benjamin couldn’t help shrugging his
shoulders and crying, ‘God help ’em!” as the
utter helplessness of the young, born under such
circumstances, fell upon his mind, with even more
terrible force than the helplessness of the old.

“Ay, you may well say ‘God ’elp ’em !’ Master
Franklin ; for a greater set of young himps never
wanted their hearts softened more than they do:
and, d’ye know, I verily believe, sir, that comfort-
able places like this here, hactually breed the very
misery they’re meant to give relief to—outdoor, or
indoor, as the case may be. Why, nearly half of
these lads is fondlings, as they call theirselves ; for
they’re a great deal quicker at that there kind of
knowledge—about fondlings, and foster-mothers,
and sitch like—than they are at their hymn-books,
I can tell you. <A great many on ’em has been
picked up by the city watchmen on doorsteps, orTHE LOWEST ‘‘ RUNGS”’ ON THE LADDER. 347

under gateways, and a goodish number been tied
in fish-baskets to the knockers of houses; and
them as has been brought here in that there way,
why, they have been born in the house itself, and
are what the world falsely calls love children ;
though a nice lot of love there must be about sitch
mothers, I say, as can turn their backs upon their
own flesh and blood as soon as the little things
comes into the world, and never care to set eyes
on ’em afterwards; but, on the contrayry, throws
the whole burden upon the parish and the re-
spectable ratepayers; ay, and what’s more, are as
himperent to our beadle over it as if they’d a per-
fect right to make us a present of a whole colony.”

‘Well, they don’t seem to be very miserable, I
must say,” exclaimed young Ben, still harping on
the most striking feature of all in such scenes.

‘‘ Miserable!” echoed the poor-house master ;
‘“why, you seem to be one of those persons, my
boy, who come here with the notion that there
will be nothing but tears and broken hearts to ke
seen from one end of the building to the other.
‘‘Miserable!” he repeated, and then burst out
laughing, as if there was something extremely
comic in the idea. ‘‘ Hem! miserable, indeed!
No, no, my lad, all the misery in the world you'll
find outside our gates. People don’t come here to
be miserable, I can tell you; but to be a great deal
too well fed and taken care of, in my opinion.
Just read our dietary table now, and you'll soon
discover that there isn’t much misery where
people can have their three ounces of cooked meat
without bone, and a pound of potatoes for dinner
three times a week, besides a basin of excellent pea-
soup—oh, yes, you have tasted it, friend Franklin —
and potatoes and suet dumpling on the other days.
Misery, indeed! Yes, but it’s good full-bellied,
warm-backed, and well-housed misery though;lots brittenisPe

 

348 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

and there isn’t a merrier set of young devil-may-
cares than them same fatherless young himps here,
I can tell you.”

‘¢OQome, come, now, friend,” cried Uncle Ben,
who could plainly see that his godson was being
led astray by the harsh views of the hardened
master; ‘‘ steady, my boy, stead-ee, as they call to
the helmsman. Do you mean to tell me ”—and the
old man kept shaking his forefinger as he said the
words slowly and solemnly--“ that when some parent
or friend comes to visit some of the more lucky of
these poor human waifs and strays, and there’s a
cry of ‘Johnson wanted,’ or ‘Robertson wanted ’
(as I’ve heard go round the yard over and over
again), do you mean to tell me that those boys who
know they haven’ta friend in the world to come and
see them, poor chicks—boys who have never so
much as set eyes perhaps on a parent’s face, or
known what a mother’s smile is hke—do you mean
to say, man alive ”—and Uncle Ben shook his finger
violently close under the master’s nose—‘‘ that such
lads (quickened with the same heart and blood as
you yourself) when they see the lucky Johnson, or
Robertson, or son of somebody or other, go skip-
ping off to the reception-ward, and come back
playing with his halfpenny, or laden with his half-
pint of nuts, or his farthing popgun—do you mean
to tell me, I say, that you haven’t noted, as I
have, the little wretched, lonely, helpless, friend-
less things crowd moodily together, and look at

 

one another with the same kind of powerless and

bewildered air as one sees in a flock of sheep
gathered outside a butcher’s door? Come, come,
friend, you’re straining the bow a little too hard—
a little too hard.”

‘‘ Well, perhaps you’re right, friend,” rejoined
the master, in a conciliatory tone. ‘‘ You, as a
stranger, I dare say, will observe things that areTHE LOWEST “‘ RUNGS”’ ON THE LADDER. 349

 

lost upon old hands like us—and one forgets,
no doubt, that it’s as remarkable a thing here for
a boy to have any friends at all, as it is for an out-
of-doors boy to be without them. So I shouldn’t
wonder, now I come to think of it, but the rarity
of a father or mother may in such cases as you say
make some of the young hurchins here feel the
misery of having no one whom they can become
chargeable to. Yes, that there must be hun-
pleasant to think of, certainly—not legally charge-
able to any one. Besides, we all know,” urged
the master, as he endeavoured to fall in with the
tone of Uncle Benjamin, ‘‘ how the boys at other
schools always feel for the one who never goes
home to see his friends in the holidays; and so
here, I dare say, the great wonder of the time is
the boy who has got any friends to wish to see
him—especially in a place too where there can’t
be any holidays, you know, from the simple fact
that there are no homes to go to.”

‘‘How shocking!” shuddered Ben, with the
sense of school and holidays fresh upon him ; ‘* but
I should like the poor boys better,” he added, “if
they seemed to feel their situation more, for really
they don’t appear to me to care about it; so
then I say to myself, If they don’t care about it,
why should J?”

““That’s good, sound, sterling sense, if you lke,
my boy!” added the master, approvingly; and
then drawing the little fellow close up to him, he
said, as he bent down and placed his head close
beside young Ben’s, ‘‘Now, you see all those
lads there in the red worsted comforters, my
child ?”

“Yes,” said young Ben; and he was about to
point towards them with his forefinger, but the
master seized his hand, as the boy was in the
act of raising it.a aa ae ee ee

 

 

 

 

 

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Jou YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

‘Well, lad,” went on the other, “the parish
allowance in the shape of neck-tie to fasten the
shirt collar is merely a piece of black cotton shoe-
ribbon; and that there red worsted comforter,
to keep the throat and chest warm, has been
bought by the friends of those boys who are
lucky enough to have such a thing as a friend in
the world. So now you can pick them out for
yourself. No friends, no comforters; d’ye see ?”

It was terrible for the little soft-hearted fellow
to be able to realize the orphanage of such a mul-
titude in so visible and massive a manner; and as
his eye wandered over the quadrangle, he kept
saying to himself, ‘‘ Comforters, fathers and mo-
thers !—no fathers and mothers, no comforters !”

‘But I tell you, friend Franklin, what is to
my mind really the most dreadful thing by far
in connection with this kind of life?” the master
proceeded, ‘‘ and that is what we were talking abont
only the other day: that boys and girls brought
up here have no idea of working in order to live.
You know they see day after day—and, indeed,
have seen ever since they first opened their eyes—
some hundred or so of people regularly supplicd
with their rations, and that without having any-
thing to pay or anything to do for the food. Do
you know, I do verily believe, friend Franklin,
that many even of our big boys here, and I’m sure
almost all of our little ones, fancy that Nature sends
breakfasts and suppers in the same way as she
sends light and darkness; and I’m nearly certain,
if some of our im-doors boys were hard pushed on
the matter, as to where bread or gruel came from,
you'd find there was some vague idea in their
minds that half-gallon loaves were dug up out of
the ground, something in the same manner as
they’ve seen the men, in their walks through the
town, doing with the paving-stones in the streets ;aed il

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aTHE LOWEST “ RUNGS” ON. THE LADDER, 351

and that gruel is as easily to be collected in tub-
tuls as the rain-water 1s caught for our washing.”
‘What would they fancy a halt- uinea was,
think you, if they were to Be shown one?’ asked
Uncle Ben, as he drew the bit of gold out of the
wash-leather bag he carried in his pocket.

‘“ Well, *pon my word I can’t say, friend Frank-
lin. Farthings are great prizes here,” returned
the master, and oroats immense fortunes. But
here, come here! you ‘Monday.’ ‘Monday, L
say !’” the master shouted, as he beckoned to one
of the foundlings, who had been named after
the day of the week on which he had been taken
out of a hamper at the mail-coach office.

And when poor *‘ Monday” had made his ap-
pearance, and had been shown the bright yellow
little dise of metal, and asked what he thought it
was, he said, as he rubbed among the bristles of
his scrubbing-brush crop of hair, and stood grin-
ning as if he had been looking ata stale-tart tray for
the first time in his life, “ It ain’t a farden, ’cos
IT seed a farden once in Dobb’s hand, after his
mother had been to see him, and she’s got two
and six a week, and half a gallon loaf out door,
you know, sir, cos she takes in washing, and has
the rheumatiz. No, no,” and he shook his hand
till you could almost fancy you heard it rattle, it
seemed so empty, ‘‘ it ain’t thick enough, nor brow n
enough neither for a farden. Oh, T know now!”

added the half-witted boy, looking up at the
master, and grinning knowingly i in his face.

‘Well, ‘Monday,’ what is it, eh?” asked the
master, as sharp and quickly as a mail-coach guard
ealis “a night.’

The lad grinned again for a minute or two
before answering, and ‘then said, ‘“‘ Why, it’s one
of the brass buttons off some charity boy’s leathe:
breeches.”YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

Poor ‘‘ Monday ”’—whose life, ever since he had
been taken out of his natal-hamper, had been
hemmed in by the four high brick walls of the
poor house, and who, had he heard by chance of
the upper, middle, and lower classes of society,
would have fancied it pointed out the distinction
between overseers, out-doors people, and in-doors
people—the poor lad was told “that would do,”
and ‘“‘he might go;” and directly his back was
turned the master began rolling about in a very
convulsion of pent-up laughter—declaring he had
never heard anything half so funny in all his life.
But Uncle Ben, and even his little nephew saw
in the worldly ignorance of poor ‘‘ Monday,”’ some-

' thing far too grave to be merry over; so the god-

father and the godson looked sorrowfully at each
other, and each knew by the tenderness of the
elance the thoughts that were stirring in the other’s
heart.

“Oh, ’m wanted, I see, up in the infirmary!
Ah, I thought that port wine would be thrown
away! so youll excuse me, friend Franklin, will
you P” said the Master, as he shook the other by
the hand. ‘“ Drop in whenever you're passing,
will you? for I shall always be glad to talk over
these matters with you. (Good-bye, my fine little
fellow. Good-bye, friend ;” and as Uncle Ben said
something to him aside, he added, ‘‘ Oh, yes! of
course, I shall be happy to give you a letter to the
governor. Good-bye, I wouldn’t leave you, but I
have to see about the shell and things, you know.”

‘‘Come along, Ben,” cried the uncle, pulling his
waistcoat down as the master hurried from them ;
but though the old man began to move, the little
fellow seemed in no way disposed to follow.
‘‘Come, Ben, I say, there’s the jail to see yet,” he
added, as he turned round and found the boy still
in the same spot.ae | REA ao eS ee

 

** LOWER AND LOWER SPiLL. 303

The little fellow jerked his head as the uncle
looked back at him. The old man understood the
signal, and returned to the boy’s side.

‘‘ Whisper,” said young Ben.

The elder Benjamin stooped down and put his
ear Close to the lad’s lips, and as he caught what
the other said, the old man smiled to hear the
words.

‘‘Oh, certainly!” said Uncle Ben.

_ The next minute the little fellow was scamper-
ing after poor “Monday,” and the minute after,
scampering back again to his uncle, who stood
watching him at the gate.

‘‘Give me your hand, my little man,” said the
godfather to young Ben; and as the boy did so,
the old man shook it as if his heart was in his palm ;
and then on the couple toddled—

Lo the jail.

GCHAPTER xX xX:
“TOWER AND LOWER STILL.”

¥rom the poor-house to the jail some think it is not
avery great remove—at least some social topo-
graphers would have us believe so.

But such people throw all the refuse of society
together into one confused heap, which they call
“the dangerous classes;”’ and it is only your
pickers-up of unconsidered trifles that pause
to separate the rags from the bones. ius

The agricultural poacher is not more distinct
from the civic pickpocket, than is the stock-
pauper from the stock-thief, or the dull-witted and
half-fatuous beggar—for instance—from the cunning
and adventurous sharper; and such is sae caste

Aae YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

and cliquery in even the “bas monde,” that a
‘‘cracksman ” would no more think of fraternizing
with a “shallow cove” than a barrister would
dream of hobnobbing with an attorney, or even a
‘‘wholesale’”’? venture to returm the call of a
“retail,” in the petty circle of suburban exclu-
siveness.

The jail that Uncle Ben took his godson to see
was the jail proper. It had the fashionable
gigantic stone gate, with festoons and tassels of
fetters by way of ornamental work arranged over
the doorway; and enormous unwieldy doors,
knobbed over with square-headed nails, as thickly
as the sole of a navigator’s boot; and punctuated
with a couple of huge lions-head knockers, that re-
minded one of the masks in a pantomime. ‘The
walls were as high as those of a racket-ground ;
and all along the top of them extended a long
bristly-hog’s-mane, as it were, of chevaux de frise,
that looked like a hedge of bayonets.

Uncle Ben and the boy were admitted through
an opening in the larger gate, and went in, duck-
ing their heads under the aperture somewhat
after the manner of fowls entering a hen roost.

‘‘Lett’r for th’ gownor,” shouted the military-
looking gatekeeper in a sharp military tone, as he
handed the note Uncle Ben had brought with him
to a stray warder, or turnkey as they were called
in those days.

The official disappeared with the document,
and the old man and the boy were asked to step
into the gate-room while they awaited the answer.

‘‘ Just look, uncle,” said the lad in a whisper as
he entered the place almost with fear and trem-
bling, “just look at the blunderbusses and cut-
lasses all chained together up there;’ there
were several rows of the clumsy brass-barrelled
pieces and knobby-handled swords arranged overMy

        

— ce ee ee
Se anc Sana ae imesicictiancelit il
- ee

““LOWER AND LOWER STILL.” 355

the fireplace: ‘‘and look at the lot of handcuffs
and irons too; just look how tastily they're ar-
ranged—all over the walls, I declare;” and he
wheeled round and round, taken with the set
patterns and bright glitter of the well-polished
manacles, that had been embroidered as it were into
all kinds of lineal devices on every side of the cell-
like lodge. There were swivel handcuffs, that
looked lke big horses’ bits, and close-linked chains,
like horses’ curbs; the one strung after the fashion
of keys on enormous rings, and the other hanging
in great hanks like somuchiron yarn. The upper
part of the walls again were garlanded round
with leg-rons and ankle-cuffs ; and there were iron
neck-pieces that were like heavy muffin-tins, and
iron waistbands that were almost as thick as the
ring to an Indiaman’s anchor. Some of the
human harness seemed to have been made—so
massive was the style of ironmongery—for the
renowed race of Cornish giants; for a few of the
manacles were literally as Jarge as the handle to
a navigator’s spade ; while others, again, were such
mere miniature things, that they looked positively
as if they were meant for babies—being no bigger
in compass than a little girl’s bracelet, though
twenty times heavier; and the sight of these set
one thinking, either that the juvenile offenders
must be very strong and desperate, or the jailers
very pusillanimous and weak.

‘““Oh my!” cried Ben, as he made the tour of
the room, and halted in front of an enormous long
pole, with an immense crutch covered with leather
at the end of it, and which had somewhat the ap-
pearance of a Brobdignagian pitchfork; ‘ what
ever can that be for, uncle?”

The gatekeeper, standing at the door, overheard
the question, and turned round for a minute to ex-
plain the use of the article. ‘* That, ay Hida said
2A Zz

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306 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
the man, as he kept his eyes still fixed on the
door while he spoke, and broke off every now
and then to answer the gate, ‘‘ 1s to prevent any
of the prisoners injuring the officers in their cells.
’Casionally, you see, the fellors gets furious when
they’re locked up alone in the ’fractory ward, and
swears they’ll stick us with their knives, or beat
our skulls in with their hammock rings if we
only chance to go in to them ; and we can see by
their looks as they means it too. Well, in such cases,
one of us puts on that great big shield you
see there,” and the officer pointed to a leathern
disc larger in diameter than the largest target.
‘‘Tt’s as big round as a man’s high, and made of
basket-work, and well padded, and covered with
buffalo hide. So, when the officer sees his op-
portunity, he dashes into the cell with that there
thrust out in front of him, and covering his whole
body. This takes the chap aback a bit, and before
he can recover hisself, another officer darts in,
holding out that long pole there with the padded
crutch at the end of it, and with that he makes a
drive at the fellor, and pins him round the body
close again the wall; and then another officer,
armed with that there smaller crutch, rushes on
directly after the other, and pinions the chap’s
legs in the same manner. So when they've got
the fellor fast and tight, then all the other
officers in the prison pours in, and overpowers
him altogether. That is what that pretty-looking
little happyratus is for, my young gentleman.”
Young Benjamin, who had been staring with
the same sapient, round-eyed kind of expression as
an owl in a bird-cage, all the time the man had
been speaking, merely said, ‘‘ Oh!” when the story
was ended, and wondered whether, if poor half-
witted ‘“‘ Monday” ever got in there, he’d be ma-
nacled, and fettered, and pitch-forked like the rest.*“LOWER AND LOWER STILL.” BOT

By this time a warder returned, and putting his
hand to his cap, saluted the elder Benjamin in
military fashion, as he said, partly to the gate-
keeper and partly to the gentleman himself,
‘‘ Pass two — spect prison-— Gov’ner’s orders.”
Then beckoning the gatekeeper to one side, the
officer seemed to take the ramrod out of his back
while he said in a whisper, “You'll find a half-
gallon of rum, Bennett” (and he winked as rapidly
as a bird at the man), ‘at the bottom of the bread
when it comes in this evening; just pass it for
me, will you, and you shall have your regulars.
I’M square it with you by-and-by.” Then sud-
denly turning round and assuming the military
air again, he cried, ‘‘ Now, sir, plz, foller me—
"spect prison.”

‘The man, who wore many heavy keys chained
round his waist, was about to apply one of them
to a huge lock (as big as a family Bible), and to
open a gate in a thick trellis-work of iron railings
that was as ponderous as a portcullis, when
Uncle Ben suggested, that he wished more par-
ticularly to see the boys’ part of the prison;
saying, that the master of the poor-house had told
him that their new Quaker governor was begin-
ning to try and keep the juvenile from the old
offenders.

‘* Yezzir—all stuff though—never carry it out—
new-fangled nonsense; been here twenty year,
I have—been together all my time, they have—no
harm came of it as I can see. Nothing like dis-
*‘pline—stric’ dis’pline ; yezzir—that’s all we want
here, sir—dis’pline—stric’ dis’pline.”

Then putting his two hands to the heavy gate
he had been standing at, while he jerked out the
above speech, he made it moan again as he turned
it slowly on its hinges. ;
Ben was now in a kind of bird-cage of ironat a a gt ee

no meter: ena : on

 

 

 

 

 

 

|
|
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858 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

bars ; and another gate, with another huge family-
biblical lock, had to be undone before he entered
the paved yard of the prison itself.

Once within the precincts, the place was like
a fortress, with its heavy blocks of buildings and
mbrasure-like windows, all radiating from the
‘‘areus” or governor’s house in the centre, like
the threads of a gigantic spider’s web done in
brickwork. The doors to the different prison
wings were as massive as those of an iron safe ;
while each of the different ‘“ airing-yards” was
railed off like the entrance to some gloomy and
desolate Inn of court.

The warder and the visitors passed on to the
oakum-room, which had been built across the end
of the large triangular space between the last
tivo prison wings; or rather the last two bricken
spokes of the architectural wheel. _ This room
consisted of a long barn-like shed, fitted with seats,
which ranged from one end of the lengthy out-
house to the other, and which stood on a slightly-
inclined plane ; so that altogether it had somewhat
the appearance of a rude stand run up, for the
nonce, at a race-course. ‘I'he air here was charged
with the true prison perfume, and reeked as
strongly of the tarry and hempen odour of rope-
yarn mixed with a whiff of stale cocoa, gritel, and
pea-soup, as a circus smells of oranges and saw-
cust.

Here were some hundred of mere children,
ranged along the forms, each with a hook tied
just above the knee, and “ fiddling away,” as the
prison phrase ran, at a small thread of the un-
ravelled junk; that isto say, sawing it backwards
and forwards across the hook, and then rolling
the loosened strand to and fro along their thigh,
where the trousers seemed to be coated with
glue, from the tar with which they had becomeԤ LOWER. AND. LOW STi, 359

covered, ‘The whole atmosphere within the room
was hazy, as that of the interior of a mill,
with the dust of the abraded tow flying in the
air. <A death-like, catacomb-like silence reigned
throughout the place; and round the shed sat
a small detachment of prison officials, perched at
intervals on high, lawyer’s-clerk-like® stools,
watching the lads at work; while here and there
upon the walls hung black boards covered with
Scripture texts, such as

‘‘ | WILL ARISE AND GO TO My FATHER; AND SAY
UNTO HIM, Faruer, [ HAVE SINNED AGAINST HEAVEN
AND BEFORE THEE.”

And *‘ Ser a4 watcH, O Lorp, BEFORE MY MOUTH,
AND KEEP THE DOOR OF MY LIPS,” &c. &e.

As the trio entered the shed, the whole of the
boys rose in a body to salute them, and each put
his hand across his forehead, ike a person shading
his eyes as he looks up on a bright sunny day.
They then sat down immediately afterwards, the
one simultaneous movement sounding like the
breaking of a huge wave upon the sea-shore.

‘‘ Hard labour pris’nus, sir, most of ’em!” said
the chief warder, still jerking out the information
in the same snappy tone, as if he were giving the
word of command. ‘‘B’ys all in gray, Sum’ry
b’ys,”* went on the communicant, with his chin
in the air as before. ‘‘B’ys in gray, with yeller
collus to weskets, Seshuns b’ys,f and b’ys in
blue here on lower fo’m, Mis’meenuns.’’f

Little Ben hardly heard the words, and the

 

* Summary boys, t.e., those who had been summarily com-
mitted by magistrates, without being sent to the sessions for
trial.

+ Anglice, Sessions boys, or those who had been tried and
convicted of larceny or felony at the sessions.

{ Properly called ‘ Misdemeanants,’”’ or boys that were
imprisoned for some misdemeanour ; that is to say, that had
not committed any theft or serious offence.

AN en ee
r Ee ne

mer arts360 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

uncle cared not to inquire into the precise niceties
of the legal distinctions.

The boy was rapt—entranced—stunned, as it
were, with the utter novelty of the place and
scene before him. He had heard talk of robbers,
and had certainly read of Robin Hood and his
band of freebooters in Sherwood forest; but he
had never seen more than the back of a thief in
all his life before, and that was when an alarm
had been raised in their street one night, and he
had caught sight, on throwing open his window,
of a troop of watchmen hurrying along, in chase
of a nimble pair of legs in the distance. Still, to
the lad there had always been a world of vague
terror in the mere idea of such characters. He
had formed an imaginative picture of wild lawless
ruffianism, and cut-throat ogrish propensities and
appearance, in connection with the predatory class
in general, and this had often, when the window-
sashes of his bedchamber rattled in their frames,
caused him to lie and tremble in his bed by the
hour; so that now, the utter difference between the
real and the ideal positively confounded him.
Could it be that the little children before him were
really thieves—little mannikin things like them—
that were not only the very opposite in appearance
to ogres, cut-throats, and ruffians, but mere babies,
most of them ; and who seemed to require a nurse,
rather than a jailer, to watch overthem? Was it
for the safe custody of such mere Tom-Thumb crea-
tures as these, that the half-military prison officials
went about, with those heavy bunches of keys
chained round their waist? Was it for these
wretched toddlekins, who seemed to need a go-cart ,
instead of a prison van, to bring them to the
jail, that the cutlasses were chained up over the
mantelpiece in the gate-room, and those tiny,
baby-handeuffs kept, ever ready, hanging against“LOWER AND LOWER STILL.” 361

the walls? Did those little hands, that had
hardly outgrown their dimples for knuckles, need
a fortress to resist them? did they want iron
doors as heavy as sepulchre-stones, and iron bars
and bolts as thick as musket-barrels, and walls
as high as cliffs, to keep them from breaking pri-
son? What could it all mean ? Surely, he thought,
as he turned it over and over, it must be the mad-
house that his uncle had brought him to; so as to
have a bit of fun with him, and see whether he’d
know the sane from the insane. Yet no! What
could those poor boys be there for, if the men in
authority over them were really so many lunatics ?
Could they be the poor idiot lads that the erownh
maniacs were allowed to play the fool with? It
really seemed to be so. But no, no; the little
fellows hadn’t the idiot look with them, like the
wretched silly boys he had seen in the poor-house.
Besides, the warder himself had called it a prison,
What could it all mean ?

Then poor bewildered little Ben began, as the
whirl and confusion in his brain, and the singing
of the blood in his ears subsided a little, to glance
his eye fitfully along the forms, and notice the
features of such lads as had resumed their work—
ulter having had their fill of staring at himself.
He could see no difference in their looks from his
old playmates at Mr. Brownwell’s school. Some one
or two were positively pretty lads—good-look.
ing in the literal sense of the term—and seemed,
despite the ugly gray prison-dress, to have faces
beaming with frankness and innocence. Others
certainly looked dogged and sullen, and many had
a sharp, knowing, and half-sly expression, with a
curl at the corners of their mouth and a twinkle in
their eye, as if they were ready to burst into
laughter on the least occasion; but not one could
he see that had that sinister avertel scowl, and3 Gn YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
   

those heavy bull-dog-like features, that were mado
to characterize the thieves in the pictures of some
1 | of his schoolfellows’ books. Were these then reaily
| thieves before him—little baby felons and convicts
in pinafores? Yet, still he fancied he must have mis-
Ml i understood his uncle somehow. Why, there was one
HH poor child therein gray, with a yellow collar to his
waistcoat, that wasn’t bigger than little Teddy
Holmes, his sister Ruth’s eldest boy; and Teddy
HH was only just turned five he knew. . ‘They could
HA never have tried lim, and made a convict of such
wail Hh iH a mere babe as he was ; for if they made felons of
PA a little things of five years old, why not at four, at
Pa WIE three ?—or, indeed, why should the baby in long
A clothes: go free, if it came to that? How could
nv such a mere infant as that lad possibly know right
Ca a from wrong; any more than ‘Tommy, their cat at
Pa home—and he really was a dreadful thief, if you
| i liked ?
Mt But poor young Ben’s speculations and bewil-
derment were soon put an end to, by his uncle
) asking the chief warder what was the character ot
a the offence for which the misdemeanants—the boys
a in blue on the lower form—had been imprisoned.
Ht) i ‘Stan’ up, mis’meenuns,” cried the chief warder,
:
|
.
|

 

 

 

|
| ° e171: °
ai as if he had been drilling a body of privates.
ie P °
i | i The boys rose in a row, as though they had been
|

 

all hoisted by their necks at one pull; and there
aT they stood, with their hands straight down by their
wT | sides, and their chins cocked in the air; the very
monkey mimicry of the antics of the chief warder
himself.
ie ‘“‘Whata’yer in for, b’y ?” squirted out the officer,
||| addressing the first lad in the rank.
mi NT ‘Heaving a highster shell through a street
| Hy Hn] lamp, please sir;” was the urchin’s reply.

| 4 Ben stared at his uncle, as the answer fell upon
his ear.‘LOWER AND LOWER STILL.” 363

‘‘In thri-times afore,’? added the officer, by
way of comment. “The b’y did it to get a month’s
tood an’ shelter, dussay.”

‘“ An’ you?’ went on the warder, passing to the
next.

‘“Please sir, a woman said I hit her babby,’
whined out this one.

‘An’ you?” the warder continued, running
down the rank.

‘“ Heaving clay about, please sir,” responded the
next.

‘©Tn fo’teen times afore,” the officer threw in,
as a commentary on the character of this lad.

‘“‘Tt’s been mostly for cadging (begging), please
sir,” expostulated the brat, ‘‘and only two times
for prigging, please sir.”

‘«Sil’ns, b’y. Nex’ b’y go on,” shouted the man
in authority.

‘‘ Heaving stones,” said No. 4.

«Threatening to stab another boy, please sir,”
sried the lad after No. 4, as the warder pointed to
him.

“Prigoing a bell in a garding, please sir,” ex-
claimed No. 6.

‘‘ Heaving stones, sir,’ went on No. 7:

‘«‘Heaving stones too,” No. 8 said.

“In fur times afore,” again interposed the
warder.

‘‘ Heaving stones,” ejaculated No. 9.

‘“The same,” answered No. 10.

And there the file ended.

‘“Heaving stones! Heaving stones! Heaving
stones!” ‘he words echoed and echoed again in
young Ben’s brain ; and then, in the natural: sym-
pathy and justice of his little heart, he cried aloud,
“Oh, uncle! do they put these poor little fellows
among thieves, and lock them up in this horrid
place, and make them wear that ugly prison-dress,

?364. YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

for such mere child’s-play as that? Isn’t it a
shame! Why, there wasn’t a boy at our school that
shouldn’t have been here then, if all were punished
alike. Oh, isn’t it a shame, a wicked shame!” he
repeated. ‘* Why, I remember myself,” and the
lad was pouring forth a torrent of generous boyish
indignation, and would have run on for heaven
knows how long, hadn’t the chief warder cut him
short, with one of his peculiarly explosive com-
mands in the shape of

“Silns, sir, plz. Can’t allow such remuks as
them in pressuns of pris’nus.”

Young Ben was tongue-tied in an instant, and
he drew up close to his uncle’s side ; for he hardly
knew whether, if “ heaving clay about” was punish-
able with imprisonment, he too mightn’t have ren-
dered himself liable to be locked up by what he
had said.

‘* Now,” exclaimed Uncle Ben to the warder,
“‘let’s hear the offences of some of the others.”

“Stan up, you b’y, ther’,” shouted the officer,
addressing the first of the lads in gray seated on
the next form.

Ihe boy shot up from his seat in an instant, as
sharply and suddenly as a Jack in.the box, on the
removal of the lid; and stood as stiff asa dummy
in the window of a ‘ youth’s fashionable clothing
mart.”

‘‘ ould a’ yer, b’y ?” said the jailer, questioning
the lad first as to his age.

‘Thirteen year, please sir,” was the answer

“What a’ y’in for?” went on the laconic turn-
key.

“Coat and umbereller, please sir,” the little
fellow replied with a faint smile; and then added,
as if he knew what would be the next query, © This
makes seven times here, please sir, and three times
at the Old Hoss, please sir.”“TOWER AND LOWER STILL.” 365

The ‘*Qld Horse” was the cant name for the
next county jail.

‘‘ Hollong ha’yer got this time ?” demanded the
warder, so as to make him state the term of his
imprisonment.

“Three calendar, please sir” (Anglice, three
calendar months). ‘This makes four times, please
sir, as I’ve had to do three calendar,” said the
lad; ‘¢and I’ve had two two-monthses.as well—one
of the two-monthses here, and one at the Old
Hoss, please sir; and l’ve done one six weeks and
two two-dayses besides. It’s mostly been for
prigging, please sir,” added the young urchin.

Little Ben stared with amazement, at his uncle,
as he heard the confession, uttered as it was with
out the faintest tinge of shame to colour the cheeks
(ay, and what struck him as still more strange)
without the least quake of fear—even though the
warder stood at the boy’s elbow.

*“Woddid yer tek?” shot out the official, now
drawing the lad out as to the kind of articles he
had been in the habit of stealing.

‘“T took a watch and chain wunst, please sir ;
and I did a pair of goold bracelets another time,”
was the unabashed and half-exulting reply. “I
frisked a till twice’d ; and this time it’s for the coat
and umbereller, as I told you onafore. One of the
two-dayses I had was for a bottle of pickles, but
that was three or four year ago.”

‘Why, I beginned thieving about four year
ago,” he went on in answer to another question
from the officer, who seemed as pleased as the boy
himself with the examination. “I went out with
a butcher-boy. He’s got seven year on it now,
please sir. He sent me into the shop with a bit
of a hold seal to sell, when I prigged the stoop”’
(stole the watch) ; ‘‘and I tried on the same dodge
when I did the pair of goold bracelets366 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

‘Have you got any father, my lad?’ asked
Uncle Ben, with a hitch in his breath.

‘Yes, please sir,” the answer ran. ‘‘ Mother
mends glass and chayney, please sir, and father’s in
the consumptive hospital down in the country. I
don’t mean to go out prigging no more, please
sir,’ added the youngster, as he suddenly lowered
his eyelids with affected penitence, “not if I can
get any other work that'll keep me, I won’t.’”*

‘“Won’ do, b’y!” cried the inexorable warder ;
‘‘ver pitched that ther’ tale to the lady as went
over the prisn las’ time we had yer here; an’
then yer got three calen’ar the second day after
yer went out,”

Little Ben was heart-stricken with what he
heard. It was all so new to him—so startling—so
shameless—so frank, and yet so subtle—so heartless,
and yet so knowing; in a word, it was so utterly
unlike all his preconceptions concerning robbers
and thieves, that now that he was really convinced
he was standing in the presence of a host of boy-
felons, he felt sick and half scared with the terrible
consciousness of the fact.

There was such a sense of massiveness in the
large array of crime before him, that, now the boy
had learnt that the greater part of the mere
children were there for thefts as brazen-faced
as those which the urchin of thirteen had just
confessed to, he was fairly appalled with the vast-
ness of the vice. Few, indeed, know what it is to
see crime in the mass—wickedness in the lump, as
it were; to look upon some hundred heads, and
feel as if they were fused into one monster brain,

 

 

* There is no fiction in the above answers of the boys.
These, and those which follow, are simply the reples of
the young thieves at the boys’ prison in Westminster, which
were taken down verbatim by the author, at the time of his
visit to Tothill Fields’ House of Correction in the year 1856,Py fe]
tee

TS AE ae ee

 

      
   
  
 
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

‘“ LOWER AND LOWER STILL.’’ 367

instinct with a hundred devil-power, and quickened

with a hundredfold more than ordinary human |

cunning and cheatery. Most people know crime Ne
i

 

only as an exceptional thing; they hear, read of,
or become personally acquainted with merely Hat
individual cases, and never see it in such huge He)
conglomerates—such immense corporate bodies of He
devilry as give the mind a foretaste of the concrete He i
wickedness of pandemonium itself. Itis no longer
one wayward human heart we contemplate, but |
hundreds of such hearts ; every one of them pulsing,
like a hundred clocks, in terrible unison, throbbing
with one universal rancour and hatred of all that
is good and grand ; and never a generous passion
nor a noble sentiment, and hardly a kindly feeling
stirring within them. Crime seen under such cir-
cumstances seems to be as much a part of the ** ordi
nations of nature” as even gravitation itself, and
a sense of destiny and fatalism almost overpowers
the soul.

As for poor little Ben, there was such a kind of
rattlesnake fascination in the terror that was on
him, that’ he couldn’t for the life of him take his
eyes off the lad who had just sat down.

The boy was a sharp-featured and sly-looking
youngster of about Ben’s own height, and had a
pucker and twitter about the corners of his mouth
which showed, despite his downcast look, that
though pretended penitence was on his eyelids,
incipient laughter was on his lips. Indeed, he
needed but to have the prison garb exchanged for
the.-man’s coat, with the tails dragging on the
ground, and the trousers tied up over the shoulders
with string instead of braces, and the bare muddy WM
feet too, to mark him as one of the confirmed young Hie
street-vagabonds that are to be found in every city.
Were these the poor little human waits and strays
of the town, that Ben had so often seen collected atram pee

 

 

“Tees:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

368 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

the entrances to the courts and alleys about the
neighbourhood ? he asked himself, without shaping
the thoughts into words. Were these the slips
and cuttings that, after being duly inoculated and
planted, and transplanted into the hot-bed prison
soils, were destined to bear the felon fruit? As
the light burst through the parting clouds of his
brain, his mind’s eye grew half dazed with the
flash.

He looked again and again at the lad, and tried
if he could read innate wickedness branded lke
the mark of Cain upon his brow. Butno! The
boy-thief, now that he came to gaze at him well,
was the very image of Bob Cooper, who was the
kindest and best-natured boy of them all at Mr.
Brownwell’s school. Then the recollection that the
father of the young thief was in the hospital, and
the mother out all day mending ‘“ chayney and
olass,’ came stealing over his heart, as soft and
genial as the warm south wind on a winter’s day ;
and as his nature melted, young Ben thought,
what would that boy-thief have been had he been
blessed with friends and counsellors like himself ?
and what might he himself have become had the
same iron circumstances cradled his childhood ?
The thought once in the little fellow’s brain, and he
looked upon the crowd of boy-thieves before him
through the liquid lens of pity flooding his eyes.

‘Stan’ up nex’ boy!’ again snapped out the
prison official.

This boy knew by the questions put to the
previous one, the kind of information he had to
give; so directly he was on his feet, he put his
hands straight down by his side, and raising his
chin, and looking directly before him, he delivered
himself of the following statement, almost in one
breath, and certainly in one sentence :—

Sixteen year old please sir and in for a stealing*“LOWER AND LOWER STILL.” 369

a coat I’ve been a prigging about four year I done
one calendar here for a pair of boots and four
calendar at the Old Hoss for prigging a tray of silver
pencil-cases the way as 1 prigged that there was
this here I took a hold aypenny ring and broke it up
and went into a shop to ax whether it were goold
or not and while the gennelman was a looking: at
it I slips the tray of pencil-cases under my coat
then I got took for two bundles of cigars and did
another month here after that I was took for some
meresome pipes and had another month on it
here I was took for a coat besides and done my
three calendar at the Old Hoss again for that
father’s a hingineer and I aint got no mother
please sir and that’s all.”

“Wait, boy!” cried Uncle Ben, as he saw the
lad about to resume his seat; ‘‘ what do you mean
to do when you leave here ?”

“Do!” echoed the young thief, as if he was
astonished at such a question being put to him.

“Yes, lad,” repeated the elder Benjamin ; ‘‘ what
do you mean to do?”

‘““Why, when I gets out here I shall go prigging
again, in coorse,” was the candid and fearless
reply of the lad, as he looked the warder full in
the face.

‘“ But why,” inquired the old man, ‘“ why will
you thieve rather than work, lad ?”

‘“ Why, coz I don’t know no other way of getting
a living honestly,” he answered, with an ill-used
air.

The odd blunder set every one in the prison
laughing, officers and all, except the head turnkey
himself, and he merely shouted out—

‘“‘Sil’ns, b’ys! we can’t ha’ no laughing here !”
and when the place was quiet, the warder added
as before, ‘“‘ Stan’ up nex’ b’y.”

“ Been fourteen times in prison,” began the lad
2B

 

 

 

 

 

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370 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

of his own accord, as he rose from his seat. ‘I’ve
had three calendar in this here prison four times,
and one fourteen-days, and I don’t know how many
two-monthses and one-monthses besides.”

Uncle Benjamin could no longer bear to hear
the boys recount their several imprisonments, with
all the glory with which an old soldier fights his
‘battles o’er again ;” so he cut this lad’s state-
ment short by asking what alone the old man cared
to know. ‘ And when you leave this prison, you'll
begin thieving again, I suppose ?”

“No, I ain’t a-going this time,’ answered the
lad, in a dogged tone.

‘‘TIndeed !”” exclaimed the old man.

‘«No,” went on the other, ‘‘ | means to hook it,
and go to sea.”

It was now time to pass from the salient details
of the foreground, into the broad masses and
deeper tones of the general view. So Uncle Ben
began to inquire as to ages, rather than the cri-
minal histories of the different boy-prisoners ; for
he knew that the mere years of the children im-
prisoned there would tell a far sadder tale than
they themselves could recount.

“What is the age of the youngest prisoner you
have here, officer?” said he, addressing himself
to the head turnkey.

“Fy ye’rs,” exploded the official, with all the
callousness of true routine. ‘‘ Stan’ up, you T’om
Tit there,’ he cried, addressing the child by
the nick-name he had got in the prison; and
immediately a little head of short-cropped hair
popped up at the back of some of the bigger boy-
thieves in thé Gronte row. “* her, wet on the
form, do, and let’s sce you a bit,” added the chief
warder.

The mannikin scrambled up on the bench
as he was ordered; and little Ben shuddered, as“LOWER AND LOWER STILL.” ae

he saw the mere babe stand there grinning in the
felon’s suit of gray, that hung about him like a
sick man’s clothes.

‘“Secon’ time o’ being here,” went on the disci-
plinarian. “In for stealing —what’s yer ’fence ?”
he asked, sharply.

he child grinned again, as he lisped_ out,
ee Frithking a till, pleathe.”

‘“Woddid yer tek ?” demanded the other.

‘Five bob and a tanner, thir,” was the urchin
thief’s reply.

“Fv and sixpuns, he means,” went on the
officer, acting as a glossary to the baby’s slang.
‘Ther’; that'll do; stan: dewn,. :- Thats ‘the
youngest we've had for some time. But I’ve
knowed a child o’ six sent to the hulks, I have—
though he cud hardly say ‘not g’i’tty’ when he
was tried.”

Uncle Ben wouldn't trust himself to speak upon
such a matter, in such a place; so he bit his lips
to keep back the words that were burning for
utterance at the tip of his tongue; and he frowned
and shook his head at his little godson, as he saw
ihe boy in his indignation scowling and making
mouths at the warder before him.

‘“‘ Want th’ ages of so’ more, sir, eh ”’ the official
asked; and as the uncle gave a nod in reply, he
cried,

‘None here eight yer old—nor nine ; let’s see,”
the man said, talking to himself—“ ten’s the nex’
youngest we got—isn’t it, Corrie?” he inquired of
one of the other warders near him.

The man addressed shot up from his seat,
as he replied, ‘‘ Yezzir!” in a voice that made
the place echo again as with the report of a pistol

‘Stan’ up now, all ten ye’r boys,” shouted out
the head turnkey, authoritatively: and the words
were no sooner uttered than the lads rose from
2B2Pe pease
Sore:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

372 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

different parts of the room. ‘‘ Ther’ they a’ sir,”
he added—‘‘one! two! three! four! five! Fy
ten-yer b’ys; and three on them in once afore;
others firs’ fence b’ys.”’

“What are they here for?” Uncle Ben sought
to learn.

‘What a yer in for?” said the man, pointing first
to the one nearest at hand, and then to the others,
while the answers of the lads ran successively
thus :—‘‘ Pick-pocketing—stealing brass—stealing
seven razors—taking tuppence—spinning a top.”

‘‘ What's that?” asked Uncle Ben; ‘surely that
lad didn’t say he was here for spinning a top ?”

‘“‘ Yezzir; reg’lar “fence that! a boy gets one
calendar for it, if he’s took up for ’structing the
king’s highway, sir;” such was the information
that came like a thunder-clap upon the two Benja-
mins; and the younger couldn’t help throwing up
his little honest hands, and tossing his good-
natured head, in the depth of his pity for the poor
little suffering things before him.

‘Stan’ up all ’leven-yer b’ys now,” was the
next order; and when it had been obeyed, his
man proceeded to tell them off with his finger as
before. ‘‘Sev’n b’ys here!” then he said, ‘‘ One
in ten times afore; another six times; nother
five; the res’ stranjus and firs’ fence by’s ?”

Uncle Ben nodded ; and again the warder cried,
‘‘ What a’ y’ in for, b’y ?”’ and went pointing to the
lads in succession, and drawing from them the
following answers, one after another, as he did
SO :—

‘Taking a silver kettle—stealing pigeons—
spinning a top (the two Benjamins again looked
at each other )—begging— killing a dog—sleeping
in the public gardens (another exchange of glances)
—stealing a trav of goold rings.”

‘“ Now twel’-yer old b’ys, sir, eh?” again in-*- LOWER AND LOWER STILL” Sie

quired the warder; and as the uncle nodded again,
up shot ten more boys; and their offences were
found, in the same manner as before, to have been:
‘* pickpocketing — stealing a coat — pawning a
jacket—stealing lead — pickpocketing — stealing
meat — breaking a window—stealing a goold watch
and chain—stealing bread” (‘You didn’t want
it, by, eh?” ‘*Oh no, sir; meant to sell it,” was
the parenthetical inquiry and answer)—‘ and steal-
ing brass.”

And when all the offences had been stated, the
warder added, by way of comment, ‘ Pickpockets
here all old hands. One in six times afore. On’y
two stranjus ‘mong the whole twel’ b’ys. See
any mo’, sir?’’*

Uncle Ben shook his head; and then said
“Stay,” as he cast his eyes upon the ground.
“Yes,” he went on, ‘‘ I shouid like to know how
many of the boys here have no fathers or mothers
to take care of them.”

The words were hardly out of the old man’s
mouth before the warder had made the building
ring with the command of ‘“ Stan’ up boys with no
fathers and mothers!” and then, as he saw one lad
rising whose parents he knew to be living, he
bawled out, ‘‘ What a’ yer doing there, b’y ?
Youre not a no father an’ mother !”

‘¢ Please, sir,’ cried the lad in return, ‘‘I’m a
no mother, sir—I got a step’, please sir.”

‘Well, si down then! It'll come to yer turn
nex’ ;” and as the lad did as he was bidden, the
warder went on counting again, and ended by say-
ing—‘‘ Ther’ they a’ sir. i’ no fathers an’
mothers.”

‘‘ Five utterly destitute!” muttered Uncle Ben,

 

* The remarks made in the note to page 366, apply also
to the above statements. ‘They are matters of fact, rather
than imagination.34 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

as he felt his heart drop like a stone in his bosom.
His little godson stared at him with all the be-
wilderment of utter horror; for he knew well
what was passing in the old man’s mind.

‘«¢ Now, sir, I s’pose youll take the boys with
a father or a mother on’y, eh?” suggested the
official; and as he saw the other nod assent once
more, he bellowed out the order; but such a mul-
titude of young ones rose at the word of command,
that the warder knew half of them had mistaken
the summons. So he kept shouting to those he
was in doubt about, ‘‘ Now, b’y, a yer a father or
a mother, eh?” whereupon the urchin would
answer, either that he was ‘‘a mother,” or “a
father,” as it might happen; or else that he was
‘both a father and mother too ;” in which latter
case he would be told to ‘ts’ down and pay more
‘tention, or he’d get in the “fract’ry cell if he didn
mind.”

‘Ther’ they a’ sir at last,” again cried the man in
authority. ‘ Fifteen no father! Twel’ no mother!”

‘¢ Please sir, my father and mother’s supperated,”
shouted one of the bigger boys; ‘‘and mine’s in
the poor'us, please sir,” cried another; ‘and
mine’s gone to sea;” ‘‘and my mother’s been in
the ’ospital for the last year, with dickey ” (decay)
‘‘of the thigh-bone ;” and so they went on, each
shouting out after the other, as if they fancied
some wrong had been done to them, in not being
allowed to stand up as orphans beside the others.

‘« Oilns!” shouted the warder; ‘‘ we can’t ha’
this here !”

Uncle Ben went up to the official, and said,
thoughtfully, ‘‘ I want to find out how many of
these boys have got relatives in prison.”

‘©Oh, a’most all on ’em, sir,” was the laconic
reply; ‘regular jailbirds, greater part on ‘em-
but I’ll see, sir, an’ let yer know.”‘LOWER AND LOWER STILL.” S15

It cost the official some trouble to make the
lads understand what they really had to answer ;
and the warder had to put the question to them in
their own peculiar terms, as to whether their family
or friends were ‘flats or sharps” (7. e., honest or
dishonest people); and then, as some misunder-
standing arose, the urchins would cry out, ‘“ Please,
sir, my father an’t a sharp, he’s a flat, sir——an’t
never been in pris’n in his life.” Other lads, too,
would call out that their mother was a cadger (a
beggar), and want to know what the gennelman
would say that there was—a flat or a sharp; while
others shouted out that they had got a brother
who was a ‘‘ gun” (1. e., thief).

However, at last the warder had settled the
matter ; and as he told the numbers off, he shouted
in his usual official tone—‘‘ Five got fathers in
prison! One, father at hulks! Three, mothers in
prison! ‘l'wenty-six, got brothers in prison! Four,
got brothers at hulks! ‘T'wo, sisters, in prison!
‘Three, cousins in prison! ‘I'wo, cousins at hulks!
One, uncle in prison! One, uncle at hulks! One,
aunt in prison! And now all’s told, sir.”

‘But one more question,” said Uncle Ben,
sorrowfully, ‘‘and I have done. How many of
the parents of these boys, who have got fathers and
mothers, are habitual drunkards ?” *

The question was clearly put and clearly under-
stood, and the statements duly checked by the
attendant warders, who, from the repeated return
of the greater part of the lads to those quarters,
knew pretty well the family history of most of
those under their charge ; and the answer proved
to be, that twenty-five boys, at least, in every
hundred, were rendered even worse than father-
iess by the brutal sotting of their parents.

Poor Uncle Ben, in his desire to read his little
* See Mr. Antrobus’ book, ‘The Prison and the School.’

 

 

 

   
  
 
   
 
 
 
 
    
  
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

Sag a376 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

godson a lesson, had given himself a severer
lecture than he had expected. He was touched to
the very quick of his own kindly nature, and
stood for a moment with his chin on his bosom
and his eyes on the ground, as if stricken down
with shame. Then his lps moved quickly,
though he uttered not a word; and he locked the
knuckles of one hand in the palm of the other, as
he flung his eyes for an instant upwards. ‘The
next minute he was looking wildly about him,
half afraid that some one might have noticed his
weakness; and the minute afterwards he was
rubbing away at his forehead, as if to rouse him-
self out of the trance that was on him.

The warders were too busy in restoring order,
and the prisoners in too much commotion to give
heed to the old gentleman. No one noticed him
indeed, not even his little godson; for he, poor
lad, had turned his face to the door, so that none
might see and know what he felt. Boy as he
was, he was well aware how those young thieves
would only sneer at him for his girlish com-
passion ; accordingly he clenched his little fists,
and dug his nails into his flesh, so that his eyes
might not seem red when he turned round
again.

‘* A’thing more, sir?” asked the chief, when the
boys had been got back to their seats, and the
place was quiet again. ‘“ A’thing more, sir?” he
repeated, in a louder and sharper tone, as he saw
the old gentleman stand still, looking on the
ground.

‘“No! no! no! no!” was the half-bewildered
answer. “I’m going—poor fatherless things—
home now directly.”

‘‘ Like to see our women’s prison, sir?”
the warder.

Uncle Ben gave a shudder that seemed to go all

went on“ LOWER: AND WOWER- SHIRA” Old

through his body, as he replied, ‘‘No! no! I’ve
had quite enough for one day, thank you!”

‘* Wooden take yer quarter-an-hour, sir, t’run
through it,” went on the officer, who was as
anxious as a showman that the visitors should see
all the sights of the place. ‘See the little things
in the nuss’ry, then ?”

Uncle Ben just caught the last words of the
sentence, and he was all alive again at the bare
mention of such a place in a jail. ‘‘ What!” he
cried, in utter astonishment ; ‘‘ did you say you had
a nursery here, officer?” and he stared at the man
as narrowly as if he was watching the workings of
his countenance; though the gesture was merely
the instinctive emotion of incredulity on Unele
Ben's part.

The warder bore the scrutiny without as much
as a wink, and replied, ‘‘ Yes! nuss’ry was my
words, sir. Like to see ’t, sir?”

The old man, now that he was assured of the
fact, gave vent to no emotion whatever, but
merely said, quickly, ‘‘ Of course I should!” and
then, jerking down his long waistcoat, he set off
at a quick pace out into the yard, saying, ‘‘ Come
along, Ben! come, boy! we’re going to see the
prison nursery !” and as he hurried along, even
an inexperienced eye might have told, by the
short quick steps he took, and the rapid twitchy
jerkings of the arms, as he went, that his whole
frame was in a state of high irritability.

Again the heavy gates had to be unlocked and
locked, and more gates forced slowly back, before
the women’s part of the prison was reached.

There the visitor and his young friend were
handed over to the care of a matron, with a
request that they might be shown the nursery
portion of the bolted and barred establishment.

   
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

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Ca VSP378 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

CHAPTER XXII.

FELONS IN

THE CRADLE.

Hl ‘Once on the female side of the jail, Ben and his
Ha uncle soon began to feel that they were out of

 

iW the close, and stifling
| military discipline (of drill and military discipline,
iN || save the mark,
WA | cried aloud for

oO

o atmo

sphere of mere drill and

among a brood of children, who
gvood fathership rather than drill-
serjeantship to train and tend them); for the

Pa a matrons really spoke, and seemed to act towards

4 their ‘‘ erring sisters,” as if they had some sense of
i their own frail tendencies, and some little feeling
Wl for those poor human reeds who had not had the

| a power to stand up against the wind.*

 

 

 

Matilda school of literature.

“ Phere may be readers of a sterner mood, unacquainted
with prison economy, who may fancy that the transition
from the mere disciplinarian male jailer to the more humane
female one, borders somewhat on the sentimental or Rosa
It may be so; but the transi-
| tion is not given as a stroke of art, but as a touch of nature.
ne | In making the prison-tour of the metropolis, and passing

Hi day after day with the governors of the several penal esta-
blishments, as the author did but lately, with the view of

ea il 4 making himself acquainted with the “prison-world,’ no
COTTE change was so marked, and, indeed, none so refreshing,
TT | as the transition from the formalities of the male warders

 

 

 

to the amenities of the female ones.

The women’s prison

| a at Brixton as well as that at Wandsworth, and let me
awit add in all justice, that at Tothill Fields too (though the
aE punishments at the latter place are ¢nordinately excessive,
a | being upwards of fifty per cent. more than the average pro-
We portion of punishments throughout the female prisons of all
Hi England and Wales), these were certainly not the heartless
and senseiess places that the men’s and boy’s prisons seemed
to be (always excepting the stupid tyranny of the silent
hour (!) at the Brixton Institution); and they were not so,FELONS IN THE CRADLE. 379

The matron to whose charge or care Uncle Ben
and his little nephew were handed over, was a
lady of very bulky proportions ; so bulky, indeed,
that the chain which she wore as a girdle round

 

simply because there was some show of kindly consideration
and feeling on the part of the lady-oificers in charge of the
prisoners. Indeed, to this day the author has no happier
memory than that of going the rounds with the compassionate
little postwoman at the Brixton prison, and seeing what
happiness she found in delivering her little packets of hap-
piness to the wretched female convicts there ; or than that of
hearing the long prison corridors at the Wandsworth House
of Correction (which is really a ‘‘model prison” as to its
eeneral management), echo with the kisses of the matrons
as they caressed and hugged one of the pretty little prison
babies, that was beine bandied from one female warder to
the other. The reader may account for this as he pleases,
but the author believes the simple explanation is to be found
in the very constitution of womankind itself. Male power
always runs into routine, idle forms, and silly ceremonies ;
but women have so little of the powerful, and so little of the
drill-master about their nature, while they have, on the
other hand, so much of the opposite qualities of tenderness
and gentleness, that feeling and common sense with them
are sure not to be utterly overlaid and crushed by mere
richt-about-face tomfoolery. All that is wanted at our
male prisons is a little less drill and a little more heart—a
mild medium between your Martinet old-soldierism on the
one hand, and your Maconochie maudlinry on the other.
What the female-jailers may have been in the olden time,
the author has not been able to discover. Whether they
were as brutal and as base as the males (who should have
changed places with the prisoners themselves, for most of
them had been thieves in their younger days), it is impossible
to say; but the writer of this book has sufficient faith in
womanly tenderness to believe not. There may have been,
and doubtless was, many a guarled old harridan among the
female turnkeys of the ‘“ good old times ;” but as human
nature belongs to no one age, depend upon it, that even a
century and a half back, the majority of the women-jailers
had the same women’s hearts as now, to temper the rigour of
prison rule—the same women’s weakness and women's pity
for misery and helplessness ; ay, and let me add, the same
women’s prison babies too.

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380 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

her waist, and to which the heavy bunch of prison-
keys was attached, sank intoa deep crease of fat;
and it was only by the glitter of an obtruding
corner of a link, here and there, that one could
tell she wore any such iron virdle around her
waist. Her face was as round and pleasant look-
ing in its ning, its dimpling and puffy cheeks,
as a hot-cross bun; and whether the typical traits
lay in the amplitude of bust, or the roley-poley
character of the pudding-bags of flesh about the
neck, or the obvious staylessness and wabbliness
of her whole figure, it was difficult to tell; but
there was an unmistakable look of the ‘‘ mother of
alarge family” stamped upon her whole ap-
pearance. Indeed, it was by the name ‘ mother’
—niother, in its bare simphcity, without any cog-
nominal affix—that she was spoken of throughout
the entire prison.

The gatekeeper asked how much beer he was
to take for ‘‘ Mother” to-day--the chief warder,
when he met the lady, held out his finger and
thumb, and threw up his nose, as he exclaimed,
*«Pinch asnuff, Mother!” The Visiting Justices
shook their powdered-wigs and smiled benefi-
cently, as they passed her in the passages leading
to the Governor's room, saying the while, ‘‘ Well,
Mother ! how do we find ourselves to-day, Mother—
eh?” The impudent boy-thieves would shout
out after her in the streets, when they got their
discharge, and saw her toddling along to or
‘rom the prison, morning and evening, “I say,
Moth-airr! Come an’ give us a kiss, old gal ;”
while the woman who had just left the prison
nursery, and stood, with her infant on her arms,
at the entrance to some court in the town, would
<lrop the good prison mother a silent curtsy as
she went by and chucked the liberated little babe
under the chin.FELONS IN THE CRADLE. OSL

‘“ Well, sir,” said this most matronly matron as
she led Uncle Ben and the boy along the narrow
and dark passages of the prison, and proceeded to
answer the question the elder Benjamin had
just put to her, ‘‘if you askes my opinion as a
mother, sir,” she began, throwing all her wonted
force upon ‘mother,’ ‘‘as I’ve been this sixteen
year come next grotter day, as is the fourth of
August, as my own Jimmy was borned upon, and
he’s as good and upright and downstraight a boy
as ever could please a poor dear mother’s heart,
though it 7s his own poor dear mother as says so
—if you askes my opinion in that compacity, sir,
why I reely must say as I can’t see as the women
in our mothers’ ward here is at all different, in no-
wise, in their motherly feelings for their poor
dear little ones, from them as is outside.”

The lady paused for a minute, and then added:
‘‘ That there is what I says to everybody, sir—
they’re mothers, sir; and here the lady stopped
again, with the double view of enfercing her fa-
vourite point upon the gentleman’s attention, as
well as fetching a little breath after the heavy
flight of stairs she had just mounted—“‘‘ they’re
mothers, sir,’ she repeated, ‘‘ which speaks wol-
lums for ’em sir, I says ; for a mother will be a mo-
ther, you know, sir, all the world over ; leastwise,
if she ain’ta monster in human form, as is what we
don’t allow in here, in nowise, sir. I’m a mother
myself, sir,” said she, proudly, pausing again and
turning full round to stare at Uncle Ben as she
said the words; ‘‘the mother of nine, as fine strap-
ping children as ever yousee, sir, as is all straight
and well made, sir, with never so much as a club-
foot, nor a hare-lip; no, nor not even so much as
a port-wine-stain neither, among one on em to
blemish their dear bodies, which is saying a great
deal—ain’t it now sir? So in coorse I knows

  

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 

Sr gr eS

oR aeTans.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

nee gee

 

a

382 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

what a mother’s feelings is—which is only common
humane natur’, sir, as I tells my good man—he’s
one of the city watchmen as walks the docks ; may-
be, he ain’t onbeknown to you, sir,” she threw in
parenthetically as she turned suddenly round once
more, ‘‘and hasn’t never slept in his bed by nights,
hike a Christian man, for this twenty year and
more, I give you my word, sir. I tells him he
don’t know what a mother’s feelings is, as in coorse
he do not; andthem as does know what a mother’s
feelings is, and it’s only common humane natur’,
I says again, why, they ‘ant but let alone having
some bowels of passion for them as is mothers in
their turn, sir—let their sitywation be what it
may, poor things. So long as they’re mothers is
all ‘as I cares about.”

By this time the trio had reached the part of
the building which was set aside as the prison
nursery. Uncle Ben was little inclined to be
talkative himself, for what he had already seen,
and what he felt he was about to see, had taken
nearly all the words out of him, and made him
moody with the grave reflections engendered
within him. There was, however, little demand
for speech from any other while ‘“‘ Mother” was
present; for even the most pertinacious would
have found it difficult to have insinuated so much
as a parenthesis into the monologue on her part.

As the matron dragged back the heavy prison
door. of, the: ‘Smothers’ wands” .1t.. disclosed...a
cleanly-looking whitewashed room, about the size
of an ordinary barn, with barn-like rafters appear-
ing overhead. <A_ strong smell of babies and
babies’ food pervaded the place, and the entire
shed vesounded with the kissing and prattling of
the felon mothers, and the eurgling and cooing,
the crying and laughing of the imprisoned babes.
On the hobs of the ample fireplace at the end ofFELONS IN THE CRADLE. 383

the ward, were rows of saucepans and pannikins,
to keep up a constant supply of warm pap; and
the rails of the high guard-like fender were hung
with an array of lilliputian linen—the convict baby-
clothes: such as, shirts hardly bigger than sheets
of note-paper, socks but little larger than thumb-
stalls, and coloured blue and white frocks of about
the same size as the squares of chintz in a patch-
work counterpane. The room seemed positively
crowded with cradles too, for they were ranged
at the foot of the iron-bedsteads in lines, like so
many tiny boats drawn up on a beach.

‘* Them there’s our own mothers, sir!” said the
matron in an exulting tone, as she stood within
the doorway previous to entering, and pointing to
the assembly of babes, as if she was proud of the
exhibition. ‘‘ There’s twenty-three mothers alto-
gether in now, with five-and-iwenty children—
two twinses,” she whispered in the old man’s ear.
‘* Poor things! I never looks at ’em, and thinks
about ’em, I don’t, but what I feels as if I were a-
going to be took with a ’tack of the spagms. You
see,” she continued, talking in an undertone to
Uncle Ben, ‘‘ they’re a far betterer class of pri-
soners, the mothers is, than them brazen-faced
minxes on the t’other side of the women’s side, as
is enough to crud all a mother’s milk of humane
kindness, sir, that they is, I give you my word.
Augh!” she burst out, with all a true matron’s in-
dignation, ‘‘ ’d have such humane warmin as
them there gals of ourn whipped at the cart’s
tail, I would; J can’t abide sitch unwomanly
things—and yet, do you know, I often drops a
tear into my beer, sir, when I sits and thinks of
the little bits of gals we has among ’em, and turns
my eyes innards to their latter end.

‘‘ But these here poor dears, sir,” the corpulent
lady resumed with a sigh that made the body of384 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

her dress heave up and down like a carpet in a
draughty room, ‘‘ is mothers, sir, as I said afore;
and that there shows as there ain’t no cuss upon
them, and they ain’t the shameless and ’fectionless
hussies the other gals is, as I can’t abide. Ah,
sir, a mother’s heart is a great thing, sir—a fine
thing, sir,” the old body went on, as she grew
half solemn in her tone; ‘“ it makes a woman of a
woman, it do, sir—let alone however bad she may
ha’ been afore. For d’reckly she has a bit of her
own flesh and blood in her arms to cuddle and take
care on; and d’reckly she feels the little thing a-
drawing its life from out of her own buzzum, and
a-looking up and a-smiling in her face the whiles,
I tell you she can’t but wish (for I’ve know’d it,
and gone through it all myself) as she mayn’t
never do nothink in the world as will hinder her
dear child from always a-looking up to her as it do
then.”

Then drawing Uncle Ben half aside, she pro-
ceeded with no little earnestness in her manner
to say, “‘ And do you mean to tell me, sir, as
them there poor things, when they has these here
mothers’ thoughts come over ’em—as is only com-
mon humane natur’, I say agin—when they sees
the little hinnocent kritter of their own a-kicking
and a-cooing in their lap, and wishes in their
‘arts as they could make it a hemperor or a par-
son, as every mother do, as is areel mother to her
babe, sir—do you mean to tell me, I askes you,
as these here poor things, as is made of the same
flesh and blood as ourselves is, sir, don’t hate
theirselves, and cuss theirselves, for the shame and
hard lines they’ve put upon their little one’s
hfe, in a-bringing it into the world with a hand-
cuff, as a body may say, about its little hinnocent
wrist? Well, J can tell you they does, sir—not as
they says as much to me, but I sees ’em, whenFELONS IN THE CRADLE. 385

they leastwise thinks it—with the tears a-rollin »
down their cheeks, like a boy’s marbles does
sometimes onbeknown to hisself down the hile
at church-time—and that too as they sits a dab-
bing their hands, quite unconscionably, over the
little dear’s mouth, so as to make it babble again
hike the bleating of a little lamb, you know; or
maybe a-tickling it with their apron-strings in
the folds of its dear little fat neck, as it lays
a-sprawling on the bed. You'd think they was a
playing with the little darling, I dessay, and a
taking part in the play too, as a mother loves to
do; for I know it, sir—/ know there ain’t nothink
in all the wide world so beautiful as a baby’s
laugh toa mother’s’art. But these here poor things
can’t hardly a-bear to hear their little hinnocents
laugh; for it only ’minds them, you see, that
the babe hasn’t no sense of the place it’s in, and it’s
like daggers in their ’arts consequently ; ’coz they
fears that when it grows up to know the start it
got in life, it’ll come to cuss ’em, as they cusses
theirselves, for the millstone they’ve been and
hung about their poor little poppet’s neck. This
here is only common humane natur’, I says agin
and agin. Why there ain’t no parson living as
could put the thoughts into these poor mothers’
buzzums as them there little babes as can’t talk
can do. They're little hangels, I says, sent from
heaven to turn their ’arts, sir. I knows it, I do.
[’ve got a mother’s ’art myself, sir, and I feels it
often a-bleeding for ’em.”’

Uncle Ben was so little prepared for this simple
burst of earnest kindness, after the stolid callous-
ness of the male officers, that he stared for a mi-
nute in mute wonder at the good old dame, and
then said, as he saw his little nephew looking up
and smiling in her fat, good-natured face, ‘* Kiss
her, go and kiss her, Ben, for her moheyy love of

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386 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

these poor creatures ;” and then as the boy flung his
arms about her neck, he hugged the prison ‘‘ Mo-
ther,” and the ‘‘ Mother” hugged the boy, as if
they'd been parent and child; while the old uncle
turned into the corridor and paced rapidly up and
down the flag-stones, flinging his arms about as
if he was preaching to the winds.

The paroxysm past, he returmed to the dame’s
side, repeating her words, ‘‘ Little angels sent
from heaven to turn their mothers’ hearts.” Then
he paused, and looked her full in the face, as he
asked sharply, ‘* And what will they grow up to
be, think you, Mother ?”

‘“« Young devils, sir—devils,’ was the emphatic
and not particularly mealy-mouthed answer of the
woman.

‘¢ T guessed so,” said Uncle Ben; ‘I foresaw as
much,”’—then he was silent for another minute,
and ultimately jerked out, ‘‘ But why should it be
so, Mother—why can’t such as you prevent it?”

‘Lor’ love you, sir,” ‘‘ Mother” replied, her face
growing as creasy as an old kid glove, with the
smiles that played all over it. ‘‘ Why, how you
talk ! The world’s agin it—every humane being’s
agin it—common humane natur’” (her favourite
reference) ‘‘is agin it. Do you think, laskes you,
these here poor little babes can ever have the
same chance of gitting a honnest penny as that
there boy of yourn, or any decent folk’s child, let
alone gentlefolks. It’s one thing to be borned
with a silver spoon, or even any spoon at all—no
matter whether it’s a hold hiron or a wooding
one—in the mouth ; and quite another pair of shoes
to come into the world with a handcuff ready
locked about your wrist; for there ain’t hardly no
gitting it off, I can tell you—it grows into the
flesh like this here wedding-ring has, you see.”
The woman put out her finger to show that theFELONS IN THE CRADLE. 387

little gold hoop had become embedded deeply into
the skin.

‘“A boy as has come of a felon mother is sure
to find it out sooner or later,” she went on, ‘‘and
often much sooner than need be; for people is only
too quick to fling the ’stificut of his buth in any
one’s face, when it ain’t worth paying a shilling
to git it. And so the boy’s the more ready to
take to felon ways than a honnest person’s child ;
tor, fust and foremost, he ain’t got no kerackter to
lose, you see, and coz he ain’t gotno kerackter, why
honnest people won’t have nothink at all to do
with him. Then I askes you, sir, as a genelman
as has seed some little of the world, how can
sitch a boy ever find out as honnesty’s the best
pollercy, as the saying goes, if so be as he can’t
never git no chance of gitting so much as a crust
of bread honnestly for hisself?

‘* But there’s another pint as I should like
you to see, sir, and that there is this here.
hough the mother’s heart of the woman as bore
him may be, and is mostly, dreadful cut up to sce
her poor little hinnocent with the prison swad-
dling clothes on his little new-born limbs; and
this makes her swear and swear over again to the
little unconscionable kritter hisself as she'll lead
a new life for his sake, d’reckly she gets her dis-
charge; and though she means it all too at the
time, more honnestly than a honnest woman ever:
can; yet, sir, d’reckly as our gatekeeper opens the
door to her, and her baby and_ she’s got her lib-
bity agin once more, why, back she goes, 1n coorse,

to her old kimpanions, with her little one in her
arms ; (for where elsewhere has she to go to, poor
dear ?) and then her good resolves is no better than
fruit blossoms in Feberrary ; and arter that her mo-
ther’s ’art won’t hardly dare to open its lips to her-
self any more about the child. So the poor little
o a2

— andYOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

   

088
thing is sent out to play with the young thieves and.
wagabones in the gutter, and there the boy larns gut-
ter moralses and thieves’ pints of right and wrong,
in coorse ; and then I leaves you to Judge what his
principles is like to be after a few quarters of that
there schooling. ’Cording, when he’s about five or
six, maybe, he comes to us, either for ‘ cadging,’ as
they calls it, or for ‘ picking up’ coals for his mother
off the barges ‘long shore, or else for stealing bits of
hold metal to get slices of pudding for hisself, or
paps for breaking winders for the “musement of a
whole lot of the young scarrymoudges. And then,
sir, when he’s been and made his fust plunge, and
got over the fust shudder-like of going headlong
into this here pool, why then, sir, he’s ready for
I don't know how many more dips agin; so ‘cord-
ing he keeps on going out and coming in here, like
the folks at a show dooring fair time, for he finds
there’s always a table ready laid for him here, and
a well-haired bed always kept made up for him
too, and that without nothink at all to pay for it,
which larns him a lesson, sir, as there ain’t no
unlarning as ever I seed in all my time. So in
coorse he keeps on a-coming backuds and foruds
to us, six months out and four months in, until at
last he gets more and more owdacious and devil-
maycareyfied ; till the ’ulks or the gallus puts a
final end at length ultimately to his kr’eer.

“Ah, sir! it sets my mother’s ’art a-bleeding,”
concluded the good-natured old dame, ‘ when I
looks at the hinnocent faces of these little things,
(as is liked to the kingdom of heaven, you know,
sir, in the church sarvice) and I knows—far
betterer than here and there one—what fate’s
wrote down in the book agin their names: why
then I sometimes thinks to myself, surelie it ‘ud be
bettermost if the whole litter of kittens was
drownded outright. If they’re to be hanged arterFELONS IN. THE CRADLE. 3589

a while, I says, why where’s the good of keeping
on ‘em just to breed more kittens like theirselves
in their turn, sir; and have more hangman’s work
to do in the final end, sir, after all? These is
hard words, sir, for a mother to speak, as has got
a mother’s ’art in her buzzum, and a whole coop-
ful of chicks of her own at home, bless ’em.
But I can’t help it, sir; it’s my mother’s ’art as
puts the words into my mouth, sir—it is.”

‘“Come! come, Ben! come along, boy! I’ve
seen and heard enough, lad, and so have you?”
cried the uncle, as the dame came to an end, and
then turning round, he was about to thank the
good old body, and hurry off; but the matron seized
him by the arm, as she said, ‘‘ You’re never a-going
in that there way, surelie: without never so much
as a Shake of the hand, or a chuck under the chin,
or a ‘God bless you’ to my little ones here. I calls
this here little lot my second famerly, sir; and I
can tell you, when some of their times is up, I often
has a good cry over the parting from some on ’em :
the same as if they was a tearing my own flesh
and blood from me.”

As the dame and the two Benjamins walked
slowly down the long room, between the double
file of prison cradles, they found some of the little
felon babes propped up in their beds, amusing
themselves with the rude playthings that the
mothers had invented to quiet them. One hada
rag doll with a couple of stitches in black thread
for eyes; another was thumping one of the prison
tin-platters, and crowing at the sound it made;
and another was rattling some pebbles in one of
the prison pannikins.

A few of the mothers were walking hurriedly
up and down the room with their infants in their
arms, endeavouring to hush them to sleep by pat-
ting their backs, and hissing the while as a groom

    
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

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Se ne oh ne
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docs to a horse he is rubbing down; and others were
reated at the edge of the iron bedstead, jogging
the little one on their knees to allay the fretfulness
of teething.

But not one lullaby song was to be heard in the
place.

As the visitors passed along, most of the women
rose and curtsied in turn, and every face they
saw was marked more or less by that dogged,
sullen, and ill-used air which is so distinctive of
the criminal character, before it is utterly hardened
and shameless.

‘“D’ye mind, sir,’ whispered the matron, in
Uncle Benjamin’s ear, as they moved on a few
paces, and then came to a stand-still, ‘‘ there ain’t
a smile nowhere ; ’cepting on that there one’s face
—the woman on my right here—and she’s got
six months on it for bigotry, sir ?”

“ Wor what?” inquired the old gentleman, ina

suppressed voice that still had a deep tone of
astonishment about it.

The dame put her mouth close to Uncle Ben’s
ear, and whispered. ‘Marrying two husbands,
sir—bigotry we cails it here !”

Hiven Uncle Benjamin, sad and sick at heart as
he was, had to blow his nose violently on hearing
the explanation.

‘‘Ah! she’s a brazen-faced bit of goods, and I
can’t abide shamelessness, JI can’t,” she ran on
with a significant toss of the head. ‘‘ Yonder, you
see, 18 a Woman with two infants, sitting by
the bed near the door—don’t turn your head
just yet, please .sir, or she’ll fancy we’re a-talking
about her,” added the kind old matron, speaking
in the same undertone as one instinctively adopts
in a sick person’s room. ‘‘She ain’t one of the
twinses ; she’s minding another prisoner’s child.
Oh, yes! they’re very good and patient to oneFELONS IN THE CRADLE, OIL

another's children, and we most seldom has cases
of hill-treatment to punish in’em. She’s in for
‘tempted ’fanticide, sir,” continued the loquacious
guide, as she turned her head away from the young
woman that Uncle Ben was now regarding with
an air of pretended vacancy and indifference ; “‘ and
yet there ain’t a better mother in the whole ward,
nor a kinder-hearted kritter breathing neether.
«That there prisoner, two off from the one with
the couple of babbies,” the matron babbled on, look-
ing straight away to the opposite side of the ward
from that which she was directing Uncle Ben’s
attention to, ‘‘ don’t you sce, sir ?—the woman with
the saller complexion, and that there dreadful cast
in her eye—so that you can only catch sight of half
the happle on it, sir—she’s a very bad dang’rous
kerackter, she is : we had to take her child from her.
Do you know, she treated the poor little dear so
inhumanely, we really thought as how she’d a’
been the death on it. But she’s a rare ’zeption, she
is; and to tell you my mind, I don’t b’leve she’s
all there, sir,” the old gossip added, pointing to her
forehead, which she affected to scratch the minute
afterwards. ‘Her husband was a ground-lab’rer,
sir, and went out for an ollidy about six months
back, and she never sot eyes on him since. She's
here for legal pawning, sir, and got two year on it.”
At this point a clean flaxen-haired littie thing,
with eyes so intensely blue that the very whites
had a faint tint of azure in ’em, came toddling
towards the matron with its plump short arms
stretched out, and shrieking, ‘“‘ Mama! Mama!”
The matron, or ‘‘ Mother” as she was called,
stooped down and caught the little human ball in
her arms, crying, ‘‘ What, Annie, my little ducks 0’
dimons!” and then raising it up, she fell to kiss-
ing it, and rubbing her mouth in its soft neck,
making the same spluttering noise the while asalla a

PoE EET

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

o92

though she was washing her own face with a hand-
ful of soap and water in her palms. ‘Bless it!
bless its own little heart! she’s mother’s own
poppet, she is—a little booty as ever was borned,
and as clean and sweet as a new pink, that she is,
every bit of her, sir. This is my Annie, sir, as I
calls her; my dear little darling Annie,” she ran on
as she tossed the child up and down, crying “ ket-
chy, ketchy,” right in front of Uncle Benjamin’s
face—‘‘ she’s a sad romp, Ican tell you. She’s two
year and three months come the—”

‘“21st of May, please!” interposed the tidy
prison mother timidly with a curtsy, for the
woman had followed her child to the spot.

‘‘And was borned in this here prison, sir.
‘The mother’s got six year on it,” the old matron
added aside as she kept dancing the little one in
the air till it fairly laughed again, ‘‘ for shoplift-
ing, sir;” and then, putting her lips close to Uncle
Ben’s ear again, she whispered, ‘‘ Not married.”

The “ Mother” now passed up the ward, carrying
and cuddling little Annie in her arms; and as she
journeyed from bed to bed, she put her finger in
the dimples of the prison babes, and made all kinds
of tender inquiries; first,about the teeth of this one,
and then the legs of that, as well as reminding the
women whose terms were about to expire, that their
time would be up next so-and-so, and she hoped
as how they'd take care and never bring that
sweet little hinnocent of theirn into such a place
again.

Presently, stopping suddenly short at one of the
beds, she said, ‘‘ Zhat there is the most timbersome
child I ever met with ;” she alluded to a poor
li tle white-faced thing who had thick irons down
its legs, and who was evidently suffering from “ soft
bones.” The prison mother was about to lead it
towards Uncle Ben; but though the old man held

YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.FELONS IN. THE CRADLE. 393

v
out his hand towards it, the little creature hung its
head, and struggled and screamed to get back to
the prison cat that lay curled up on the bed it had
just left.

‘he mother is married to a private in the
Granadiers, sir,’ went on the matron; ‘‘and she
ain’t never heerd from him wunst since she was
took for making away with the work of her ployer
sir. She’s oot. four year on it, and fifteen month
more to do, sir. Yousee the child is nat’ral timber-
some, sir; besides, poor thing! it never sees no
man’s face here but the Guvynor’s and the Surjin’s ;
so no wonder it’s afeard at the sight of strangers’
looks.

‘Well, sir,” she rattled on, in-answer to a
question from Uncle Ben, as they turned away,
and, passing out of the ward, proceeded to descend
the steps that led to the “ mothers’ airing yard,”
‘we don’t oo no hinfant babe here to over
four year, sir, though there were one little thing
as Wwe ae had in the prison so long, that when
its mother’s lbbity came, it used to call every
horse it seed in the streets a great big pussy. lt
did, I give you my word, sir.

Grote Ben shuddered, as a sense of the brute
ignorance of the little baby-prisoner came over
him, and the boy at his side stared up with
wonder and terror in the old ‘‘ Mother’s”’ face, for
he remem ered the tales he had read of the ‘‘ wild
boys ” found in the woods, and how they had grown
up as senseless as baboons.

‘“T won’t ast you, sir,’ said the matron, while
passing across the yar d back to the passages
leading to the entrance to the women’s prison,
“now that you’ve that there sweet boy of yourn
with you, who’s as like what my own dear Jemmy
were a year or two agone, as ever he can stare—
only he ain’t got my Jemmy’s nose ’zackly—tosee ere Ri cepa
=

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

394 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

come and see our women’s ward over on the t’?other
side, for to speak the candid straightforud truth,
sir, it ain’t ’zackly the place a mother, with a
mother’ s’art in her buzzum, would like to take a
boy of tender year like hizen to. Ah, they’re
shocking brazen-faced, ondecent, foul-mouthed
termyg g ints, that they is, sir—and_ the little-est on
om is as bad as the bigwest- est. They’d only be
grinning in the young gen’elman’s hinnocent
face, sir, and a-making all kinds of erimages at
you, sir, ‘behind your hinnocent back, as you went
along: ; and as ’m a mother myself—the mother of
nine living, sir, and have had as many as a baker’s
dozen on ’em, bless ’em! in my time—w lista.
coorse, | knows what a mother’s dooty is, thank
God ; ‘and g so I won’t demean my sell to press you
to stay and see the Jessybells, sir.

By this time they had Heaenna the heavy and
big- locked door by which they had entered, and
as ‘ Mother ’ put the monster key into the keyhole,
she paused for a minute before turning it, as she
said, stooping down to young Ben, ‘“ Kiss me, my
sweet child! I know he’s a dear good boy to his poor
dear mother as bore him, by the very looks on him.
Your name’s Benjamin, ain’t it? for I heerd your
dear father here call you by that. Well, I’ve got
a Benjamin of my own, I have; but he’s four year
younger than you, if he’s a a ay; and I’m sorry
to say it, my dear, but he’s the werry worrit of
my life, he is! for Me bustis his clothes out—till,
lor’ love you, it’s one person’s time to look after
him, and keep him anything like tidy and ’spec-
table.”

All the time she was delivering this little domes-
tic episode, she was smoothing youns Benjamin’s
hair, or stroking his cheek, or hugeing him close
up to her side; There, kiss me again, “dear child,
for the last final time,” she said, ‘ and always mindFELONS IN THE CRADLE. 395

and be a good boy to your poor dear mother, what-
ever you do; for youdon’t know what it is to have
a mother’s ’art, 1 can tell you.”

The catch of the enormous prison lock then
resounded with a loud capstan-pall-like click
through the corridors, and the mother was drop-
ping a curtsy to the old gentleman, and giving her
last broad grin to the young one, as the couple went
nodding to her through the doorway—when she
suddenly espied the gatekeeper running, with a
pewter pot in his hand, soas to get to the ‘‘ wo-
men’s-side entrance ” before the door closed again.
‘Oh, there you are with my beer, at last, young
man! Come along, Bennet, for goodness gracious
sake do, there’s a good soul! for heaven knows I’m
come over quite swoundy-like for the want on it.”

In a few minutes Uncle Ben and his nephew
were retracing their steps across the ‘‘ boys’ side”
of the prison; and as the couple strode along,
sorrowfully, the godfather said: ‘‘ Ah, my boy, we
have only to imagine that years are flying past us
now instead of minutes, to recognize the little
baby faces we have just leftin the prison nursery,
in that file of boy-thieves that are exercising
yonder in the airing yard before us, and circling
away one after another, like the horses in the
equestrian booth at a fair.”

As the endless troop of little felons kept
shuffling on (the heavy prison boots clattering on
the flagstones, with a very different noise from
what their bare feet were wont to make on the
pavement outside the prison gates), the uncle
told little Ben to notice the figures on the red cloth
that was fastened round the left arm of the boys;
saying, he would see by them the number of times
they had been in prison before. ‘‘ Call the numbers
out, Ben, as the lads go by, and let’s hear theTdi ad

ll a ped

 

 

 

 

 

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396 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

tale they tell of boys many of whom are not yet
in their teens, and none out of them.”

Little Benjamin did as he was bidden, and the
story ran as follows:

LO: (recommiuttals), 2, 40, ve oee6n 2 iedaay 2.
LO, 2..4,™

“‘That’s enough, my boy—that will do, in
heaven’s name,” exclaimed the uncle; ‘ and hardly
half a score years back these children were many
of them in the prison nursery.”

At this point the discipline-loving chief warder
approached the couple, saying, ‘‘ Like to see pris’n
bur’al groun’, sir?” Uncle Ben shook his head.
‘““ Very cur’ous—not a tomb-stun, “lowed in it—
only a ’nitial letter to some—others without no-
think atall to mark whose grave it is—place chuck
full of bones, sir.”

“NO, no, cried Unele Ben, half petulantly, as
if he thought this wretched finish to the story
might have been spared him. ‘I want to go.”

‘‘Pris’nus own clothes store, very cur’ous too,
sir,” persisted the showman-warder. ‘Their own
clothes is oncommon strange sight—every one
says so. All things been foomigutted, so there’s no
fear, I ’sure ye, sir.”

6 No, 10, man, ) swan to go, I say,” was the
answer; whereupon the warder proceeded to un-
lock door after door as before, and to conduct
Uncle Ben and his nephew back to the gate.

‘“Who are these boys?” asked the old uncle; ‘a
fresh batch of prisoners just come in, I suppose 2”

‘‘ No, sir!” was the sharp response ; ‘‘ they’s the
s charges !”

Uncle Ben as well as the warder alluded to a
group of some half-dozen lads who had cast the

 

* These figures are no fiction—but were taken down un
der similar circumstances,—See “ Great World of London,”
Part VIII, p. 414.FELONS IN THE CRADLE. 397

prison garb, and now stood gathered about the little
clerk’s office beside the gate-room, habited in their
own rags and tatters, ready to regain their liberty.
Half an hour before they had been warmly and
comfortably clad, but now many of them stood
shivering in their scanty and rent apparel.

One was without a jacket, while another had
his, coat pinned up so as to hide the want of a
waistcoat, and perhaps a shirt.

Uncle Ben waited to see the story to its end.

‘* William Collins!” was called out from within
the clerk’s office, and the warder outside the
office-door, echoing the name, told the boy who
answered to it, to step up to the office window.

Ifere he was placed in a small passage, immedi-
ately in front of the casement, within which stood
one of the prison clerks, against a desk in the office
on the other side.

‘“You ever been here before?” asked the clerk,
in a tone of authority.

“No,” was the simple answer.

‘ B’longs to the Docks,” interposed the atten-
dant warder; ‘‘and a friend’s come for him.”

‘“‘Ho! let ’m step here, then,” rejomed the
clerk; and the ‘“ friend,’ who was a boy hardly
older than the young thief himself, no sooner
appeared outside the window, than the voice
within went on, ‘‘ Whoa’ you?”

‘‘Collins’s brother, sir,” the boy responded.

‘‘ Well,” the voice continued, “ His Majesty’s
justices of the peace ‘uv oddered this boy a
shilling, and they ’opes they'll never see ’m here
again. So do you ta’ care of him.” And with this
admonition, and the money, the couple passed on,
to wait till the rest were ready to depart.

‘‘We alwa’s sen’s letter to paren’s or fren’s of
pris’nus, sirs, prevus to ’scharging on em,” ex-
plained the chief warder, who stood aside with

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the two Benjamin Franklins, while they watched
the: proceedings. ‘‘ We does this so that the bys’
fren’s may be at gate at the time of thur going
out, so’s to take charge on ’em.”

‘James Billington!” was next shouted out.

The minute afterwards a mere urchin made his
appearance outside the office window, his head
scarcely reaching above the sill.

‘‘You’ve been in forrobbing yer mother, eh 2”
began the’ clerk, who had perceived that there
were strangers present, and therefore commenced
laying on the morality, in full force. “What a
horrible fellow of a son you must be to go and do
that! Why must you go plundering her, poor
woman, of all persons in the world? The next
boy to you has been flogged, and that'll be your
case if ever you come here again, I can tell you’
and having delivered himself of this lecture,
he put his head out of the window, and inquired :
‘* Anybody for James Billington ?”

‘‘ Nobody for Billington,” answered the gate-
keeper.

‘* Where does your mother live ?” demanded the
clerk,

‘“In'a cellar in Hold Street, please sir,” was the
reply of the ‘boy, with a smile on his hp; and
utterly unaffected, of course, by what had been
said to him,

‘‘ B’y’s beem here offen afore,” the chief warder
said aside to Uncle Ben. “ EHe’s bad boy “deed,
sir |?

‘“ Henry Norris,” was the next lad called for:

‘“ How long ha’ you been here, Norris 2” the
clerk began with this one:

‘Six weeks,” the boy said, doggedly.

‘‘ How often afore ?’ the other went on.

“Three times here, and twice in jail up in the
country,” was the cool and frank rejoinder.

YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,; eee
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‘‘How CAME you To BREAK Sixty PANES oF GLASS, EH ?”’

a diaadeie ene eeFELONS IN THE CRADLE. 399

‘‘Ha! were getting it out! of you a little,”
added the clerk. .‘* Nobody for Norris, I spose ?”
he said, again thrusting his head out of the window.

‘* No, sir,” exclaimed the: gatekeeper.

‘¢'Thomas Wilson,” was then ealled.

“What time:ha’ you been here, Wilson?” in-
terrogated the clerk, as a fresh boy came up to
the window, but who was so short that the man
in the office had to thrust his head out, in order to
see him.

‘“Ten days; please sir,” answered the brat, in a

whining tone.

“« And how offen afore : ?? demanded the other.
Six time, please sir,” the boy went on, whining,

“ Now that’s very pretty for A child of your
age, ain’t it?” continued the moral man in office.
‘* How came you to break sixty panes of glass ?—
for that's what you were charged with, you: know
—eh ?’

‘eT did it all along with other boys, please sir,
—eaving stones,’ the child again whined out:

‘A set of mischeevous young ragamuffins,” the
moralist persisted. »‘* Was the house empty—cnh ?’

“No, please sir, it wer’n’t no house,)sir; it
were a hold factory, please sir; and there was
about a hundred panes broke afore we begunned ;
so us boys was a trying to smash the rest on ‘em,
sir, when I got took.” Such was the childish
e «planation of the felonious offence.

Anybody for boy of the name of Thomas
Wilson ?” shouted out the clerk.

‘No, sir; nobody for Wilson,” the gatekeeper
made answer once more.

‘‘Well, then,” continued the clerk, ‘‘ that’s all
the ’scharges for to day. So you can let ’em all
vo, Bennett.”

“Come along, Ben,” said the uncle, hurriedly
as he heard the last words; “I want to see the

”
oAQO YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

end of all this. Good day, warder, good day ;”
and the moment afterwards the officer in charge
of the gate opened the outer door, and the wretched
young thieves and vagabonds were once more at
large in the world.

Uncle Ben passed with his nephew througk
the prison portal at the same time, and stood
close against the gate, watching the proceedings
of the hberated boys.

The lad whose ‘‘brother” had come to take
charge of him, had two other youths of rather
questionable appearance, waiting to welcome him
outside the prison gates.

The other little creatures looked round about, to
see if they could spy any friend of theirs loitering
in the neighbourhood.

None was to be seen.

Of all the young creatures discharged from the boys’
prison that morning, not a father, nor a mother, nor even
a grown and decent friend was there to receive them.*

Uncle Ben stood and watched the wretched little
friendless outcasts turn the corner of the road-
way, and saw the whole of them go off in a gang,
in company with the suspicious looking youths
who had come to welcome the boy whose
‘‘brother” alone had thought him worth the
fetching.

Then turning to his little nephew he cried
aloud: “If ever you forget this lesson, Ben,
you've a heart of stone, lad—a heart of stone !”

* The bare fact,CHAPTER. XXET,
UNCLE BEN AT HOME.

Ir has been said that it is impossible to stand up
under an archway during an April shower, with
a man of really great mind, without being im-
pressed that we have been conversing with some
superior person.

But—no matter, let it pass.

Nevertheless, it is certain that we have but to
enter the ordinary sitting-room (not the “ show-
room,” mark!) of any person, great or small, in
order to read in every little article of furniture or
knick-knackery, or even in the odds and ends that
we find scattered about, some slight illustration of
the pursuits, the habits, the tastes, the affections,
ay, and even the aspirations of the individual to
whom the chamber belongs.

Uncle Ben’s ‘‘own room” was not a “ reception-
room,” but a “ retiring-room ;” a small chamber on
‘‘ the two-pair front,” that served him at once for
study and dormitory too.

On one side of the apartment stood the high
turn-up bedstead, with its blue and white checked
curtains drawn closely round it, and bulging out
from the wall, like the hind part of a peep-show
caravan. ‘I'he furniture was of the straight-

backed, rectangular, and knubbly kind, usually
seen in curiosity shops now-a-days; but which, in
Uncle Benjamin’s time, was hardly old fashioned
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402 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

and this consisted simply of a small old oaken table,
knobbed over with heads of cherubim round the
sides, with legs as bulky as a brewer’s drayman’s,
and a kind of wooden ‘‘catch-cradle” to unite
them at the base, as well as two or three chairs
with backs as long, and legs as short, as weasels.
In one corner, was set a kind of small triangular
cupboard, with a square of looking-glass in the
lid, and a basin let into a circular hole beneath ;
but though this was fitted with a small door below,
tho style of workmanship was so different from
the rest of the furniture, that had it not been for
the box of tools in another part of the room, one
might have wondered what country carpenter had
wrought it.

Against the wall, dangled a few book-shelves
slung on a cord, and these also were obviously of
home manufacture. Here the very backs of the
volumes (without reference to the marginal notes,
with which many of the pages were scribbled
round) formed a small catalogue of the tastes,
principles, and habits of thought peculiar to the
man who had ‘ picked them up cheap ” at auctions

and book-stalls—for many had the lot-mark, or

second-hand price-label, still partly sticking to
their covers. Here one shelf was devoted to
Shakspeare’s “Plays and Sonnets,” Bacon's “ No-
vum Organum,” and ‘Moral Essays ;” Newton’s
“Principia,” “Optics,” and ‘‘ Observations on the
Prophecies of Holy Writ;”’ Milton’s “ Paradise
Lost,” ‘Comus,” “ L’ Allegro,” and ‘‘ Penseroso,”
as well as his ‘“‘Character of the Long Parlia-
ment ;” Butler’s ‘‘ Hudibras,” Mandeville’s “‘ Fable
of the Bees, or Private Vices Publick Benefits,”
and “The Port Royal Logic ;” Erasmus’ “ Praise
of Folly,” Owen Feltham’s ‘“ Resolves,” and a
translation of Seneca on “Old Age;” “A BriefUNCLE BEN AT HOME. 403
Account of the C ontroversies between the Nomi-
nalists and Realists,” John Bunyan’s “ Pilgrim’s
-rogress,” and Sir ictus More’s “ Utopia, or the
Happy Republic ; ” Longinus “On the Sublicne and
Beautiful,” ' Bishop Butler’ s ‘*Sermons on Human
Nature,” Evelyn’s “Sylva, or a Discourse ‘on
Forest Trees,” as well as Sir Thomas Brown’s
“* Religio-Medici,” and << Vulgar Errors.”
On the shelf beneath this again were packed the
‘Life of Martin Luther.” anal his (ae able alls?
the ‘* Trial and Martyr dom of John Huss,” and ie
works of Wycliff, with Baxter’s “ Plea for the
Quakers ;” the Sermons of B ishop Fuller and Jere-
my Taylor, together with the “‘ Holy I Living and
Dying ” of the latter, besides Peter Folger’s quaint
poem entitled “A Looking- Glass for the Times,”
Defoe’s ‘Shortest W ay with the Dissenters,” el
Dr. Mather’s ‘‘ Essay to do Good,’”—not forgetting

‘The Whole D uty of Man.”

Then the lower shelf of all was filled with
Plutarch’s ‘ Lives,” and Puller’ s ‘* Worthies,”
“The History of the Crusades,” Jo ee “ His.
tory of the Jews,” ‘The History of E ngland, ;
and also that of “ The Christian Church :? t henides
Raleigh’s “‘ Travels Round the World,” and ‘« Some
account of the present state of see

Moreover there were a few stray volumes
equally characteristic of the occupier of the apart-
ment ; such as Nicholas Culpepper’s ‘‘ Herbal,”
and a “Treatise on Apparitions and Ghosts,” to-
gether with a small ‘“‘ Manual of. Short-hand,” a
‘* History of Witchcraft,” a copy of the ‘ ‘ Test and
Corporation Acts,” a pocket “Latin Dictionary,”
and a well- thambed ‘* Concordance ;” whilst ar-
ranged along the top of the drawers beneath, was
a series of huge volumes labelled ‘‘ Biblical Com-
mentaries ;” and secretly stowed away on one of
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404 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

the shelves of the cupboard in the wall, beside the
fireplace, was a small regiment of octavos in the
shape of Bayle’s ‘‘ Philosophical Dictionary,” and
the folio edition of Hobbes’ ‘‘ Leviathan,” as well
as his ‘‘ Analysis of the Human Intellect and
Affections.”

Again, the few prints about the room were each
illustrative of the true character of little Ben’s god-
father, and told the observer that Uncle Benjamin
was something more than a strict Puritan in his
tastes. For pinned against the wall was Holbein’s
‘¢ Dance of Death,” as well asa few of Rembrandt’s
etchings, that he had picked up from his Dutch
friends in the town; then besides these there was
agrand steel engraving of ‘Thomas Franklin, his
elder brother, in his barrister’s wig and gown (this
was dedicated to Squire Palmer of Northampton),
together with a small water-colour painting of the
old smithy at Ecton, in Northamptonshire, as it
appeared after the heavy snow-storm of 1642, with
“ Benjamin Franklin, Pinxit,” scribbled in one corner.
Further, above the mantelpiece, was pinned one of
the pictorial conceits that were so popular at the
period, consisting of a full-length portrait of Uncle
Ben himself, drawn half ‘‘ in his habit as he lived,”
and half-skeleton, and evidently painted by the
same hand as sketched the family forge; whilst,
on the other side of this, was a simple curl of
flaxen hair, framed and glazed, with the signature
of a letter in a female-hand pasted below it, say-
ing, merely,

“ Thine till death, Mary.”

The only evidence of the religious temperament
of the man was the following Bible text, written
out large, in Uncle Ben’s own hand, and pasted up
between the lock of hair and the deadly-lively

portrait of Uncle Ben himself :—UNCLE BEN AT HOME. 405

 

‘“When thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the
hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in
the synagogues, and in the corners of the streets ;
that they may be seen of men. Verily, I say unto
you, They have their reward.

‘“ But thou, when thou prayest, enter into
thy closet; and when thou hast shut thy door,

 

 

 

pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy
father which seeth in secret shall reward thee
openly.” Matis 21. &, ©.

?

 

 

 

The underscoring of the words ‘seen of men,”
and “ when thou hast shut thy door,” was Uncle Ben’s
own.

On the table, however, stood the old family relic,
the ‘‘ joint-stool”—which Uncle Ben had begged
as an heir-loom of his elder brother Thomas the
barrister, before leaving Ecton for New England—
and by means of which the forefathers of the
Franklin family used to read their bible in secret,
(at a time when it was ‘‘ felony” to do so,) with the
book fastened under the lid, so that the volume
might be hidden the instant the approach of the
dreaded “apparitor” was announced by the boy
stationed at the door. The book was still kept
conscientiously hidden as before; for though the
government apparitor was no longer feared, Uncle
Ben dreaded the social spy (who will not allow
us still to worship as we please) catching him at
his devotions. Indeed, the honest-natured old
fellow hated in his heart anything that might even
seem like the parade of what he knew to be, when
deeply felt, a purely secret emotion; for he did
not scruple to declare, that as love is always mute
in its profundity, and grief chatters only whenLL EO

 

 

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406 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

dumb despair is passing into whining melancholy,
so true religious reverence is silent and solemn as
the woods which are ever congenial to it.

Within this joint-stool also was kept the printed
list, that was regularly sent to Uncle Ben every
year, of the subscriptions and donations to the
principal hospital of the town during the past
twelvemonth. The eye might have looked up
and down the grand names and the rich array of
figures till doomsday, and never have found there
even so much as a B. F. 21s.; though, in turning
over the pages, it might have detected written at
the end of the long list, in the same clear hand as
that which had penned the text over the mantel-
piece, the following quotation :—

“¢ Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound
a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the syna-
gogues and in the streets ; that they may have glory of
men. Verily L say unto you, They have their reward.

“But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand
know what thy right hand doeth.”

These, with the addition of the ever-memorable
two volumes of manuscript sermons, that he had
taken down himself from the most celebrated
preachers of his time—and a dumpy ear-trumpet,
that was not unlike a cow’s crumpled horn, and
which of late years he had used in church, so as
not to lose a word of the discourse he wanted to
transcribe; these, we say, with occasionally one
flower in a tumbler of water, and a Dutch oven
for the cooking of “‘ Welsh rarebits”—for which
the old man frankly confessed an over-weening
weakness of the flesh—made up our broker’s in-
ventory of Uncle Ben’s worldly goods.

The boy and his uncle sat at either end of the

small oaken table, with the joint-stool between

them, sipping their morning’s porringer of bread-eeLOOP CP a NT RE te

ESS

Nw

 

Uncire Ben Expiains tHe Duties oF LIFE.

ied a ekUNCLE BEN AT HOME,

and-milk, in front of the little wood fire that
crackled away on the hearth; for the autumn days
had suddenly set in chilly.

‘“ Now, Master Ben,” began the godfather, “‘ we
have looked up our text, and are well primed for
the discourse, so I hope you’ve got your sitting
breeches on this morning; for I fancy we shall
want some sticking-plaster, lad, to keep you to your
chair before I have done with you. Yet stay,
when we’ve got the porringers out of the way,
you shall have my picture there of the old smithy
at Ecton to copy ; so you cansitand draw, while I
walk about the room and talk—and that'll take
the fidgets out of the pair of us.”

{t was not long before the breakfast things were
cleared away, and room made at one corner of the
table for the sheet of paper, as well as the painting
that the boy was to work upon while he listened.

Then the old man, having cut a pencil for the
youth, with a knife that had no end of blades and
a small set of tools besides in its handle, and lent
him his box of colours for the occasion, said,

“There, lad, now go to work—sketch the outline
in lightly first, and then just fill in the little bits
of colour here—the red glare of the fire inside the
forge, you see, and the dark, swarthy figure there
of old Mat Wilcox; for that was meant for Mat.
I wonder where he is now, poor fellow. I re-
member well his standing to me for the picture—
just as you see him there, Ben, with his shirt-
sleeves rolled up, and his big leathern apron on,
in the act of hammering away at the glowing bit
of metal he holds in the pincers. And after that,
lad, you can put in the black clouds of smoke
pouring out of the forge chimney, and the gray
leaden sky there, as well as the bright-green little
specks of house-leek that the snow has not quite
covered over on the roof at one part, you see—and

 

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408 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

the robin, too, perched on the thatch where the
snow’s thawed there by the flue, and with the
trident marks of his feet all along the roof. Then
that done, lad, you can pass on to colour in the
under parts of the boughs here of the old beech-
tree that grew beside the forge, and the two or
three little children there peeping in at the door—
let me see, whose children were they? Oh, I re-
member. ‘* Ha—ah!” the old man sighed, ‘‘ what
would I give to see the old place again, and have
all the fresh thoughts of one’s youth rush back
into one’s brain! Ha—ah! but that can never be
now. There,” he broke off suddenly, as he flung
the recollections from him, « you needn’t take any
particular pains over it, boy; for it isn’t the sort
of thing to please my taste now. 'There’s too much
waite and too much bright colour about it to suit
my eye at present. Still it’s a nice thing to look
upon, Ben, bad as it is—a very nice thing ; for
when I did it I wag but little more than your
own age, boy, and I can hardly glance at it now
without feeling young again. However, this’ll
never do,” he broke away suddenlv again; “for
we must go to work, the pair of us.”

 

OHAPTER XX.
A PEEP INTO THE HEART,

Tar old man passed his hands behind his skirts,
and began striding up and down the room, as he
said, ‘“‘ Well, lad, we understand something about
the business and the amusements of life, and we
now want to find out what are its duties,”

‘Oh, yes, uncle,” cried the boy, ‘I know nowA PEEP INTO THE HEART, 409

what you mean—what I saw at the poor-house
and the jail taught me a great deal.”

‘* Not so fast, boy, not so fast! We'll see what
is the lesson they ought to teach you by-and-by,”
rejoined the uncle. ‘‘ All in good time, my litle
philosopher, all in good time. Now you remem-
ber I told you, Ben, that to experience a sensual
pleasure, it is essential that the object should be
immediately present to us ? ‘The sugar, for instance,
is on our tongue—the perfume in our nostrils—
the musical note ringing in the ear, and then we
feelimmediately, without any thought intervening,
that the sensation is more or less agreeable to us.
With an intellectual pleasure, however, the enjoy-
ment is never derived directly from the sensible
impression itself; but rather from the peculhar
nature of the thoughts, or intellectual perceptions
engendered within the brain. Jor instance, in
the pleasure we derive from wit: the sensible im-
pression which causes the perception of the odd
association may be neither agreeable nor dis-
agreeable to us. We may not care about the tone
in which it is uttered, nor the paper and print on
which we read it; but the perception of the ex-
travagance in the connection of the ideas is no
sooner forced upon us by such means, than we
are immediately thrown into convulsions of
delight. So again with the imagery and sug-
gestions of poetry, and the contemplation of
works of high art, as well as the sublimities of na-
ture; the mere sensation has nothing to do with
the intellectual enjoyment—further than being
the cause of the peculiar condition of mental exer-
cise, excitement, or satisfaction we are thrown into,
and from which alone the enjoyment proceeds.”

«Yes; I think I can make out the difference
pretty well, uncle,” interposed the boy, looking
up from his drawing for a minute.eon

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410 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

‘“* Very well, Ben,” went on the teacher; “and I
must now point out to you another distinction,
and that is the main distinction, between the in-
tellectual and the moral pleasures of our nature.”

The boy paused to hear the explanation.

‘““In what are called moral pleasures,” con-
tinued the other, ‘‘ there is always associated a
perception of some good or evil happening to
ourselves or others; but with intellectual plea-
sures no such perception is corinected.”

‘Really, uncle, I don’t see that,” argued the little
fellow. ‘Isn't this picture now good to me? and
wasn’t what you said to me about books the other
day just as good to me too, in its way, as what
old ‘Mother’ said about the poer little prison
babies ?”

‘‘'The confusion, my little man,” replied Uncle
Ben, ‘‘is merely the confusion of words loosely
used, rather than any want of distinctness in the
ideas. We call sweetmeats good, and say that
such a poem is good; and we speak of a good joke,
a good idea, and even a good number, or a good
deal ; as well as good fortune, and good men. But
this is only our vague way of talking, and there is
no necessity to be always ‘speaking by the card,’
as Shakspeare calls it; for this would make our
conversation savour more of the crabbedness of
scholastic logic, than the grace of familiar inter-
course. We need to be precise only where preci-
sion is needed, in order to prevent mistakes be-
tween the delicate shades of ideas and feelings.
Jn common parlance it is enough to say a thing is
green, for us to know roughly what is its peculiar
colour; but with artists, who are aware that there
are infinite varieties of this particular colour, we
require to define if possible the precise hue or
species of green; is it light green or ‘ green ver-
diter,’ or ‘terre-verte,’ or ‘ Brunswick green,’ orA PEEP INTO THE HEART. 41]

is it a ‘green gray,’ and so on, Well then, the
word good, in its strict signification, is anything
which benefits or promotes the permanent well-
being of ourselves or others; and not merely that
which pleases us for the moment—no matter how
purely or transcendently. In this sense, friend-
ship is good, kindness good; the same as food is
good, and even medicine itself is good—though
it may be sensually disagreeable to us.”

“Oh, I see what you mean now!” said the boy,
‘good then, | suppose, is what serves to do us
good, as people say.”

“Right, lad! It is what tends to promote our
worldly welfare; therefore you will see readily
enough, that however much a smart joke or fine
poem may serve to delight us, it cannot logically
be said to be good; and that simply because it
does not serve to advance our well-being.”

“Yes, yes, uncle, I understand it now per-
fectly,” exclaimed the young artist.

‘““'That point being settled then,” proceeded the
old man, ‘of course it follows that a moral
pleasure is the enjoyment we derive from the
perception of some worldly good, or benefit,
accruing to ourselves or others. So now let us
proceed to find out what this worldly good or
benefit really means, and then we shall understand
why things may be agreeable, and good too, as
food and fruit are ; health, as well as kindly counsel
and charity too.”

‘Well, uncle,” asked the youth, who was
anxious after what he had seen, to have the riddle
unriddled as quickly as possible, ‘“‘ and what does
worldly good or benefit, as you say, really mean ?”

‘‘T must turn your thoughts back again, Ben,
before answering that question,” was the reply.
‘¢ Now what did I tell you was the great boon of
sensual pleasure?” he inquired.

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eit ‘Oh! I remember, uncle!” the little fellow
i i cried, starting from his seat; ‘‘you called them
| ‘ after-graces ;’ you said they were enjoyments that
had been superadded—that was the word you

used—to the operations of the senses themselves ;

and that there was no real necessity for the addi-

1a Hi tion of them ever having been made. I recollect
VA I well, how you told me that light was quite enough
1 i for the purpose of seeing, still the beauty of colour
‘ and form had been added toit; sound sufficient for
| hearing, still melody had been connected with i1t,—
ev a I’m repeating it all as nearly as possible in your
Pe A a HE words, uncle ;—and that though food alone was
a necessary to allay appetite and sustain life, yet it

a | had been made delicious to us as well. And all
| these things you said too, uncle, were ‘ signal evi-

Pa dences,—I remember the term well—of the good-
Pau Ail | | ness and kindness of the Creator to his creatures.”
|

|

|

 

Uncle Ben took the little fellow and hugged him
in his arms; for this was the religion he wanted
a ah his godson to get fast and deep into his heart, and
a the religion that the old man dearly loved to talk
Wi i about too; for he knew how it made a temple of
| wm Wh the whole world, a temple not only of the highest
u\ | HY) Bl i beauty, but of the highest and sweetest worship ;

| Hie il filling the mind to overflowing with the fine com-
Ht posite emotion of admiration, love, gratitude, sub-
a limity, and reverence. Again and again he hugged
OUT the boy, for he now knew that he had not been
| talking to the winds as they sat by the sea-shore
a at night; and he told the little fellow with his
| a | kisses, how glad he was to see the fruit-buds burst-
| OT Th ing forth at last in the little sapling that he had
TB long loved to tend and rear.
Hh The boy knew the old man’s inarticulate lan-

a AT guage by heart—as well and naturally, as the
I a young bird comprehends the chirrup of its parent ;
and every fond embrace of Uncle Ben made his

 

nh aSA PEEP INTO THE HEART. 413

nerves quiver, as harp-strings, that are tuned in uni-
son, are said to vibrate responsively to each other.

Presently the tncle was pacing the chamber, as
before, and the boy once more sketching away at
the table.

‘‘ Well then, my little man, I now want to show
you,’ resumed the teacher, ‘‘that as our sensual
and intellectual pleasures are bountiful, and won-
drously benevolent additions to the mere per-
celving and knowing faculties of the senses and
the intellect itself; so the moral pleasures, or the
sense of moral good, is the crowning goodness and
kindness of all. Why should we have been made
to feel gratified for anything, Ben? why ?”

He paused for a moment or two, and then added,
‘““'There was no necessity, lad, for such a feeling ;
the exigencies of continued existence did not re-
quire it—for flies live on for a term; they go after
their food, and eat it, and yet no insect ever had
an affection for the hand that fed it. Try and
imagine fondness in a gnat, gratitude in a flea,
love in a maggot, and you will comprehend that
there was no vital necessity for the addition of any
such emotions to man. ‘The human maggot might
have seen and thought, calculated and reasoned,
just as acutely as he does now: he might have
known as much science; have learnt as “many
languages ; have been as profound in the subtle-
ties of logic and metaphysics as he is at present,
without any heart at all. Nay, he might perhaps
have been even deeper skilled, and more subtle
and clearsighted, lacking human emotions than
possessing them; for the heart often warps the
judgment of the brain, as is seen in what is
termed sentiment; even as the brain often checks
the promptings of the heart, as we ourselves, Ben,
saw in the matter of prison discipline.”

‘Well, uncle, and why should we have beenie YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

made to feel grateful for anything ?” asked young
ben; and he would have added, “grateful as I
now feel to you,” but, boy as he was, he blushed
at the idea of making empty professions.
‘“Simply, my son, because God, in his goodness,
has willed it so,” returned the pious old man,
solemnly ; and a quick observer might have noted
the uplifting of the soul at the same time, in. the
slight elevation of the eye, as he uttered the words,
“We might have eaten our bread, lad; yes, and
have relished the dainty snack of the new loaf
too, and yet not have felt the grateful and half
sacred pleasure we do in looking at a corn-field.
We might have slaked our thirst in the crystal
spring; ay, and have enjoyed all the deliciously
pure delight of a draught of cool, clear, and fresh
water, and yet never have positively loved the
brook-side, nor have regarded certain wells as holy
places. We might have quaffed our mother’s milk,
Ben (that wondrous elixir which the kindly provi-
dence of the great Father has made to gush forth,
as the one indisputable human birthright, on our
very entry into the world—a fluid in which the
subtlest chemistry can detect no germ of bone,
muscle, or nerve, hair, nail, or blood, and yet
which holds all the elements of the human body
in the most perfect sclution), we might have
quaffed this, I say, and we might still have found
our first delight in the sweet fountain of our
parent’s bosom; and yet the babe need not have
been made to turn up its little eyes and smile its
gratitude, in the face of her who nourishes it, as
it drinks in the liquid life. Neither was there
any vital necessity why the very first emotions
stirring the heart should have been the purest
and holiest of all worldly feelings; those of lore
and gratitude, almost to adoration, for the ventle
and fond creature that nurses us.A.PEEP INTO THE HEART. 415

‘“We might, lad,’

’ the old man continued, after

a pause, ‘‘ rather have been sent into the world
mentally mature ; with our brain as fully developed
as that of a new-born bee, and have been created
wise and reasoning young imps, had it been so
willed ; and we might then have asked ourselves,
ag we lay in our cradle, why should we be grateful
for all this maternal care? why should we love the
mother that feeds and fosters us? Our judg-
ment, too, might under such conditions have whis-
pered in our ear, it was no merit on her part to do
so; she was made to love and cherish, and cannot
choose but obey the impulse within her. And all
this fine common-sense might have frittered
human gratitude down to mere brute folly, when
looked at under the withering scrutiny of cold-

blooded criticism.

Yet, my little man, logically

foolish as this same gratitude or love may appear,
it isassuredly morally beautiful; ay, and the high-
est moral beauty too: and without it we should
have begun life but as mere parasitical vermin, with
no sense nor regard for the body which feeds us.”

«Oh, uncle, uncle!” exclaimed the boy, throw-
ing down his pencil; ‘‘ I never knew there was so
much goodness in the world.”

“Tt is a world full of goodness, Ben, as it is a
world full of beauty, if we will but open our eyes
to it,” responded the teacher, “ for it is G od’s own
handiwork, ornate with all the wondrous good-
ness and beauty of the divine nature.”

The old man reflected for a moment, and then
said, ‘‘ Well, you see now, Ben, that we have our
sense of moral good and moral beauty given to us,
over and beyond our reason and our sense of in-
tellectual delight; even as our capacity of enjoy-
ing the agreeableness of sensible impressions has
been superadded to our mere sensations them-

selves; and we can only bow our head and lift

 

soning canmmannaaRAleRe
— uo
: Sat BIR416 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

up our soul in thankfulness for the profuse bene.
volence of the gifts.”

The little fellow covered his face with his
hands, and cried aloud with all a boy’s fervour,
“Thank you! thank you both.”

‘‘ Now, it is the instinctive gratitude we feel, lad,
when any good is done to us,” the uncle resumed,
‘‘or, indeed, when any pleasure is given us—as
well as the instinctive love which springs up
within us, for the cause of such pleasure or good—
that makes the whole world, nct only a world of
beauty, but a world of love too. Itis the con-
tinued reverting of the mind to past enjoyment,
and the gratefulness that the mere memory of a
pleasurable feeling produces on the soul, that make
up that sweet and tender affection of our nature,
which we call regard; and it is this continued re.
gard, or the new delight we experience in contem -
plating the causes of our past delights, which
makes objects that are beautiful to us become objects
of love also. Hence, we not only like the flowers,
the birds, and the sunshine; the brooks and the
fields; the woods, the country lanes, and the sea-
shore, but we get to love them also. The entire
world thus comes to be garlanded over with our
affections, and every nook and corner of the earth
hung with some bright lamp of our adoration;
while even the light-threads of the stars them.
selves serve as golden cords to link our heart
with the very firmament. The sweet aroma of
the rose, for instance, Ben,” he went on, ‘‘ fills the
nostrils with a luscious perfumed vapour—an
ethereal incense of honey-dew, that steeps the
sense in a balm of redolent delight; while the
delicate tinting of the blossom, that is a pinky
ball of beauty—together with the wondrous pack-

ing of its many petals, and the fine smooth texture
of the rose-leaves, that are soft as foam in the handA PEEP INTO ‘THE HEART, AIT

—as well as the charming symmetry and rounded-
ness of the composite form, with the exquisitely
varied undulating lines of the details—besides the
pretty serrate edges and elegant oval-shape of the
richly contrasting green leaves below, jutting
here and there from the reedy flower stem,
bespurred with many a little spine; all these
points of prettiness serve in their turn to charm
the palate of the eye with the daintiest visual
luxury: so that the sense is doubly gratified. And
then, in the very gratefulness of our nature, the
mind turns instinctively to the cause of the delight,
and gets to love, and look with thankfulness upon
the little garden beauty for the pleasure it has given
us. Nor does the expression of the soul’s orati-
tude last only while the charm is on us; but, on
the contrary, so enduring is our thankfulness, that
even the very idea of the rose afterwards is suffi-
cient to revive the sense of all its associate
winsomeness; and thus we never hear the name of
the flower, nor think of the graceful, odorous blos-
som, without having a regard for the object itself—
without turning the mind back to the enjoyment
it gave us—and feeling a faint touch of the past
pleasure thrilling the brain again. As it is with
the rose, Ben, so is it with every other object of
natural beauty; till the world itself becomes a
galaxy of bright associations and glowing endear-
ments; and every tiny bit of prettiness we can
remember in the hedge-rows, on the hill side, by
the river’s brink, in the caves, on the rocks, upon
the cliffs, and along the shore—seems to shine
like a little star in the brain, and to twinkle in the
dark dome of the memory with all the tender
alory of the holiest love.”

Young Ben’s heart was too deeply touched for
words; so, starting from his seat, he ran towards
his teacher, and flinging his arms about the old
24ll i ee ee

 

 

 

 

 

 

418 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
man’s neck, kissed him again and again, as a
he was trying to give back a little of the love
his uncle had Bbyed! in him: and tien) -as’ if half
abashed, he hid his head ‘pon the other’s shoulder.
The godfather knew what it all meant, and loved
the boy tie more for the very speechlessness of
the emotion that was on him.

‘¢Come, my lad,” at last Uncle Ben said, ‘‘ we
have too much to do, and too little time £6 do it
in, to waste the moments in fondness; so go back
to your seat now, and listen.” And then he went
on again as follows: “ But not only do we get to
love every object of beauty in the world about
us,” said he, ‘‘as if it were really a friend and
benefactor to us—and to hate to see it injured or
destroyed, as well as to desire and long for the
renewed possession of it—but we get to ‘love also
the varied and different aspects of nature in the
same manner. We love, for example, the blush-
ing beauty of the young virgin morn, as she steps
from out her bed of night, and parts the crimson cur-
tains of her oriel window, to peep at the waking
world once HIRE and we love the fiery glory ae
the sunset, too, when the great orb of day seems
to die with all the peaceful ¢ randeur of a martyr
amidst the lurid flames—or lies like some mighty
hero welling his blood upon the earth, as he gives
his last look of slory to ‘the world. We love the
gvolden fervour a the noon ; and the silver serenity
of the night. We love the maniac rage of the
foaming and howling storm ; and the fine thought-
ful calm of the forest. We love the bustle of the
workday world of enterprise, when the city seems
to roar like the sea, with the chafing tide ef
human passion; and, on the other hand, we love
the lull of the sabbath, when the strife of human
greed ceases for a while, and the earth 1s quiet as
when the flocks are folded for the night. WeA PEEP INTO THE HEART. 419

love the pageantry of travel; and the long pro

cession of new countries and strange people.

We also love the cosy rest and welcome looks of

the old familiar faces at home. We love the

tenderness and freshness of the new green of the

earth at spring-time, when the orchards are all

silvered over with their fleecy clouds of: fruit

blossoms, and the hedges are white as wedding-

favours, and redolent as new-mown hay, with the

flowering hawthorn; even as we love the rich

ripe glories of the summer, when the air is seen

to tremble above the ground, with the heat of the

soil, and the rivers look cool as moonbeams in the

blaze of day—when the crops undulate like a sea of

gold upon the land—when the bean-flower and the
clover make the fields as fragrant as gardens, and
the birds are all merry as children to find that
the earth’s feast is spread. We love, too, in its
turn, the mellower beauties of the autumn, when
the world is gay as a painter’s palette with the
many colours of the woods, the orchards, and the
plains—when the heads of the reapers are seen
above each golden pool of corn—when the trees
in the lanes have blades of wheat dangling from
their topmost boughs, and the jangling bells of
the harvest team sound cheerful as a marriage
chime, as the high-piled load of sheaves goes top-
pling along the road. We love the broad crystal
pavement of the sea as it lies smooth as a mirror
encupped in the vast silver chalice of the horizon,
and hived in by the grand pellucid cupola of the
skies ; even as we love the childish petulance of
the streamlet, with the broken shadow of its rustic
bridge quivering into long zigzag lines as the tiny
tide sweeps under it, dimpled over with many am
eddy, and crumpled as silver tissue into many a
curved and sparkling line. We love the ruined
castle, with the weeds and brambles growing in
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4?) YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

‘ne old banqueting hall; and we love the neat

cottage with the roses dangling, like balls of floral
fruit, over the doorway. We love the broad
expanse of nature as seen from the mountain-top,

when the earth seems like a little toy-world at
our feet, and the far-stretching sight gives one a
faint sense of Omnipresence in the 5 rastness of its
range ; and we love the little picturesque bits of
nature, like the gipsy camp with cave-like tent
pitched in some sequestered lane, and the cal-
dron swinging over the fire on its trivet of boughs
-—with the olive-faced crone in her es red
cloak, filmed over with the white smoke, crouched
beside it—-and the old gray shock-coated horse
cropping the grass by the bank-side; and all
arched in by “the ereen vault of overhanging
tolage, through which the sunlght leaks in many
a big lustrous drop—till the brown pathway
is dappled as a deer’s back with the mixture of
light and shade. figihions we love the rosy inno-
cence and toddling helplessness of childhood ;

even as we love the silver bes uty of hale old age.
Then, again, we love the birds of the wood and
the grove—-the little lark at morning, that we can
hardly see in the dazzling of the sunbeam, trilling
forth a very rapture of song as it les bellied on
the air with the warm sun shining on its back;
and the nightingale in the night w aking the still-
ness with her notes, rich and resonant as an organ,
and pleasant as the midnight music which reminds
us of the Saviour’s birth. So again, too, we love
the fine old ancestral air there 1s about the clamour
of the rooks—the spectral-like whoop of the night
owl—the chime-hke ding-dong of the cuckoo’s
ubiquitous. cry, marking the first quarter of
the year—and the sharp twitter of the black-
backed swallows, as they flash to and fro in fine
forked flight over the surface of the pool, beforeA PEEP INTO THE BEART. 421

the thunder-cloud bursts upon the earih. We
love the young lambs, too, with their white curly
backs and baby-like bleat, as they run to the ewe
and butt their heads against her side, or as they
capriole for very gladness in the air; the hand-
some square forms of the brown cattle, with their
eyes as meek as slaves, and breath as sweet
as violets; the patient old jackass, with his down-
cast head and black velvety snout, and the fine
stoic resignation with which he bears the jibes
and cuffs of the world; and the faithful dog,
whose tail is another tongue, and who can read
his master’s looks as we do books. Indeed and
indeed, lad, there is not a source of pleasure in
the wide range of animate and inanimate nature
that is not a source of love also.”

“But, uncle,” asked the little pupil, ‘‘ you say
love comes of gratitude; are we then gratefu
to what you would call the stocks and stones
about us, which can’t help pleasing us whenever
we find pleasure in them ?”

‘Yes, Ben,” answered the teacher, ‘“‘ we are as
orateful, in a certain degree, to them as we are to
the mother who nurses us. Such is the abound-
ing spirit of thankfulness implanted in the human
breast, that there is not an object, however minute
and however senseless, which delights us, that does
not also inspire us with a sense of gratitude and
ultimate love for it.”

“Well, do you know I thought, uncle,” con-
tinued the boy, ‘‘that we were only grateful to
persons for favours.”

‘Ay, lad! you thought so because the innate
eratitude of our nature,” the other made answer,
‘is then intensified by the consciousness that the
favour conferred upon us, is in such cases, a volun-
tary act. We know that the human being might
have refrained from benefiting or pleasing us, had

 

 

 

 

 

 

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499 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

he so willed; and therefore we feel inordinately
thankful for the grace he has done us. But, Ben,
you forget, my boy, that I have shown you that
all our pleasures, whether sensual, intellectual,

-or moral ones, are really favours after all; since
‘they were in no way necessary for the purpose of
-continued existence, nor yet for the purposes of
“intelligence and reasoning either. And these are

favours conferred, too, remember, by a Being who
might have willed otherwise. It would seem,

“therefore, as if it was an intuitive sense of this

point, that makes even the child and the savage
‘ove the flowers, and the brook-side, and the
woods (and, therefore, feel the same instinctive
gratitude for them) as naturally as the wisest and
kindhest philosopher.”

“Oh, then, I see!” exclaimed the little fellow,
thoughtfully, “the love of nature is but the love

«Ol God, after all.”

‘* It is, my son,—the love of the beauty and eood-

2 a 5
mess of the Creator—the reverting of the mind to
the one Great Cause of all our enjoyments ; and the

natural intuition we have that such enjoyments are
pure favours or acts of grace to man. And it is

the consequent expression of our thankfulness for
the bounty of the gift which inspires, in its turn,
a devout love of the All-bounteous Giver.”

‘““T can only say thank you both once more,”
murmured the boy, as he pondered over the high
and holy thoughts that the old man had excited
in his soul.

‘‘But the world within us, Ben,—the world of
human thought and action, has as many sources of
love, as even the world of animate and inanimate
nature itself. We love play, for instance, and we
love work too if we will but put our heart into
the work—we love exercise, and we love rest—
we love humour, and we love reason—we loveA PEEP INTO THE HEART. 493

sclence, and we love poetry—we love the flash of
wit, ard we love the solemnity of meditation—we
love the ideal world of books, and we love the
bright glimpses of that world which we get in
works of art—we love the romance of adventure,
and we love the matter-of-fact of history—we
love the bright coloured imagination of fiction,
and we love the diamond purity and hardness of
truth. Further, if we love the sweet infection of
cheerfulness, we love also the sober gloom and
pensiveness of melancholy—if we love honour, we
love humbleness also—if we have an innate love
of power, weakness can. on the other hand, win
our love as well,—and if we have a savage hking
for pomp and splendour, we have at the same time
an equally natural affection for the unadorned
elegance of simplicity. Again, we love praise,
and we love good counsel, even though it have a
touch of kindly blame about it—we love the
strict equity of justice, and we love the blessed
indulgence of mercy—we love the lavish bene-
volence of charity, and we love too the wise thrift
of frugality—we love wealth, and yet we can love
the poor—we love chastity, and yet we have
ove enough to pity the frail—we love health, and
we love the afflicted and the sick—we love the
martyr, and the hero, and the great artist; the
philanthropist, the just judge, and the wise
governor. We love our parents and our children,
our kindred and our playmates, our friends and
benefactors, our neighbours and our countrymen ;
ay | and we have hearts large and human enough
to love the whole human race as well. And over
and above all we love the source of all love: the
one great Friend, and Benefactor, and Father, to
us—Him who gave us the very power to compre-
hend his wisdom and his goodness, and the high
faculty to love and adore Him for it.”

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424

The uncle sat mute for a while after the com-
pletion of the pean, and he covered his eyes with
his hand as he remained rapt in the beauty of his
own theme.

‘“You now see, Ben,” at length he resumed,
‘that if the brain of man can compass the entire
universe, at least the heart has an equally com-
prehensive power; and that the well-spring of
man’s love is as inexhaustible, as the objects upon
which it may be shed are infinite.”

‘““T see it is, uncle,” answered the little man,
thoughtfully, ‘‘and most wonderful it seems to
me that it should be so.”

‘‘ Now, lad, of this same love,” went on the old
man, “there are several delicate gradations and
shades—so delicate, indeed, that they are as diffi-
cult to fix in words, as it would be to give a name
to each different hair’s breadth of the rainbow
bands of interblending hues. However, mankind
has invented a few such terms, and these may
be said to indicate the more marked tones in what
may be called the chromatic scale of love and
affection. Starting, then, from utter indifference,
which is the zero in the graduated scale, we have
first the feeling of Respect, which is that faint ad-
miration and liking that we have for a person who
offends no natural or moral law—who breaks no
tie of kindred—who does no one any wrong, re-

is distinguished for no par-

YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

fuses no just demand, i
ticular faculty, and marked by no particular vice.
Such a person is what the world delights in so
much, my lad; ‘a respectable man ;’ an inoffensive
creature, who, if he does no good, at least does no
harm; for a human being, like a poem or a pic-
ture, or any other work of art which requires
high powers to make it excellent, is just respectable
when violating no rule of good taste, propriety,
or decency.A PEEP INTO THE HEART. A

« And what comes after respect, uncle ?” inquired
the youth.

“Why, Regard, lad,” answered the other; ‘‘and
this, as I have before said, is merely that sweet
and tender affection of our nature, which leads us
to look back with ideal delight upon some object
that has really delighted us. It is simply pleasur-
able contemplation—the fond disposition we have
to linger over and revert to any object which has
interested us. This is the feeling we entertain
for our neighbours and old schoolfellows ; and
even for the suffering, the miserable, and the
afflicted: as well as for the helplessness of age,
whether it be that of infancy or senility.”

‘Well, and after regard, uncle?” said little

Jen.

“Comes Lsteem, my boy—not as a necessary
consequence, but im mere orderly succession,”
rephed the elder one; ‘‘esteem, which is the
affection we have for whatever is of service to us
or others, and is difficult to obtain. it must be
difficult to obtain, Ben, or we should set no store
or value upon the abject ; and it must be of service,
or we should have no regard or care for it. Hence
you will see, my lad, that what is called esteem is
simply a feeling of regard with a sense of value
attached to it; and this therefore makes us loth
to lose what is estimable. This is the affection
which lies at the bottom of all friendship; since
a true friend is one that never hesitates to serve
ais. and whose acquaintance we can never afford
to lose. Hor & mam te be really estimable there
must be a certain amount of what is called ‘ worth’
about bim; that is to say, of qualities that are
more or less valued and prized, in the mental
and moral appraisement of the world, as being
spore or less serviceable to us, and which ave not
commonly mct with in the ordinary run of hu

 

 

 

 

ae426 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

=

ap manity. Thus, if we have merely a respect for
a that mental and moral negation—the respectable
Vii man—we have a positive esteem for the man of
! talent, and even the man of skill; as well as for
the man of honour and the man of generosity. If
we respect the just judge, we have an esteem for
| the lenient one. If we have a respect for the
ii | born poor, we have an esteem for those who are
i i the architects of their own fortune.”
| “You've done esteem now, haven’t you, uncle ”
asked the little fellow, growing pleased with the
ie i rapid succession ; ‘‘and then what have we ?”
A ‘Why, Admiration is the next soft tone in the
Wa ascending scale of the tender passion,” was the
| reply ; “and this is simply the intense regard
| which objects of wonder and beauty combined,
| force upon the soul; so that we are constrained to
al) linger over and dwell upon the contemplation of
A the extraor dinary charms which have, as it were,
He transfixed us. Admiration is the highest pleasur-
Hit a vble contemplation, interblent with the most
| a oe marvelment. Hence, to excite this feeling,
Ht two essentials must cohere in the object; the one
t | is, that 1t must be an object of loveliness, and the
\ ee MT a i other, that the loveliness must be so inordinate as
ny) a to amaze us; for without these twin qualities no
Na Hl object can be really admirable. It must seem extra-
| ordinarily beautiful, pleasing, or good to us, in
wt] WH order to set us nore ling in the midst of our
Pe a enjoyment, at the very rarity or uncommonness
ail Hl of the charms; for it is this delicious marvelment,
OWT Ben—this lovely wandering, and yet lingering, of
a a the thoughts over an object. of high beauty, hich
| hi makes up the state of mind that is usually called
‘rapture ;’ and which is, as it were, a delightful
swooning —the sweet waking trance of the heart
and intellect. Hence we do not admire the com-
monplace qualities of mere respectability; any

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tene

 

 

al elle ne ae eeA PEEP INTO THE HEART. 427

more than we admire the simply estimable quali-
ties of talent and worth; but we do admire
genius, and heroism, and sacrifice, and high per-
sonal and artistic beauty; because they are the
transcendent rarities, the supreme excellences of
the world about us.”

“Go on, uncle,” the boy exclaimed, as the old
man came to another pause. ‘‘ What follows
admiration ?”

«< Tove, Ben,” the godfather made answer ; “love,
of which we have said so much, and of which
there are volumes still to say, if there were but
time for the saying of it. Love follows admiration,
not only in regular succession, but generally as a
natural sequence too; for admiration is but the
first transient gleam of love, and love only the
steady and enduring flame of long-continued and
permanent admiration. And it is this persistence
of the emotion which develops the two other
tender elements that go to make up the one
composite passion. It develops first a disposition
not only to guard and protect the object of our
love against injury ; but also to cherish and benefit
it in every way we can: and secondly it develops
a desire to possess it, to remain for ever present
with it—for ever contemplating and for ever ad-
miring and enjoying it—for ever guarding it—
and for ever cherishing, benefiting, and gladden-
ing it. This is what is termed ‘true love,’ lad ;
the love of swains, a8 well as the love of children
for their parents, and the love of parents for their
children ; the love of warm friendship, the love of
high art, and the love of moral excellence; as
well as the love of natural beauty and.the love of
God also. Next in the scale we have—”

“ What, uncle ?” interjected the boy, determined
not to be baulked of his question.

“ Honour, lad,” proceeded Uncle Ben. “ Now

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een.428 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

honour is the admiration that we feel for any
superior quality or excellence which develops
a slight feeling of- awe, rather than love on the
contemplation of it; so that the emotion wants the
tenderness of admiring regard to cordialize it, and
partakes rather of the modesty of wondrous respect.
We honour our superiors; we honour the eveat,
the wise, the powerful, the brave, the noble, the
illustrious, and even our parents too; Indeed:
we honour whatsoever impresses us at once with a
sense of its superiority and our own inferiority.
Hence there is always a certain submissiveness
and deference in the outward display of this
feeling. It is the worldly worship that humility
offers up to worldly pride and worldly dignity.
The servant honours the master, the subject the
sovereign, the world the conqueror: even as the
little child honours its father, whilst it rather
loves the mother that has tended, fostered, and
fondled it.”

“Well, uncle,” said the boy, ‘what now 2”

‘“Why now, Ben, we have but to touch the
highest note in the scale—the highest within the
pitch and compass of the human soul; and thus to
stand upon the topmost rung of the Jacob’s ladder,
and look down upon the earth, almost from the
altitude of the heavens themselves.”

‘“And what is this highest note, uncle.” the
little fellow inquired as he looked up in the old
man’s face, and felt almost the self-same feeling
stirring his heart.

‘* Veneration, Ben! veneration!” * said his cod-

* It is worthy of note that the three words wonder, vene-
ration, and honour, are probably all etymologically identical,
being mere dialectic varieties of the same biliteral radical,
wn, on, or hn; for that wand v are philologically the same,
the Saxon witan, to show, and the Latin videre, to see,—the
Saxon win, and Latin vinwn, and a host of similar instances,
are indisputable proof; and that w or v is equivalent to theA PEEP INTO THE HEART. 429

father, ‘‘that fine, lofty, and composite emoticn
which is made up of the profoundest regard, tho
highest admiration, the purest and yet warmest
love and the most intense honour: that reverent
emotion which is usually associated not only with
so strong a tendency to guard and protect the
object of it from injury, as to make us hold it abso-
lutely sacred, and to look upon the desecration of it
as the highest crime; but also with so fervent a
desire to be for ever contemplating and admiring
it, and for ever lingering over its excellences and
its marvellous greatnesses and graces, as to lead
the mind to find its highest delight in the hynan-
ing of its praises, and the heralding of its glories,
such as occurs in what is commonly called worship.
Moreover, there is at the same time connected
with the emotion so deep a feeling of that submis-
siveness which is the outward expression of honour,
that an instinctive propensity comes upon the soul
to humble ourselves before the venerated object,
and to bow the head and bend the knee in its

 

Greck w, the Latin vendere, and Greek wveoua, are sufficient
to assure us; even as @pa and hora, amos and humerus
prove that the Greek @ aud ® are equal to the Latin ho.
Wonder comes to us directly from the Saxon wondrian ;
veneration from the Latin veneror; and honour (through
the Latin) from the Greek évos, value; and the funda-
mental signification is to be found in the Welsh gwyn, 2. €.,
what is white, fair; that which affords happiness, and which
is well known now to be the root of the Latin Venus (Welsh
gwener) and venustas. The etymological trine, therefore,
would appear to have signified originally the emotion be-
gotten by the perception of beauty ; and to have had the
idea of the worship which the highest beauty inspires,
afterwards superadded by the Latins, and so to stand for
veneration; and to have been restricted to the mere feeling
of marvelment by the Saxons, and thus to mean wonder ;
while the Greeks appear to have limited it to the mere value
or high esteem in which excellence is alway sheld—as in
honour.sameecanenc tae tes PONSA

 

 

 

 

 

  

A430 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

presence ; and that from a sense of the very over-
poweringness of the grandeur of it. This sub-
lime feeling, lad, which is the very ecstasy of the
human spirit—the most intense—the most elevat-
ing,and yet the most humbline—the most purify-
ing—and withal the most impassioned and fervent
of the many delights of which human nature is
susceptible, ig generally supposed to be given
only to the Most High,” But. though His tran-
scendent greatness and wondrous excellence exalt
the mind to the very highest pitch in the com.
pass of the soul’s fervour; nevertheless supreme
worldly greatness and excellence may still excite
the same feeling, though in an infinitely smaller
deprée. “Irie! there is strong tendency among
weak and zealot natures to make idols of men and
images, to bow the head and crook the knee to
some golden calf, some dressed-up Goll, or even to
the purple and fine linen potentates of the earth.
But though there ig no necessity, lad,” said the
honest and independent old Puritan, “to go down
on the belly to any man—any more than to a
trumpery toy—or to slaver over any bit of frail
humanity like ourselves with ‘your michtiness,’
or “your excellency,’ ‘ your reverence,’ or ‘ your
grace ’—any more than to offer up our worship to a
block of ornate wood symbolical of a saint: never-
theless, to the true magnates of human kind—doing
the highest good, creating the highest human
beauty, and displaying the highest genius and
power of soul—we should be wanting in decency
and gratitude, if we did not render to them the
highest earthly homage of which the human heart
is capable. So that, always remembering that
even they are men like ourselves, let us have all
the manliness of men, rather than the sycophantic
zeal of zealots in our worship ; but still be ready to

lift the hat with the profoundest respect, and atA PEEP INTO THE HEART. 431

the same time to love and honour, ay, and to
revere, the Great Artists, Heroes, and Martyrs, as
well as the Good Samaritans of the world. And
now that the rosary of love is complete,” con-
cluded the old man, ‘‘do you tell the beads, lad.”

‘“‘ First,” said little Ben, as he placed the finger
of one hand on the thumb of the other, so as to
count the emotions off as he enumerated them,
‘there is respect, then comes regard, then esteem,
then admiration, then love, and then—let me see
what comes next? oh, I know now; then honour,
and lastly veneration. Seven altogether ; the per-
fect number among the ancients, wasn’t it, uncle ?”

“Yes, boy, the number of the days of the week,
and the number of the planets,” the answer ran.
‘“Now that is the ascending scale of love and
affection, Ben; and there is a similar descending
scale running through all the phases of hate,
scorn, contempt, &c., but this I must leave you
to spell out for yourself.”

THE SELFISH EMOTIONS.

“Well, uncle, and what are you going to do
now? I suppose we have done with the moral
pleasures, haven’t we ?” asked the lad, quite inno-
cently.

“Done, my little man!” cried the teacher with
all the emphasis of profound astonishment ; ‘‘ why,
we’ve hardly begun. As yet we have taken only
a broad general view of the whole class of feelings ;
we have merely mapped them out, in the same
manner as from a mountain-top we see a whole
tract of country at one sweep of the eye; and we
must now come down from our height, and exa-
mine the several parts of the view rapidly in detail.
There, you needn’t be alarmed, lad,” added the
old man, as the little fellow resumed his paint

 

i
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if
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ifeee ron ee

 

 

 

    
   
   
  
  
 
    
   
  
    
    
  
 
  
    
   
    
 
   
    
  
 

A YOUNG BENJAMIN FRAN GIN.

brush, and began painting away again, “I shall
not be very long over the business.”

“T’m not alarmed, uncle,” exclaimed the boy.
‘“‘ T declare, I could sit and he to you all the day
long, alone with you here. Yes, uncle!” he added,
by way of intimating to the old man that he was
ready for his teacher to begin.

“The best way, my httle man,” proceeded the
gvodfather, “to open up the different sources of
our moral pleasures to you, is to commence by
telling you, that some of our moral feelings are of
a secon and others of an unselfish character ; that
is to Say, We experience some of the emotions when
any good or evil occurs, or is likely to occur to
ourselves; and some of iene on the other hand,
when such good or evil occurs or is likely to occur
to others. ‘As, for instance, we are thrown into a
lively emotion of Joy, when any sudden or unex-
pected piece of good fortune happens to ourselves
even as we have a strong feeling of sympathy or
pity on witnessing the misery or afflictions of
others.”

‘Oh, I see, some selfish and some unselfish,”

said the youth, half to himself, as “ proceeded to
scribble the words down as a “mem :” on the side
of his drawing paper. ** | wonder ie I couldn’t
have found that out by myself now ?”

“ Well, lad, I shall begin with a brief account of
the selfish emotions,” went on the tutor.

“Qh, don’t, uncle, they’re beastly things, I
know,” cried the y oungster ; “all about ereediness,
and that sort of thine. Do you do the unselfish
ones first, unky dear, for they’re nice and pretty

enough, L can tell; and leave the nasty selfish lot
to the last.”

The old man couldn’t help laughing at the boy’s
simplicity ; however, he was not to be moved from
his purpose, so he pr ‘oceeded as follows :—A.PEEP INTO FHE HEART.

“'The selfish emotions of our nature may be
regarded from three different points of view, Ben,
and hence they admit of being grouped into three
distinct classes, according as they refer to the
past, the present, or the future ; that is to say,
according as the good or evil which is the object
of them has occurred to us, either at some remote
period, or but recently, or as it seems hkely to
occur to us at no very distant date.”

‘ T see,” exclaimed the youth again, as he made an-
other vote on the margin of his s ketch, —‘‘ past, pre-
sent, and future. Yes, uncle, and what are the feel-
ings that you say refer to some past good or evil?”

‘Why, lad, the very feelings of love and grati-
tude, and all the rest (with their opposites) that
we have been but recently considering,” was the
answer.

‘‘Oh, ay, so they are, of course!’ How stupid
of me not to know that, to be sure!” exclaimed
young Ben, still talking more to himself than to
his uncle. ‘‘1 see, they include all the different
kinds of love—love of parents, children, friends,
benefactors, neighbours, schoolfellows, and so on.

Of course they do; because the love one has for
them must be on account of some good that they
have done a chap some time before. I see! I see!
Yes, uncle, and which are the feelings that arise
-—how did you say 1b?”

“That arise on the contemplation of some
good or evil that is likely to seers to us in the
future,” prompted Uncle Ben. “ Why, lad, they in-
clude not only the emotions of hope and despair,
and the sentiments of confidence and diffidence,
as well as all the various feelings that arise in the
bosom, when we calculate the chances of any
object of our desires or our fears happening or
not happening to us; but they include also all
those desires and fears themselves ; and such de-

2 Fil etal oe: dat a

 

 

 

 

 

434+ YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

sires of course may be as numerous and different
as are the different objects of our love. Now this
feeling of mental desire, Ben, is the yearning of
the heart to possess some object which has either
previously charmed it, or which it fancies is likely
to do so; or else it is the heart’s craving for some-
thing which it wants, not for its own sake per-
haps, but as the means of compassing some de-
sired end. It is the excitement of this state of
desire, physical or mental, which is the main-
spring of all human action, Ben; and which
stirs men to move their limbs in quest of what
they want—as the steam stirs that wonderful new
engine of Savery’s to fling its iron arms about.
The mental desire differs only from the physical
one in the fact that the precedent uneasiness,
which is the immediate cause of the action, is in
the physical state a purely physical result, as in
the feeling of hunger, and the consequent desire for
food ; whereas, in the mental desire, the uneasiness
is purely an uneasy state of the mind, rather than
of the body. The mind, under such conditions, is
continually thinking of the object which has
charmed it, and which is to charm it again; and
every other state of mind therefore becomes in-

‘tolerable to it. It cannot rest, from the very dis-

satisfaction that is on it. A longing, a yearning,
a craving is excited in the soul for the darling
object—the same as in the stomach when want-
ing food—and the hmuan being must go seeking
what it wants. For we never desire, nor crave
for, but merely wish for, those pleasurable objects
which there is no probability of our ever pos-
sessing ; nor do we go in quest of those objects of
our desires, on the other hand, that there seems
no likelihood of our ever attaining, When, how-
ever, it appears probable that they will come to
our hands without any exertion on our part, why,A PEEP INTO THE HEART. ASD

then we sit and wait, look and long, expect and
hope for them; with

more or less patience or
impatience,

according as we have more or less
philosophy—or according as the result appears to
grow more or less hopeful, or the contrary.”
‘““How nice, plain, and clear it all. comes,
doesn’t it, uncle!” said the youth.
‘* Hope,* lad,” the gcdfather continued, ‘is one

_* The term hope comes to us directly from the Anglo-
maxon verb Hopian (Dutch Hoopen, German Hoffen), the
affinities of which are not very clear. Webster suggests
that it may be connected with the Latin Capio; but it may
rather be derived from the Anglo-Saxon Hebban, to heave, to
lift up ; forthe Dutch Hoopen is not only to hope, but to heap.
Hence hope would signify literally that eraltation or lifting
up of the soul which comes of increased belief in the proba-
bility of our gaining some desired end; and it is conse-
quently the very opposite from that state of depression or
dejection of spirit, which ensues when we lose faith in ob-
taining some wished for object, and which is usually termed
Despondency. The Welsh term for hope is as fine a word
as there is in any language: go-baith, which signifies lite-
rally seeing darkly. It is a pity that this fine old tongue is
not more studied by philologists, instead of merely Saxon
——as by Richardson (who has consequently wasted a life,
and utterly spoilt a grand dictionary by its crude and trite
etymologies)—and Latin and Greek only by others. The an-
cient British language, indeed, appears to underlie the whole
of the European forms of speech; and Owen Pugh’s dic-
tionary is really a noble work. There is no more curious and
startling proof of the antiquity of the old British tongue, than
the fact that the word Pythagoras, which we have always
been taught to regard as the name of the earliest Grecian
philosopher, is a Welsh word signifying simply “ explanation
of the universe.” MHenceit is plain that what was origin-
ally merely the title of a system of philosophy, came to
be mistaken for the name of the philosopher propounding
it. Nor can we reject this notion by assuming that the
Velsh title was derived from the Greek name, and so came
to have its present signification ; since the elements of the
Welsh word exist in the Welsh language. Now it-is evi-
dent that this could not have been the case had the term
been derived from thé name; since in. our word Macada-
mize, neither Mac nor Adam are to be found in the
Pe nD

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436 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

of the sweetest, the most sustaining and comforting
feelings of the soul. What bread is to the body,
hope is to the spirit,—the very staff of life. What
oil is to the wound, hope is to the bruised heart:
the anodyne that heals, lulls, and soothes. It is
the one tiny bright star that is for ever raised a
little above the earth, and that seems to beckon us
onward with its light-tipped wand, as it guides us
along our darksome way. What would the life of
man be without this blessed feeling of hope, Ben ?
what but one long, lingering term in the condemned
cell of the world, if we only knew that we came
into existence with the sentence of death already
drawn out and clutched in our baby-fist, and felt
that there was really no hope of our life being
spared beyond the allotted span ?

“ But sweet is the hope of the mother, as her
little baby bud lies nestled in her lap, and she sits
and spins her aspirations for her httle one, into
the most lustrous threads of life ; weaving her
wishes into the brightest and prettiest golden web
of a fate for the child. How fine too the hope
of ardent, beardless manhood, when the iron mass
of circumstances encompassing our lives, seems as
easy to be cut through as water! how grand the
hope of old age, for even though the force and
weight of this same iron mass may have sorely

English language in an elementary form signifying each a
component part of the complex idea which is expressed
by the compound term. In Welsh, however, pyth signifies
universe, life, and corresponds dialectically with the Greek
Bios, and the Latin vita; whilst agoras is explanation.
from agori, to explain, which again is the equivalent of
the Greek ayopedw, to speak, a term found partly in our
word all-egory. So that pyth-Caniverse)-agoras (explanation)
exactly makes up the complex idea, and hence the word
must originally have been of Welsh extraction. It should
be added that the writer of this brief encomium on the
Welsh language is no Welshman.A PEEP INTO THE HEART. 437

bruised the spirit in the long wrestle with it; still
the soul drinks in new life. ; as lt scents the morn-
ing air of the immortal dawn, and sees, in the
eloaming of the coming day, a long bright crack
in the dark clouds, that tells of “the wondrous
splendour of the time to come !”

And as the devout old man said the words, he
rose, almost unconsciously, from his seat, and stood
with his head thrown pack. looking far away into
the skies.

‘“‘Kvery different form of life, lad,’ went on the
old boy, ‘thas a different phase of hope connected
with it. There is the hope of the young knight
to win his spurs—the knights of those chivalrous
arts which are for ever battling for beauty ; as there
is the hope of the young poet ‘and the young artist.
Then there is the hope of the merchant looking
for his ship; the hope of the sailor watching for
the land; the hope of the maiden awaiting her
Jover; the hope of the little child yearning for
the promised treat ; and the hope of the schoolboy
as he counts the days on to the holidays; the hope
of the farmer, as he gazes up at the moon, and thinks
of his thirsting crops; the hope of the prisoner,
as he sees the jury leave the box to ponder over
their verdict; the hope of the gambler who has
staked his all, while he watches the ball spin
vound and round, and then sees it tremble and
vacillate about the ventured number upon the
board; and the hope of the young mother, as she
looks into the doctor’s eyes while he leans over
the cradle of her little oue, and feels its fluttering
pulse; ay, and even the hope of the murderer
himself, as he sees the sails unfurled, and the
water begin to move past the hull of the vessel
that is to bear him far away.”

‘Oh, isn’t it nice! J think I like this even
better than what you said about love, uncle!”438 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

exclaimed the little fellow, tickled with the pretti-
ness of the subject.

‘““ Nor should we ever go in quest, lad, of such
objects as seem to be within our own reach, or
to be compassable by our own exertions,” the
godfather proceeded, ‘had we not the samc
hope of success, as when we stand still, and
watch what the tide, in the great sea of circum.
stances about us, will throw up on the shore at
our feet. Now, it is this hope of SUCCESS, OF
rather this faith in our own power to gain the
end we desire, that is the mainspring and sustaim-
ing influence of all our energics while at work ;
for if there was no abiding belief in our soul that
we had the ability either to avert or overcome
the obstacles that lie between us and the fulf1
nent of our desires, we should either sit and
wait, and long for fortune to waft them to us; OF
else we should merely utter a vague and vain
wish that the object were in our possession, with-
out having the heart to hope for it, or the energy
to move either hand or foot in quest of it. Hope,
faith, and work, are the three great elements of
all human action, lad; and in the social world
they are as high virtues, as even Taith, hope, and
charity are in the spiritual one. We couldn’t
bestir ourselves even to pluck the ripe fruit that
dangles from the branch, Ben, if we didn’t hope
to succeed in our endeavours to tear it from the
tree; or if we hadn’t faith that our muscles would
answer to our will, and that we had power suf-
ficient to climb the trunk and wrest it from the
bough. Self-reliance, Ben—that fine manly spirit
of honest independence which is the true mark
of every great nature—is the necessary consequence
of faith in our own powers; and whatsoever serves
to foster this, and to overcome the natural doubt,
diffidenee and despondency of our spirit—what-A PEEP INTO THE HEART. 439

soever tends to stimulate us with hope rather
than to deaden and cramp our energies with
despair; as well as to strengthen us with faith in
ourselves, rather than to take all the strength out
of us by doubt of our own abilities—whatsoever
does this, lad, goes far towards making an honest,
upright, self-sustained man of us, and to knock
every atom of the cringing beggar or the filch-
ing thief out of our constitution. So I say to you,
lad, have faith in yourself, faith in your own
faculties, faith in your own nature, faith in your
own intelligence, faith in the dignity and goodness
of your own heart: faith without assurance, mind !
be full of hope, but lacking the presumption of
sanguineness ; and then rest assured this worldly
faith of yours will lead to the same ‘ good works’
as even Christian faith itself.”

“Yes, 1 will have this faith,” cried the boy,
roused by the fervour of the old man, who had
spoken with all the ardour of his own independent
Puritan spirit. ‘‘ Iwill have faith that I can be all
that you tell me, and oh, may my after life—”

The uncle cut short the aspiration by adding,
“May it be, lad, a bright instance to the world
of a deep abiding trust in that fine manly magnan1-
mity that God has planted, more or less, in the
nature of every one of us,”

The little fellow hung his head, and the words
kept humming lke the boom of a big cathedral
bell in his brain. Not a word was spoken by
either for many minutes. The uncle sat gazing at
the lad of whom he had such high hopes, and
watching the rain of the prayer sink deep into
the hot and thirsting soil of his young heart; for
he knew and felt he had touched the one fine
chord of young Ben’s nature, and made it ring
again with a strain that he would never forget
to his dying day.440 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

The boy only kept lis eye fixed vacantly on
the table, and sat gnawing the end of the pencil,
as his hps moved rapidly with the unuttered words
of some inarticulate speech.

‘‘ Well, Ben, we must jog along, for we have
still some distance to travel,” at length exclaimed
the uncle, rousing the lad out of the trance that
was on him.

“Yes, uncle!” answered the little fellow, shaking
himself as if he had really been asleep.

“Well, lad, it would be idle to run over the
several objects of our desires,” resumed the
teacher, “since they are but the yearnings, or out-
stre stchings of the different forms of love, of which
we have. already spoken so fully. Suffice it
to deal only with those objects that we desire,
not directly for their sake, but indirectly as the
means (as I said before) of compassing some
desired end.”

‘““T don’t understand you, uncle,” was all the
little fellow said in return.

‘“Why, boy, we desire money, not for money's
sake,” exclaimed the other—“ unless, indeed, we
have a miser’s silly greed upon us—but merely
because it is one of the chief means in the world
of procuring what we want. So, again, we delight
in the exercise of our own power, not so much
because we find a special pleasure in the use of it
(for that, if carried toexcess, is the tyrant’s depraved
delight, and the ambitious fool’s fond mania), but
because our own powers are what we have mainly
to depend upon for our advancement in life; and
because whatsoever serves to give us faith in
them, confers a high moral delight upon us. ‘Then
we desire liberty ty, so as to be free to exercise those
powers as we will—within, of course, all due
bounds of propriety and respect; and whatever
acts as a shackle on our limbs or a cord upon ourA PEEP INTO THE HEART. Ait}

will, not only galls the flesh, but chafes and sores
the very soul itself; it sets the whole nature
wincing and smarting, till the continued iritation
of the fetter makes it grow rebellious even to fury,
and nerves us with an almost giant force and will
to burst the fretting bondage. Further, we desire
security-—the security of life and property against
wrong and outrage; for without this, all our
labour and our care would be useless, since it
would be idle to desire the possession of any
object that we loved; idle to wish to guard and
protect it against harm, or even to husband it ;
idle to stir hand or foot to obtain it; if, after all
our pains to gain it, the prize could be wrested
from us, and our industry be rendered fruitless,
at the very moment when the fruit was in our
grasp. Even so, too, we desire to feel secure
from bodily and mental injury as well as from
moral wrong. Moreover, we desire ease-——not only
ease of mind, and worldly ease, or a sense of
comparative freedom from worldly care—but ease
in the work which we have to do, in order to make
our way in life; and hence we have an inveterate
hatred of whatever seems to obstruct our progress,
by increasing the difficulties in our way through
the world. ‘Thus we find a special moral charm
even in our own dexterity and expertness ; as well
as a fine moral satisfaction when, at the end of a
long life of toil, we lave a sense that our own
industry and thrift have enabled us to amass
sufficient to procure for us all the little home-
comforts, we have been accustomed to, for the
rest of our days; and that we have no necessity
to continue labouring when the bones are aching,
and the force spent with the heavy load of years on
the back, nor yet to accept the beggar’s dole of the
poor-house. And further still, we desire the love
and good opinion of our neighbours --not only for4492 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

its own sake, and because it is morally pleasing to
our natures—but because it is another mode of
enabling us to make way in the world ; for when
we look round and see how many advance by
favour, and how few by special merit of their
own, we soon get to understand that almost every
man's lot is due, nearly as much to the exertions
and interest of the friends he finds and makes jin
life, as it is due to his own energies, talents, and
rectitude. Indeed, so much of human life and
intercourse must depend upon trust, Ben, that
not to be trustworthy is to sever our own indivi.
dual link from the great chain, and so to put an
end to onr being dragged on by the rest. The
love and good opinion of our neighbours, there-
fore, is desirable, boy—not only because it has
been made naturally pleasant to us to receive—
but because it is essential, ere we can be trusted,
and ere we can receive any favour or help in our
work from those about us.

‘‘ Now these, Ben, so far as T know,” concluded
the old man, “constitute the principal objects
that we desire, not directly, for their own sakes,
but, I repeat, indirectly, as means to an end:
money, power, liberty, security, ease, and good
name. But every one of these sources of moral
pleasure, I should warn you, may be abused, and
transformed into the ugliest moral vices. We may
Jove money, for example, till our very soul is
jaundiced with the yellow earth, and we grow
prone to go down on our bellies in worship of each
golden calf in the land; we may love it till we
love to see the very colour of our money plastered
over our walls and on our chairs, our tables and
sideboards, our lacqueys, backs, our coach-panels,
and our own bodies: till even, like Jong-eared
Midas himsclf, we may find no beauty in the
wide world but in the precious brazen stuff.A PEEP INTO THE HEART. 443

Nevertheless, Ben, money is not the ‘ filthy lucre,

that your sentimental fools delight to term it:

but only filthy, when used for filthy purposes.
Money itself, lad, i is really neither a vood nor an
evil, but simply a means; and therefore capable
of being made either sood or evil as we please;
according as we choose to apply it to either a noble
or a base object. So with power too, we mav
delight in the exercise of it, till we get to feel
the same proud pleasure in driving and curbing
men—as a good horseman does in riding a fiery

natured steed, and in see ing, while he feels per-
fectly secure in his
blood. fret and foam at the mouth, from the
continued chafing of the bit; and in feeling him
plunge and rear beneath him, at each fresh thrust
of the spur or switch of the whip. Or if we have
a zest for the luxury of tyranny, we may still
find a morbid. pleasure in the sense of mastery,
from the. very adulation and fawning that the
possession of power begets among the sycophants

and serfs about us.-- The hollow, heartless voices
of the world’s toadies are positive music in the
ambitious man’s ear ; for the man of ‘ high ambition,’
as it 1s. called, finds little pleasure in the exercise
of power itself, but the sweetest possible delight
in the court and obeisance that the world pays
to the powerful. .'l’o Ais mean soul, the noblest
sight in life is not a man standing erect as his
Maker made him; upright in body as in mind,
and instinct with all the fine, unassuming courage
of true dignity—but crouching on his knees in
the born beggar’s attitude of abasement and sup-
plication. Your ‘lord paramount ’ delights in
this, because the moral hop-o’-my-thumb feels him-
self sixpenny-worth of halfpence higher from the
contrast.

“So, too, the love of liberty may pass into the love

 

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444

of unrestricted licence: the love of security of
possession, into the desire for absolute monopoly ;
the love of ease, into the love of indolence; and
even the love of a good name, into the most hateful
of all vices—that wretched social hypocrisy, where
people seek to get credit for virtue when they
are really moral men of straw ; making the moral
world a world of mere trust—of high characters
got upon tick,—-a world of tick godliness, tick
kindliness ; where there is no real bullion worth,
but all fimsy paper-virtue; where men understand
merely ‘the representative value’ of religion,
philanthropy, honour, and probity, without having
any of the sterling metal in their coffers: where
all is lacker and varnish, French polish and
veneer, rouge, cosmetic and dyes, artificial flowers
and wax-fruit, pinchbeck and paste, masquerading
and costuming,—peacocks’ feathers, sheep’s cloth-
ing, and lions’ skins. Indeed, Ben, it is the easiest
possible thing to ‘affect heart ;’ we can do this
with even a paving-stone in our bosoms; but we
can't affect brains, lad, without having some little
capital of intellect to trade upon. So the social
hypocrites and Pharisees of our day are always
overflowing with love and charity, as if it were
the very milk and honey of their hearts. Ah, Ben,
Ben! it only wants a halfpenny-worth of oil in the
palm to be able to play the Good Samaritan any
day.”

As the old man sat down to rest for a while,
young Ben said, “Now you have finished the
pleasures that refer to the past and the future,
and are going, I suppose, to do those which refer
to the present ?”

‘“ Ay, lad, we have reviewed the retrospective
and the prospective moral emotions of our nature,”
was the reply, ‘‘and go, of course, are ready to
pass on to what are called the immediate feelings ;

YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,A PEEP ENZO RE KEART: 445

and they are so called because they arise, not
from the contemplation of some retrospective or
prospective good or evil, but simply from the
sense of some present benefit or injury happening
immediately to aa? | : :
“Ves, uncle,” chimed in the little fellow, ‘‘ and
t are the names of some of these; for, do you
know, I never can think of one of them before
you mention them tome. Isn’t it strange ?”
‘Why, there are the emotions of Joy, and
Sorrow, Ben,” the uncle continued, ‘‘ with the con-
sequent tempers or continuous moods of mind
that they often leave behind them, and which are
called Cheerfulness, and Melancholy ; even as there
is the delight or sense of Complacency that we
feel upon success, together with the emotion

wha
VV SLO

g
of what is called Fultation, at our triumph over
the difficulties which beset us; as well as the
opposite emotion of ejection, or sense of Discom-
jiture, that we experience upon failure.”

Little Ben wriggled away at the roots of his
hair with the tip of the pencil in his hand, as
much as to say, ‘“* Now, why couldn’t J have
thought of that ?”

“Well, my little fellow,” went on the Mentor,
“of the high pleasure of Joy and the intense pain
of Sorrow, it would be almost idle to speak,
since they are obviously pleasurable and painful
states of mind. Suffice it to say, that when these
intensely vivid feelings are rendered even more
intensely vivid than usual, by the inordinate

excitement of some surprise or shock in connec-
tion with them, they have often been known, not
only to craze the mind, but even to deprive
the person of life. then and there. However, the
emotion, or rather the temper—that is to say, the
yrolonged and gentle excitement—of cheerfulness
(as well as the opposite state of continuous andco rere ase

an

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

ALG YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

mild depression called melancholy), is sufficiently
remarkable to warrant a few words. It is the
characteristic of many of those peculiarly vivid
states of mind, which are called emotions or pas-
sions, that, when the first wild excitement has
passed away, they leave behind them a permanent,
and kindred state of mind of so subdued a form,
that it is neither a transient passion nor emotion,
but merely a prolonged temper or mood. It is ag it
were the trail of light which follows the meteor
the faint hum of the bell after the bewildering
clang of the stroke has passed away. ‘hus Wonder
is the temper or mood of mind that Astonishment
or Surprise often subsides into; so Tetchiness or
Peevishness is the disposition that is prone to
follow Anger, and general Tenderness the con-
Sequence of Love, or rather it is the mark of -a
loving nature; even as Cheerfulness is the temper
begotten by Joy, and Melancholy that which sets
in after Sorrow. Such tempers, however, I should
tell you, are often the effects of a peculiar state of
body or organization, and hence the persons so
constituted are habitually cheerful, tetchy, or
tender-hearted, and so on; but in such condi-
tions the mental moods are the Jorerunners rather
than the after-states of the emotions to which they
belong; and thus tetchiness becomes a sign of a
predisposition to anger ; tenderness, to love; and
cheerfulness to joy; even as a melancholy tempera-
ment (as the bodily state is termed) is a mark of
proneness to grief.”

‘Oh, then, that’s what we mean when we say,
‘Father ’s in a bad temper to day,’ or he’s in a good
one, as if may happen,” cried the little man,
delighted with the burst of hight. “TI gee now,
it means merely that he’s ready to be pleased, or
vexed with whatever oceurs at home. Of course
it does. But go on, uncle, please.”A PEEP INTO THE HEART. 447

‘“‘ Now, my boy,” he proceeded, in obedience to
the request, ‘1 have spoken of these tempers in
order to point out to you how much of human
happiness depends upon them, and how necessary
it is, even for our pleasure, to cultivate the good
tempers, and to check the bad ones. For as they
are permanent states of more or less vividness of
feeling, and our emotions themselves are only the
temporary flash of human passion, they of course
are the ugly, rankling festers, and the others only
the momentary sharp stings; the one the long
clisease, and the other the instantaneous wound ;
so that he who wishes to live a happy life must
train himself to be of a happy and cheerful temper.”

“Yes, uncle, it’s all very well to say ‘train
himself to be of a cheerful temper,’” argued the
young monkey; ‘but if, as you say, cheerfulness
comes either from joy, or from what you call a
certain state of the body, how is a person to train
himself to be continually in a state of joy, I should
like to know; or to be in the precise state of body
wanted for the temper? I’ve always heard mother
say such and such a child is naturally of a good
temper ; so that I should think our tempers are
born with us.”

I'he old man smiled at the boy’s argument, for
he was so staunch an advocate for liberty of con-
science, that he delighted to hear, and indeed had
always let the lad speak his thoughts freely to
him. ‘‘T'rue, lad,’ he said in answer, ‘‘ we are
all born with what the doctors calla certain bodily
temperament,* and this naturally begets in the

* Physicians enumerate four distinct kinds of tempera-
ment. 1. The sanguine (or hopeful). 2. The choleric (or pas-
sionate). 3. The melancholy (or sorrowful). 4. The
phlegmatic (or sluggish). The sanguine temperament is
generally marked by a ruddy complexion; the choleric and

melancholic temperaments, on the other hand, are mostly of
a darker hue; whilst the phlegmatic is more or less whiteececmcempriinet seen

 

 

 

 

 

448 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

mind a particular mood or temper corresponding
with it; that is to say, a proneness or predisposition
for particular emotions and fancies. And it is
also true, lad, that the emotion of joy is not a
voluntary state of mind, but one that we are sud-
denly thrown into by certain occurrences in the
world about us. Nevertheless, we can train our
mind, Ben, to certain habits of thought; for we
can educate it to see the beauties rather than the
ugly blemishes of things; we can render it quick
to detect the goodness, and slow to discover the
evil in life; we can bring it, by long schooling
and watching, to find some virtue in the meanest
thing, and to prefer the contemplation of the one
little bit of merit to the crowd of vicious defects,
in even the basest of our fellow-creatures. This
is what is termed looking at the bright side of
things ; and depend upon it, Ben, even though the
new moon appears but a dark ball to us, if we
could but regard it from a different point of view,
we should find it still the same brillant bit of
chastity, as we see it when the bright side is
turned towards our eyes. This better view of
things is what is styled charity, in religion ; it is
poetry in art, chivalry in the code of honour,
elegance in matters of taste, and politeness in mere
manners. ‘Train your mind then, lad, to see only
the beauties, the nobilities, the virtues, and the
graces of the world; and to turn the eye from the

 

or pale. The sanguine appears to have a large quantity of
the red colouring matter of the blood in the system; the
cholerie and melancholic an excess of bile; and the
phlegmatic an excess of lymph, or water in the system.
Or, in the language of Liebig’s theory of respiration, we
may say that the iron in the blood of temperament No. 1 is
highly oxidised, whereas in that of temperaments No. 2 and
3, it is insufficiently oxidised ; whilst in temperament No, 4
the blood has but little iron in it to oxidise.A PEEP INTO THE HEART. 449

uglinesses, meannesses, and clumsinesses of human
nature; and rest assured, Ben, your life will be
one continued state of joy and cheerfulness. Close
your ear too, lad, to that wretched huckster and
attorney creed, which would have us believe all
men rogues till we find them honest people; and
be you at least gentleman enough, my httle man,
to regard all men as gentlemen, till you find them
blackeuards. Do this, boy, and you will be sure
to gather a goodly company of gentlemen and
friends about you. This is the honest, cheerful
view of the world, lad, and we have Christ’s own
word for it that the hypocrites are the men of ‘sad
countenances.’ ”

“Yes I remember, uncle,” the little fellow
chimed in, ‘‘He says so in the Sermon on the
Mount; ‘ Be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad counte-
nianice.’ ”

The uncle merely nodded, and said, ‘‘ Ay, lad,
your solemn-faced Pharisee is as different from
the heavenly bringers of the ‘ glad-tidings’ of the
new light, as is the morose old screech-owl from
the sweet voiced little lark. But, Ben, I spoke to
you before of the sweet infection of cheerfulness, and
T now wish to impress upon you, that another
special reason why we should cultivate a good and
cheerful temper, is because of the very ifectious-
ness of happiness itself. Laughter is as catching
as the measles, lad; and rely on it, as the sight of
one person yawning will set the jaws of a whole
company on the stretch, so one pleasant smiling
face will breed a hundred other smiles. One
cheerful countenance in a roomful of lugubrious
ascetics, is really as genial as a bit of God's own
sunshine falling upon a sick man’s bed; it is light
and life too; and it is impossible to continue
morbid with that in the room. What a power of

diffusing happiness then has every one in his own
9
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450 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKUIN

heart, if he will but train himself to the use of it!
Why, if we had the wealth of Crassus, Ben, and
the charity of the early Christians to boot, no
alms that we could dispense would shed half so
much comfort upon those about us, as we have it
im our ee to bestow—if we will but look at
the brightness of creation, and feel and enjoy this
brightness 3 in our heart, till it beams again in our
own face; and thus make others feel and enjoy 1t
in their hearts, and wear it in their faces too.

“But if we have the power to make so many
happy at so little cost, by the mere charm of
cheerfulness,’ he went on, ‘think, on the other
hand, my good lad, what a vast amount of human
misery we can cause by giving way to bad temper.
Indeed, there is no home curse like this; nothing
that scares the household gods from so many
hearths; for there is no tyranny of kings or em-
perors so hateful or so cruel, and none so cowardly
either, as that of the home despot; for bad temper
wreaks its rage only on the helpless; ay, and
though the ‘brief madness’ is supposed to be
ungovernable, it can—even in the very ‘ tempest
and whirlwind,’ as Shakspeare calls it, of its
passion—check ‘the fur y that is on it in an instant
so as to be civil and soft-spoken enough to any
whose favour it dreads to lose. So, if it be only
to avoid the terrible devilry of a bad temper I
say again to you, Ben, cultivate the fine homely
Christianity of a good one.”

“T shall remember it, you may depend,” cried
the boy, as he again scribbled something down on
the paper before him, and then said, ‘ “That's all
youre going to say about cheerfulness, I suppose,
Uncle Ben?”

“It ts, my child,’ the reply ran, ‘‘and now
only a few words alban ut the pleasures of success,
and the emotion of Exultation, and then weA PEEP INTO THE HEART. 45]
have finished with the selfish emotions of our
nature.”

“But don’t you remember, uncle, you told me
a lot about success before?” the boy reminded his

godfather. ‘ You said, when you were speaking of

art, that we found a pleasure in succeeding even
in the smallest things; such as balancing a straw
on the nose, or in walking along the cracks in the
pavement, or indeed, you said, in hitting any
mark we aim at. I recollect it well.”

‘“J recollect it too, now, boy,” the other
returned ; ‘‘and I think I said at the time that the
pleasure we felt was always in proportion to the
difficulties overcome; and that it was simply the
delight that all people experience im overcoming
great difficulties, which led some men to practise
the difficult feats of dancing on the back of horses
at full gallop, swallowing swords, and drinking
glasses of wine while balancing themselves on
their head a-top of a long pole.”

‘Oh, yes, so you did, uncle,” the youth chimed
in; ‘‘for I remember thinking how true it all was
when you said so.”

‘“Well, Ben,” the old man added, “ this delight
in overcoming difficulties is simply the emotion
of Hzultation; and though it may be applied to

small things, it is, when rightly directed, one of

the finest emotions of the human soul. I spoke to
you of the grand peaceful conquests of Art, when I
was discoursing of the artist power, and the love we
had for it. But Science has its peaceful conquests
as well as Art, and they are no whit less grand.
I never see that wonderful steam-engine at work
down at our docks, but I think what must: have
been the inventor’s feeling when he first beheld
the iron giant move in obedience to his will;
when he found that he had really breathed the
breath of life into the metallic monster, and given

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452, YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

it all the action, and made it instinct with all the
power of the Titan race of old. Surely there
must have been a smack of divinity in the emotion
that then stirred his spirit. Or did he tremble at
the sight of his own handiwork, as he beheld it
pulsing like an iron heart, and snorting forth its
steamy breath, and did he think it as impious as
Prometheus’ daring when he stole the fire from
heaven? Or did he feel, as a really wise man
would, that it was God’s will and not his, that
was really stirring the mighty engine after all;
and that he had merely learnt to spell out another
passage in the great poem of the fitness of things ?
I can’t say how your old uncle would have felt
under such circumstances, Ben, though I am afraid
he would have been weak enough to have burst
into a hymn of self-glorification, and have indulged
in a little bit of trumpery self-worship. But I
hope the fine fellow who made the first steam-
engine didn’t do this. I hope he merely felt the
supreme delight of conscious power. I hope he
felt, as he sate down before the mechanic offspring
of his genius, and watched it puff and gasp, labour
and heave, as it became quick with the force
within it, that he had the power of a giant in his
brain, and that he had used it like a sage; that he
could make the mightiest forces in the world as
docile as turnspit-dogs, at his will; that he could
tame even the fire and the flood to do his bidding;
and that he had learnt how to make arms of brass
and sinews of iron do the mere brute labour of the
world for the poor weary labourers among mankind.
I say, I hope he felt merely the fine glory of peace-
ful triumph—the high honour of his trumpetless
victory over the elements of nature, and I hope,
for the sake of humanity, he didn’t mentally fall
to clapping his own hands at his own conceited
self, or blowing an ideal trumpet into his own ear,A PEEP INTO THE HEART. 458

and proving how small a man he really was, by
fancying himself a really great one. For this,
Ben, is the weakness of exultation and not the
grandeur of it. The exultation of high genius is
not the exultation of the hero, not the triumph
of man over man, but the triumph of mind over
matter. Itis the conquest of circumstances that
stirs the intellectual hero’s heart, the mastery of
difficulties that sends a thrill of glory through his
nerves; and as there is no power on the earth so
great as that of genius, so is there no exultation so
pure and so noble as that which true genius feels
when it has done its work, and wants no other
reward but the mere satisfaction of the work itself
—the high sense of mastery unalloyed with the
degradation of slavery.”

THE UNSELFISH EMOTIONS.

‘What are you going to do now, uncle?” asked
the little fellow, directly he saw that the old man
had finished another portion of his theme.

‘Why, now we come to the unselfish emotions
of human nature,” was the rejoinder.

‘T think you said sympathy or pity was one
of these—eh, uncle ?” little Ben inquired.

The old man answered merely, ‘‘I did, Ben;”
and then fell to pondering what was the best
way of making out his subject. Presently he
went on saying: ‘‘Some persons, I should tell
you, lad, have denied the very existence of this
class of emotions in man. They assert that the
conduct which appears unselfish is merely the most
prudent and enlightened of all selfishness. ‘They
say that we sympathize with, and delight to re-
lieve the suffering, merely because we derive the
highest pleasure from the act.” | :

‘Do they though!” exclaimed the boy, who

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ote Ta adeaP a ~RA entrap ewe oP lee Ty aor tanta BAS.
bal ~ ~ . pe a pe SON NIN ry

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Par A facia ee454 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

was evidently taken aback with the force of the
argument; ‘‘and isn’t it so, uncle? I really don’t
see how it’s possible to get over that.”

The godfather laughed at the little man’s sim-
plicity, as he cried, ‘‘ Why, you little goose, can’t
you see, that though it may be mere sefishness
that makes us relieve those with whose sufferings
we sympathize (because in sympathy we suffer
all the misery of the objects of our pity), never-
theless, it can’t be selfishness that makes us sym-
pathize with them? Is it selfishness to suffer
with them, and to suffer like them ?”

‘“No, of course it isn’t!” the little fellow said ;
‘‘T was a goose not to be able to see that, cer-
tainly 1”

‘* When we sympathize,” the other continued,
“‘of course the mere love of promoting our own
happiness makes us desire to releve our own
fellow-sufferings; and as that can only be done by
relieving the original suffermgs which caused
them, of course we cannot choose but act as our
pity dictates. But still it was no love of our own
happiness, Ben, that engendered in us the feeling
of commiseration itself; for riddle it out as sceptics
may, the emotion which causes us to suffer others’
sufferings—to share in their misery—to take part
in their afflictions, is, and must be, in the very
nature of things utterly unselfish ; and therefore
there are such things as unselfish emotions.
Q. EH. D.,”* added Uncle Ben, with a small chuckle,
as if he had vanquished some imaginary as-
sailant.

‘What's Q. E. B., uncle?’ demanded the
youngster.

“(Q. E. D., Ben,” the old man corrected him:
‘oh, nothing, lad—merely a bit of scholastic

* Q. E. D. = quod erat demonstrandum: Angl., which
was to be proved.A PEEP INTO THE HEART. 455

pedantry—that’s all. Now, first, Ben, I must tell
you, that we find certain kinds of pleasure in
aifecting our fellow-creatures ourselves in a parti-
cular manner; and certain other kinds of pleasure
when they are so affected, but not by ourselves. In
some cases we find delight in domg them some
good, or even some evil turn ourselves, and in
others the emotion springs merely from our con
templation of the good or evil which has befallen
them, and in our participation of the consequent
joys or sorrows. I shail begin with describing
to you the pleasures that we experience when we
ourselves confer any good, or inflict any evil upon
our fellow-creatures. First of all, then, we find a
curious pleasure even in producing a simple impres-
sion upon people—without regard to the impression
being agreeable or disagreeable. This is what 1s
termed the delight of causing a ‘sensation,’ of
producing an ‘impression,’ or creating a ‘noise Im
the world.’ True, most people prefer to make a
favourable or agreeable impression ; still, it 1s an
acknowledged fact, that there are certain morbid
natures that even destroy themselves in some wild
and extravagant manner, merely with the view of
drawing public attention to them; others, again,
indulge in some strange eccentricity of dress, or
manner; and others live strange lives, or in strange
places, merely to make themselves ‘outré’ as the
saying goes, or, in plain English, to render them
selves remarkable; whilst some prefer even the
notoriety of the felon’s dock, and the unenviable
conspicuousness of a death upon the gallows, rather
than suffer the utter insignificance of public dis
regard. Even as there are other morbid natures
that feel delight, not in producing a mere impres
sion upon others, but in having this mere impres-
sion made upon themselves: such as the collectors
of those morbid curiosities which are usually made456 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

up of hangmen’s ropes, murderers’ clothes and
knives, or of some horrible ‘identical axe,’ and
the lke; though perhaps one great incentive to
the formation of such ghastly museums consists
Li Hh as much in the desire to produce a mere impres-
Hi | sion upon others, as to have such an impression
| produced upon themselves.”
‘“‘T never knew that people had such feelings be-
fore,” remarked the boy.
| ‘‘'Then, Ben, there is the pleasure we feel in
Hi communicating our own feelings to others,” continued
al the teacher. ‘“‘I have before spoken to you of the
A unselfish character of intellectual delight, and
Sana pointed out to you how, when we are charmed with
Yau | | the beauty of some new truth, or fine figure of
speech, or the wit of some startlingly good joke,
we positively long for another bosom to share the
pleasure with us; and now I should tell you, that
it is nearly ihe same instinctive propensity that
I | makes certain people spend large sums of money
i in printing—without any regard to profit—the
Wt works of some favourite author; and others devote
| months, and even years, to writing certain books
from which they can never hope to receive the
least emolument. But there is no more marked
instance of the general desire among mankind to
communicate their own feelings to others, than is
to be found among zealots, who are mostly so
. : eager and rabid to make all the world think and
eae Wa feel as they do, that they are ready even to put
Ht a to torture those who refuse to be of their way
| a of thinking. The desire to convert and prosely-
Ht a | tize—indeed the propensity for tract-printing,
Ha for gospel-propagating, and mission-instituting,
| springs merely from the innate wish of the more
| Binal earnest portion of mankind that the entire human
ii race should feel the blessed delight, as well as
Bini share the grace of that creed, which they them-

aA PEEP INTO THE HEART. ant

selves feel to be the greatest blessing and grace
ever vouchsafed to Man.

‘“* Again, it is this disposition to make others feel
the same joy that we feel, which gives rise to the
custom there is among nobles and squires to feast
the villagers and peasants upon the occasion of
their marriage, or the birth of an heir, or the
coming of age of their eldest son, and so forth.
Further, it is the same desire to rejoice in common,
that is the cause of public jubilees in celebration
of some great national good; and the same prin-
ciple holds good even down to the harvest-homes,
and Christmas-festivals, and May-day games of the
people.”

**Tsn’t it curious!” murmured the youth.

‘* Next, lad, there is an instinctive propensity
in our nature,” Uncle Ben proceeded, ‘‘ not only
to share our own happiness with our fellows, but
also to share our advantages with them, at the
expense of our own gains ; in other words, there
is a natural desire to benefit others. There can be
no doubt that we would rather have the whole
world happy than miserable, Ben—provided it cost
us nothing to make it so, and the mind be in a
sane condition. Assuredly, in a natural state of
things, every onein his heart wishes every one
well, and it is only the petty greeds, rivalries,
jealousies, and heartburnings of our nature, that
interfere with the operation of this aspiration,
which is merely the utterance of the native
benevolence of our souls. If we admit that there
is an innate tendency to feast those about us, when
we ourselves experience any unexpected or unusual
happiness; or, in other words, to make those about
us rejoice, merely because we ourselves are full of
joy: surely we must allow that the inate pro-
pensity of the human heart is not alone to compass
our own happiness, but also to share that happt-

99

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SERN STR

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 

458 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

ness with others-—-more particularly if we can do
so without any sacrifice being required on our part.
Moreover, misery, squalor, and bodily suffering
are such naturally ugly things to us, that even our
instinctive love of the beautiful and the agreeable
is sufficient to make us prefer universal well-being
to universal pain and gnashing of teeth. So that
it is manifest that the benevolent principle —
when uncontrolled by any petty private interest,
or any savage revengeful passion—is a marked
attribute of our nature, and lies at the very bottom
of the human heart. But if we are naturally
benevolent to those who have never wronged or
injured us (as we are and can be malevolent to
those who have), surely we can advance a step
farther, and say we have an instinctive propensity
to benefit those fellow-creatures who are neither
friends nor foes to us. ‘J do not mean,” proceeded
the old man, ‘that we have an innate desire to
relieve suffering, for that proceeds, as we have
seen, from our instinctive disposition to com-
miserate—or, in other words, to share the misery
of others; but I do mean, that we are disposed to
benefit and promote the good of our fellow-beings,
merely for the sake of benefiting them, and because
we find a greater pleasure in the c.ntemplation of
human happiness than in witnessing human misery.
Of course this desire to benefit is continually
restrained by a number of conflicting emotions,”
—the uncle added, ‘and more particularly by our
desire to promote our own happiness, as well as
by our natural disposition to guard and husband
our own possessions, and to treasure up what we
love and esteem. But, that there 7s sucha benevo-
lent and benefactive impulse in human nature,
is demonstrable from the very moral beauty of
goodness, and the moral ugliness of evil; for that
which is morally beautiful to us we cannot butA PEEP INTO THE HEART. 459
prefer to see prevail, rather than that which is
morally ugly—even as we instinctively prefer
sunshine to darkness, and harmony to discord.
Indeed, if there were no innate disposition to
benefit, there could never have been a pure
benefit rendered in the world,—that is to say, a
good act done to a fellow-creature for the mere
sake of the goodness; for in that case it would
either be a voluntary act done without any cause
to determine the volition; or else the act itself
must be referred to some purely selfish motive,
which is absurd—since, to promote the good of
another, at the sacrifice of our own personal
good, is to be unselfish ; and if, on the other hand,
it be urged that we do so because the good of
others delights us, or in other words, that it is
merely selfishness on our part, after all, that causes
us to confer the good on them—then the answer
is, How, if we are purely selfish, can the good of
others delight us; since to find delight in good
that is not our own good, is to love goodness for
its own sake, and hence it is to have a pure
unselfish love of it 7”

This was said with all the air of an old contro-
versial divine ; indeed, in his youth, Uncle Ben
had delighted in disputation, and still nothing
pleased him more than to break a friendly lance
with any one ou the pet subjects of his heart; and
often he and his brother Josiah would sit by their
hearth, and play a game of logical chess, as it were,
while they discussed some of the old subtleties of
the schoolmen: as to whether the angels could pass
from one point of space to another without going
through the intermediate places, and whether
space itself was an entity or a quiddity, as well as
trying to unravel the nice knotty tangle of
‘“‘fiberty and Necessity ;’ when Josiah would
stand out hard for ‘“ Predestination,” while the460 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

more liberal brother would take up the cudgels
in favour of free agency, and try to split the
fine metaphysical hair, as to whether foreknow-
ledge necessarily implied foreordinance

“T can hardly follow all you say, uncle,”
observed little Ben, as he chewed the cud of the
old man’s syHogism ; ‘‘ but 1t seems to me that we
a must love goodness for goodness’ sake, as you call
a it; just as we love truth for truth’s sake, and
if beauty for beauty’s sake.”
i ‘« Of course we do, lad,” cried the other; ‘‘ and if
é we have a pure unselfish love of goodness and
truth, then, I say again, we have a pure love of
i promoting the good of others; or what is quite the
fi
i
'
|
!

same thing, an utterly disinterested desire to bene-
fit them. ~ However, perhaps the most convincing
proof of the existence of this innate benevolence
of our nature is to be found in the fact which
i nobody doubts, and none have ever attempted to
| gainsay: viz., that there is an instinctive spirit of
ail malevolence in the human heart; and that we
1 A | desire to injure, and love to inflict evil upon those
whom we believe to have wronged us, or even
| interfered with the attainment of our wishes
i “Oh, uncle, don’t tell me, after all the fine things
| youve been saying about human nature, that we
have such feelings at all,” little Ben exclaimed,
| Wt for he had begun to look upon the heart of man with
Pe AY the same fond eyes as a mother gazes at the babe
| in her lap, and he couldn’t bear to think it had
| got even one little blemish about it.
|| “Don’t tell you!” shouted Uncle Benjamin; * of
| course I will tell you, boy. Do you think I wish to
i build up a barley-sugar ‘palace of a world for you?
I) A Do you think I wi ish to fasten a pair of goose-
|
|

 

mia pence

ed ed
ti Ce ee

wings on your back, youngster, and lead you to
i | believe that you—little devil as you can be—are
a perfect angel? No, lad!” and he thumped theA PEEP INTO THE HEART. 461

table as he said the words; “you are not an angel,
only an angel in the bud: a creeping, crawling,
human grub, that may one day be a winged butter-
fly. The human heart, Ben, is picked out all black
and white, like a chess-board, with the strong con-
trast of opposing passions— passions for good, and
passions for evil as well; and J say again, the very
fact of there being a malevolent principle in our
soul, is proof conclusive of there being a benevolent
one also to counterbalance it. Hence, lad, the next
moral pleasure we have to deal with is the pleasure
we find in imyuring others. Some believe that there
are people of an innately cruel nature, who de-
hight in torturing ; for the mere sake of the pleasure
they derive from the contemplation of the torments :
that is to say, in torturing those who have never
offended them—not because the torturers have any
savage desire for revenge upon their soul—but
simply because the evil, the pain, and the anguish
are agreeable to their nature. Now J don’t believe
that such ‘depraved’ nature, as this is termed, is
possible in the very nature of things. It is im-
possible that ugliness can be beautiful, Ben; some,
indeed, may think that beautiful which we hold to
be ugly; still it is not ugliness to them, but
beauty instead. So, lad, pain, even in another,
never can be pleasure to us; for it is part of God’s
ordination that the sight of pain in any feeling
thing—directly it impresses us with a sense of the
pain—should give rise to a feeling of sympathy or
pity in the beholder ; and this has been rendered so
naturally painful and distressing to us, as to induce
us to seek to put an end to the sufferings which
originally excited it.”

“Well, but, uncle, I remember some boys at old
Brownwell’s school,” urged young Ben, ‘‘ who
always seemed to me to be naturally cruel, and
used to ill treat—oh, so dreadfully, you don’t know!er

ee

 

 

46? YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

—

—the poor dumb animals that mother always
taught us to be kind to.”

‘Yes, lad, I know,” the uncle continued, ‘“‘ boys
will tear off flies’ legs and wings, tie kettles to
dogs’ tails, put cats’ feet in walnut shells, and
commit a host of other atrocities; even as grown
people will go to executions, and find delight
in gazing at some poor wretch in his death-
struggles.”

“Then, isn’t that a proof that some persons do
find pleasure in other people’s pain?” modestly
inquired the little fellow.

‘“No, lad!” cried the uncle; ‘‘1tis not and cannot
possibly be a proof of what, in the very nature of
things, I repeat, is a moral impossibility ; for I say
again, the contemplation of pain in another—when
we have a sense of the pain—has been made to pro-
duce an emotion of pity, which is merely reflected
suffering, and therefore cannot be pleasure. But
it is a proof that humankind may see pain without

 

Jeeling it ; and it is simply because the wantonly

cruel do not feel, and have no sense of the suffer-
ings they inflict, that they find delight in witness-
ing the writhings of the death-throes of their
fellows. Besides, such people are barbarously
curious, Ben, to see how the sentient creature will
behave under the trying circumstances : and hence,
as with the boys in the fable, even the death of
another being becomes sport to them—owing to
the novelty and extravagance of the contortions
induced by the bodily agony.”

“Oh, I see,” the boy exclaimed, “it is merely
unfeeling curiosity, then, that makes boys and
others so cruel as they are.”

“Yes, Ben, it is the prurience—the itch of
morbid, unfeeling curiosity, as you say,” added the
tutor ; ‘‘and directly we begin to think and feel at
the foot of the gallows, why we get sick, andA PEEP INTO THE HEART. 463

swoon with a sense of the agony we are contem-
plating.”

““T see! I see!” said the lad, thoughtfully, for
he was only too glad to be beaten on such a
subject.

“Well, but though we do nei ice pain for
pain’s sake,” Uncle |'en went on, “nor love it
with the same disinterested owe, as we do good-
ness ; neverthe less there are certainly times when
the infliction of pain upon a human being, or even
an animal, becomes an intense delight to our soul.
‘Revenge is sweet,’ says the proverb, but though it
assure sly is sweet at the moment of oratification—
most sweet to the savage unthinking nature, to give
wound for wound, and even 4 sautniduie'd heavy
wounds for one little one ; nevertheless, ungratified
revenge is by no means sweet, but simply the
bitterest and most galling passion—the ugliest
and sharpest stinging of all the appetites that can
stir our nature. The hunger for blood and human
agony is the acutest form of all hunger that man
can possibly suffer; and the wretch who suffers 1t
feels all the torments of the starving man upon a
raft at sea, racked with a million- fold the agonies
of starvation. Hence, lad, beware e how you hue the
viper to your bosom; for, rely upon it, in secking
to compass the misery of another, you compass
your own, to a far greater degree than you can
ever hope to wreak it upon your enemy—since the
revengeful man suffers all the protracted agony of
an enduring devilish temper, that is for ever rank-
ling, (as if he had a thorn in his heart,) with all
the long continued gnawing of an ugly fester;
whereas the object of the passion can only be made
to feel the mere spasm of the temporary wound

the other hopes and longs to inflict upon him.”
** Well then, uncle, revenge,” the pupil chimed
in—‘‘ revenge is not sweet ; it 1s silly.”464 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

«Silly as madness, child,” was the answer ;
“so cut it out of your heart, Ben, while your heart
is young and generous, and keep your eyes for
ever fixed upon the true nobility of the New Com-
mandment, which enjoins us to ‘love our enemies.’
Love them, I say to you, for your own sake—tfor
the very happiness there is in loving any one.
It may be hard work for poor huinan nature to
compass, and require the highest human heroism
to be able, even in our mortal agony, to cry,
‘Father, forgive them, they know not what they
do; but it is possible to grow such a spirit of
wise kindness in our heart, that if we cannot
forget a wrong, we shall, at least, have common
worldly prudence enough to forgive it. Nor can
I leave this part of my subject, boy, without here
enforcing upon you what has always appeared to
me one of the strongest proofs of the divine origin
of this same New Commandment itself. It is
merely human to desire blood for blood; this is
only the bright-red glaring justice of man in the
rough; and, therefore, to love the blood-shedder 1s
not human ; it is more than human, and is so utterly
out of the natural course and current of our feelings
and thoughts, that no mere man could ever have
conceived the wondrous wisdom and godliness
there is in the precept; and, certainly, no mere
man could have given us in his life so lucid an
example of the beauty and magnanimity of the
creed: no ordinary bit of humanity could have
done this any more than he could have conceived
and compassed Creation. I say, the very thought
itself is beyond the bounds of human imagination
and human aspiration to come at; for if it be
impossible as all allow, for the fancy of man to con-
celve a new sense—another sense superadded to
our faculties, that is not a compound of two or more
of our existing senses: then as assuredly no mereA PEEP INTO THE TEART. 465

man’s brain and heart could ever have had an ink-
ling of this supremely new sense—this most unna-
tural impulse to turn the other cheek when one
has been smitten, and to bless them that persecute
you.”

‘“‘T understand you, uncle,” answered the lad,
‘and thank you kindly for the thought.”

‘‘ Well, Ben, I hate chattering religion even to
you, boy,” the godfather proceeded. “It is a
thing for the heart to feel, and not for the brain to
talk about; indeed, it is the natural communication
between man and God, and not between man and
man, who can have no possible right to interfere in
such matters,” said the old Puritan, with no little
emphasis on the word. ‘“ But this is not religion,
lad; it is philosophy—philosophy counselling the
heart, and not bigotry striving to proselytize it.”

‘* But, uncle, do you know, I’ve been thinking all
this while,” confided the simple little pupil, ‘“‘ why,
if revenge is so wrong and so natural, that it
wanted Christ himself to come and teach us the
New Commandment, why sucha feeling should
have been given to us at all?”

‘Ah, lad, that why is always a puzzler; your
final causes, as they are called, are difficult things
for poor finite reason to come at,” sighed Uncle
Benjamin. ‘‘A mere solitary brick can never
give us an idea of the architecture of the entire
palace. Nevertheless, Ben, we can get just a
twinkle of hght sometimes; and so it is with our
malevolent feelings, which are far from being so
utterly bad as youimagine. Indeed, ifman had not
peen made to grow angry and savage at any inter-
ference with the objects of his desires, he would
have been but a poor sluggish brute ; and certainly

would never have wrought a tithe of the grand
achievements he has in the world. We are angry
even with the stocks and stones in nature, Ben,
2H

eteie ae Se 5

  

 

466 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

when they offend us, either by injuring or impeding
us. A baby delights to beat the chair or table that
has hurt it, and even a great man glories in crush-
acles that cumber the road to some
grand end. ‘This conquest of difficulties is, as I
before said, one of man’s finest triumphs, and. if
we were not angry with the mountains that oppose
our progress, we should never cut through them ; if
the fetters did not gall our flesh, we should remain.
willing slaves all our lives. Hannibal’s proudest
foat was to force his way across the Alps, rather
than to slink round the base of them ; and he must
have felt a finer triumph in vanquishing the very
mountains, than he ever did in battling with any
human host. So our old friend Columbus, too,
when he beheld the morning sun crimsoning the
shores he had been so long in quest of, must have
eloried more in having conquered the sea itself,
than in having mastered his mutinous crew, and
humbled the pride of the kings who had treated
his scheme with scorn. We like to crush under
our heel the stones that are the stumbling-blocks
in our way; and it is only when we have so little
ense of human error and human misery that we
treat men as stones—and consequently wish to
destroy or bruise the hearts of our fellow-creatures
__that the malevolent spirit runs riot, and converts
a principle that was meant to stir us to do the
srandest work, into a bit of devilry compassing
the bloodiest ends.”

“Tgn’t it strange,” little Ben exclaimed, ‘‘ that
the same feeling should be beth good and bad!
for, if I understand you, uncle, it is only wrong to
feel angry towards men; but when we are roused
with a desire to beat down some great difficulty,
there is no harm in the feeling.”

“ Ay, my boy, it is the difference between use
and abuse. The destructive propensity of our

ing the obst

seA PEEP INTO THE HEART. 467

nature may lead to murder: it should lead to the
grandest engineering in life—the cutting through
the mountains of circumstances that appear to wall
in our existence. Nor is the malev olent or angry
feeling alw: ays bad: even when exercised against
our ilo. creatures, Ben. Maudlin haneedlence
is the very dotage of weak and fatuous humanity.
some per ople have such mere milk <-sop hearts that
they cannot bear to punish. But punishment,
Ben, is simply moral surgery, and the rod is as
necessary as the knife-—not the knife of the butcher,
nor the rod of the tyrant; but each used with all
the tenderness of a kind and loving hand. ‘To
cuddle and caress the criminal, lad, is to behave as
if we were in love with criminality ; ; but to treat
a criminal as he should be treated, is to inflict
upon him some bodily penance, that will have the
effect of deve loping the natural re morse and con-
trition of his heart-—to do this with no revengeful
spirit, but with the merciful regard of ch: astening,
rather than chastising him; but still, never to Hs
get that penance is necessary for penitence, and
that penitence alone can turn and soften the heart.

lence, I say, as little punishment as possible, but
stil] pen: ance sufficient to awaken penitence, and
depend upon it, we are the criminal’s best friend
after. all.”

Lhe subject was exhausted, and the uncle came
and stood by the boy at the table, watching the
progress of his sketch; and when he had put in @
few eae ace for the lad, and shown him how AA
whisk out the high lights with the corner of his
handkerchief, he began striding the room again,
as he resumed the thread of his theme.

‘The next unselfish emotion that we have to
treat of, lad,” he went on talking and walking, ‘is
that of emulation, or the pleasure we derive from
excelling or surpassing others. Ambition, i unre before
2H 2468 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

told you, is the love of power, or rather the love of
the deference and court that is paid to power—
tyranny being the mere love of the power itself.
But emulation or rivalry is simply the love of
racing upon the great human race-course of life ;
and there are social jockeys who find intense delight
in being ‘up in the stirrup,’ as it is called, and in
whipping and spurring the beast they are mounted
upon, in the hot struggle to win some paltry prize
by aneck. Now jockeys, lad, are proverbial for
their love of jockeying ; and a fierce spirit of rivalry
is not the temper that prompts the soul to acts of the
purest honesty, or the brightest generosity. More-
over, there is always this bitter drawback, even
to the greatest good luck when one man gambles
against another—that the winner makes a beggar
of his antagonist; and even so the delight of
distancing others is but sorry child’s play, and
leads to a whole host of heart-burnings and feuds
among those who are left behind, and that only for
the glory of the one greedy and ~ver-reaching
nature that wins. It is this petty racing spirit
that sets every one struggling now-a-days to get
out of their own sphere and class. The servant
longs to leave off her caps, and go up and sit in
the parlour like her mistress; and the mistress
longs, in her turn, to be out riding in her carriage
like ‘mylady.’ There is no such thing as con-
tentment—all is scramble, struggle, greed, and
rivalry. And yet, exalt the servant into the mis-
tress, and the mistress into ‘my lady,’ and see how
the parvenue is laughed at and despised; for the
bird which has escaped from its cage is almost
sure to be pecked to death by the old wild ones.
However, lad, when the love of excelling is
limited to the love of excellence, it is one of the
grandest pleasures of which our nature is sus-
ceptible ; and this, when combined with the powerA PEEP INTO THE HEART. 469

to excel, is simply human genius. For this love
of excellence is not the desire to distance men, but
merely to surpass certain works—to transcend
certain beauties. There is none of the chafing of
vulgar, worldly competition in it; but it is merely
a craving to approximate perfection. Indeed, in
its highest and purest form, 1t has no sense of man-
kind—no sense of opposing interest, nor desire to
trip others up by the heels; but only a sense of
the work itself, and to make it better than what
has been done before. It is this feeling which is
the cause of all human improvement, as well as of
all human excellence itself.

‘“There is now but one other feeling to be de-
scribed,” added the old man, ‘‘and then we shall
have exhausted this division of the unselfish emo-
tions of man.”

‘¢ What is that, uncle?” the boy inquired.

“ The love of conquering others,” was the answer ;
“ thoughI have before spoken of this so fully, while
treating of the love of success and the love of
power, that only a few words need be said further
upon the matter. The love of conquering is really
the love of humbling the proud—tor there is little
pleasure in depressing those who are already de-
pressed. I'he higher the enemy we vanquish, the
vreater the delight of the victory. Now it was
this love of humbling, that made the warriors of
old find such pleasure in enslaving the conquered ;
and ready as the world always has been to worship
the conqueror, still the worship has been that of awe
rather than veneration—the sacrifice paid to the
blood-stained pagan idol, in the hope of appeasing
his love of slaughter. Hence, you see, Jad, the
delight of triumphing over our fellows consists of
the composite charm of enslaving others and
elevating ourselves—of putting our heel on the
neck of one who was once as proud as we, andLan SECO i ARE CSE ERR CI EOE ARONA

470 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

feeling ourselves a few inches higher, because we
are lifted up on the poor pedestal of another’s car-
cass.* This is but petty posture-master work at
best, Ben; and there is too little real elevation, and
too much human debasement about it, too many
victims and only one victor, to please me. Never-
theless, when the same passion is applied to the
conquest of the great host of circumstances with
which we have always to battle—to the beating
down of difficulties, and to the enslaving of the
giant forces of the world in which we live, and
making them work for the benefit of mankind,
I know no ovation that can be too grand for such
a bloodless and yet glorious victory.”

THE UNSELFISH EMOTIONS

Which arise when others are affected in a particular
manner, but not by ourselves.

‘* Let me see,” said little Ben, ‘“‘ what have you
got to do now? We have done the unselfish
emotions which—are—which—how did you ex-
press it, uncle P”

“The unselfish emotions that spring up in the
bosom, when we ourselves affect others in a parti-
cular manner,” the old man prompted the boy ;
‘‘and now we have to do those which arise when
others are affected in a particular manner, but noi
by ourselves.”

“Oh, yes!” repeated Ben, “when others are
affected by ourselves, and when others are affected.
but not by ourselves. I think, uncle, you said
sympathy belonged to the latter class.”

the elder Benjamin returned no direct answer
to the question, but merely said, “ Why do we
turn sick at the sight of blood, Ben 2”

Ihe boy stared, as if he wondered what thatA PEEP INTO THE HEART. el

could have to do with the subject, and replied,
‘‘T’m sure I can’t say, uncle.”

‘Well, lad, in itself,” went on the old man,
‘there is nothing particularly repulsive about the
vital fluid; indeed, the colour is so intense, the
crimson so fine, that naturally it should be a
pleasing object to look upon. An infant would
dabble in it with delight; and yet the sight of it
often makes stout-hearted men swoon.”

The boy still stared with wonder at what it all
meant.

“Why, Ben, as the blaze of that old smith’s
forge is winsome, with the snow lying thick upon
the ground, because of the imaginary sense of
warmth it gives us amid all the cold; so blood 1s
sickening to us, because the imagination has a
sense of the wound which caused it to flow, and of
the suffering and danger connected with the spill-
ing of it. It is this working of the imagination
that lies at the very bottom of our feeling of
sympathy.”

“Oh, I see,” young Benjamin murmured out.

“ Had we been made as unsympathetic and un-
imaginative as leeches, the sight of the vital fluid
would have delighted us as much as them,” the
teacher proceeded ; “ and it is because some people
have more or less imagination than others, that
they have more or less pity for the afflicted. ‘This
is the reason why spectacles of human agony,
that stir some to their heart’s core, can be wit-
nessed by others without even a qualm ;.and why
surgeons cease after a time to be unmanned as
it is called, during their operations ; because, after
considerable practice, the surgical mind becomes
too intent upon the cure to think any longer of
the suffering. So that, you see, the feeling of
sympathy has no more selfishness about ibs than
there is selfishness in being pleased with the sight

eee ren

 

 

 

Snr cence et a yeaa RETIN PE PE

 

AT, YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

of a clean white garment in summer, and which
is pleasing to us, simply, because it revives in
our mind a sense of the coolness of snow.”

‘Of course there isn’t!” cried the little fellow.
‘“‘T can see it now quite plainly.”

“Now, Ben, this feeling of sympathy springs
out of the very constitution of the human mind,
having its source in what is called the association
of ideas, and thus it becomes a thorough funda-
mental element of our nature; so that we cannot
but regard it as part of the wise and merciful
ordinations of creation, that we should suffer with
the suffering, and rejoice with the joyful. This
sympathy of ours is the nerve-string that unites
all the different members of the human family
into one consentaneous body—with but one com-
mon heart among all. This is the httle cobweb
fibre that weaves and knits the gossamer threads
of life into the one perfect social web; this the
wondrous cause of the widening circles in the
pool, making the whole mass pulse and vibrate
directly one little particle of it is stirred: for ifthe
whole human fraternity were bound together, each
to each, with a band of living flesh stretching from
bosom to bosom, and quickened with the same
blood and reticulated with the same nerves—so
that though there were many bodies, there was but
one common sensorium, one common life among the
whole—man could not be more surely bound to man
than he is by the hgaments and tissues, as it were,
of hissympathetic emotions. ‘True, we do not see
the spiritual band, we only feel it; but assuredly
it exists as much as if we could press the warm
life-bond in our hands. All that is wanted is
that we should think when misery is presented to
us, and then we must feel—the thoughtless alone can
be indifferent. It is impossible that even the
meanest and the vilest should suffer, and we notA’, PEEP INTOCEAE HEART.

feel a pity for their sufferings—if we will but let
the common course of our intellectual nature
work as it was meantto do; and it is only the fool
that suffers misery to endure without feeling it, or
without a wish, if not an endeavour, to relieve it.”

‘ How beautifully it is all arranged, to be sure,
uncle,” was all the little fellow had to Say.

‘ Beautiful!” echoed Uncle Ben; “why, the
heavens themselves are not more beautiful than us
the heart of man, if we will but look into it,
closely as star-gazers love to scan the glories of ns
firmament. And see here, lad,” Ee went on:
‘there is the same mighty principle of harmony
running through the human heart as there is in
the great womb of space itself. What is 1t that
keeps the planets for ever circling in their course ?
Newton has given us the golden key to the
mystery. There are two forces ever at ‘work, he
shows us, throughout all nature; the one a mere
impetus, driving the orbs in the direction of the
force that has been or iginally impressed upon them,
and limited to the mere moving body itself; and
the other a mighty spirit of attraction, extending
throughout the entire universe and tending to
draw every body, each towards the other: hence,
one power tends to drive the mov ing body i &
straight line, and the other to draw it down
towards the centre of the entire world-system
itself; so that by the two acting at right angles
to one another, a balance is produced, and a series
of movements in diagonals is the result, ending
in the describing of one continuous and perfect
eircle. Fling a stone straight along in the air, and
ou will find it describe a curve, Ben, a curve
that is brought to an abrupt termination only by
the ground on which it fell. It flies in a straight
line from your hand, lad; the earth draws it down
and down to the oround ; ; and so it goes sweepingei te SSSR AR TN SAR A PCT

  

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
  

ATA. YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

, falling and falling as it rushes through the
ad and describing Hie same ever- -bending iene as
even a planet itself in its course.’

“But what has this to do with sympathy ?” said
the boy.

‘“‘ Listen, Ben,” the old man added; ‘there are
the same rectangular forces for ever at work in
the moral world as in the stellar one. The selfish
force drives man away from home in quest of
the objects of his wants and desires: his appe-
tites and his impulses are the impetus which stirs
him in this direction, and which keeps him for
ever moving in his own individual path. But the
unselfish force of sympathy, the mighty and
invisible power of human attraction, which causes
every human heart to tend and eravitate, as it
were, to every other human heart, and which
reaches to the furthermost corners of the earth,
makes him revert to the centre of the social circle
in which he dwells; and thus the two moral
powers, working in unison, cause him to move
harmoniously in the orbit that has been marked
out for him; so that, while seeking his own good,
he is for ever fulfilling his loving offices as well
as the duties of kinship, friendship, or citizenship
to those about him.”

“Oh, wonderful! most wonderful!” exclaimed
the youth, who was now able to see and compre-
hend what was meant by the emotion of sympathy.

‘ And now, Ben, let me beg of you, lad, ever to
ysis in mind,” the earnest old man concluded,
“that you have been so constituted that a fellow-
creature’s misery, not only should never be a matter
of indifference to you, but (if you will only
think as a man—if you will but attend to the
misery, and not avert your eyes and heart from it)
you have been made so that it cannot possibly be
indifferent to you. For as it has been arrangedA PEEP INTO THE HEART. 475

that the infection of one happy, smiling face
should make others feel disposed to smile too, so,
lad, the sight of a sorrowing countenance is like
the sight of blood, to unhardened natures ; it makes
the heart sick with the fellow-sorrow it breeds
within it. Still this sickness, boy, is no morbid
disease, but merely the sickness of the yearning
appetite of our common humanity to heal the
ugly mental sore—to pour oil into the wound that
it pains us to look upon. It only wants a half-
pennyworth of oil in the palm, I told you before,
Ben, for a man to be able to play the good Sama-
ritan any day; and, depend upon it, charity lies
not in munificence of gifts (which are often only
the mere lacquer of brazen ostentation) ; but in
tenderness of heart, in mercifulness of thought, in
kindliness of construction, and in willingness to
serve and tend, rather than in readiness to give
and depart. ‘To the suffering, sympathy alone is
all-sufficient ; one tear-drop is of more value to the
honest aching heart than a guineaat any time. It
is only the born beggars and canting impostors
that put a market-price upon human commisera-
tion. A few minutes by the sick bed, a single up-
ward glance of the eyes, one tender tone, a gentle
pressure of the palm, are worth more to the sutfer-
ing poor than a whole volume of stock sentiment,
a purseful of gold, or a prayer-book full of mere
magpie religion. ‘The kindly look and the com-
forting word we can always give; and these,
depend upon it, are the true oil of good Samaritan-
ship—the oil that is a very balm to the heart-
sore ;—these, the widow’s mites that all can drop
into the poor-box, and which are greater in value
than all other gifts that can be cast into the
human treasury. If it were not thus, what signi-
ficance could there be in the proverb which says,
‘what would the poor do without the poor?’ tora

ATG YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

the poor have only the comfort of commiseration
to give to the poor, and this, which transcends all,
they certainly give bey ond all. The easy sood-
ness of a ‘subsor iption’ sums up the charity of the
rich; nights of long watching, days of tender
nursing, neglect of work, loan of bedding and
clothing, and a hundred other precious little boun-
ties make up, on the other hand, the untrump eted
munificence ‘of those who have nothing to eine:

‘‘ What would the poor do w ithout the poor ?”
repeated young Ben, half sorrowfully to himself.

‘And now, lad, remember, I say again,” Uncle
Ben added, ‘* poverty and suffering ‘ye shall ever
have with you; so do you have always a sense that
three fourths of the human race are born to want
and hardship ; do you have a sense, in the midst of
the misery that encompasses you, like the very
air you br ‘cathe, that the poor are God’s own poor
that the bitter her itage is theirs for some inscru-
table purpose ; and do you have still a sense, that
if you can give no worldly gift, at least you have
it ever in your power to give the infinitely higher
one of the sweet comfort of commiseration, and
that you are a better and more hopeful man if you
east but a wish that it were otherwise, into the
treasury.”

‘“T will have this sense, uncle,” the earnest-
natured boy cried out, ‘‘for now that you have
given it me, it shall never die in me, depend upon
bs

‘That's hard and hazardous to promise, Ben,”
added the other; “ the cold shade of worldly pride
ean soon numb it, and make the fine nerve as
callous as the veins in marble. Beware of worldly
success, lad, for this, in most cases, is moral failure.
It wants but little dignity of soul to fail well,
for sorrow and trouble generally chasten the heart,
so as to enable even a small man to play theA PEEP INTO THE HEART. ATT

martyr in a small way ; but to succeed grandly 1s
the most trying thing, even to a hero’s nature.
The little ant-hill on which we have raised our-
selves looks so like a mountain under the micro-
scope of our own vanity, and we are so prone to
believe that the vantage ground has been built up
by our own spade and shovel, rather than by the
million little busy things for ever labouring around
us—so ready to look at these little labourers
through the wrong end of the telescope, and see
them infinitely smaller than they are—so quick to
believe that the old friends whom we have out
jockeyed in the world’s race have but sorry hacks
to carry them—so proud to stick the trumpery
‘plate’ we have won in the * heat” ipon our own
sideboard, and flash it in the eyes of the vulgar—
and so credulous to believe, with the mythologists
of old, that it’s only the really great men that are
raised to the glory of the ‘stars,’ and to find our
gods merely in the stellar world of humanity—we
are so disposed to do all this, Isay, that it is difficult
to find the successful man who advances through
life, like the rower who understands the right use
of a scull,—with his eyes continually fixed upon
the scenes he has left behind, and his back
turned, even while he is ever respectful, to all
that lies ahead of him.”

Uncle Ben’s staunch Puritan spirit rang out in
every word of the speech as he uttered it, and 1¢
was manifest in the tone and temper with which
he spoke, that the hatred of servility, and the love
of hearty, but not arrogant independence, was the
marked characteristic of his nature.

Presently he wound up with, “ There, Ben, we
have pretty well cropped out our subject, for it
would be idle, after what I have said to you about
the feeling of sympathy—underlying as it does
almost the whole of our unselfish emotions—to doA478 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

other than enumerate to you the feelings which
I have grouped under this second division of the
class. Let me just run over the heads of them,
and then an end. Thus we find not only a plea-
Sure in sympathizing with the sutferines of
others, or rather in relieving or comforting the
sufferers, but also a pleasure in rejoicing at the
happiness of our fellow-creatures, and this pro~
ceeds trom what is termed the emotion of con-
gratulation; that is to say, of feeling the same
gratefulness at any good which occurs to others as
they themselves do. Then again, we are capable
of finding a savage delight in exulting and triumph-
ing over the downfall of those we detest, even as we
can derive pleasure from the worldly success of
those in whom we feel an interest ; so, too, we can
be even base enough to feel a charm in gloating
over the miseries and afflictions of such as we
believe to be our enemies, and which is, as it
were, the savage sympathy of malevolence, rather
than the tender pity of the benevolent feelings.
These, Ben, with the exception of the emotion of
envy, or covetous longing, which we feel for those
possessions of others to which we fancy we
have no claim, and that of Jealousy, or savage
greed of those possessions to which we fancy we
have a claim, or to which we aspire,—these, I
believe, make up the whole of the feelings under
consideration, and so far as I know, exhaust the
matter of the entire moral emotions—selfish as
well as unselfish—themselves.”CHAPTER XXIV:
THE STILL, SMALL VOICE.

‘*] supPposE youre going to tell me now, uncle,
about the prison and the poor-house, and to show
me what are the duties of hfe; just as you did
with the amusements, you know ?” observed young
Benjamin, as he shook the crumbs from the dinner
cloth into the fender, and proceeded to fold it.

«Noi: T’m. not, lad,’ the. elder _ Benjamin
answered, stretching his legs, and leaning well
back in his chair, as if he was settling down for a
doze rather than a chat. ‘‘ We’re not ready for
the lesson yet, boy. _ Before we try to read Greek,
we must learn the Greek alphabet, and as yet we’re
only half-way through the A B C of morality.”

‘What! is there more to do about the moral
pleasures then, uncle?” cried the little fellow,
somewhat disappointed. _

‘Yes, more,” rejoined the teacher; ‘“‘a little
more schooling of the heart, Ben,.and then you
will be ready to appreciate the moral of the long
story. Up to this time, lad, we have been dealing
with the pleasures that arise from the perception
of some good or evil accruing to ourselves or
others. But there is something more than good
and evil in the moral world: there is the little
matter of right and wrong, boy; and that is a nut
that needs good sound teeth to crack, I can tell
you. Now if I were to ask you, Ben, what is
right and what is wrong, you'd begin by saying—"
“« Now just let me speak for myself, sir,” inter-sR RE AR PLO ETE RMIT SEE MEO IR OR TI

  

480 YOUNG BENJAMIN -FRANKLIN.
rupted the boy, playfully, as he began to spread
his sketch and colours before him again; ‘‘ let me
see. Well, I should say it was right to speak
the truth, and wrong to tell a lie; that it was
wrong to steal, and right to give every man his
due, as father says—and so on, you know.”

«Ay, I knew you would,” returned the uncle;
‘and yet you've told me nothing, you little gos-
ling, about what is either right or wrong 1n itself.
You've only informed me that John is a man,
when I didn’t want to be made acquainted with
what kind of an animal John was, but merely
with what class of creature a man belonged to.
What, I say again, is right per se—right in itself
—right in the abstract, as the schoolmen say ?”

‘Well, I should say that’s right which isn’t
wrong, then!” cried the eager lad, endeavouring
io make something like a guess at the riddle.

“Yes, but what’s wrong? that which isn’t right,
I suppose you'd say; and so there we should keep
shuffling our feet backwards and forwards, like
soldiers halting on a march, and yet never
advancing a step;” and as the old man said the
words, he shook his head and smiled at the mno-
cence of the puzzled youngster. ‘ Well, lad, let’s
vive you a helping hand up the ship’s side before
we weigh anchor, and tell you that right is lite-
rally what is ruled; what is ordained; what 1s
straightforward, or done directly, in obedience to
some command.”

“Well, but, uncle,” argued the plain-spoken
little fellow, ‘“‘if you were to tell me to go and
steal, as I have heard you say the gipsy mother
does to her child, immediately after it has said its
prayers, that wouldn’t be right for me to do; and
yet if I did so I should only be acting in obedi-
ence to a command, as you say.”

‘Tt would be right, lad-~”THE’ STILL. SMALE VOICE. 481

‘‘Q—oh, uncle!” cried the boy, breaking into
the middle of the sentence.

“Right in an unthinking child, Ben,” concluded
the godfather; ‘‘ but you know that the command
would be at variance with a superior command
that we are bound to listen to, above all others.
‘The subject, therefore, becomes narrowed into,
what commands are we, like dutiful children, to
attend to.”

“Tl know what you mean, uncle,” said the
youngster, a little discomfited.

‘‘No you don’t, Ben,” was the rejoinder, “for,
remember, I’m not talking religion to you. Iam
merely endeavouring to help you to spell out the
laws of the heart, lad—the commands of what is
called the conscience; and I want to let you see
there are natural commandments as well as
spiritual ones, and that the ordinations of nature
are and should be the same law to us as even the
law of the Bible itself; for law is simply that
which is laid down, or enjoined for our obedience.
The laws of what is called nature are but the laws
of the one great Lawgiver after all ; and therefore
must be one and the same law. The three great
breaches of the various forms of law in the world
make the three great human errors. ‘Thus, Si is
what is contrary to divine law, or the breach of
some religious commandment or ordination of the
great Ruler of all; Vice what is contrary to some
moral law, or the breach of some righteous com-
mandment or ordination of nature; and Crvime,
that which is contrary to some social law, or the
breach of some politic commandment or ordina-
tion of the rulers of the land.”

“T see! I see!” again murmured the youth.

‘‘Now some, I should tell you, in all honesty,
my little man,” the elder Benjamin continued,
“have gainsayed this doctrine | am propounding

atOR NDNA

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
  
  
  
  
   
    
    
 
  
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
  
      
  

482 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
to you, and have urged, that if right be mere
obedience to orders, God, if He had. so pleased,
might have ordained a code of laws the very oppo-
site to that of the ten commandments; and would
it then be right, they ask, to plunder and slay ?
3ut the simple answer, lad, is ‘yes;’ for then we
should have been so constituted that slaughter
and pillage would have been the one great sood to
us, even as they are to some warring nations in
christendom to this day. Nevertheless, the All-
wise and All-merciful never could have willed and
ordained wrong, right; any more than He could
have willed two and two to be five. As it is, how-
ever, it has assuredly been made part of the wise
and merciful ordinations of nature—not only that
we should love the man who does a benefit, and
does it for the pure sake of benefiting, but—
that we should believe that the benefactor acts
rightly in so doing; even as we have been made
to feel satisfied that the malefactor does what is
wrong.”

‘““ Yes, uncle, and youare right too,” added little
3en; “right in what you say, and acting rightly
in saying it, because I can feel how much it
benefits me.”

‘‘ Well then, Ben,’ the other went on, “we
now see what is right and wrong; we see that
right, morally speaking, i is merely what is conform-
able to the commands of the conscience; and con-
science is simply moral consciousness—an intuition
which springs up within us that certain human
conduct is contrary to the ordinations of nature,
immediately such conduct comes to be judged by
the natural instincts of the heart. Moral right
then, lad, is that which is agreeable to the
decisions of the moral judgment, and these decisions
or the moral judgment are simply what are called
sentiments.”THE STILL, SMALL VOICE.

“Why, I thought, uncle, a sentiment was
merely an opinion,” interposed young Ben.

“So it is, boy; an opinion begotten by a feel-
ing,” ran the reply; ‘but it is not a mere judicial
opinion. I have, for instance, an opinion that it
will rain to-morrow, and that is simply a purely
intellectual opinion, because my intellect alone is
concerned in coming to the decision; but I have
an opinion also that vice is hateful, and that is a
sentiment, because both the intellect and the emo-
tions are engaged in forming the judgment.”

“So,” said little Ben, “a sentiment is an
opinion begotten by a feeling.”

‘Yes, Ben; we speak of sentimental novels,
and a mother’s sentiments about her child, and so
forth, meaning thereby neither passion, emotion,
nor temper, but merely the opinions engendered
by such emotions and tempers,” explained the
tutor. ‘‘And now, having pointed out to you
the pleasures of the emotions themselves, I shall
proceed at once to show you what are the delights
of the sentiments. Though even before doing
this, should say a few words to you on the world
of opinion in which we live; for the moral senti-
ments are divisible into three classes, like the
emotions from which they spring, and may be
described as—(1) Sentiments engendered in
us by our opinion of ourselves; (2) Sentiments
engendered in us by our opinion of others; and
(3) Sentiments engendered in us by others’ opinion
of us. Hence you perceive how much of human
happiness depends upon mere opinion, and that
we live in a world not only of sensation, thought,
and emotion, but of opinion also.”

‘¢So we do,” chimed in the boy, “and yet I’ve
heard people say they don’t care about mere
opinions, and father, I know, objects to senti-
ment.”
a2A84 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

‘Your father objects, Ben, as wise men do,”
urged the elder Benjamin, ‘to that affectation of
feeling which merely chatters sentiment—that 1s
to say, which delivers the opinions of the emotions,
without having any corresponding emotions to
justify them.”

THE WORLD OF OPINION.

“ Now this world of opinion, my son, 1s as mar-
vellous as the solid external world, or the fairy-
like internal ideal world, in which we pass our
lives. It is this which makes the Tomkinses
live in continual terror of the Jenkinses; this
which makes people clothe themselves in the most
unseemly costumes at most unseasonable periods ;
it is for this that people furnish their houses ; for
this they wear their jewels ; for this they exhibit
their plate, and dress their lackeys up like macaws ;
and for this they keep their carriages: for all is
done, not to please themselves, not to minister to
their own comforts, nor to add to their own hap pi-
ness, but merely to please their neighbours ; and
yet not to please them either, as true kindness
loves to please others, for the mere pleasure it
finds in pleasing; but to please them as actors
strive to please, for the hollow vanity of the mere
clapping of the hands they get from the spectators.
And when we think that if there were only the
same pains taken to benefit others as there is to
please them, with the view of extorting the small
encouragement of a pat on the back from the
beholders, how different a world it might be! why,
then we can hardly help believing that the love
of applause has turned this same world of ours
into a playhouse, where scenery and decorations,
dress and mimicry, are the chief attractions of the
time. Again, lad, it is for this mere opinion of
people—the majority of whom can never be knownTHE STILL, SMALL VOICE. 485

or seen, nor even heard of—that the author writes,
the poet weaves his verses, the artist paints his
pictures, and the warrior risks his life; even as it
is this same public opinion that the truly righteous
man gives no heed to, and the martyr braves.
Again, Ben, look at the tyranny of fashion, which
is only public opinion expressed on the small
matter of dress. Why, if Nero had passed an
edict, condemning women to compress their ribs,
for the greater part of their lives, in an iron-bound
corselet, think how historians would have raved
about the devilry of the ingenious inhumanity ;
and yet one fashionable fool thinks it the perfec-
tion of human beauty to cut her body into two
compartments like a wasp, and to make them seem
as if united by a mere ligature of a waist—and
instantly the whole legion of fashionable fools
voluntarily condemn themselves to the same tor-
ture. One idiot again parts his hair down the
middle, and then immediately every other idiot
in the world falls to halving his locks in the same
manner; one monkey trims his whiskers this way,
and instantly the whole cageful of monkeys coax
theirs into the same contortions; one thinks it the
acme of elegance to wear his hands in his breeches-
yockets, and the next day nobody can keep their
fingers out of the sides of their small-clothes.
Surely, Ben, that little extra spoonful of brains
which man has had given to him, to make him
something more than an ape, has been wasted
upon the majority of skulls; for as we laugh at
the ortolan, that is fattened by being made to feed
six times a day, by means of half a dozen sham
sunrises per diem, in the shape of a lantern thrust
every four hours in ata hole into a darkened cham-
ber: so these people of fashion are as silly as the
poor deliciously-fat birds; ever mistaking the
hight of a farthing rushlight for that of the trueees

sae aii Sea

  
 
 
   
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
    
   
  
  
 
 

486 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

glory of the day, and tricked, by their love of
paltry splendour, into the exaggeration of their
bulk, only to tickle the taste of the voluptuary.”
Ife paused for a moment or two, and then added,
‘“‘ Nevertheless, Ben, this same world of opinion
can work its marvels as well as its follies. It was
this that snatched Martin Luther from the stake,
and this that drove the bigoted James from the
English throne; it is this, too, that keeps society
in check far better than any statute-book could

‘ever accomplish. Further, it is merely the still,

small voice within us—the outspeaking of the
heart itseli—that makes the murderer’s sleepless-
ness so terrible to him; and it is this small voice
again that makes the martyr find a consolation
even in the flames.”

‘“ Why,it seems, uncle, as if there were two sides
to every one of our feelings,” advanced the young-
ster, ‘‘for no sooner do you show me that what
you called ma-ma-malevolence is bad, than you be-
gin to let me see how good it can be, when properly
used, to overcome the difficulties that plague us.”

‘“‘Yes, Ben,” rejoined the uncle, ‘as even bene-
volence itself may run into maudlin dotage.”

SENTIMENTS ENGENDERED IN US BY OUR OWN OPINION
OF OURSELVES.

‘““Now, my patient little listener, we will begin
with the consideration of the first class of the
moral sentiments, and what did I tell you they
were, Ben ?”

‘Here it is, uncle,” cried the eager boy, for he
had jotted it down again upon the paper before
him ; ‘sentiments engendered in us by our own opinion
of ourselves.”

‘Just so, Ben,” nodded Uncle Benjamin; “en-
gendered, mark! for there is always a certainTHE STILL, SMALL VOICE. A487

amount of moral criticism, of pondering over and
scrutinizing our own conduct, preceding the de-
velopment of the sentiment in our bosoms; and
then, according as we get to think well or meanly
if ourselves, according as we pluck up our shirt-
collars, and smile blandly at the image of our-
self in the ideal looking-glass; or according as
we shake our head, and scowl at the reflection,
so does the opinion that we form of ourselves
blend with a certain affection of our nature, and
become a sentiment of either self-approbation, or
disapprobation, as the case may be. Nor does the
process end here: for this sentiment of approba-
tion or disapprobation unites again with the natural
likings and dislikings of our natures, and develops,
in its turn, an emotion of some form of lasting love,
or hate for our own self; and thus we get to feel
some one of those delicate shades and gradations
of the affectionate emotions, that I before showed
you make up the chromatic scale of love: the
result of the entire mental process being the
development of a. feeling of self-respect, self-
regard, self-esteem, self-admiration, or self-honour,
even up to that form of self-worship and ‘self-
lorification which comes of self-veneration.”
“Oh!” exclaimed the little fellow, delighted
to be brought back again to the chain of love,
‘how plain and easy it seems to come, uncle !”
“Ay, boy! it is easy to put the puzzle map
together, when you are well up in the veography
of the countries it relates to; but it is no child’s
play, I can tell you, to make the map itself. It
requires many long voyages of discovery, and many
observations to be taken, before the longitude and
latitude, and the bearings of the different points
of the human mind and heart, can be settled ; and
before the thoughts and feelings can be traced
down. as plainly as the land itself upon a chart, for

cr
oOeA en CRE

  

4

our guidance. But oh! these tropes and figures,
Ben, “they are the true flowers of speech, that always
lead us children out of the hard, dry, dusty road be-
fore us. Now, of all the different forms of self-
love, my boy,” he proceeded, ‘the only one that a
truly wise and great man can ever allow himself

be seduced into, by the witchery of his own
conceit, 1s the one at the very bottom of the scale,
V1Z., self respect, and which is only just one rung
of the ladder above utter indifference. he rest,
lad, are all personal vanity and coxcombry;
for your fool has ever the crest of the coxcomb
for his coat of arms. We might as well be down
on our spiritual knees, worshipping the mud
idol of our own selves, ether we have tricked the
dirty deity out in all the tinsel and trumpery
jewelry of man’s vanity, — -as well do this as be for
ever playing the ‘fon,’ ike the spoony boy Nar-
cissus, and making sheep’ s-eyes at our own florid
portrait, as imaged in the shallow basin of the
fountain of our own conceit. Depend upon it, lad,
a man that knows himself thoroughly, knows that
there is no beauty in him when ‘he comes to be
turned inside out; for then there is such a
hideous display of stomach and bile, that the
human anatomy is by no means pleasant to behold.
To see our own fetch at any time, Ben, should set
the mind thinking how we should look in the felon’s
dock, at that oreat time when there is to be no
special pleading, but all are to be judged as they
really are, and might have’ been. ‘The felon’s
dock, boy, tries the heres countenance ; and,
rely on it, that many of those that seem to have
angel’s faces now, will look hardly a whit better
or fairer than felons under the searching glance
of the Great Judge’s scrutiny.

“T do not wish to knock all the self-love out of
you, my little man,” he added, ‘but I say, never

 

33 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.THE STILL, SMALL VOICE. 489

let yon sali ‘egard go beyond the bounds of self-
res n if you can honestly mount so high.
And ce of selfadmiration and self- adulation,
as you would wish to ward off madness and
dotage. 1 do not wish to teach you that you are
a born devil, my dear boy, for little children have
been said by Him who knew them best, to be
as pure as the kingdom of heaven; but the mis-
fortune is, the mirror grows tarnished by age, and
soon ceases to reflect the light of the skies. I do
not want you to believe there is no hope for you,
for I tell you, lad, that you are ever hopeful; and
that you can never be so utterly good, nor so utterly
bad either, that there may not be hope of you
still. Think of what you are, and for ever con-
trast the image with what you might be. Have
faith in the possible goodness of your own nature,

even while yon have a consciousness of the posi-
tive shorteomings—the meanness and baseness of
it; have ever before you a pattern self for yourself
to copy, and be for ever comparing your own self
with your own model nature. Let the moral look-
ing-glass reflect both back and front: look back,
and have a sense of what a shapeless, soul-less
bodily lump ; youare; and then look frontward, and
see God’s image stamped upon your features; and
after all, shake hands with yourself, and pledge
your honour to yourself, that you will still strive
and struggle to be the fine, upright, and fair-faced.
fellow you may be—and not the cringing and limp-
ing moral hunchback which honest retrospection
shows you are. Therefore, I say again to you,
Ben, be ever self-respectful ; lift your hi it, and bow
your head to your own superior né ature—that nature
which is, and always should be in advance of you ;

but never be self-enamoured, and rather pass by
your other self without so much as an ap proving
nod, and hang your head in very shame at the490 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

shabbiness of the contemptible scoundrel, di rectly
you are alive to the dirtiness of your friend. Se/f-
respect and self-faith, Ben, these are the only self-
sentiments that can be honestly en couraged, or
even countenanced in the heart of man; with the
exception, indeed, of what is termed self-approbation
—hbut certainly not self-satisfaction—at our own
conduct.”

‘You may depend on my minding what you
say, uncle,” the pupil assured the teacher.

“This sentiment of self-approbation, on the con-
trary,’ the other went on,. ‘is the immediate
result of the operations of the conscience, or
moral judgment ; for right and wrong are but the
true and the false of the heart; and the same
faculty which compares, weighs, deliberates, and
determines upon the rectitude or error of intel-
lectual propositions, also comes to the decisions
upon the pr ropriety or impropriety of human con-
duct. H ence, the feeling of appr obation that en-
sues in the niga directly we i ave an intuitive per-
ception ¢ that such an act is right, is tantamount to
the feeling of conviction which follows, imme-
diately we have an intuition that a certain state-
ment is true; and this explains why the morals
of nations differ, in the same manner as different
countries have dutten ent kinds of truths, and even
different tastes—and that with one and the same
nerves, brain, and heart. For as it is noé true that
there is no such thing as truth, so is it not might
for sceptics to assert that there is no such thing
as Fon Uean ti in the world; since in the same man-
ner as it is demonstrable from the very nature of

the forms of things, that all the angles of a triangle
must be equal to two right angles, so is it morally
certain, from the very constitution of our inate
sympathies and antipathies, that it is impossible
the benefactor could ever be disapproved of forTHE STILL, SMALL VOICE. 49]

benefiting others, for the pure sake of the benefit
conferrec : ; espe cially when it is felt that he has
Vv iol ited to superior claim in so doing.”

So then it is as plain to see what i 19 right and
wrong, as it is to tell what is true and false,” mur-
mured. the younger Benjamin, still pondering
on the pr atiea

‘* As plain when the matter is self-ey ident,” was
the reply, ‘and yet as difficult when the relations
are involved. _‘ Which was first,’ says Plutarch,
‘the bird or the ege ?—who can paele the truth out
of that vexed question. So, in like manner, we
may ask which is first, country or child? Brutus
preferred his country; should he have e preferred
his child ?”’

‘The boy was about to take up the gauntlet, and
have a tilt with the old man in favour of “the
cna but the uncle cut him short by crying,

‘To the point, boy! to the point! Now this
faerie of self-approbation is the all-sufficient
reward that good and great men work for. It is
only the little moral fop that wants and craves
for the approbation of others. Indeed, according
as a man loves the applause of his own heart, or
that of others, so are we enabled to gauge the
greatness or littleness of his soul. The moral
hero listens only to the voice within him, for this
he knows is but the echo of the divine decrees
—the whispering of an angel’s tongue prompting
him to the right course the tr umpet of the unseen
herald proclaiming the law of nature to him, and
crying ‘le roi le veut ; and so the cheering of his
own heart is like the music of the spheres to his
conscience,—a soft mellifluent concord flowing out
of the very harmony of things. Butas for the ap-
plause of others, what is it but the poor actor's re-
ward? and he who acis his part well; who mimics
the man of probity, honour, and loving-kindness to49? YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

the life; who can play the fine walking oentle-
man with propriety in front of the foot- lights,
even though he be the dirtiest and shabbiest of
varlets Sine unseen of men, is sure to get a
round or two for the claptrap moral sentiment
that he invariably utters as he quits the scene.
Be assured, lad, there are two standards of right
and wrong, of dignity and villany: an external
and an internal one; and that the man who con-
forms to the goodness of men, is the petty moral
coxcomb, tricked in all the canting fashion of the
time—the vagabond waif and stray that always
goes with the current,—and ready even for can-
nibalism, if human haunches came to be thought
as thoroughly in good taste as those of venison ;
whilst the man who studies only the goodness of
his own heart, and squares his conduct with his
conscience, has all the sturdy, stalwart element of
the honest old martyr in his bosom —of the faithful
servant who likes always to have his orders direct
from his master.”

‘‘T can understand now, uncle, what is meant
by listening to the voice of one’s own con-
science ” the gvodson observed, ‘‘and shall strive to
have Ie ays an easy one myself ; and I know,
mother has often told me how people suffer from
remorse after a wicked act, and that it is only
their own guilty conscience, as she says, upbraiding
them for their wickedness.”

“And that brings me, lad, to the last part of
our present theme,” the godfather added, ‘‘ namely,
to the varied feelings of pleasure or pain which
are developed in the bosom, directly we come to
reflect upon our own eonduct, and to approve
or disapprove of what we have done. Some
time ago I told you, that many of the emotions
subsided into a snbdued and more or less perma-
nent form of pain or pleasure, which are calledTHE STILL, SMALL VOICE. 493

‘tempers ; and so with the sentiments, Ben:
many of them have a tendency to develop a vivid
feeling, which has all the character of an emotion ;
but with this simple distinction, that there is
always a sense of right and wrong, approbation
and disapprobation, connected with it, rather
than merely good and evil. Such states of mind
imay be called moods, for they have also many of
the characteristics of temper. Of these moods,
the feelings of se/f-complacency and remorse may be
cited as instances, proceeding as they do from
certain sentiments which are engendered by our
own opinion of ourselves; so anger and gratitude
are the moods of mind, begotten by the sentiments
engendered by our opinion of others’ conduct
towards us, and thus we come to speak of an
angry mood, and a remorseful mood ; even as there is
again the proud mood, or the humble mood of mind,
which arises whenever we compare our conduct,
our gifts, or our possessions, with those of others,
and think ourselves the better or worse for them
than they. The delight of the feeling of se/f-com-
placency which springs up within us, whenever
we review our past conduct, and feel that we
have violated no tie of kindred, broken no law
of nature in our acts, but that we have fulfilled
some little of the duty that was imposed upon us,
when we were ordained to form part of the great
human chain,—each link for ever helping and
being helped on by the rest through life,—this
is the exquisite consolation of an easy conscience,
which all allow to be the very swmmum bonum of
existence—that fine foretaste of heavenly enjoy-
ment which follows the consciousness of having
done one good act; of having foregone some little
pleasure, suffered some little misery for the sake
of another’s happiness; of having rendered back
some fraction of those gifts which we hold on494 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

trust for the good of our fellows. This is given
us as the liberal and honestly earned wages of
good work in this world; whereas, the applause
of men is but the petty prize held out as a bribe
for sorry workmen to try and work better. To
strive to win the applause of our neighbours,
however, for the mere sake of the trumpery vanity
of the cheermg voices, without doing the good
for which alone the applause is honestly due, is
to endeavour to trick the paymasters into paying
the wages without doing the work at all. This
is the true cheatery and infamy of modern society
—the obtaining of moral credit under false pre-
tences—the moral swindling that is daily practised
by high and low, rich and poor, gentleman and
sweep. Nevertheless, though we may cheat others,
lad, we cannot well trick ourselves. - We know
our ingrained meanness, even though a hundred
charity dinners toast and huzza at our mag-
nanimity ; and even if the trickster be caught
in his own trap, and be himself tricked, by the
speciousness of the hollow plaudits, into the con-
ceit that he is a bright grain of the salt of the
earth, assuredly the time will come when the
delirium of the fever shall pass away, and the
soul shall be roused by an angel’s trumpet out of
the long trance that has been on it: and see
itself as in a black mirror without a speck of
colour to give a meretricious tone to the hard
lines and ugly forms of the picture.”

Young Ben stopped painting, as his uncle halted
® minute on coming to a resting-place in his
discourse ; but the little fellow merely looked up
to assure the old mar that he was still ready for
his words.

‘Remorse, Ben, I should tell you, is not a
necessary and immediate consequence of iniquity.
A dog has no conscience, lad, and a man may liveyy roam ‘ - i ACV
1 Bi bu SJ ILL, SMALL \ OLrohi, ae Jo

the life of a dog; be as savage and remorseless
as a bloodhound, or as pampered and inoffensive
as a lap-dog, and yet be as unabashed as the
mastiff or the poodle after all. To develop con-
science, calm and patient reflection is requisite ;
and if there be neither time nor humour for this,
of course the great judging principle can never
pass sentence, since the culprit has escaped trial.
Nevertheless, if we be really something more
than dogs—if we have a principle of volition
within us—a principle that transcends organism,
since its office 1s to be ever at war with the mere
organic instincts of our nature, and if the dumb
1

beasts have only these same organic instincts to

gvuide them—surely we do not die the death of
dogs; and then how shall offended justice be
filched of its due? Remorse may not come for a
time ; 1t may remain as dead in us as the faculty
of perceiving light and colour did in the born-
blind boy, till he was couched by Cheselden ; but
when we see—when the nine days’ puppyhood of
human life has passed away, and our eyes are
fairly opened, and we come to behold ourselves
as we really are—why then remorse shall burst
upon the head like a storm—as assuredly as
the thunder after excessive heat.”

 

SENTIMENTS ENGENDERED BY OUR OPINION OF OTHERS,

“¢ We now come to the sentiments engendered by our
opinion of others, don’t we, uncle?” asked little Ben,
as he turned to his paper, and refreshed his memory
with the notes he had made. :

, my patient little philosopher,” answered
the uncle, who was not a little astonished at the
boy’s continuity of attention, ‘and the pleasure
we derive from such sentiments consists chiefly
in the delight we find in loving and being grate-

66 Nad
‘ Yes4.96 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

ful to others, as well as in approving and in
thinking well of them; while, on the contrary,
human nature is capable of finding a savage enjoy-
ment in detracting from the merits of others—
in censuring and satirizing them—as well as in
venting our anger or indignation upon those who
have either offended ourselves personally, or
committed some flagrant injustice against our
friends or neighbours; for indignation is but
sympathetic anger, the sense which makes us feel
a wrong done to another, the same as if it had been
done tous. And here I should point out to you
what is the peculiar characteristic of this class
of sentiments, namely, its tendency to inspire us
with trust in those about us. For if we live in
a world of opinion, lad, at least we live in a
world of faith to give us confidence in the seneral
probity of our fellows. Faith, Ben, is usually
supposed to apply to religious matters, and to be
that principle of our soul which transcends reason
as a means of developing belief. For instance,
we cannot rationally understand the infinitude of
space ; and yet we have a faith that the universe
is endless, and feel morally certain that there
cannot possibly be any limit or boundary to it,
since if there be a wall round it, as you would
say, boy, what is on the other side of the wall ?”
«Ah, that’s what I never could make out,” the
little fellow observed, ready to fly off into the
new mystery. But the godfather was too intent
upon the work he had in hand, to be drawn aside
from his object; so he merely said, ‘‘ No, nor the
greatest philosopher either. However, Ben, faith
is as necessary for worldly guidance as it is for
transcendental knowledge itself; and our daily lite
is one continuous round of credence. Indeed, if it
were not for the credulous principle within us, we
should grow up as ignorant and barbarous asTHE STILL, SMALL VOICE. 497

savages. You believe the world to be a huge ball,
Ben; but you believe this only because people
tell you so, and despite the testimony of your own
eyes, which assure you that it is merely an
enormous plate of land and water. You believe
that there are shores across the sea, even though
you see none, and see, too, that the water itself
ends at the horizon; and you believe this simply
because your father and I tell you that we came
thence ; and yet when poor Columbus reasoned
with the bigoted potentates of Spain and Portugal,
they laughed such notions to scorn, and preferred
the avouchment of their own eyesight to the
demonstrations of his logic. You believe the
million strange tales of history, and yet you
could never have known one fact recorded there
of your own cognizance, nor have even so much
as set eyes upon the old chroniclers, nor, indeed,
have ever spoken with any one who did. When,
too, you come to study the discoveries and
elaborations of physical science, you will find how
heavily your faith has to be taxed, and that if
you pause to test and prove for yourself each new
truth as it startles your mind, you will find that
you will advance no quicker than the tame
elephant, which dreads a pitfall at every step,
and will not move a foot till it has tried with
its trunk the solidity of each paving-stone it has
to pass over. Indeed, lad, we are born credulous,
even to superstition, and credulous we must be
to the last, if we would hold the least communion
with our fellows; for it is only the silliness of
scepticism that would have us believe all men
liars till we have proved them truthful; even
as it is the roguery of lawyers to make us think
all men are rogues till we find them honest.
Why, lad, if it were not for the abiding trust of
faith, how could we have any sense of future ?
K

 

 

 

 

ea =498 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

But as it is, the child lays its little head on the
pillow, and gives itself up tothe temporary death
of sleep, confident in the new life of to-morrow.
Lhe philosopher and the boor see the gunpowder
explode once, and instantly the boor and the
philosopher, too, have faith that the wondrous
powder will, under the same circumstances, con-
tinue exploding for ever after. The farmer sows
his grain in perfect faith that season will follow
season as before, and husbands the crop in
perfect faith that year will succeed year to the
end of time. The swain writes to his absent
lover in faith—in faith that the letter will reach
the girl, even though it have to travel thousands
of miles before it gets to her hand—faith that the
magic little ink-marks he traces on the paper
before him, will whisper in her ear the very words
he wishes, and pour his heart out to her as he is
then doing; ay, and in faith too that she will kiss
the letter as he kisses it, and that their lips will
thus be joined again, even though miles of space
le between them. And further, to round the
perfect circle of our faithful lives, the graybeard
lays his head upon the pillow like the tired child,
and gives himself up to the temporary sleep of
death—confident in the new life of to-morrow.”

Oh, isn’t iit: pretty!” the little. fellow ex
claimed.

“ Pretty, child!” echoed Uncle Ben : “ it is simply
true; and truth is always more or less beautiful.
Indeed, Ben, doubt and mistrust enter the mind
only through the hard lessons of experience. We
have an innate tendency to believe—to believe
in nature, and believe in man too ; even as all men
have an innate propensity for truth-speaking and
frankness, and this has to be checked and perverted
before they can lie and deceive; for the truth
ever rises first to the lips, and falsity and secrecyTHE STILL, SMALL VOICE. 499

are merely the dishonest after-thoughts of the
craven heart. Now it is. this’sense’ of the
Spontaneous truthfulness of human nature that
gives rise to that spirit of trust in our fellow-
creatures, which is one of the grandest and kind-
liest characters of our soul. Again I say to you,
boy, let your ear be ever stone-deaf to the base
attorney-precept, which would have you believe
ul men rogues till you find them honest ; for, rest
assured, trust between man and man is as neces.
sary for the business and friendship of the world,
as even faith in the uniformity of nature is for our
continued physical existence. The entire machinery
of commerce is trust and credit: and even in what
are called ready-money transactions, the same prin-
ciples must have sway for a time ; for either the
seller must part with his goods, or the buyer with
his money, one before the other, unless they stand,
the one holding and the other grasping the wares,
while each does the same with the gold and
silver, both relaxing their grip of their former
possessions only at one and the same time. But
when you come to look into the wondrous
mechanism of the world’s merchantry, lad, and
see the all-pervading element of trustfulness
which permeates the monetary affairs of all great
nations, you will find how shiploads of treasure
are consigned to utter strangers in remote count-
ries, without deed or document from those to
whom they are intrusted; how dealings are daily
made for thousands, and often millions, by mere
word of mouth, without a line to vouch the bar-
gain; how a man’s mere signature will pass
current in the market as the representative of a
mass of gold that no cart could carry ; and how
a simple slip of printed tissue paper will go
from hand to hand, and be changed for an infinity
of goods, and yet-none care to carry pd ~ bank,
k 2

o<5OO YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

and get the gold for it that it is believed to be
convertible into.”

‘‘T declare, uncle,” interrupted the boy, ‘all
this seems more wonderful to me than anything
you have yet told me.’

‘Indeed, my lad, be assured that untrustfulness
is the enormity, and not the rule of human life A
conduct (otherwise the world could not go on as
it does); be assured too, that the attorney- -creed
is the simple consequence ae lawyers having to deal
with the exceptional cases of ‘breach of faith in
society, rather than being witness to the innume-
rable daily instances of the faithfulness and
ordinary integrity of merchant life. or it is self-
evident, that if, year after year, the bad debts in
trade in the least exceeded the good ones, commerce
itself must collapse after a time, and every atom of
capital ultimately disappear from the land; whilst,
on the contrary, the growing riches of a* country
are ever a golden proof, not only that the principle
of faith in nature has made men labour and hus-
band still as before, but that the principle of trust
in man has not been abused, and that more have
turned out trustworthy than roguish.”

‘Indeed ! indeed, uncle!” the little fellow cried
out, ‘‘this is the most cheerful view of human
nature that you have yet given me.”

ecelityis: my jad.” responded the mentor; ‘‘ and all
the eonld 18 econ: if we will look a) it with
but just a gimmer of daylight about it. And now,
Ben, | come to you yourself,” the old man said,
solemnly ; ‘‘ you see what a grand and noble prin-
ciple is this propensity to trust in man, so do you
never do a thing to abuse it. Remember, the man
who trusts and believes you, honours you; he pays
you the finest and most elegant tacit compliment
it is possible for one man to pay another. Let the
truth then be ever on your lips—like the light ofTHE STILL, SMALL VOICE, O01

the morning sun, gilding the crimson edges of the
clouds; and spit the rising lie from your teeth,
before your coward heart has time to shape it into
words. Do you ever bear in mind that man’s innate
belief in the truthfulness of his fellow-man is so
fine and generous a gift, that it has all the impress
of the godhead’s own righteousness upon it. Do
you then ever see it asa sacred thing, and regard
lies and equivocations as the very blasphemy of
honour. Remember, too, you damage not only
your own integrity by falsity, but you undermine
a man’s trustfulness, and so make him doubt
and suspect others.”

The boy again began to scribble round the draw-
ing; and when he had finished, the uncle once
more proceeded with the exhortation.

‘“‘Be just and righteous to the man, too, who
makes you his trustee—no matter upon how small
a business. Break faith with none; for remember
the one who trusts you is himself trusted by others,
and if you fail to keep your bond with him, you
make it hard for him to meet his engagements with
those to whom he himself stands pledged. Com-
merce, Ben, is the broad arch overspanning every
city and country, with nothing but the honour of
men for the keystone to bind the whole together ;
and with each atom of the structure bearing upon,
and not only sustained by but sustaining the others,
Moreover, I say, be not only strictly just, but
have you ever the generosity to be fair in all your
dealings. Justice is but negative virtue, doing
no man wrong; but, I say to you, be more than
negatively virtuous; be positively righteous enough
to be liberal, rather than mean and grasping in
your transactions; and prefer to give an advan-
tage to the man with whom you deal, instead of
taking advantage of him. So when the scales of
equity are trembling with the exactness of the

 

an ae teh eee merch mega ines toe902 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

equipoise, do you be the one to throw in the market
handful, that shall change the rigid straitness and
Squareness of the arrangement into the grace of
the well turned balance.”

Again the lad fell to scribbling the moral
memoranda on the margin of the paper before
him, and when he had finished he looked up as
usual in the old man’s face, and said ‘‘ Yes, uncle!
I am listening.”

‘‘Moreover, Ben,” then went on the good coun-
sellor, ‘“‘as you wish to be trusted yourself, and
feel how galling it is to be doubted and suspected,
be it your rule ever to put your trust in others;
and let not the exceptional rogues and cheats of
the world ever beat out of you your faith in the
general trustworthiness of your fellows. A bum-
bailiff believes every man to be a swindler; but
do you have a soul above the catchpoll’s, and
think well and kindly of men—as you yourself
would be well and kindly thought of. Remember
how difficult it is in the tangled yarn of human
motives to pick out the very ‘ cue to action,’ and
that the parsimony, which is wise husbandry in
a prudent man, is but base avarice in the miser:
the punishment, which is kindly chastenment from
the hands of the wise governor, is. simply bloody
malevolence when the blow is prompted by revenge.
Be you, therefore, the one ever to translate the
passages in a man’s life freely rather than
crabbedly ; and to choose the finer spiritual ren-
dering, in preference to the harsh literal construc-
tion of the act. Be slow to suspect, for an eager-
ness to believe in meanness is but the mean
prompting of a mean nature; and have faith in
no man’s baseness till the creed is fairly forced
upon you: but when you find your old friend out,
why, then fling the dog from you, as you would
a fawning hound with dirty paws. Moreover, ITHE STILL, SMALL VOICE. 0038

say to you, trust even the untrustworthy, so long
as they remain true to yourself; for if one breach
of faith with another is to put an end to all
faith in us, how can the fallen ever hope to rise ?
Be assured, too, that by trusting those who have
broken trust, the chances are you so rouse in
them the dormant sense of honour, that even they
will scorn to abuse the generosity that gave them
credit for a virtue which others supposed to be
dead in them. Therefore, I tell you, lad, lend
your money as I have done to the starving thief,
in the face of the whole world; and let the
whole world see that even he—if you pique his
honour—can render you every farthing of your
due. To give others credit for being as honour-
able as yourself, till you find them dishonour-
able, is not only to be a gentleman, but to create
gentlemen, It is to raise men to a dignity that
the monarch himself cannot confer; for though
a king may make a man a lord, he cannot make
a man a gentleman; for that is the Almighty’s
own peerage, over which none can take pre-
cedence.”

More notes were made, and there was the same
silence as before during the pause, for little Ben
could do no more than listen, record, and ponder.
The theme, he well knew, was far beyond his
.powers to grapple with; so, like a wise little
fellow as he was, he became a good listener in-
stead of being only an indifferent talker.

‘‘ And now, my son,” presently resumed Uncle
Ben, “there remains but the small matter of
pride and humility to glance at, and then our
task is done.”

The only remark the boy hazarded, was ‘ You
said that we felt proud when we compared our
conduct, our gifts, our possessions, our station in
life with that of others, and fancied ourselves504 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

better than they for what we do or have—that’s
what you said, uncle.”

“T know, lad,” smiled the godfather; ‘pride
always comes of one of those human comparisons
that are truly said to be odious. Even when the
pride is just, we merely put ourselves in the scales
against a heap of rags and bones, and find a small
delight in seeing the human refuse kick the beam ;
but in false pride it is a mere bubble that we strive
to give gravity to. As well might the peacock’s
feather itself be proud that it no longer trails in
the dirt, as the upstart fool of a mandarin who
wears it. But to my mind, boy, it is the light
weights after all that win the race; for the humble
are ever the wise. The humble man flings him-
self upon his knees, and looks upward, in very
worship of the greatness and the goodness he
loves to contemplate; the proud man, on the
other hand, draws himself up, and looks down, in.
scorn of the baseness and the littleness he de-
lights to contrast with himself: the one gets a
reflected grace from the glory he is for ever re-
garding, the other a smudge of the soot from the
sweeps with whom he is continually measuring
lengths. Besides, pride is merely the coxcomb
crest, as I said before, of the poor mumming
fool in the masque. For what has the proudest
of us to be proud of? Is it your person, man?
why that is merely the showy binding which is
ever relied on as a means of fudging off a trum-
pery book. Is it your clothes? why, the tailor’s
dummy might as well lord it over the scarecrow.
Is it the strawberry-leaves of your grace? but
what are the mere leaves of honour without the
fruit? Is it your learning? what is it but the
chattering of the Greek alphabet after all? Is it
your wisdom? what are you, Mr. Philosopher,
but the monkey hammering away to get at theTHE STILL, SMALL VOICE. D05

ticking of the watch? Is it your art? a grass-
hopper might as well be proud of the power in
its hinder legs, as the artist of his handicraft.
Is it your goodness? pshaw! had you any of the
true stuff about you, pride could not enter your
heart, seeing that you are no better than the idiot
—the mere creature of the great inscrutable will.”

The task was now fairly ended; for though
there were still the feelings of anger and gratitude,
belonging to the class, Uncle Ben had already
spoken of these while treating of the affectionate
emotions; so that he merely pointed out to the
boy, that the grateful impression which preceded
the feeling of love is more a sense of delight than
gratitude, and that the impulse of thankfulness
is strongly felt only when we are convinced that
the good done us is a voluntary act of grace con-
ferred upon us, and that merely with the view of
doing us the good.

The third and last class of sentiments, viz.,
those which are engendered in us by others’ opinion
of ourselves, the uncle merely particularized, with-
out entering into the details of each distinct feel-
ing; saying that the pleasures we derive from
this group of sentiments consist of the delight we
feel in being loved by others, or in being adnured
by them, as well as in being pitied, respected,
honoured, revered, and approved by them; whilst,
on the other hand, he said it was possible, under
certain conditions of mind, for man to find a
perverse enjoyment in being hated, despised, con-
temned, and even persecuted by his fellows. In-
deed, after all he had propounded about the love
of approbation —which he told the boy was the one
feeling underlying almost the whole of the class—
it was idle for him to expand the subject into
tediousness.506 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

So he concluded by simply informing his little
godson, that the love of the approbation of others
is the main element in what is called vanity ;
even as the love of our own approbation is the
ruling principle in what is termed pride. Further,
he said that the reason why praise is so agreeable
to weak natures, is because it serves to increase
people’s faith in their own powers, and this is
necessary for their very existence; so that where
this self-faith is the feeblest, (because the powers
are felt to be the weakest,) the desire for praise
and admiration is always found to be the strong-
est. Hence, the love of approbation, he added, is
the distinctive mark of modesty and diffidence,
and is as pardonable, and even beautiful to
behold—when not made an all-absorbing passion
—in the feminine character, as it is a sign of
efleminacy and foppery in the masculine mind,

 

CHAPTER, XOX,
THE BURDEN OF THE SONG.

Unctr Ben’s evening meal did not take long ta
discuss. The bowl of milk was soon emptied, and
the hot, buttered corn-cake that Dame Franklin
had sent up with it was rapidly made away with :
for the old man was anxious to get the lesson
ended that night. So when the boy had removed
the basins, and swept the crumbs from the table,
another log was thrown across the dogs on the
hearth, and the little room made to flicker again
with the ruddy flames, in the dusk of the “?tween-
lights.”

The old man drew his chair round close to
the fire, and sat watching the burning fagots,THE BURDEN OF THE SONG. 507

as he proceeded to put the finishing touch to
the view of life he had sketched out for his little
pupil.

Little Ben placed himself on the hassock at his
uncle’s feet, and said, as he laid the old man’s
veiny hand in his own little palm, and kept trying
to smooth the wrinkles out of the back of Big “iL
know what you're going to tell me now, unky
dear. You're going to point out to me what is
my duty to those poor boys we saw in the poor-
house and the jail; ain’t you now 2?”

The godfather shook his head, and replied :
‘Not so, my boy; they are only a mere fraction
of the mass to whom we owe a duty. I might,
had I cared to harass your little soul into good-
ness, have taken you to the madhouse, and shown
you the host of pauper lunatics and idiots there :
or I might have led you to the quarter of the town
where the blind beggars mostly live, and have let
you see them with their blind wives (for the
blind mostly marry the blind), sitting in their
clean and tidy homes, without a candle, in the
dark—and have let you hear them tell their blind
dreams and stories of the death of the faithful
dogs that they still love well enough to weep
over. I might have shown you how, even they,
beggars as they are, seldom or never shut the door
against the beggar who is worse off than them-
selves; and how; though they have hearts full of
pity for suffering, they are still callous enough to
relish, with all a true beggar’s zest—any roguish
cheat of mendicancy. I could have taken you
likewise, lad, to the crippled and the maimed,
and have brought you face to face with the half-
beggar hucksters of the town, that pretend to sell
some petty wares about the city, so as to avoid the
imprisonment of the jail, as regular mendicants on
the one hand, or of the poorhouse, as in-doors508 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

people on the other. I might have shown you,
too, the petty markets frequented by the very old,
and very young, for trades that require but a few
halfpence as capital to startin; I might have let
you see these poor, struggling, half-starved things,
shivering at early morning in their rags, and
might have let you hear how even they—mer-
chants who are hterally not worth twopence—are
trusted, ay, and seldom or never break faith with
their creditors either. And when you had read
the sorry leaf out of life’s book, from beginning to
end, I might have whispered in your ear, Ben,
that these were not the voluntary beggars of
the world—not the professional mendicant-cheats
that prefer lying and louting to honest labour—
but God Almighty’s own beggars—the blind, the
crippled, and the infirm.”

‘“I wish you had taken me to see all this,
uncle,” broke in the little fellow, as he still fondled
with the old man’s hand.

‘“* Nevertheless, Ben, this is not the rule of want,”
went on the other; “it is good to know that such
misery exists about us, so that we may have a
sense of the favours vouchsafed to ourselves—even
if we have no desire to relieve the suffering.
But there is little good in the knowledge, as a
matter of wisdom; for the study of exceptional
cases gives the mind but a sorry understanding
after all. What I do want to wake you up to, how-
ever, is the law of human suffering, lad; and the
reason why I took you to the poor-house and the
jail, was merely to shake you well, and rouse you
to listen to the tale I had to tell.”

‘The law of human suffering !” echoed the boy.

‘“¥es, the law!” reiterated the teacher, “for it
is the rule of life, that more are born to want and
suffer than to feast and be merry, Ben.”

“Well, but, uncle!” remonstrated the littleTHE BURDEN OF THE SONG. 09
fellow, ‘‘ I’m sure I don’t see so many poor people
about as you’d make out.”

‘“How should you, lad, when the truly honest
and deserving poor are always the secret sufferers,
and not the ostentatious beggars that love to parade
the afflictions on which they trade ?” was the gentle
rebuke. ‘‘ Besides, you are born in the sphere of
comparative comfort and competence, Ben; and
such is the caste of class-life among us, that the
people belonging to one division of society have
no more knowledge of the people in another grade
—even though they live continually about them—
than they have of the inhabitants of the remotest
countries. Hence, the well-to-do, having no com-
munion with the hard-to-do, are naturally sceptical
when they are told that their happiness and ease
is the anomaly in life, and that suffering and
trouble are the normal lot of humanity. Now
look here, little man: in every state, as nearly
as possible two thirds’ of the population are born
to a life of hard labour, and live continually, as it
is called, ‘from hand to mouth ;’ so that, as almost
all trades have their brisk and their slack seasons,
and many a calling depends on the very elements
themselves for the pursuit of it, you can readily
understand, that the mass of the people must have
recularly-recurring periods of bitter privation to
pass through every year of their lives. Think, for
one moment, of the immense host of stomachs that
depend on the very soil itself for their bread—the
multitudinous body of ground-labourers (includ-
ing the great agricultural troop), and the miners,
road-makers, and excavators, that are more or less
required in all nations. Think, too, of the im-
mense army of carriers, carters, and porters, barge-
men, and boatmen, merchant-seamen, and dock-
labourers, coachmen, stablemen, and messengers ;
why these, lad, generally make up two fifths of theO10 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

entire body of grown men in every civilized com-
munity ; and upon the labour and health of these,
some thousands, if not millions of families are de-
pendent. Think then of the brutal ignorance in
which this tremendous crowd of people are left to
wallow, generation after generation; and next,
think of their comfortless homes and their aching
limbs after a heavy day’s labour (you have never
done one yet, my boy), and then you will be able
to make some allowance for the attraction they find
in the stimulus and cheering fire and company of
the taproom. And when you have made. this
allowance, and seen that thrift and providence,
under such circumstances, are moral im possibili-
ties, you will be able to have some faint idea of
what kind of a season winter must be to such
people, and to their wives and children: winter,
when there is always less to do and get, and more
wanted. Why, if we can feel for the birds of the
air, and the robins, when the snow is on the
ground, surely the heart cannot be utterly
steeled against the thousands of little half-
feathered human birds—such as the children of
the ground-workers—that suffer, when the earth is
like a block of marble with the frost, as much as, if
not more than the robins themselves at such times.

“The skilled labourers again,” the uncle re-
sumed, ‘‘ such as the tailors, the shoemakers, the
weavers, and the vast body of metal-workers, and
wood-workers, as well as the builders of every
community, are a multitude that are becoming
almost as large as the tribe of unskilled workmen
themselves; and in many of these trades there are
the same periodical fluctuations, as in those that
depend upon the seasons and the earth for the
subsistence of the people belonging to them. So
that when I tell you that as many as two thirds
of the people in most countries are wagemen,THE BURDEN OF THE SONG. ee

living generally from hand to mouth, and that a
very large majority of them are hardly a half:
gallon loaf beyond starvation, you will understand
that I do not speak at random, and that want and
suffering is the rule of life, and comfort and happiness
on ly the except ion. *

“Oh, uncle!” exclaimed young Ben, * how can

* The numbers and proportions of the different classes of
society in our own country af the time of taking the last
census, were as follows :—

Total population of Great Britain in 1851 (in round num-
bers), twenty-one millions.

But of these not quite half were children and young
people under twenty years of age, the majority of whom were
incapable of earning their own living ; the returns being—
4,765,000 males in Great Britain under twenty years of age
4,735,000 females

39 99 39 39

9,900,000 of young people of both sexes,

Whilst, on the other hand, out of the eleven and a half
millions of grown people, rather more than half were women :
the majority of whom also were in rapable of supporting
themselves: the returns being (in round nuinbers) :—
0,900,000 males in Great Britain above twenty years of age
6,000,000 females

29 3° 29 99

11,500,000 of grown people of both sexes.

So that out of a gross population of just upon twenty-one
millions, but little more than a quarter, or five and a half
millions, were grown men, upon whom the support of the
other three-fourths of the community more or less depended.

Now these five and a half millions of grown men throughout
Great Britain were thus distributed as to their occupations :—

In the first place there was upwards of one million of
agricultural labourers, shepherds, drovers, farm servants,
woodmen, and men employed about gardens, and the like.

And besides these there was upwards of a quarter of a
million of general labourers; such as groundworkers, navi-
gators, railway labourers, road men, coal-heayvers, and go
forth.

Then there was more than a quarter of a million of miners
and quarrymen ; and upwards of another quarter of a million
of carriers and carters, railway men, and omnibus drivers,
coachmen, grooms and stable men, boatmen and bargemen,atin

od? YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

you tell me such things after the fine, pleasant
views of the world you have given me? But why

canal service men, and merchant seamen, messengers and
porters, warehousemen and packers, and others engaged in
the conveyance of goods or persons from one part of the
country to another.

Hence there was an aggregate of very nearly two millions
(one million nine hundred and fifty thousand) of unskilled
labourers among the five and a half millions of men through-
out Great Britain; or in other words, more than a third of
the grown male population of the country existed in the semi-
brute state of mere “ hewers of wood, and drawers of water,”

The remaining three and a half millions of men in Great
Britain were thus occupied. First, there were more than two.
millions of artisans, or skilled labourers, following callings
that required more or less of an apprenticeship before they
could be profitably pursued; and these were made up of
more than a quarter of a million of builders (such as brick-
layers, slaters, masons and plasterers, &c.); upwards of a
third of a million of wood-workers (such as carpenters and
joiners, cabinet makers, and carvers and eilders, musical in-
strument makers, chair and box makers, turners, frame
makers, block and print cutters, clog makers, coopers, ship-
wrights, coachmakers, wheelwrights, sawyers, basket makers,
lath makers, cork cutters, &c.); upwards of another third of
a million of textile manufacturers (Gneluding the cotton-
factory workers, and the several working manufacturers of
woollen cloths, worsted and stuff materials, carpets, silk and
ribbon, flax and linen, fustian, rope, sail-cloth and lace, as
well as the printers and dyers of calico); and one hundred
and twenty-five thousand workers on textile materials (such
as the great body of tailors, umbrella makers, hatters, &c.) ;
upwards of a quarter of a million, too, of leather workers
(such as curriers and tanners, saddlers, and whip and har-
ness makers, glovers and shoemakers); more than a third of
a million metal workers (such as iron manufacturers, black-
smiths, locksmiths, gunsmiths, farriers, anchor smiths, boiler
makers, file cutters, nail makers, needle makers, engine
and machine makers, tool makers, millwrights, implement
makers, wire workers, braziers, button makers, coppersmiths,
whitesmiths, tinmen, zine workers, platers, goldsmiths and
silversmiths, watchmakers and philosophical instrument
makers); nearly one hundred thousand workers in clay,
stone, and glass (such as the brick makers, potters, and
earthenware manufacturers, pipe makers, and glass manu-THE BURDEN OF THE SONG. ey

should all this want and suffering be, if God is as
good and kind as you say He is?”

 

facturers). Nearly nineteen thousand workers in bone and
hair (such as the comb-makers, brush and broom makers,
horse-hair workers, and hair-dressers, and wig-makers) ;
twenty-five thousand and odd printers and paper workers,
(such as compositors, pressmen, paper stainers, bookbinders,
and paper hangers) ; nearly fifty thousand chemical manu-
facturers (such as the manufacturers of acids, artificial
manures, cements, inks, colours, disinfectants, varnishes,
medicines, &c., as well as the dyers and fullers, soap boilers,
and tallow chandlers, provision curers, french polishers, gas
manufacturers, paper makers, patent firewood and lucifer
match manufacturers, firework makers, &c.) ; besides, there
were upwards of two hundred thousand of workers at provi-
sions (such as bakers, confectioners and millers, butchers,
maltsters and brewers, fishermen, and even milkmen). Then
add to these ten thousand general mechanics (branch not
mentioned), and we shall have an ageregate of two millions
and sixty odd thousand of skilled workmen above twenty
years of age in Great Britain. Moreover, there were up-
wards of one hundred thousand clerks and officials through-
out the country Gncluding government clerks, law clerks,
commercial clerks, parish clerks, as well as the toll collectors
and commercial travellers, besides the various parish and
church officers, and those attached to the different charitable
institutions and law courts) ; there were also neatly another
hundred thousand gentlemen’s servants, and nearly the same
number (ninety-two thousand) of guardians of the public
peace (such as policemen, soldiers and pensioners, sailors in
the navy, and marines) ; and lastly, there were nearly twenty
thousand itinerant traders (such as showmen, and men with
games and sports, hawkers and pedlars), together with not
quite forty thousand males above twenty years of age,
belonging to the helpless and dependent class (such as
paupers, vagrants, alms-people, beggars, lunatics, and those

living on their relatives),
Now, putting the whole of these several classes of skilled
and unskilled labourers, clerks and--officials, policemen and
common soldiers and seamen, as well as the servants, itinerant
traders, and dependents all together, so as to form one body,
we have a total of four millions three hundred and sixty odd
thousand of grown men (with families generally), who, if
they are not all strictly wage-men, at least mostly live like
them from hand to mouth upon their immediate earnneys and
As514 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

«¢ Why should hunger, which is one of the chicf
evils of a life of poverty, be a pain, lad ?” was the

 

whose earnings, moreover, seldom exceed one hundred a
year, often fall below fifty, and in a large number of cases
hardly ever rise above ten shillings per week. Four millions
three hundred and sixty odd thousand of grown men, living
more or less from hand to mouth—the majority of whom are
seldom half-a-quartern loaf beyond starving—and that out of
only five and a half millions of grown men altogether! so
that if Uncle Ben had said that three-fourths of the people
in most communities are born to want and suffer, the state-
ment would have been more correct.

It may be useful to the young reader to know what
classes constitute the more lucky portion of the community
—that portion which is either so well paid for the services
rendered by them, as to enable them to live like gentlemen,
or who are engaged in trade or commerce, or else living on
their means as independent people.

Well, imprimis, there are sixty-seven thousand men be-
longing to what are styled the learned professions: thirty
thousand clergymen and priests, seventeen thousand law-
yers, and twenty thousand doctors. Then there are four-
teen thousand officers belonging to the army, navy, or Hast
India service, on either full or half pay.

Moreover, there are another sixty-seven thousand grown
men belonging to the literary and artistic classes (such as
authors, editors, scientific “ professors,” teachers, school-
masters, music masters, and others; musicians, actors,
artists, engravers, carvers, pattern designers, draughtsmen,
medallists and die sinkers, architects, surveyors, and elvil
engineers).

Further, there are upwards of a hundred thousand con-
nected with the moneyed or'capitalist classes, as wellas what
may be styled the “commission” business of commerce
(such as those who are returned as independent and annui-
tants)—of whom there are about thirty-three thousand in
the last decennial report—and not quite twenty thousand
landed proprietors, as well as twelve thousand house pro-
prietors throughout Great Britain. Then there are two
thousand shipowners ; not quite two thousand bankers, and
nine thousand merchants; besides a host of ship agents,
brokers, agents and factors, salesmen, auctioneers, account-
ants, pawnbrokers, general merchants and dealers, as well

as coach and cab owners: in all, one hundred and fifteen
thousand people.ae aa

 

 

THE BURDEN OF THE SONG. 515
interrogatory in reply. ‘ Why, because, as I told
you before, if it had been made a pleasure, we

Next, there are upwards of a third of a million farmers
and graziers throughout the country.

After these come the tradesmen and dealers, of whom
there are altogether as many as three hundred and seventy-
eight thousand, including thirteen thousand general “ shop-
keepers,” five thousand and odd cattle and sheep dealers,
three hundred horse dealers, twenty odd thousand inn-
keepers, twelve hundred livery stable keepers, six thousand
board and lodging-house keepers, thirty-seven thousand
licensed victuallers and beer-shop keepers; nearly nine
thousand wine and spirit merchants, eight thousand corn
merchants and flour dealers, nearly the same number of
greengrocers, three thousand cheesemongers, not quite two
thousand poulterers, and six thousand seven hundred fish-
mongers; as many as fifty-five thousand five hundred
grocers, and three thousand tobacconists ; and. about twenty-
two thousand others dealing in vegetable or animal food,
or else in drinks and stimulants; fifteen hundred “ water
providers ” the same number of dealers in salt, and only as
many oil and colourmen, besides two thousand others dealing
in oils and gums; eleven thousand and odd druggists, over
ten thousand coal merchants and dealers; nearly nine thou-
sand dealing in wool, and three thousand woollen drapers ;
six thousand clothiers, and three thousand hosiers ; nearly
twenty eight thousand linen drapers; about five thousand
dealing in silk, as silk mercers, &c., and thirteen thousand
others engaged in furnishing articles of dress; five thousand
and odd dealing in hemp, and eighteen thousand in flax ;
sixteen hundred fellmongers, three thousand grease and
bone dealers, and only five hundred and sixty dealing in
feathers and quills; three thousand five hundred sta-
tioners, and two thousand and more dealing in paper; six
thousand five hundred publishers and booksellers; six thou-
sand four hundred people dealing in timber, three thousand
five hundred in glass and earthenware, and six hundred in
precious stones; besides whom there are the dealers in the
different metals, or metal goods—as three hundred and
twenty in copper, five thousand in tin, two thousand in
lead, thirty in zinc, six thousand and more in the mixed
metals, and about twenty-five thousand in iron and steel; in
cluding nearly seven thousand ironmongers.

Now add to the numbers of the above-mentioned classes
twenty odd thousand men above twenty years of age, re-

2 Van516 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

should have sat still and should have starved with
delight. Even so with human misery: if all were
well-to-do—if there were no sickness and no suffer-
ing in the world, there would be no need of sym-
pathy, nothing to be grateful for, no reason for
human love. If man wanted nothing at the hands
of his parents or his neighbour, if he were able to
shift for himself directly he came into existence, as
readily as the young grub, why he would have no
more love than a grub, no more affection and
cratitude than a house-fly. But, as itis, this sense

turned as sons and scholars, and nearly fifty-five thou-
sand others “of no stated occupation,’ and we have a gross
total of one million and eighty-six thousand grown men in
positions of comparative comfort, agaius. four million three
hundred and sixty odd thousand in comparative indigence.
Or, assuming each of these men to be married, and have two
children respectively, we shall, if we multiply these totals
by four, come to something like an approximate notion as to
how many of our twenty-one millions of people enjoy lives
of ease and plenty, and how many live lives of care, if not
distress. ‘The result shows that the proportions are four
millions of well-to-do folk and seventeen millions of strug-
eling poor in the country.
A brief summary of the whole is subjoined.

NUMBER OF MEN ABOVE TWENTY YEARS OF AGE, BELONGING TO
THE WAGE CLASS, AND OTHERS LIVING FROM HAND TO MOUTH
IN GREAT BRITAIN, CALCULATED FROM THE CENSUS OF
1851.
Labourers (agricultural and general, as well as
those engaged in mining and the carrying p 1,944,300

PAGS) oe poe es ae eee oe ae
ATG Gets eee eo ore on hae Sone Oe
Ollenksipndeomeia Sis he ee ee 112 350
Gentlemen’s servants Be oud ies ee es 96,150
Policemen, and common soldiers, and seamen 92,000
Showimen and NMCKSiers. 2.5.5 2. 1 fe a, 18,300
Dependents (including paupers, vagrants,

alms-people, beggars, and living on rela- 38 , 000

ULVES ce ate cee ee

 

4 862,500THE BURDEN OF THE SONG. SLT

of sympathy has been made one of the most tender
and graceful emotions of our nature, being a double
blessing —blessing him that gives, as Shakes-
pere says, and ba that receives as oe and rest
assured it was for the development of this, the
finest feeling of our soul, that some have ‘Deen
born to w ant and suffering, and some, on the other
hi ve endow ed with the power to commiserate and
relieve.”

NUMBER OF MEN ABOVE TWENTY YEARS OF AGE, BELONGING TO
THE MONEYED AND CAPITALIST CLASSES, AS WELL AS TO
THE PROFESSIONAL, ARTISTIC, AND TRADING CLASSES IN
GREAT BRITAIN, CALCULATED FROM THE CENSUS OF 1851.

 

Military, naval, and East India officers ae full)
and half p: 'y) a ee 1s, 006
Professionalmen . . oie os (Ae eee 67,900
Literary and arise Wet 074 ee 67,000
jyione syed classes, capitalists, merchants, and) eee
COMMISSION APENIS . %, 2: as ee oa
Parniers and eraziers: 3 . 3 ea: 367 , 000
‘Tradesmen. and dealers... 4’3 3 378,710
Sons and scholars belonging to wealthier | a
classes <>. OU ne ek eee st
Of no stated occupation i oh eee ap ee 54,800
1,086,760

Total number of males above tw 2 years of |

 

ne
0,458 ,81
age in Great Britam . . and pOS
Total “number accounted for in ‘the classes a Pye
5,449 , 260

above IVE: 07.5. “ae ae a
Undceointed ton. 4 fe G00

It is impossible to give the returns exactly on this subject,
owing to the confounding of the employers with the em-
ployed in the last census returns; as well as owing to the
disgracefully imbecile manner in which the various occupa-
tions of society are classified in the government report—the
iogical arrangement being such as would shame a schoolboy.
For on account of an insane attempt at what is styled a
“subjective ” classification of the people, we have the woollen

 

a ap TEES

ee teers be518 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

‘©T see now what it all means, uncle; and that
is the reason, I suppose, why we are told that
from those to whom much is given much is ex-
pected ?”

“Be it then your aim, lad, to do your duty in
that state of life in which it has pleased God to
call you,” was the simple reply.

There was a slight pause, and then the uncle,
reverting to the starting-point of the long dis-
course, asked once more the following question :—

 

and silk manufacturers there grouped under the same head as
the cow-keepers and the fishmongers, the soap boilers and
tallow-chandlers, fellmongers and tanners, merely because
they are all cngaged upon animal matters ; so again we have
in the last census report, the cabinet makers and timber mer-
chants grouped with the greengrocer and confectioner, and
the cotton and lace manufacturers lumped with the oil and
colourmen and brewers; the paper makers and cork cutters.
classed with the grocers and tcbacconists, and all for the
extremely simple reason that they are every one employed
upon vegetable matters ; even as the chimney-sweeps go with
the coal miners and the glass manufacturers, the coal-
heavers with the workers in precious stones, the road
labourer with the goldsmith and silversmith, and the
brick-maker with the blacksmith, solely because they are
one and all employed upon iinerals. Then we have the
carpenter and joiner classed with the actor, engraver, and
musician ; the bricklayer and pavior with the civil engineer,
under the miscellaneous head of those engaged upon art
and mechanics; though the turners and block and print
cutters are lumped with the bakers and the brewers under
the head vegetable workers, even as the carvers and gilders
and electro-platers are classified with the railway navigators
under the mineral order. As well might the arrangement
have been according to the four elements, viz. : those with
fire; those working upon or under the earth; those working
with air or gases; and those working with or upon the
water, as have adopted the childish plan of those working
with antmal matters, vegetable matters, and minerals, In-
deed, the classification of the people given in the last census
is the very fatuity of system-mongering, compared with which
the crudity of an alphabetical arrangement is the height. of
enlightenment.THE BURDEN OF THE SONG. 519

‘““And now do you know how to spend your
money when you’ve go it, Ben ?”

‘““Oh, yes; I know what I shall do with mine,”
cried the little fellow, jumping up from his stool,
and shaking his head as he paced the room with
the excitement of the thought.

‘““ What?” quietly inquired his godfather.

‘“Why, I shall give it all away to the poor,”
vas the earnest answer.”

“Trash, Ben! trash! and mere boyish senti-
ment,” rejoined the mentor. ‘This is the same
as the old monkish folly—the folly of ascetic
bigots, who thought the world a thing to fly from,
and who gave up their riches to the church, ay!
and made a legion of beggars in return. Now 1]
tell you, lad, beware of the cant of charitable
donations; and rely more on helping, comforting,
and assuaging, than giving. Be assured that you
do no good in making a beggar of a man, and
leading him to believe in the chance half-cuineas
got out of charity, rather than in the certain
weekly income to be gained by industry. Be
assured that the kindliest act you can do even to
a born beggar, is not to give, but to teach him to
be self-reliant by developing in him the means to
earn. So I say to you, give only where it would
be a mockery to offer to lend; namely, to God’s
own poor—the blind, the crippled, the idiot, and
the infirm. But with the honest poor, be ever sufii-
ciently respectful of their independence and their
misery (for suffering should at least meet with this
from us) to treat them as honest, independent men,
and aid and assist them in their trouble and want,
with any advance you can—but remember they
are not beggars, but workmen, and therefore with-
hold the beggar’s dole. Still, in all you do, lad,
ever bear in mind that giving is merely charity
made easy to therich. It costs so little to give and520 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

depart; and requires such a deal more self-denial
to stay and tend, that those who believe in the
all-sufficient power of money, believe also in the
charity of the pocket rather than the heart. But
do you believe, lad, there is a benevolence beyond
vifts—the benevolence of wishing to see the needy
and the suffering grow thrifty and sober, cleanly
and courteous ; of wishing to see them find pleasure
in the more graceful and refined enjoyments of
our nature; of wishing to see them alive to the
beauties of the world about them, as well as the
graces and dignities of life and action; to see them
well-housed, and justly dealt by, and kindly
treated; and not only does true benevolence wish
to see all this compassed, but it strives its best
to promote the end. ‘This well-wishing and
eenerous-striving are often more genuinely chari-
table than even liberality in giving. Nevertheless,
where there is an urgent necessity for pecuniary
relief, I say to you, let no base love of your money
stand between you and your duty; for if you
have been lucky enough to escape the common
lot of want and pain, you should at least be
grateful enough for the favour that has. been
shown to you, to share a little of the bounty with
those whom God has left unprovided for, and left
them unprovided for, too, solely that you and
they might know the sweet friendship of befriend-
ment.”

‘But, uncle, why shouldnt I give all my
money away to the poor if I please?” asked the
lad, who didn’t half like the rebuff he had met
Wiltlhiy gee

‘“Why, boy, because there is a scale of heinous-
ness in crime, that tells us there is a scale of duty
in virtue also,” Uncle Benjamin made answer.
‘‘Parricide is felt to be the greatest atrocity of
which human nature can be guilty, and we knowTHE BURDEN OF THE SONG. ae

that it is so, simply because we know and feel that
it violates the highest of all social ties—the tie
between child and parent. Hence the first duties
we have to fulfil are the home ones, Ben: and when
vou have done all that love could wish or want
for those of your household, why then pass on to
your friends, and do all the duty of your love to
them; and after that widen the circle of your
loving-kindness, and do what is due to those that
want and suffer in your own neighbourhood.
And when this is done, if your heart have any
surplus love left, why then extend your charity
to your whole country—but beware, lad, be-
ware—”’

The boy waited eagerly for the conclusion of the
sentence, but Uncle Benjamin remained silent,
and merely shook his head and smiled at the little
fellow.

After a while the old man beckoned to the lad,
and said, as he drew his godson to him, “ Give
me your ear, Ben... Beware of the cant of
loving the whole world,” he whispered. ‘ Depend
upon it, there is quite enough to do, if you do only
half what you ought to your relatives, friends, and
neighbours. Stick to the neighbour, lad! stick to
the neighbour!”

‘‘ Love your neighbour as yourself,” murmured
the little fellow.

‘Ay, boy, and depend upon it you'll find you
have made a second self, and a better self, outside
yourself, in so doing; for true gratitude is more
than equitable; it gives back and adds an interest
that never can be got by law. Remember the
wisest man tells us—

$99

“«The quality of mercy is not strain’d

alded the godfather, as he laid his hand on his
godchild’s head—YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

“Tt droppeth, as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath : it is twice bless’d ;
Tt blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.’

And this, Ben, is the burden of our song.”

The little fellow flung himself upon his knees
on the hassock at the old man’s feet, and burying
his face in his lap, took up the words, and cried
aloud in thankfulness for the creed, ‘‘‘ It is twice
blessed. It blesseth him that gives and him that

takes s

Presently Uncle Ben added, ‘‘ And now the
lesson of life is ended, and this the moral of all our
teaching:—labour thriftfully at your business,
boy, have graceful amusements, and do your duty.”

 

CHAPTER XXVI.
THE START IN LIFE.

A werEx elapsed, and Uncle Ben was sitting up
late in his own room transcribing into his volumes
of manuscript sermons, the short-hand notes of
the last important discourse he had heard, when
suddenly his little godson bounced into the room
shouting,

‘¢Oh, uncle, I’ve chosen a trade at last. What
do you think it is? Now just you guess.”

The old man shook his head as much as to say
the task was hopeless.

‘“‘Father’s been so kind, you can’t tell,” the
boy rattled on, for he was too elated with his
new prospects to be other than loquacious. ‘‘ He’s
taken me round to see all the different kinds of
businesses in the town, and I went with him a
little way into the country too; so that I might beTHE START IN LIVE, 593

in a position, as he said, to choose fairly for myself.*
Wasn’t it good of him? And he told me, do you
know, that he was quite pleased to find I had sot
such altered views of life; though he said he
didn’t care much about your—-what ever were the
words he used ?—oh yes, your ‘ hoity-toity notions’
about the pleasures of poetry, and so on, you know.
Still he was delighted when he found that I saw
the errors of pride and vanity, and that I could
understand how necessary it was to be trustful in
the world, and so on, uncle.”

‘I'he old man merely smiled in his turn at his
brother’s hard utilitarian theory of human enjoy-
ment; but the pair of them had too often discussed
the question for Uncle Ben to be at all astonished
at the ‘ hoity-toitiness’ that was ascribed to him.

‘“‘ Well, and what did you see, my little man?’
asked the godfather, as he drew young Ben to his
side, and curled his arm about the boy’s waist.

“Oh I saw sever such a lot of things, uncle—
such a lot that L hardly know what I have seen, I
declare,” was the simple answer. ‘I never
thought there was so much work going on in the
world before. Let me see now, how did father
begin? Oh, first he told me, as we went along,
that the simplest form of labour is that of col-
lecting the wealth that Nature produces of her
own accord; and this he said includes the work
of the fisherman, the fowler, and the wild hunter,
as well as that of the seaweed and manure collec-
tors, the woodmen, and the wild flower gatherers,
together with the pickers-up of shells and minerals
along the sea-shore.”

‘‘T know, Ben,” nodded the uncle: ‘‘all which
Master Josh got from me; for it was only the
other night I was telling him about it, after you had

sa
tl

* A fact.524 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

gone to bed. Well, and after that, I suppose he

told you, come the extractive processes of wealth-
getting ?”

is « Certainly ; - but first father said,” added the
youth, “that it would be needless for me to go
and see any of the work of collection, because such
labour would be wholly unsuited to me. And it was
the same with the extraction of wealth from the
earth, he told me; for this includes the different
forms of mining and quarrying; though if I liked
I might see a stone quarry, for father said he knew
many a fine fellow engaged at that business.’

‘Go on, Ben,” eal nodded the old man; “and
then followed all the different kinds of labour
engaged in production : e

Yes, uncle,” answered the youth, “such
farming, grazing, and cattle-breeding ; flower-gar-
dening, as well as the growing of fruits and vege-
tables: = (But i:told .bim 1 thought 1 shouldnt
like to belong to any of those businesses, for I
didn’t know why it was, but I felt as if I had no
taste for them. But father said, that for his part,
he preferred a country life to a town one, and he
thought the pegpies in the country more honest and

better natured than those that lived in the cities.”

“Yes, exactly what I observed,” tittered the
old one; ‘‘and next, of course, he said there came
the different trades that are engaged in working
up the materials of wealth that the others are
employed in collecting, extracting, or producing
from the soil ?”

“So he did,” young Benjamin exclaimed; ‘‘and
these he explained to me might be arranged into
three classes, according as they—as they—”

“Why, according,” the godfather prompted the
lad, ‘as they are engaged in working up the raw
materials into fabrics or stuffs, and these fabrics or
stuffs again into articles or commodities; or elseTHE START IN LIFE, 025
according as they are employed in improving them,
that is to say, in strengthening, finishing, or beauti-
fying the fabrics or articles manufactured by the
others.” ;

“Yes, that’s it, uncle, that’s it,” went on the
lad; ‘‘ fabric-makers, commodity-makers, and im-
provers—they were the three great forms of handi-
craft, father said, in all civilized countries. And
besides these, uncle, he told me there are the
helpers or those whose business it is either to
design the work—or to make everything ready for
it—or else to assist the men while doing the work
itself; such as architects, pattern designers,
draughtsmen—”

‘‘ And civil engineers, too; all of whom make it
a business to plan the work that has to be done,”
Uncle Ben proceeded, as he found the little fellow
at a loss to recall the difficult details; ‘for these
are the great designers of the world’s handicraft :
while the excavators, road-makers and menders, as
well as the riggers and stowers of ships, are the
fitters and preparers for other forms of labour;
even as the hodmen, the wheel-drivers, the layers-
on, the feeders, and stokers, and, indeed, all those
lower grades of manual labourers( whose duty it is
to act as the fetchers and carriers and attendants
of the skilled workmen) are merely the assist-
ants of the others.”

‘Then father told me, too, uncle,” the boy
went on again in his turn, ‘‘that after the goods
are manufactured by means of all these diflerent
kinds of work—”

‘And aids to work,” suggested the other.

‘There is an immense number of people engaged
in what he termed distributing them into the ditter-
ent markets, all over the world sometimes,” added
the boy; ‘‘and for this purpose, he said, there is
the great machinery of the carrying trades.”526 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

‘‘TIncluding the merchant-seamen,” broke in
the uncle, ‘‘bargemen, boatmen and canalmen;
the coachmen, guards and waggoners; the carriers,
carters and trammen (there were no railways
then); the truckmen, porters, messengers and
postmen ; the dock-labourers, warehousemen and
storekeepers, as well as the packers and the like.”

“And an equally large number engaged in
commerce also,” resumed the lad,

“Such as ship-owners and merchants,” ex-
plained Uncle Ben; ‘brokers, factors, agents and
their clerks; wholesale dealers and travellers ;
retail dealers and shopmen; auctioneers, town
travellers and commission agents ; tallymen, huck-
sters, hawkers, pedlars and packmen; besides the
attendants at fairs and markets.”

‘Oh, isn’t it wonderful,” burst out the little
fellow, ‘that there should be so many different
kinds of business in the world! Why, it would
have taken us years to have seen all of them.”

“Ah, but we have got only half through the
list yet, lad,” urged the persistent old man.

‘Yes, I know; for father told me,” proceeded
the godson, ‘‘that over and above these, there are
the capitalists, the employers and superintendents, who,
though they do none of the work themselves, are
always engaged either in aiding and providing it
for others, or else in watching and testing the
work done; and these, father said, might be called
the foster-workers of society.”

‘Of course!” cried Uncle Ben, ‘the very word
[gave him; and a good term it is too, 1 flatter
myself, for though the man of money is not
directly one of labour’s own children, he is certainly
her foster-child, at once maintained by her, and
maintaining her, as he himself advances in life.

And under this class, lad, we have what are called
‘sleeping partners,’ as well as the whole legion ofTHE START IN LIFE. Hey

bankers and their clerks, of bill discounters, bill
brokers, and scriveners, mortgagees and pawn-
brokers—and, indeed, all those whose vocation it is
to lend, advance, or procure capital or money for
such as stand in need of it; while, on the other
hand, there is the large class of work superintend-
ents, aS supervisors, overlookers, foremen, pay-
clerks, inspectors, examiners, viewers, and so on.”

“Well, I declare, I never thought society was
arranged in anything like the way it is,” observed
the lad.

“Ah! but we haven’t done yet, little Mister
Shortsighted, I can tell you,” added the old man,
as he covered the boy’s eyes with his hands to
show him how blind he was.

‘But we must have done, uncle,’ remonstrated
the lad, as he broke away from the old man ;
‘‘ there can’t be anything else, for that was all
father went over to me.”

‘‘Can’t there indeed, Mister Clever?” was the
playful answer. ‘ Well, sir, I must tell you what
your father forgot: that there is still a large class
that live, not by making or producing anything,
nor yet by helping or encouraging others to do so,
but simply by doing something for the rest of the
world.”

‘Well, I can’t see how you can make that out,
uncle,” argued the boy, ‘‘ for if they don’t produce
anything, as you say, I don’t understand how they
can have anything to sell.”

“Indeed, sir,” answered the godfather, patting
the boy on the cheek; ‘then how do you think
doctors and clergymen, play-actors and servants,
soldiers and watchmen, manage to live?”

“Ay,” ejaculated Master Ben, pulling a long
face; “and how would you describe their work,

uncle 2”

‘Why, I should style them servitors,” said the52S YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

elder Benjamin ; ‘‘ for the vocation of every one of
them consists in rendering some service, or doing
some good office to others in the community ; and
as such services lie in ministering to the enters
tainment, the well-being, or the security of the
public, I should class them either as the enter-
tainers, such as actors, authors, artists, musicians,
dancers, conjurors, and even servants—all of whom
are engaged in rendering some temporary service to
others; or else as the advisers and instructors—like
the members of the learned professions, and the
several teachers and professors of the different
branches of learning and science; or else I should
evroup them under the head of public guardians—a
class which would include the ministers of State,
the government officers, and the soldiers and
sailors engaged in the defence of the country, as
well as the legal authorities, and all their depend-
ents, together with the several parish functionaries
of the kingdom. Of these classes, the last two (the
advisers and guardians) are occupied generally in
rendering some permanent service, or in doing some
lasting good office, rather than (like the enter-
tainers) affording a mere passing gratification to
the other members of the community. And with
these, Ben, we come to an end of the several voca-
tions that make up the complex machinery of civi-
lized society.”

‘Well, I declare,” exclaimed the little fellow,
“itis a tangle—such a tangle, that it seems almost
impossible to unravel when a chap comes to think
of itiall,”’

“Ay, but a little orderly arrangement, a few
mental pigeon-holes, can soon enable us to have
the matter at our fingers’ ends, and to take a bird’s-

eye view of the whole,” explained the uncle. “It
is this mere tidying work of philosophy, as I said
before, which is the mainstay of the comprehen-THE START in LIFR. 529

sive faculty of the mind. Thus we see now
that the different members of society are engaged
either in producing something directly or indi-
rectly, or else in serving some one tempora-
vily, or permanently; and that those who are
concerned directly in production are occupied
either in getting the materials, or in working them
up into commodities, or else in improving the pro-
ducts, or helping the workers; whilst those who
are indirectly concerned in the same business, are
occupied either in distributing the goods, that is
to say, In carrying them to their different markets,
or in selling them to the consumers, or else in
fostering the work itself, by providing the capital
or superintending the labour: whereas those who
are concerned in doing some service, rather than
producing any thing for the community, are occu-
pied either with entertaining, or with advising,
and teaching, or else with protecting, and guard-
ing the public. And this, Ben, makes up the
entire mechanism of civilized society.”

‘‘ IT see, uncle,” added the boy; ‘it looks a great
deal simpler now that we go over it all more
rapidly.”

‘“* Well, Ben,” asked his uncle, ‘‘and which of
the wheels of this same wonderful piece of machi-
nery are you going to work at, lad?”

‘““Why, I really don’t know now, uncle, under
which head to place the trade I’ve chosen,” said
young Ben, with an air of no little perplexity.

‘“‘ Well, are you going to produce anything, or to
serve any one, Ben? that’s question number one,”
interrogated the elder Benjamin.

“You see, uncle, I’m not going to produce any
thing exactly, but only to add something to a
thing that’s already made,” the little man replicd,
still boggling over the difficulty.

“Qh, then, you are going to be an improver of

“M530 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

some product after it’s made, are you?” inquired
the godfather. ‘ Well, are you going to strengthen
it, boy; to put the finishing touches to it, or to
beautify it?”

“Do you know, I don’t think ’m going to do
any one of the three. I’m merely going to add
something to it, uncle. Now you guess what it is,
sir,” said the youth, kneeling down on the hassock
in front of his godfather, and shaking his forefinger
with mock authority in his face.

The old man thought of the little fellow’s vow
that he would be an artist; so, with a toss of his
head, he auswered, ‘‘ Oh, | know—your're going to
be a painter; a house painter, perhaps,” he added
with a laugh.

‘¢ No, I’m not,” answered the youth ; ‘ I’m going
to be a printer—a printer of books! what do you
think of that, uncle ?”

““Why, I’m glad to hear you’ve chosen so sen-
sibly, lad,” the godfather made answer, as he laid
his hand approvingly on the little fellow’s head.

‘“ And do you know why I preferred that trade
above all others, uncle ?” the lad asked, as he looked
up affectionately in the old man’s eyes.

‘‘Letme hear your reason, Ben,” said the other.

The little fellow stretched up his hands, and
pressed the old man’s cheeks between his palms,
as he replied, ‘‘ Why, uncle, because 1 remem-
bered all the nice things you told me about the
pleasures of good books; and I thought if I became
a printer, it would be having a business and the
best of all amusements too.”

“Vm glad my counsel has guided you so well,
my child,” smiled out the old good counsellor.

‘Yes, and what’s more, uncle,” added the kneel-
ing boy, “‘now I’m at your feet, thanking you for
all your goodness to m3, Tl promise you that
while I do my work Pll nxt forget my duty.”THE LAST DAY AT HOME. Sol

The simple expression of the lad’s gratitude was
nigh unmanning the kindly natured old boy, his
uncle, so when he had gulped down the bali that
seemed to rise in his throat, the Puritan godfather
said ‘Get up, Ben. I like no one to go upon his
knees to his fellows;” and when he had stood the
lad erect before him, and made him look full in his
face, he added, ‘and now give me your hand, like
friend to friend, and promise me one thing more
before we have done.”

The boy gazed straight into his godfather’s eyes
as he answered, ‘I will.’

‘‘ Promise me, sir,” went on the other “that in
after life, when any mean or savage thought crosses
your mind, youll think of Uncle Ben, and beat
down the ugly impulse before it has time to ex-
press itself in action.”

The boy merely bowed his head, and answered,
“JT do promise you this.”

And then the old man shook the youngster
warmly by the hand fora moment, and at last start-
ing from his seat, he darted hurriedly from the
room, crying, “Good-night! May God bless
you.”

CHAPTER XXVII.
THE LAST DAY AT HOME,

Uncte Ben would have a feast to celebrate his
godson’s start in life. Josiah of course was as
strong as usual against ‘‘ carnal joys,” and the “‘ love
of the flesh-pots ;” but the mother, motherlike, was
soon won over to the gastronomic theory of boyish
happiness (for Puritan as was her stock, she had
still all a matron’s instinctive belief in the loving-
kindness of plum-cakes and puddings,—so long asD2 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

they were not made too rich, she added) :"so the
united forces of wife and brother were brought
to bear against the half-ascetic creed of the stern
old tallow-chandler; and even he (though he
had all the martyr element in his veins, and could
have borne the stake without wincing), wanted
hardness of nature sufficient to hold out against
brother Ben’s kindly banter about brother Josh’s
own early love of pudding, and the wife’s insidious
coaxing and motherly appeals.

Accordingly, a day for the feast was soon fixed,
and the thirteen members of the Franklin family,
all duly apprised and bidden to the merry-making ;
and in a few days afterwards the dame was again
engaged in thumbing patches of lard over the broad
sheet of paste that was to roof in another apple
and pumpkin pie, almost as big as a sponging-
bath. Then there was the lke brisket of corned-
beef wabbling away, with the dough-nuts bump-
ing against the lid, on the hob; and another
turkey and pair of canvas-back ducks twirling in
front of the huge kitchen fire, and making the
whole house savoury with their tantalizing per-
fume. Deborah, too, filled another gallon measure
of dried apples and peaches out of the store closet,
to be duly stewed for the supper; and on the dresser
stood another bowl of curds as big as a kettle-
drum, and another huge jar of honey to serve the
children for dessert.

And the day was not far advanced before the
boys and girls, and the grown young men and
their wives and little ones, all came swarming
back again to the hive. Little Esther and Martha
came first this time—one bringing a bead purse,
and the other a knitted worsted comforter, for
young Ben; and scarcely had they kissed the
little fellow, and wished him every success in
life, before Jabez and Nehemiah, the carpenter’sTHE LAST DAY AT HOME,

and mason’s boys, came tearing over the house,
the former laden with the promised rabbit hutch ;
and after them came Zachary, the shipbuilder,
with his motherless little boy as before; and
John Franklin, the tallow-chandler from Rhode
Island, and his young Quakeress wife with her
infant in her arms; and Abiah, the sister who
had married the trader in furs and beaver skins,
but who, to the great disappointment of the boys,
was now away on his travels among the Indian
tribes; ‘Thomas, the eldest brother, and hereditary
smith of the family, came too, and Ebenezer, the
young farmer, with his intended bride by his side,
as well as sister Ruth, the captain’s wife, with
her little brood of chicks at her heels—indeed, all
were there, as at the previous feast, even including
James the printer, to whom little Ben was going
to be bound, and Uncle Ben’s own son, the cutler
all the Franklins were there excepting poor
Josiah the outcast.

And the merry-making and the games were as
hearty as ever, and when the supper was over, and
the bowls of dame Franklin’s celebrated ‘‘ lambs’-~
wool” placed upon the table, Uncle Ben bade
all present fill their mugs to the brim, and gave
them the toast of the evening, ‘‘ Health and
success to young Benjamin Franklin, and may he
live to be the man we wish him.”

The candle-store in Hanover Street fairly shook
again with the volley of brothers’ cheers that fol-
lowed the sentiment; and when silence was com-
paratively restored, the little fellow stood up, in
obedience to a summons from his uncle, and made
his first speech like a man—a speech that was full
of faith and hope for the future, and regret for the
past—a speech that made the good old mother weep
tears of joy, and the father shake him warmly by
the hand, and bid him ‘‘ God speed,” and aspeech,584 YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

too, which set all the sisters hugging and kissing
him, and vowing “he was their own dear Benny,
that he was.”

And when all was quiet in the house, and Ben
and Jabez and Nehemiah were up in their room,
playing with Master Toby, the pet guinea-pig, as
they prepared for bed, little Benjamin cried
suddenly as he was taking off his shoes, “Oh! I
forgot, I haven’t wished Uncle Ben good-night.”

So down he scampered, unshod as he was, and,
with only his little knee-breeches and his shirt to
cover him, burst suddenly into the old man’s room.

Uncle Ben was on his knees beside his bed;
and as the little fellow crept up and stooped to
kiss him, he felt that the cheek of his best friend
in the world was all wet with tears.

Tears! that the godson never forgot—not even
when the practice of the godfather’s philosophy
had made him the first Ambassador from the
American Republic,

THE END.

 

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