He helped row the boat across the Delaware. He offered the boatman his fare.

"No," said the boatman, "I ought to take nothing; you helped row."

Franklin had just one silver dollar and a shilling in copper coin. He insisted that the ferryman should take the coin. He said of this liberal sense of honor afterward that one is "sometimes more generous when he has little money than when he has plenty."

Philadelphia, the city of Penn, now rose before him, and he entered it a friendless lad, whom none knew and few could have noticed. Would any one then have dreamed that he would one day become the governor of the province?

Benjamin Franklin had now found the world indeed, and his brother James had lost the greatest apprentice that the world ever had. Both were blind. Each had needed that early training that develops the spiritual powers, and makes it a delight to say "No" to all the lower passions of human nature.

Josiah and Abiah Franklin had had great hopes of little Ben. The boy had a large brain and a tender heart. From their point of view they had trained him well. They had sent him to the Old South Church and had made him the subject of their daily prayers. In fact, these good people had done their best to make him a "steady boy," according to their light. The education of the inner life was like a sealed book to them. But they were yet people upon whom a larger light was breaking. The poor old soap and candle maker went on with his business at the Blue Ball with a heavy heart.

"Gone, gone," said Jamie the Scotchman. "He'll find proverbs enough on his way of life. This is a hard world, but he has a heart to return to the right. I pity good Abiah Franklin, but we often have to trust where we can not see."



CHAPTER XX.

LAUGHED AT AGAIN.

FRANKLIN'S first day in Philadelphia is well known to the world. He has related it in Addisonian English, and it has been read almost as widely as the adventures of Robinson Crusoe or Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.

We must give a part of the narrative here in his own language, for a merry girl is about to laugh at the Boston boy as she sees him pass, and he will cause this lovely girl to laugh with him many times in his rising career and in different spirit from that on the occasion when she first beheld him, the awkward and comical-looking boy wandering he knew not where on the street.

Let us follow him through his own narrative until he meets the eyes of Deborah Read, a fair lass of eighteen.

On his arrival at Philadelphia, he tells us, he was in his working dress; his best clothes were to come by sea. He was covered with dirt; his pockets were filled with shirts and stockings. He was unacquainted with a single soul in the place, and knew not where to seek for a lodging. Fatigued with walking, rowing, and having passed the night without sleep, he was extremely hungry, and all his money consisted of a Dutch dollar and about a shilling's worth of coppers, which latter he gave to the boatman for his passage.

He walked toward the top of the street, looking eagerly on both sides, till he came to Market Street, where he met with a child with a loaf of bread. Often he had made his dinner on dry bread. He inquired of the child where he had bought the bread, and went straight to the baker's shop which the latter pointed out to him. He asked for some biscuits, expecting to find such as they had in Boston; but they made, it seems, none of that sort in Philadelphia. He then asked for a threepenny loaf. They made no loaves of that price. Finding himself ignorant of the prices as well as of the different kinds of bread, he desired the baker to let him have threepenny worth of bread of some kind or other. The baker gave him three large rolls. He was surprised at receiving so much; he took them, however, and having no room in his pockets, he walked on with a roll under each arm, eating the third. In this manner he went through Market Street to Fourth Street, and passed the house of Mr. Read, the father of his future wife. The girl was standing at the door, observed him, and thought with reason that he made a very singular and grotesque appearance, and laughed merrily. We repeat the many-times-told tale in nearly his own words.

So here we find our young adventurer laughed at again. We can fancy the young girl standing on her father's doorsteps on that mellow autumn day. There comes up the street a lad with two rolls of bread under his arm, and eating a third roll, his pockets full of the simpler necessities of clothing, which must have made him look like a ragman; everything about him was queer and seemingly wrong. She may have seen that he was just from the boat, and a traveler, but when did ever a traveler look so entirely out of his senses as this one did?

Never mind, Ben Franklin. You will one day stand in Versailles in the velvet robes of state, and the French king will give you his portrait framed in four hundred and eight diamonds.

"I then turned the corner," he continues, "and went through Chestnut Street, eating my roll all the way; and having made this round, I found myself again on Market Street Wharf, near the boat in which I arrived. I stepped into it to take a draught of river water, and finding myself satisfied with my first roll, I gave the other two to a woman and her child who had come down the river with us in the boat and was waiting to continue her journey. Thus refreshed, I regained the street, which was now full of well-dressed people, all going the same way. I joined them, and was thus led to a large Quakers' meeting-house near the market-place. I sat down with the rest, and, after looking round me for some time, hearing nothing said, and being drowsy from my last night's labor and want of rest, I fell into a sound sleep. In this state I continued till the assembly dispersed, when one of the congregation had the goodness to wake me. This was consequently the first house I entered or in which I slept at Philadelphia.

"I began again to walk along the streets by the riverside, and, looking attentively in the face of every one I met with, I at length perceived a young Quaker whose countenance pleased me. I accosted him, and begged him to inform me where a stranger might find a lodging. We were then near the sign of the Three Mariners. 'They receive travelers here,' said he, 'but it is not a house that bears a good character. If you will go with me I will show you a better one.' He conducted me to the Crooked Billet, in Water Street. There I ordered something for dinner, and during my meal a number of curious questions were put to me, my youth and appearance exciting the suspicion of my being a young runaway. After dinner my drowsiness returned, and I threw myself upon a bed without taking off my clothes, and slept till six o'clock in the evening, when I was called to supper. I afterward went to bed at a very early hour, and did not awake till the next morning.

"As soon as I got up I put myself in as decent a trim as I could, and went to the house of Andrew Bradford, the printer. I found his father in the shop, whom I had seen at New York. Having traveled on horseback, he had arrived at Philadelphia before me. He introduced me to his son, who received me with civility and gave me some breakfast, but told me he had no occasion at present for a journeyman, having lately procured one. He added that there was another printer newly settled in the town, of the name of Keimer, who might perhaps employ me, and that in case of refusal I should be welcome to lodge at his house. He would give me a little work now and then till something better should be found.

"The old man offered to introduce me to the new printer. When we were at his house, 'Neighbor,' said he, 'I bring you a young man in the printing business; perhaps you may have need of his services.'

"Keimer asked me some questions, put a composing stick in my hand to see how I could work, and then said that at present he had nothing for me to do, but that he should soon be able to employ me. At the same time taking old Bradford for an inhabitant of the town well disposed toward him, he communicated his project to him and the prospect he had of success. Bradford was careful not to discover that he was the father of the other printer; and from what Keimer had said, that he hoped shortly to be in possession of the greater part of the business of the town, led him, by artful questions and by starting some difficulties, to disclose all his views, what his hopes were founded upon, and how he intended to proceed. I was present and heard it all. I instantly saw that one of the two was a cunning old fox and the other a perfect novice. Bradford left me with Keimer, who was strangely surprised when I informed him who the old man was.

"I found Keimer's printing materials to consist of an old, damaged press and a small font of worn-out English letters, with which he himself was at work upon an elegy upon Aquilla Rose, an ingenious young man and of excellent character, highly esteemed in the town, Secretary to the Assembly and a very tolerable poet. Keimer also made verses, but they were indifferent ones. He could not be said to write in verse, for his method was to set the lines as they followed from his muse; and as he worked without copy, had but one set of letter cases, and as the elegy would occupy all his types, it was impossible for any one to assist him. I endeavored to put his press in order, which he had not yet used, and of which indeed he understood nothing; and, having promised to come and work off his elegy as soon as it should be ready, I returned to the house of Bradford, who gave me some trifles to do for the present, for which I had my board and lodging.

"In a few days Keimer sent for me to print off his elegy. He had now procured another set of letter cases, and had a pamphlet to reprint, upon which he set me to work.

"The two Philadelphia printers appeared destitute of every qualification necessary in their profession. Bradford had not been brought up to it, and was very illiterate. Keimer, though he understood a little of the business, was merely a compositor, and wholly incapable of working at press. He had been one of the French prophets, and knew how to imitate their supernatural agitations. At the time of our first acquaintance he professed no particular religion, but a little of all upon occasion. He was totally ignorant of the world, and a great knave at heart, as I had afterward an opportunity of experiencing.

"Keimer could not endure that, working with him, I should lodge at Bradford's. He had indeed a house, but it was unfurnished, so that he could not take me in. He procured me a lodging at Mr. Read's, his landlord, whom I have already mentioned. My trunk and effects being now arrived, I thought of making, in the eyes of Miss Read, a more respectable appearance than when chance exhibited me to her view, eating my roll and wandering in the streets.

"From this period I began to contract acquaintance with such young people as were fond of reading, and spent my evenings with them agreeably, while at the same time I gained money by my industry, and, thanks to my frugality, lived contentedly. I thus forgot Boston as much as possible, and wished every one to be ignorant of the place of my residence, except my friend Collins, to whom I wrote, and who kept my secret.

"An accident, however, happened which sent me home much sooner than I proposed. I had a brother-in-law, of the name of Robert Holmes, master of a trading sloop from Boston to Delaware. Being at Newcastle, forty miles below Philadelphia, he heard of me, and wrote to inform me of the chagrin which my sudden departure from Boston had occasioned my parents, and of the affection which they still entertained for me, assuring me that, if I would return, everything should be adjusted to my satisfaction; and he was very pressing in his entreaties. I answered his letter, thanked him for his advice, and explained the reasons which had induced me to quit Boston with such force and clearness that he was convinced I had been less to blame than he had imagined.

"Sir William Keith, Governor of the province, was at Newcastle at the time. Captain Holmes, being by chance in his company when he received my letter, took occasion to speak of me and showed it to him. The Governor read it, and appeared surprised when he learned of my age. He thought me, he said, a young man of very promising talents, and that of consequence I ought to be encouraged; that there were at Philadelphia none but very ignorant printers, and that if I were to set up for myself he had no doubt of my success; that, for his own part, he would procure me all the public business, and would render me every other service in his power. My brother-in-law related all this to me afterward at Boston, but I knew nothing of it at the time. When, one day, Keimer and I being at work together near the window, we saw the Governor and another gentleman, Colonel French, of Newcastle, handsomely dressed, cross the street and make directly for our house. We heard them at the door, and Keimer, believing it to be a visit to himself, went immediately down; but the Governor inquired for me, came upstairs, and, with a condescension and politeness to which I had not at all been accustomed, paid me many compliments, desired to be acquainted with me, obligingly reproached me for not having made myself known to him on my arrival in the town, and wished me to accompany him to a tavern, where he and Colonel French were going to have some excellent Madeira wine.

"I was, I confess, somewhat surprised, and Keimer appeared thunderstruck. I went, however, with the Governor and the colonel to a tavern at the corner of Third Street, where he proposed to me to establish a printing house. He set forth the probabilities of success, and himself and Colonel French assured me that I should have their protection and influence in obtaining the printing of the public papers of both governments; and as I appeared to doubt whether my father would assist me in this enterprise, Sir William said that he would give me a letter to him, in which he would represent the advantages of the scheme in a light which he had no doubt would determine him. It was thus concluded that I should return to Boston by the first vessel with the letter of recommendation from the Governor to my father. Meanwhile the project was to be kept secret, and I continued to work for Keimer as before.

"The Governor sent every now and then to invite me to dine with him. I considered this a very great honor, and I was the more sensible of it as he conversed with me in the most affable, familiar, and friendly manner imaginable.

"Toward the end of April, 1724, a small vessel was ready to sail for Boston. I took leave of Keimer upon the pretext of going to see my parents. The Governor gave me a long letter, in which he said many flattering things of me to my father, and strongly recommended the project of my settling at Philadelphia as a thing which could not fail to make my fortune."

What is there prophetic of a great life in this homely narrative? Read over again the incident of the three rolls, one of which he ate, and two of which he gave to the poor woman and her child who needed them more than he. All his money on that day was one silver dollar. In that incident we see the heart and the persistent purpose to do good. He had made mistakes, but the resolution that he had made on reading Cotton Mather's meaty book was unshaken. He would correct his errors and yield to his better nature, and this purpose to help others would grow, and so he would overcome evil with good.

He who helps one helps two. The poor woman may never have been heard of in public, except in this story, but that act of sharing the rolls, with one for the little child, made Ben Franklin a larger man. "The purpose of life is to grow."

Benjamin Franklin is now a seed in the wind, but he is a good seed in the wind—good at heart, with a right purpose. The stream of life is turned aside, but it will flow true again toward the great ocean of that which is broadest and best.

For this little Jenny at home is hoping, and Abiah Franklin praying, and Josiah Franklin keeping silence in regard to his family affairs.

These were hard days for Uncle Benjamin and his philosophy, and for Jenny and her human faith.



CHAPTER XXI.

LONDON AND A LONG SWIM.

WHAT kind of a man was Governor Sir William Keith? There are not many such, but one such may be found in almost every large community. He desired popularity, and he loved to please every one. He was constantly promising what he was not able to fulfill. He had a lively imagination, and he liked to think what he would do if he could for every bright person he met; and these things which he would like to do he promised, and his promises often ended in disappointment. It delighted him to see faces light up with hope. Did he intend to deceive? No. He had a heart to bless the whole world. He was for a time a very popular Governor, but he who had given away expectations that but disappointed so many hearts was at last disappointed in all his expectations. He was greatly pleased with young Benjamin Franklin when he first met him, just as he had been with many other promising young men. He liked a young man who had the hope of the future in his face. This young printer who had entertained Boston under the name of Silence Dogood won his heart on a further acquaintance, and so he used to invite him to his home. He there showed him how essential a good printer would be to the province; how such a young man as he would make a fortune; and he urged him to go back to his father in Boston and borrow money for such an enterprise. He gave him a long letter of commendation to his father, a droll missive indeed to carry to clear-sighted, long-headed Josiah Franklin.

With this grand letter and twenty-five pounds in silver in his pocket and a gold watch besides, and his vision full of rainbows, he returned to the Puritan town. He went to the printing office, which was again under the charge of his brother James. He was finely dressed, and as he had come back with such flattering prospects he had a grain of vanity.

He entered James's office. The latter looked at him with wide eyes, then turned from him coldly.

But Silence Dogood was not to be chilled. The printers flocked around him with wonder, as though he had been a returning Sindbad, and he began to relate to them his adventures in Philadelphia. James heard him with envy, doubtful of the land "where rocs flew away with elephants." But when Benjamin showed the men his watch, and finally shared with them a silver dollar in hospitalities, he fancied that his brother had come there to insult him, and he felt more bitterly toward him than ever before. Benjamin had much to learn in life. He and his brother, notwithstanding their good Quaker-born mother, had not learned the secret of the harmony of Abraham and Lot.

But one of these lessons of life our elated printer was to learn, and at once.

He returned to his home at the Blue Ball. His parents had not heard from him since he went away some seven months before, and they, though grieved at his conduct, received him joyfully. There was always an open door in Abiah Folger's heart. The Quaker blood of good Peter Folger never ceased to course warm in her veins.

Ben told his marvelous story. After the literary adventures of Silence Dogood in Boston, his parents could believe much, but when he came to tell of his intimacy with Sir William Keith, Governor of the Province of Pennsylvania, successor to the great William Penn, they knew not what to think. Either Sir William must be a singular man, or they must have underrated the ability of young Silence Dogood.

"This is great news indeed. But what proof do you bring of your good fortune, my son?" asked the level-headed Josiah, lifting his spectacles upon his forehead and giving his son a searching look.

Young Benjamin took from his pocket the letter of Sir William and laid it before his father. It indeed had the vice-royal seal of the province.

His father put down his spectacles from his forehead, and his wife Abiah drew up her chair beside him, and he read the letter to himself and then reviewed it aloud.

The letter told him what a wonderfully promising young man Benjamin was; how well he was adapted to become the printer of the province, and how he only needed a loan wherewith to begin business to make a fortune.

Josiah Franklin could not doubt the genuineness of the letter. He sat thinking, drumming on a soap shelf.

"But why, my boy, if you are so able and so much needed does not Governor Keith lend you the money himself?"

Ben sat silent. Not all the arts of the Socratic method could suggest any answer to this question.

"I am glad that you have an influential patron," said Josiah, "but to a man of hard sense it would seem very strange that he should not advance the money himself to help one so likely to become so useful to the province to begin business. People are seldom offered something for nothing in this world, and why this man has made himself your patron I can not see, even through my spectacles."

"He wishes, father, to make me a printer for the advancement of the province."

"Then why, my son, should not a governor of a rich province himself provide you with means to become a printer for the advancement of the province?"

Socrates himself could not have answered this question.

"Did you tell him that your father was an honest, hard-working soap boiler and candle maker?"

"No," said the young man.

"Benjamin, I have a large family, and I am unable to lend you the money that the Governor requests. But even if I had the money I should hesitate to let you have it for such a purpose. You are too young to start in business, and your character is not settled. That troubles me, Ben. Your character is not settled. You have made some bad mistakes already. You went away without bidding your mother good-by, and now return to me with a letter from the Governor of Pennsylvania who asks me to loan you money to set you up in business, because you are so agreeable and promising. O Ben, Ben, did you not think that I had more sense than that?"

Josiah lifted his spectacles up to his forehead, and looked his finely dressed son fully in the face. The pride of the latter began to shrink. He saw himself as he was.

But Abiah pleaded for her large-brained boy—Abiah, whose heart was always open, in whom lived Peter Folger still. Jenny had but one thing to say. It was, "Ben, don't go back, don't go back."

"I will tell you what I will do," said Josiah. "I will write a letter to Governor Keith, telling him the plain truth of my circumstances. That is just right. If when you are twenty years of age you will have saved a part of the money to begin business, I will do what I can for you."

With this letter Silence Dogood returned to Philadelphia in humiliation. We think it was this Silence Dogood who wrote the oft-quoted proverb, "A good kick out of doors is worth all the rich uncles in the world."

Young Franklin presented his father's letter to Governor Keith.

"Your father is too prudent," said the latter. "He says that you are too young and unsettled for business. Some people are thirty years old at eighteen. It is not years that are to be considered in this case, but fitness for work. I will start you in business myself."

Silence Dogood rejoiced. Here was a man who was "better than a father"—the "best man in all the world," he thought.

"Make out an inventory of the things that you need to begin the business of a printer, and I will send to London for them."

Benjamin did so, an inventory to the amount of one hundred pounds. He brought it to the Governor, who greatly surprised him by a suggestion.

"Perhaps," said Sir William, "you would like to go to London and get the machinery yourself. I would give you a letter of credit."

Was it raining gold?

"I would like to go to London," answered the young printer.

"Then I will provide for your journey. You shall go with Captain Annis." This captain sailed yearly from Philadelphia to London.

Waiting the sailing of the ship months passed away. Governor Keith entertained the young printer at his home. The sailing time came. Franklin went to the office of the Governor to receive the letter of credit and promised letters of introduction.

"All in good time, my boy," said the Governor's clerk, "but the Governor is busy and can not see you now. If you will call on Wednesday you will receive the letters."

Young Franklin called at the office on the day appointed.

"All in good time, my boy," said the clerk. "The Governor has not had time to fix them up and get them ready. They will be sent to you on board the ship with the Governor's mail."

So Franklin went on board the ship. As the Governor's mail came on board he asked the captain to let him see the letters, but the latter told him that he must wait until the ship got under way.

Out at sea the Governor's letters were shown to him. There were several directed to people "in the care of Benjamin Franklin." He supposed these contained notes of introduction and the letter of credit, so he passed happily over the sea.

He reached London December 24, 1724. He rushed into the grand old city bearing the letters directed in his care. He took the one deemed most important to the office of the gentleman to whom it was directed. "This letter is from Governor Keith, of the Province of Pennsylvania," said Franklin.

"I know of no such person," said the man. The latter opened the letter. "Oh, I see," said he, "it is from one Riddleson. I have found him out to be a rascal, an exile, and refuse to entertain any communication from him."

Franklin's face fell. His heart turned heavy. He went out wondering. "Was his father's advice sound, after all?"

The rest of the letters that had been directed in his care were not written by Governor Keith, but by people in the province to their friends, of which he had been made a postboy. There were in the mail no letters of introduction from Governor Keith to any one, and no letter of credit.

He found himself alone in London, that great wilderness of homes. Of Keith's conduct he thus speaks in his autobiography:

"What shall we think of a Governor playing such pitiful tricks, and imposing so grossly upon a poor ignorant boy? It was a habit he had acquired; he wished to please everybody, and having little to give, he gave expectations. He was otherwise an ingenuous, sensible man, a pretty good writer, and a good Governor for the people, though not for his constituents, the Proprietaries, whose instructions he sometimes disregarded. Several of our best laws were of his planning, and passed during his administration."

He found work as a journeyman printer in London, and we are sorry to say lived like most journeymen printers there. But Silence Dogood had to make himself useful even among these unsettled people. He instituted new ways of business and life of advantage to journeymen printers, and so kept the chain of his purpose lengthening.

There was a series of curious incidents that happened during the last part of this year of residence in London that came near changing his career. It was in 1726; he was about twenty years old. He had always loved the water, to be on it and in it, and he became an expert swimmer when he was a lad in Boston town.

He had led a temperate life among the London apprentices, and had kept his physical strength unimpaired. He drank water while they drank beer. They laughed at him, but he was able to carry up stairs a heavier case of type than any of them. They called him the "American water-drinker," but there came a day when he performed a feat that became the admiration of the young London printers. He loved companionship, and had many intimate friends, and among them there was one Wygate, who went swimming with him, probably in the Thames, and whom he taught to swim in two lessons.

One day Wygate invited him to go into the country with him and some of his friends. They had a merry time and returned by water. After they had embarked from Chelsea, a suburb which was then some four and a half miles from St. Paul's Cathedral, Wygate said to him:



"Franklin, you are a water boy; let us see how well you can swim."

Franklin knew his strength and skill. He took off his clothing and leaped into the river, and probably performed all the old feats that one can do in the water.

His dexterity delighted the party, but it soon won their applause.

He swam a mile.

"Come on board!" shouted they. "Are you going to swim back to London?"

"Yes," came a voice as if from a fish in the bright, sunny water.

He swam two miles.

The wonder of the party grew.

Three miles.

They cheered.

Four miles to Blackfriars Bridge. Such a thing had never been known among the apprentice lads. The swim brought young Franklin immediate fame among these apprentices, and it spread and filled London.

Sir William Wyndham, once Chancellor of the Exchequer, heard of this exploit, and desired to see him. He had two sons who were about to travel, to whom he wished Franklin to teach swimming. But the two boys were detained in another place, and Franklin never met them. It was proposed to Franklin that he open a swimming school.

But while he was favorable to such agreeable employment, there occurred one of those incidents that seem providential.

He met one day at this shifting period Mr. Denham, the upright merchant, whose integrity came to honor his profession and Philadelphia. This man had failed in business at Bristol, and had left England under a cloud. But he had an honest soul and purpose, and he resolved to pay every dollar that he owed. To this end he put all the energies of his life into his business. He went to America to make a fortune, and he made it. He then returned to Bristol, which he had left in sorrow and humiliation.

He gave a banquet, and invited to it all the merchants and people whom he owed. They responded to the unexpected invitation, and wondered what would happen. When they had seated themselves at the table, and the time to serve the meal came, the dinner plates were lifted, and each one found before him the full amount of the money due to him. The banquet of honor made the name of the merchant famous.

Mr. Denham was a friend to men in need of good influences. He saw Franklin's need of advice, and he said to him:

"My young friend, you should return to Philadelphia. It is the place of opportunity."

"But I have not the means."

"I have the means for you. I am about to return to America with a cargo of merchandise. You must go back with me. Your place in life is there."

Should he go?

It was early summer. He went out on London Bridge one night. It grew dark late. But at last there gleamed in the dark water the lights of London like stars. Many voices filled the air as the boats passed by. The nine o'clock bells rang. It may be that he heard the Bow bells ring, the bells that said, "Come back! come back! come back!" to young Dick Whittington when he was running away from his place in life. If so, he must have been reminded of all that this man accomplished by heeding the voice of the bells, and of how King Henry had said, after all his benefactions, "Did ever a prince have such a subject?"

He must have thought of Uncle Tom and the bells of Nottingham on this clear night of lovely airs and out-of-door merriments. Over the great city towered St. Paul's under the rising moon. Afar was the Abbey, with the dust of kings.

Then he thought of Uncle Benjamin's pamphlets. It seemed useless for one to look for books in this great city of London.

Franklin never saw ghosts, except such as arise out of conscience into the eye of the mind. But the old man's form and his counsels now came into the view of the imagination. His old Boston home came back to his dreams; Jenny came back to him, and the face of the young woman whom he had learned to love in Philadelphia.

He resolved to return. America was his land, and he must build with her builders. He sailed for America with his good adviser, the honest merchant, July 21, 1726, and left noblemen's sons to learn to swim in the manner that he himself had mastered the water.

Did he ever see Governor Keith again? Yes. After his return to Philadelphia he met there upon the street one who was becoming a discredited man. The latter recognized him, but his face turned into confusion. He did not bow; nor did Franklin. It was Governor Keith. This Governor Please-Everybody died in London after years of poverty, at the age of eighty.

Silence Dogood may have thought of his father's raised spectacles when he met Sir William that day on the street, and when they did not wish to recognize each other, or of Jenny's words, "Ben, don't go back."

He had learned some hard lessons from the book of life, and he would henceforth be true to the most unselfish counsels on earth—the heart and voice of home.



CHAPTER XXII.

A PENNY ROLL WITH HONOR.—JENNY'S SPINNING-WHEEL.

BENJAMIN became a printer again. By the influence of friends he opened in Philadelphia an office in part his own.

Benjamin Franklin had no Froebel education. The great apostle of the education of the spiritual faculties had not yet appeared, and even Pestalozzi, the founder of common schools for character education, could not have been known to him. But when a boy he had grasped the idea that was to be evolved by these two philosophers, that the end of education is character, and that right habits become fixed or automatic, thus virtue must be added to virtue, intelligence to intelligence, benevolence to benevolence, faith to faith.

One day, when he was very poor, there came into his printing office a bustling man.

"See here, my boy, I have a piece for you; there's ginger in it, and it will make a stir. You will get well paid for giving it to the public; all Philadelphia will read it."

"I am glad to get something to give the paper life," said Franklin. "I will read the article as soon as I have time to spare."

"I will call to-morrow," said the man. "It is running water that makes things grow. That article will prove very interesting reading to many people, and it will do them good. It is a needed rebuke. You'll say so when you read it."

Franklin at this time did a great part of the work in the office himself, and he was very busy that day. At last he found time to take up the article. He hoped to find it one that would add to the circulation of the paper. He found that it was written in a revengeful spirit, that it was full of detraction and ridicule, that it would answer no good purpose, that it would awaken animosities and engender bitter feelings and strife. But if used it would be read, laughed at, increase the sale of the paper, and secure him the reputation of publishing a smart paper.

Should he publish an article whose influence would be harmful to the public for the sake of money and notoriety?

He here began in himself as an editor that process of moral education which tends to make fixed habits of thought, judgment, and life. He resolved not to print the article.

But the author of it would laugh at him—might call him puritanic; would probably say that he did not know when he was "well off"; that he stood in his own light; that he had not the courage to rebuke private evils.

The young printer had the courage to rebuke wrong, but this article was a sting—a revengeful attempt to make one a laughing stock. It had no good motive. But it haunted him. He turned the question of his duty over and over in his mind.

Night came, and he had not the money to purchase a supper or to secure a bed. Should he not print the lively article, and make for himself better fare on the morrow?

No. Manhood is more than money, worth more than wealth. He went to the baker's and bought a twopenny roll; he ate it in his office, and then lay down on the floor of his office and went to sleep.

The boy's sleep was sweet. He had decided the matter in his own heart, and had given himself a first lesson in what we would to-day call the new education. In this case it was an editorial education.

It was a lovely winter morning. There was joy in all Nature; the air was clear and keen; the Schuylkill rippled bright in the glory of the sun. He rose before the sun, and went to his work with a clear conscience, but probably dreading the anger of the patron when he should give him his decision.

When the baker's shop opened he may have bought another twopenny roll. He certainly sat down and ate one, with a dipper of water.

In the later hours of the morning the door opened, and the patron came in with a beaming face.

"Have you read it?"

"Yes, I have read the article, sir."

"Won't that be a good one? What did you think of it?"

"That I ought not to use it."

"Why?" asked the man, greatly astonished.

"I can not be sure that it would not do injustice to the person whom you have attacked. There are always two sides to a case. I myself would not like to be publicly ridiculed in that manner. Detraction leads to detraction, and hatred begets hate."

"But you must have money, my Boston lad. Have you thought of that?" was the suggestion.

Franklin drew himself up in the strength and resolution of young manhood, and made the following answer, which we give, as we think, almost in his very words:

"I am sorry to say, sir, that I think the article is scurrilous and defamatory. But I have been at a loss, on account of my poverty, whether to reject it or not. I therefore put it to this issue. At night, when my work was done, I bought a twopenny loaf, on which I supped heartily, and then wrapping myself in my greatcoat slept very soundly on the floor until morning, when another loaf and a mug of water afforded a pleasant breakfast. Now, sir, since I can live very comfortably in this manner, why should I prostitute my press to personal hatred or party passion for a more luxurious living?"

This experience may be regarded as temporizing, but it was inward education in the right direction, a step that led upward. It shows the trend of the way, the end of which is the "path of the just, that leads more and more unto the perfect day."

A young man who was willing to eat a twopenny roll and to sleep on the floor of his pressroom for a principle, had in him the power that lifts life, and that sustains it when lifted. He who puts self under himself for the sake of justice has in him the gravitation of the skies. Uncle Ben's counsels were beginning to live in him. Jenny's girl's faith was budding in his heart, and it would one day bloom. He was turning to the right now, and he would advance. There are periods in some people's lives when they do not write often to their best friends; such a one had just passed with Ben. During the Governor Keith misadventures he had not written home often, as the reader may well imagine. But now that he had come back to Philadelphia and was prosperous, the memory of loving Jenny began to steal back into his heart.

He had heard that Jenny, now at sweet sixteen, was famous for her beauty. He may have been jealous of her, we do not know; but he was apprehensive that she might become vain, and he regarded modesty, even at his early age of twenty-one or twenty-two, as a thing very becoming a blooming girl.

One day he wrote to her, "Jenny, I am going to send you a present by the next ship to Boston town."

The promise filled the girl's heart with delight. Her faith in him had never failed, nor had her love for him changed.

What would the present be?

She went to her mother to help her solve this riddle.

"Perhaps it will be a ring," she said. "I would rather have that from Ben than any other thing."

"But he would not send a ring by ship," said her mother, "but by the post chaise."

"True, mother; it can not be that. It may be a spinet. I think it is a spinet. He knows how we have delighted in father's violin. He might like to send me a harp, but what is a spinet but a harp in a box?"

"I think it may be that, Jenny. He would send a spinet by ship, and he knows how much we all love music."

"Yes, and he must see how many girls are adding the music of the spinet to their accomplishments."

"Wouldn't a spinet be rather out of place in a candle shop?" asked the mother.

"Not out of place in the parlor of a candle shop," said Jenny with dignity.

"Do you think that you could learn to play the spinet, Jenny?"

"I would, if Ben were to send me one. I have been true to Ben all along. I have never given him up. He may get out of place in life, but he is sure to get back again. A true heart always does. I am sure that it is a spinet that he will send. I dreamed," she added, "that I heard a humming sound in the air something like a harp. I dreamed it in the morning, and morning dreams come true."

"A humming sound," said Josiah Franklin, who had come within hearing; "there are some things besides spinets that make humming sounds, and Ben must know how poor we are. I am glad that his heart is turning home again, after his scattering adventures with the Governor. It is not every one who goes to sea without a rudder that gets back to port again."

Jenny dreamed daily of the coming ship and present. The ship came in, and one evening at dark an old sailor knocked at the door. He presently came in and announced that they had a "boxed-up" thing for one Jane Franklin on board the ship. Should he send it by the cartman to the house?

"Yes, yes!" cried Jenny. "Now I know it is a spinet I heard humming—I told you about it, mother."

The girl awaited the arrival of the gift with a flushed cheek and a beating heart. It came at last, and was brought in by candlelight.

It was indeed a "boxed-up" thing.

The family gathered around it—the father and mother, the boys and the girls.

Josiah Franklin broke open the box with his great claw hammer, which might have pleased an Ajax.

"O Jenny!" he exclaimed, "that will make a humming indeed. Ben has not lost his wits yet—or he has found them again."

"What is it? What is it, father?"

"The most sensible thing in all the world. See there, it is a spinning-wheel!"

Jane's heart sank within her. Her dreams vanished into the air—the delights of the return of Sindbad the Sailor were not to be hers yet. The boys giggled. She covered her face with her hands to hide her confusion and to gain heart.

"I don't care," she said at last, choking. "I think Ben is real good, and I will forgive him. I can spin. The wheel is a beauty."

The gift was accompanied by a letter. In it Benjamin told her that he had heard that she had been much praised for her beauty, but that it was industry and modesty that most merited commendation in a young girl. The counsel was as homely as much of that that Uncle Benjamin used to give little Benjamin, but she choked down her feelings.

"Benjamin was thinking of you as well as of me when he sent me that present," she said to her mother. "I will make music with the wheel, and the humming will make us all happy. I think that Ben is real good—and a spinet would have been out of place here. I will write him a beautiful letter in return, and will not tell him how I had hoped for a spinet. It is all better as it is. That is best which will do the most good."

If Franklin sent a practical spinning-wheel to Jenny when she was a girl, with much advice in which there was no poetry, such a sense of homely duties soon passed away. He came to send her beautiful presents of fabrics, "black and purple gowns," wearing apparel of elegant texture, and ribbons. When he became rich it was his delight to make happy the home of Jane Mecom—his poetic, true-hearted sister "Jenny," whose heart had beat to his in every step of his advancing life.

She became the mother of a large family of children, and when one of them ran away and went to sea she took all the blame of it to herself, and thought that if she had made his home pleasanter for him he would not have left it. In her self-blame she wrote to her brother to confess how she had failed in her duty toward the boy. Franklin read her heart, and wrote to her that the boy was wholly to blame, which could hardly have been comforting. Jenny would rather have been to blame herself. There was but little wrong in this world in her eyes, except herself.

She saw the world through her own heart.



CHAPTER XXIII.

MR. CALAMITY.

THERE was a fine, busy old gentleman that young Franklin met about the time that he opened his printing office, whose course it will be interesting to follow. Almost every young man sometimes meets a man of this type and character. He is certain to be found, as are any of the deterrent people in the Pilgrim's Progress. He is the man in whose eyes there is ruin lurking in every form of prosperity, who sees only the dark side of things—to whom, as we now say, everything "is going to the dogs."

We will call him Mr. Calamity, for that name represents what he had come to be as a prophet.[B]

One day young Franklin heard behind him the tap, tap, tap of a cane. It was a time when Philadelphia was beginning to rise, and promised unparalleled prosperity. The cane stopped with a heavy sound.

"What—what is this I hear?" said Mr. Calamity. "You are starting a printing office, they say. I am sorry, sorry."

"Why are you sorry, sir?" asked the young printer.

"Oh, you are a smart, capable young man, one who in the right place would succeed in life. I hate to see you throw yourself away."

"But is not this the right place?"

"What, Philadelphia?"

"Yes, it is growing."

"That shows how people are deceived. Haven't you any eyes?"

"Yes, yes."

"But what were they made for? Can't you see what is coming?"

"A great prosperity, sir."

"Oh, my young man, how you are deceived, and how feather-headed people have deceived you! Don't you know that this show of prosperity is all delusion; that people of level heads are calling in their bills, and that this is a hard time for creditors? The age of finery has gone, and the age of rags has come. Rags, sir, rags!"

"No, sir, no. I thought the people were getting out of debt. See how many people are building."

"They are building to be ready for the crash—they do not know what else to do with their money; calamity is coming."

"But how do you know, sir?"

"Know? It requires but little wit to know. I can feel it in my head. The times are not what they used to be. William Penn is dead, and none of his descendants are equal to him. Look at the Quakers, see how worldly they are becoming! Most people are living beyond their means! Property," he added, "is all on the decline. In a few years you will see people moving away from here. You will hear that the Proprietors have failed. Young man, don't go into business here. Let me tell you a secret, though I hate to do it, as your heart is bent upon setting up the printing business here; listen to me now—the whole province is going to fail. Before us is bankruptcy. Do you hear it—that awful, awful word bankruptcy? The Governor himself, in my opinion, is on the way to bankruptcy now. The town will have to all go out of business, and then there will be bats and owls in the garrets, and the wharves will rot. I sometimes think that I will have to quit my country."

"Do other folks think as you do?"

"Ay, ay, don't they? All that have any heads with eyes. Some folks have eyes for the present, some for the past, and some for the future. I am one of those that have eyes for the future. I expect to see grass growing in the streets before I die, and I shall not have to live long to pluck buttercups under the King's Arms. I pity young chickens like you that will have no place to run to."

"But, sir," said young Franklin, "suppose things do take another turn. The young settlers are all building; the old people are enlarging their estates. It is easy to borrow money, and it looks to me that we will have here twice as many people in another generation as we have now. If the city should grow, what an opening there is for a printer! I shall take the risk."

"Risk—risk? Jump off a ship on the high sea with an iron ball on your feet! Go down, and stick there. Business, I tell you, is going to die here, and who would want to read what a stripling like you would write outside of business? You would print that this one had failed, that that one had failed, and one don't collect bills handy from people who have failed. I tell you that the whole province is about to fail, and Philadelphia is going to ruin, and I advise you to turn right about and pack up, and go to some other place. There will never be any chance for you here."

Tap, tap, tap, went his cane, and he moved away.

Young Franklin started to go to his work with a heavy heart. The cane stopped. Old Mr. Calamity looked around.

"I've warned you," said he with a flourish of the cane. "I tell you, I tell you everything is going back to the wilderness, and I pity you, but not half so much as you will pity yourself if you embark in the printing business, and print failures for nothing, to fail yourself some day. This is the age of rags, rags!"

Tap, tap, tap, went on the cane, and the old gentleman chuckled.

Young Franklin went on in his business. What was he to do? He saw everything with hopeful eyes. But he was young. His heart told him to go on in his undertaking, and he went on.

He had been laughed at in Boston, and old Mr. Calamity had risen up here to laugh at him again.

He knew not how it was, but it was in him to become a printer. As the young waterfowl knows the water as soon as it toddles from his nest, so young Franklin from his boyhood saw his life in this new element; the press was to be the source of America's rise, power, and glory, the throne of the republic; it was to make and mold and fulfill by its influence public opinion; the same public opinion was to rule America, and the young printer of Philadelphia was to lead the way now, and to reap the fruits of his spiritual resolution after he was seventy years of age. He saw it, he felt it, he knew his own mind. So he left behind old Mr. Calamity for the present, but he was soon to meet him again.

He had now taken a third step on the ladder of life. His business should be built upon honor.

The next time that he met Mr. Calamity, the old gentleman gave him a view of the prospects of a printer.

"If you think that you are going to get your foot on the ladder of life by becoming a printer, you will find that you have mistaken your calling. None of the great men of old were printers, were they? Homer was no printer, was he?"

"I have never heard that he was."

"Nor did you hear of any one who ever printed the Iliad or the Odyssey. No printer was ever heard of among the immortals. A printer just prints—that is all. Solomon never printed anything, did he?"

"I never read that he did, sir."

"Nor Shakespeare?"

"I never heard that he did, sir."

"A printer has no chance to rise; he just builds the ark for Noah to sail in, and is left behind himself."

"I hope to print some of my own thoughts, sir."

"You do? Ha! ha! ha! Who do you think is going to read them? Your own thoughts—that does give me a stitch in the side, and makes me laugh so loud and swing my cane so high that it sets the cats and dogs to running. See them go over the garden fence! I shall watch your course, and when you begin to scatter your ideas about in the world, I hope I will be living to gather some of them up. I hope they will never lead a revolution!"

Franklin's "Ca Ira" were the words that led the French Revolution.

FOOTNOTE:

[B] The old gentleman who suggests this character was named Mickle or Mikle.



CHAPTER XXIV.

FRANKLIN'S STRUGGLES WITH FRANKLIN.

AT the age of fifteen Franklin had avowed himself a deist, or theist, which must have grieved his parents, who were people of positive Christian faith. He loved to argue, and when he had learned the Socratic art of asking questions so as to lead one to confuse himself, and of answering questions in the subjunctive mood, he sought nothing more than disputations in the stanch Puritan town. His intimate friends were deists, but they came to early failure through want of faith or any positive moral conviction. Governor Keith was a deist.

The reader may ask what we mean by a deist here. A deist or theist in Franklin's time was one who believed in a God, but questioned the Christian faith and system. He was not an atheist. He held that a personal governing power directed all things after his own will and purpose. Under the providence of this Being things came and went, and man could not know how or why, but could simply believe that all that was was for the good of all.

At the age of twenty-two young Franklin began to see that life without faith had no meaning, but was failure. In the omnipotence of spiritual life and power the soul must share or die. Negations or denials did not satisfy him. This was a positive world, governed by spiritual law. To disobey these laws was loss and death.

He had been doing wrong. He had done wrong in yielding to his personal feelings in leaving home in the manner which he did. He had committed acts of social wrong. He had followed at times the law of the lower nature instead of the higher. He had become intimate with two friends who had led him into unworthy conduct, and over whom his own influence had not been good. He saw that the true value of life lies in its influence. There were things in his life that tended to ruin influence. There were no harvests to be expected from the barren rocks of negation and denials of faith in the highest good. Sin gives one nothing that one can keep. He must change his life, he must obey perfectly the spiritual laws of his being. He saw it, and resolved to begin.

Now began a struggle between Benjamin Franklin the natural man and Benjamin Franklin the spiritual man that lasted for life. It became his purpose to gain the spiritual mastery, and to obey the laws of regeneration and eternal life.

Here are his first resolutions:

"Those who write of the art of poetry teach us that, if we would write what may be worth reading, we ought always, before we begin to form a regular plan and design of our piece; otherwise we shall be in danger of incongruity. I am apt to think it is the same as to life. I have never fixed a regular design in life, by which means it has been a confused variety of different scenes. I am now entering upon a new life; let me, therefore, make some resolutions, and form some scheme of action, that henceforth I may live in all respects like a rational creature.

"1. It is necessary for me to be extremely frugal for some time, till I have paid what I owe.

"2. To endeavor to speak truth in every instance, to give nobody expectations that are not likely to be answered, but aim at sincerity in every word and action; the most amiable excellence in a rational being.

"3. To apply myself industriously to whatever business I take in hand, and not divert my mind from my business by any foolish project of growing suddenly rich; for industry and patience are the surest means of plenty.

"4. I resolve to speak ill of no man whatever, not even in a matter of truth; but rather by some means excuse the faults I hear charged upon others, and, upon proper occasions, speak all the good I know of everybody."

But there must be a personal God, since he himself had personality, and he must seek a union of soul with his will beyond these mere moral resolutions.

At the age of twenty-two he composed a litany after the manner of the Episcopal Church, but adapted to his own conditions. In this he prays for help in the points where he had found himself to be morally and spiritually weak.

These petitions and resolutions show his inward struggles. They reveal his ideals, and to fulfill these ideals became the end of his life. For the acts of wrong which he had done in his period of adventures, and the unworthy life that he had then led, he tried to make reparation. The spiritual purpose of Benjamin Franklin had obtained the mastery over the natural man. Honor was his star, and more spiritual light was his desire and quest.

He married Miss Read, the young woman who had laughed at him when he had entered Philadelphia eating his penny roll, with two rolls of bread under his arm, and his superfluous clothing sticking out of his pocket. He had neglected her during his adventures abroad, but she forgave him, and he had become in high moral resolution another man now.

As a printer in Philadelphia his paper voiced the public mind and heart on all which were then most worthy. To publish a paper that advocates the best sentiments of a virtuous people is the shortest way to influence in the world. Franklin found it so. The people sought in him the representative, and from the printing office he was passed by natural and easy stages to the halls of legislation.

So these resolutions to master himself may be regarded as another step on the ladder of life. To benefit the world by inventions is a good thing, but to lift it by an example of self-control and an unselfish life is a nobler thing, and on this plane we find young Franklin standing now. Franklin is the master of Franklin, and the influence of Silence Dogood through the press is filling the province of Pennsylvania. The paper which he established in Philadelphia was called the Pennsylvania Gazette. In connection with this he began to publish a very popular annual called Poor Richard's Almanac, about which we will tell you in another chapter.

Right doing is the way to advancement—Franklin had this resolution; a newspaper that voices the people is a way to advancement—such a one Franklin had founded; and good humor is a way to advancement, and of this Franklin found an expression in Poor Richard's Almanac which has not yet ceased to be quoted in the world. It was the means of conveying Silence Dogood's special messages to every one. It made the whole world happier. Franklin, on account of the wise sayings in the almanac, himself came to be called "Poor Richard."



CHAPTER XXV.

THE MAGICAL BOTTLE.

FRANKLIN is now a man of character, benevolence, wisdom, and humor. He is a printer, a publisher, a man whose thoughts are influencing public opinion. He is a very prosperous man; he is making money and reputation, but it is not the gaining of either of these that is true success, but of right influence. It is not the answer to the question, What are you worth? or What is your popularity? but What is your influence? that determines the value of a man.

He had founded life on right principles, and he had well learned the trade in his youth that leads a poor young man of right principles and nobility to success. He took the right guideboard, and the "Please-everybody" Governor did him a good service when he showed him that to become a printer in Philadelphia would bring him influence, fame, and fortune. People who are well meaning, beyond the ability to fulfill their intentions, sometimes reveal to others what may be of most use to them. It was not altogether an unfortunate day when the wandering printer boy met Governor Keith.

In the midst of his prosperity Silence Dogood was constantly seeking out inventions to help people. When he was about thirty-four years of age, in the Poor Richard days, he saw that the forests were disappearing, and that there would be a need for the people to practice economy in the use of fuel. The fireplaces in the chimneys were great consumers of wood, and in many of them, to use the housewife's phrase, "the heat all went up the chimney." But that was not all; many of the chimneys of the good people smoked, and in making a fire rooms would be filled with smoke, or, to use again the housewife's term, "the smoke would all come out into the room."

When this was so the people would all flee to cold rooms with smarting eyes. New houses in which chimneys smoked were sometimes taken down or altered to make room for new chimneys that would draw. Franklin sought to bring relief to this sorry condition of affairs.

He invented the Franklin stove, from which the heat would go out into the room, and not "up the chimbly," to use a provincial word. This cheerful stove became a great comfort to the province, and to foreign countries as well. It saved fuel, and brought the heat of the fire into the room.

He long afterward began to study chimneys, and after much experiment found that those that smoked need not be taken down, but that only a draught was needed to cause the smoke to rise in rarefied air. The name of the Franklin stove added very greatly to Poor Richard's wisdom, in making for Franklin an American reputation, which also extended to Europe. His fame arose along original ways. Surely no one ever walked in such ways before.

He formed a club called the Junto, which became very prosperous, and gave strength to his local reputation. He also began a society for the study of universal knowledge, which was called the Philosophical Society.

A man can do the most when he is doing the most. One thing leads to another; one thing feeds another, and one does not suffer in health or nerves from the many things that one loves to do. It is disinclination or friction that wears one down. People who have been very busy in what they most loved to do have usually lived to be old, and come down to old age in the full exercise of their powers.

While Franklin was thus seeking how he could make himself useful to every one in many ways—for a purpose of usefulness finds many paths—his attention was called to a very curious discovery that had been made in the Dutch city of Leyden, in November, 1745. It was an electrical bottle called the Leyden jar.

Nature herself had been discharging on a stupendous scale her own Leyden jars through all generations, but no one seems to have understood these phenomena until this memorable year brought forth the magical little bottle which was a flashlight in the long darkness of time.

The Greeks had found that amber when rubbed would attract certain light substances, and the ancient philosophers and doctors had discovered the value of an electric shock from a torpedo in rheumatic complaints; that sparks would follow the rubbing of the fur of animals in cold air had also been noticed, but of magnetism, and of electricity, which is a current of magnetism, the world was ignorant, except as to some of its more common and obvious effects.

In 1600 Dr. Gilbert, of England, discovered that many other substances besides amber could be made to develop an attractive power. He also discovered that there are many substances that can not be electrically excited.

In 1650 Otto von Guericke, the inventor of the air-pump, made a machine which looked like a little grindstone—a wheel of sulphur mounted on a turning axle, which being used with friction produced powerful electrical sparks and lights. He found by experiments with this machine that bodies thus exerted by friction may impart electricity to other bodies, and that bodies so electrified may repel as well as attract.

Sir Isaac Newton made an electrical machine of glass, and Stephen Gray, in 1720, said that if a large amount of electricity could be stored, great results might be expected from it.

Charles Francois Dufay detected that there were two kinds of electricity, which he called "vitreous" and "resinous."

A great discovery was coming. The first beams of a new planet were rising. How did there come into existence the "magical bottle" known as the Leyden jar?

At Leyden three philosophers were experimenting in electricity. "We can produce electrical effects," said one. "If we could accumulate and retain electricity we would have power."

They electrified a cannon suspended by silk cords. A few minutes after ceasing to turn the handle of the electrical machine which supplied the cannon with fluid, the charge was gone.

"If we could surround an electrified body with a nonconducting substance," said Professor Musschenbroek, "we could imprison it; we could accumulate and store it." He added: "Glass is a nonconductor of electricity, and water is a good conductor. If I could charge with electricity water in a bottle, I could possess it and control it like other natural powers."

He attempted to do this. He suspended a wire from a charged cannon to the water in a bottle, but for a time no result followed.

One day, however, Mr. Cuneus, one of the scientists, while engaged in this experiment, chanced to touch the conductor with one hand and the electrified bottle with the other. It was a mere accident. He leaped in terror. What had happened? He had received an electric shock. What did it mean? A revolution in the use of one of the greatest of the occult forces of Nature.

Terror was followed by amazement. Mr. Cuneus told Professor Musschenbroek what had happened.

The professor repeated the experiment, with the same result.

If electricity could be secured, accumulated, and discharged, what might not follow as the results of further experiments?

It was several days before the professor recovered from the shock. "I would not take a second shock," he said, "for the kingdom of France!"

Thus the Leyden jar came into use. The news of the experiment flew over Germany and Europe. Scientific people everywhere went to making Leyden jars and imprisoning electricity.

Society took up the invention as a wonder toy. Gunpowder was discharged from the point of the finger by persons charged on an insulating stool. Electrical kisses passed from bold lips to lips in social circles. Even timid people mounted up on cakes of resin that their friends might see their hair stand on end. Sir William Watson, of London, completed the electrical fountain by coating the bottle in and out with tinfoil.

The great news reached America. Franklin heard of it; no ears were more alert than his to profit by suggestions like this.

Mr. Peter Collinson, of London, sent to him an account of Professor Musschenbroek's magical bottle.

He told his friends of the Junto Club of the invention, and set them all to rubbing electric substances for sparks.

He had invented many useful things. A new force had fallen under the control of man. He must investigate it; he must experiment with it; he too must have a magical bottle.

"I never," he wrote in 1747, "was before engaged in any study that so totally engrossed my attention and time as this has lately done; for what with making experiments when I can be alone, and repeating them to my friends and acquaintances who from the novelty of the thing come continually in crowds to see them, I have during some months past had little leisure for anything else."

What was magnetism? What was electricity? What secrets of Nature might the magical bottle reveal? To what use might the new power which might be stored and imprisoned be put? Silence Dogood, ponder night and day over the curious toy. The world waits for you to speak, for Nature is about to reveal one of her greatest secrets to you—you who gave two penny rolls to the poor woman and child on the street, after Deborah Read, your wife now, had had her good laugh. Your good wife will laugh again some day, when you have further poked around among electrical tubes and bottles, and have brought your benevolent mind to bear upon some of the secrets contained in the magical bottle. You have added virtue to virtue; you are adding intelligence to intelligence; such things grow. Discoveries come to those who are prepared to receive them.



CHAPTER XXVI.

THE ELECTRIFIED VIAL AND THE QUESTIONS IT RAISED.

THERE came from Europe to America at this time some electrical tubes, which being rubbed produced surprising results. To the curious they were toys, but to Franklin they were prophecies. There were three Philadelphians who joined with Franklin in the study of the effects that could be produced by these tubes and the Leyden vial.

Franklin's son William was verging on manhood. He was beyond the years that we find him experimenting with his father in the old pictures. He became the last royal Governor of New Jersey some years afterward, and a Tory, and his politics at that period was a sore grief to his father's heart. But he was a bright, free-hearted boy now, nearly twenty, and his father loved him, and the two were harmonious and were companions for each other.

Franklin, we may suppose, interested the boy in the bristling tubes and the magical bottle. The stored electricity in the latter was like the imprisoned genii of the Arabian Nights. Let the fairy loose, he suddenly mingled with native elements, and one could not gather him again. But another could be gathered.

The Philadelphia philosophers wondered greatly at the new effects that Franklin was able to produce from the tubes and the bottle. Did not the genii in the vial hold the secret of the earth, and might not the earth itself be a magnet, and might not magnetism fill interstellar space?

The wonder grew, and its suggestions. One of the Philadelphia philosophers, Philip Sing, invented an electrical machine. A like machine had been made in Europe, but of this Mr. Sing did not know.

The Philadelphia philosophers discovered the power of metallic points to draw off electricity.

"Electricity is not created by friction," observed one of these men. "It is only collected by it."

"And all our experiments show," argued Franklin, "that electricity is positive and negative."

During the winter of 1746-'47 these men devoted as much of their time as they could spare to electrical experiments.

"William," said one of the philosophers to the son of Franklin one day, "you have brought your friends here to see the vial genii; he is a lively imp. Let me show you some new things which I found he can do."

He brought out a bottle of spirits and poured the liquid into a plate. "Stand up on the insulating stool, my boy, and let me electrify you, and see if the imp loves liquor."

The lively lad obeyed. He pointed his finger down to the liquor in the plate. It burst into flame, startling the audience.

"Now," said another of the philosophers, "let me ask you to give me a magic torch."

He presented to his finger a candle with an alcoholic wick. The candle was at once lighted, emitting sparks as it began to burn.

"Hoi, hoi!" said the philosopher to the young visitors, "what do you think of a young man whose touch is fire? We have a Faust among us, sure!"

"Now, girls, which of you would like to try an experiment?" we may suppose Father Franklin to say, in the spirit of Poor Richard.

William stepped down, and an adventurous girl took his place on the experimental stool.

"You have all heard of the electric kiss," said Poor Richard. "Let this young lady give you one. I will prepare her for it."

He did.

Another girl stepped up to receive it. She expected to receive a spark from her friend's lips; but instead of a spark she received a shock that caused her to leap and to bend double, and to utter a piercing cry.

"I don't think that the kissing of young men and young women in public is altogether in good taste," said the philosophers, "but if any of you young men want to salute this lively young lady in that way, there will be in this case no objections."

But none of the young men cared to be thrown into convulsions by the innocent-looking lass, who seemed to feel no discomfort.

Experiments like these filled the city and province with amazement. The philosopher made a spider of burned cork that would run, and cause other people to run who had not learned the wherefore of the curious experiment.

The wonderful Leyden vial became Franklin's companion. He liked ever to be experimenting in what the new force would do. What next? what next? How like lightning was this electricity! How could he increase electrical force?

He says at the end of a long narrative:

"We made what we called an electrical battery, consisting of eleven panes of large sash-glass, armed with thin leaden plates pasted on each side, placed vertically, and supported at two inches distance on silk cords, with thick hooks of leaden wire, one from each side, standing upright, distant from each other, and convenient communications of wire and chain, from the giving side of one pane to the receiving side of the other, that so the whole might be charged together."

Franklin at this time was a stanch royalist. He made a figure of George II, with a crown, and so arranged it that the powerful electrical force might be stored in the crown.

"God bless him!" said the philosopher.

A young man seeing that the crown was very attractive, attempted to remove it. It was a thing that the philosopher had expected.

The youth touched the crown. He reeled, and started back with a stroke that filled him with amazement.

"So be it with all of King George's enemies!" said the philosophers. "Never attempt to discrown the king."

"God bless him!" said Franklin. His son always continued to say this, but Franklin himself came to see that he who discrowns kings may be greater than kings, and that it became the duty of a people to discrown tyrannical kings, and to make a king of the popular will.

Franklin now resolved to give up his business affairs to others, to refuse political office, and to devote himself to science. The latter resolution he did not keep. He went to live on a retired spot on the Delaware, where he had a large garden, and could be left to his experiments and thoughts upon them. With him went the magical bottle and his interesting son William.

The power of metallic points to draw off lightning now filled his mind. "Could the lightning be controlled?" he began to ask. "Could the power of the thunderbolt be disarmed?"

Every element can be made to obey its own laws. Water will bear up iron if the iron be hollow. But deeply and more deeply must the thoughts engage the mind of the philosopher. "Is lightning electricity? Does electricity fill all space?" He wrote two philosophical papers at this critical period of his life, when he sought to give up money-making and political life for the study of that science which would be most useful to man. He who gives up gains. He who is willing to deny himself the most shall have the most. He that loseth his life shall save it. He who seeketh the good of others shall find it in himself.

One of these papers was entitled "Opinions and Conjectures concerning the Properties and Effects of the Electrical Matter, and the Means of preserving Ships and Buildings from Lightning, arising from Experiments and Observations at Philadelphia in 1749."

In this treatise, which at last made his fame, he shows the similarity of electricity to lightning, and gives a description of an experiment in which a little lightning-rod had drawn away electricity from an artificial storm cloud. He says:

"If these things are so, may not the knowledge of this power of points be of use to mankind in preserving houses, churches, ships, etc., from the stroke of lightning, by directing us to fix on the highest part of those edifices upright rods of iron made sharp as a needle, and gilt to prevent rusting, and from the foot of those rods a wire down the outside of the building into the ground, or down round one of the shrouds of a ship, and down her side till it reaches the water? Would not these pointed rods probably draw the electrical fire silently out of a cloud before it came nigh enough to strike, and thereby secure us from that most sudden and terrible mischief?"

A great discovery was at hand.



CHAPTER XXVII.

THE GREAT DISCOVERY.

IT was a June day, 1752—one of the longest days of the year. Benjamin Franklin was then forty-six years of age.

The house garden was full of bloom; the trees were in leafage, and there was the music of blooms in the hives of the bees.

Beyond the orchards and great trees the majestic Delaware rolled in purple splendor, dotted with slanting sails.

Nature was at the full tide of the year. The river winds swept over the meadows in green waves, where the bobolinks toppled in the joy of their songs.

It had been a hot morning, and billowy clouds began to rise in the still heat on the verge of the sky.

Benjamin Franklin sat amid the vines and roses of his door.

"William," he said to his son, "I am expecting a shower to-day. I have long been looking for one. I want you to remain with me and witness an experiment that I am about to make."

Silence Dogood, or Father Franklin, then brought a kite out to the green lawn. The kite had a very long hempen string, and to the end of it, which he held in his hand, he began to attach some silk and a key.

"When I was a boy," said Franklin, "and lived in the town of Boston by the marshes, I made a curious experiment with a kite. I let it tow me along the water where I went swimming. I have always liked flying kites. I hope that this one will bring me good luck should a shower come."

"What do you expect to do with it, father?"

"If the cloud comes up with thunder, and lightning be electricity, I am going to try to secure a spark from the sky."

The air was still. The cloud was growing into mountain-like peaks. The robins and thrushes were singing lustily in the trees, as before a shower. The men in the cornfields and gardens paused in their work.

Presently a low sound of thunder rolled along the sky. The cloud now loomed high and darkened in the still, hot air.

"It is coming," said Franklin, "and the cloud will be a thunder gust. It is early in the season for such a cloud as that. See how black it grows!"

The kite was made of a large silk handkerchief fastened to a perpendicular stick, on the top of which was a piece of sharpened iron wire. The philosopher examined it carefully.

"What if you should receive a spark from the cloud, father?" asked the young man.

"I would then say lightning was electricity, and that it could be controlled, and that human life might be protected from the thunderbolt."

"But would not that thwart the providence of God?"

"No, it would merely cause a force of Nature to obey its own laws so as to protect life instead of destroying it."

The sky darkened. The sun went out. The sea birds flew inland and screamed. The field birds stood panting on the shrubs with drooping wings.

A rattling thunder peal crossed the sky. The wind began to rise, and to cause the early blasted young fruit to fall in the orchards. The waves on the Delaware curled white.

"Let us go to the cattle-shed," said Father Franklin. "I have been laughed at all my life, and do not care to have my neighbors tell the story of my experiment to others if I should fail."

The two went together to the cattle-shed on the green meadow.

The wind was roaring in the distance. The poultry were running home, and the cattle were seeking the shelter of the trees.

The cloud was now overhead. Dark sheets of rain in the horizon looked like walls of carbon reared against the sky. The lightning was sharp and frequent. There came a vivid flash followed by a peal of thunder that shook the hills.

"The cloud is overhead now," said Franklin.

He ran out into the green meadow and threw the kite against the wind.

It rose rapidly and was soon in the sky, drifting in the clouds that seemed full of the vengeful fluid.

At the termination of the hempen cord dangled the key, and the silk end was wound around the philosopher's hand.

The young man took charge of a Leyden jar which he had brought to the shed, in which to collect electricity from the clouds, should the experiment prove successful.

The cloud came on in its fury. The rain began to fall. Franklin and his son stood under the shed.

The air seemed electrified, but no electricity appeared in the hempen string. Franklin presented his knuckle to the key, but received no spark.

What was that?

The hempen string began to bristle like the hair of one electrified. Was it the wind? Was it electricity?

Benjamin Franklin now touched the key with thrilling emotion, while his son looked on with an excited face. It was a moment of destiny not only to the two experimenters in the dashing rain, but to the world. If Franklin should receive a spark from the key, it would change the currents of the world's events.

Flash!

It came clear and sharp. The heavens had responded to law—to the command of the human will guided by law.

Again, another spark.

The boy touches the key. He, too, is given the evidence that has been given to his father.

The two looked at each other.

"Lightning is electricity," said Silence Dogood. "It can be drawn away from points of danger; no one need be struck by lightning if he will protect himself."

"God himself," once said a writer, "could not strike one by lightning if one were insulated, without violating his own laws."

And now came the consummation of one of the grandest experiments of time. He charged the Leyden jar from the clouds.

"Stand back!"

He touched his hand boldly to the magical bottle. A shock thrilled him. His dreams had come true. He had conquered one of the most potent elements on earth.

The storm passed, the clouds broke, the wind swept by, and the birds sang again over the bending clover. Night serene with stars came on. That was probably the happiest day in all Franklin's eventful life. Like the patriarch of old, "his children were about him." He shared his triumph with the son whom he loved.

But—he sent a paper on the results of his observation in electricity to the Royal Society at London, in which he announced his discovery that lightning was electricity. The society did not deem it worth publishing; it was a neglected manuscript, and as for his theory in regard to the electric fluid and universality, that, we are told by Franklin's biographers, "was laughed at."

But his views had set all Europe to experimenting. Scientists everywhere were proving that his theories were true. France had become very much excited over the discovery, and was already hailing the philosopher's name with shouts of admiration. Franklin's fame filled Europe, and the greatest of British societies began to honor him. It was Doctor Franklin now!—The honorary degree came to him from many institutions.—Doctor from England, Doctor from France, Doctor from American colleges.

The boy who had shared his penny rolls with the poor woman and her child sat down to hear the world praising him.

The facts that lightning was electricity or electricity was lightning, that it was positive and negative, that it could be controlled, that life could be made safe in the thunder gust, were but the beginning of a series of triumphs that have come to make messengers of the lightning, and brought the nations of the world in daily communication with each other. But the wizardlike Edison has shown that the influences direct and indirect of that June day of 1752 may have yet only begun. What magnetism and its currents are to reveal in another century we can not tell; it fills us with silence and awe to read the prophecies of the scientists of to-day. The electrical mystery is not only moving us and all things; we are burning it, we are making it medicine, health, life. What may it not some day reveal in regard to a spiritual body or the human soul?

The centuries to come can only reveal what will be the end of Franklin's discovery that lightning might be controlled to become the protector and the servant of man. Even his imagination could hardly have forecast the achievements which the imp of the magical bottle would one day accomplish in this blind world. It is not that lightning is electricity, but that electricity is subject to laws, that has made the fiery substance the wonder-worker of the age.

If Uncle Ben, the poet, could have seen this day, how would his heart have rejoiced!

Jane Mecom—Jenny—heard of the fame of her brother by every paper brought by the post. She delighted to tell her old mother the weekly news about Benjamin. One day, when he had received honors from one of the great scientific societies, Abiah said to her daughter:

"You helped Ben in his early days—I can see now that you did."

"How, mother?"

"By believing in him when hardly any one else did. We build up people by believing in them. My dim eyes see it all now. I love to think of the past," she continued, "when you and Ben were so happy together—the days of Uncle Benjamin. I love to think of the old family Thanksgivings. What wonderful days were those when the old clock-cleaner came! How he took the dumb, dusty clock to pieces, and laid it out on the table! How Ben would say, 'you can never make that clock tick again!' and you, Jenny, whose faith never failed, would answer, 'Yes, Ben, he can!' How the old man would break open a walnut and extract the oil from the meat, and apply it with a feather to the little axles of the wheels, and then put the works together, and the clock would go better than before! Do you remember it, Jane? How, then, your wondering eyes would look upon the clock miracle and delight in your faith, and say, 'I told you so, Ben.' How he would kiss you in your happiness that your prophecy had come true. He had said 'No' that you might say 'Yes.'"

"Do you think that his thoughts turn home, mother?"

There was a whir of wings in the chimney.

"More to a true nature than a noisy applause of the crowd is the simple faith of one honest heart," said Abiah Folger in return. "In the silence and desolation of life, which may come to all, such sympathy is the only fountain to which one can turn. Our best thoughts fly homeward like swallows to old chimneys, where they last year brooded over their young, and center in the true hearts left at the fireside. Every true heart is true to his home, and to the graves of those with whom it shared the years when life lay fair before it. Yes, Jane, he thinks of you."

She was right. Jenny had helped her brother by believing in him when he most needed such faith.

There is some good angel, some Jenny, who comes into every one's life. Happy is he who feels the heart touch of such an one, and yields to such unselfish spiritual visions. To do this is to be led by a gentle hand into the best that there is in life.

In sacred hours the voices of these home angels come back to the silent chambers of the heart. We then see that our best hopes were in them, and wish that we could retune the broken chords of the past. The home voice is always true, and we find it so at last.

Franklin had little of his sister's sentiment, but when he thought of the old days, and of the simple hearts that were true to him there, he would say, "Beloved Boston." His heart was in the words. Boston was the town of Jenny.



CHAPTER XXVIII.

HOME-COMING IN DISGUISE.

THERE is a very delightful fiction, which may have blossomed from fact, which used to be found in schoolbooks, under the title of "The Story of Franklin's Return to his Mother after a Long Absence."

It would have been quite like him to have returned to Boston in the guise of a stranger. Some one has said that he had a joke for everything, and that he would have put one into the Declaration of Independence had he been able.

The tendency to make proverbs that Franklin showed in his early years grew, and if he were not indeed as wise as King Solomon, no one since the days of that Oriental monarch has made and "sought out" so many proverbs and given them to the world.

The maxims of Poor Richard, which were at first given to the world through an almanac, spread everywhere. They were current in most Boston homes; they came back to the ears of Jamie the Scotchman—back, we say, for some of them were the echoes of Silence Dogood's life in the Puritan province.

Poor Richard's Almanac was a lively and curious miscellany, and its coming was an event in America. Franklin put the wisdom that he gained by experience into it. In the following resolution was the purpose of his life at this time: "I wished to live," he says, "without committing any fault at any time, and to conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into."

"But—but," he says, "I was surprised to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined; but I had the satisfaction of seeing them diminish." In the spirit of this effort to correct life and to learn wisdom from experience, he gave Poor Richard's Almanac annually to the world. Like some of the proverbs of Solomon, it taught the people life as he himself learned it. For years Franklin lived in Poor Richard, and it was his pulse beat, his open heart, that gave the annual its power. All the sayings of Poor Richard were not original with Franklin. When a critical proverb, or a line from one of the poets, would express his idea or conviction better than he could himself, he used it. For example, he borrowed some beautiful lines from Pope, who in turn had received the leading thought from a satire of Horace.

While Franklin was learning wisdom from life, and expressing it through Poor Richard, he was studying French, Italian, and Spanish, and making himself the master of philosophy. "He who would thrive must rise at five," he makes Poor Richard say. He himself rose at five in the morning, and began the day with a bath and a prayer. Intelligence to intelligence!

Such was his life when Poor Richard was evolved.

Who was Poor Richard, whose influence came to lead the thought of the time?

Poor Richard was a comic almanac, or a character assumed by Benjamin Franklin, for the purpose of expressing his views of life. Having established a paper, Franklin saw the need of an annual and of an almanac, and he chose to combine the two, and to make the pamphlet a medium of hard sense in a rough, keen, droll way.

He introduces himself in this curious annual as "Richard Saunders," "Poor Richard." He has an industrious wife named Bridget. He publishes his almanac to earn a little money to meet his pressing wants. "The plain truth of the matter is," says this pretended almanac maker, "I am excessive poor, and my wife, good woman, is, I tell her, excessive proud; she cannot bear, she says, to sit spinning in her gown of tow, while I do nothing but gaze at the stars; and has threatened more than once to burn all my books and rattling-traps (as she calls my instruments) if I do not make some profitable use of them for the good of my family. The printer has offer'd me some considerable share of the profits, and I have thus began to comply with my dame's desire."

This Titian Leeds was a pen name for his rival publisher, who also issued an almanac. The two had begun life in Philadelphia together as printers.

The way in which he refers to his rival in his new almanac, as a man about to die to fulfill the predictions of astrology, was so comical as to excite a lively interest. Would he die? If not, what would the next almanac say of him? Mr. Leeds (Keimer) had a reputation of a knowledge of astronomy and astrology. In what way could Franklin have introduced a character to the public in the spirit of good-natured rivalry that would have awakened a more genuine curiosity?

The next year Poor Richard announced that his almanac had proved a success, and told the public the news that they were waiting for and much desired to hear: his wife Bridget had profited by it. She was now able to have a dinner-pot of her own, and something to put into it.

But how about Titian Leeds, who was to die after the astrological prediction? The people awaited the news of the fate of this poor man, as we await the tidings of the end of a piece of statesmanship. He thus answers, "I can not say positively whether he is dead or alive," but as the author of the rival almanac had spoken very disrespectfully of him, and as Mr. Leeds when living was a gentleman, he concludes that Mr. Leeds must be dead.

In these comic annuals there is not only the almanacs and the play upon Titian Leeds, but a large amount of rude wisdom in the form of proverbs, aphorisms, and verses, most of which is original, but a part of which, as we have said, is apt quotation. The proverbs were everywhere quoted, and became a part of the national education. They became popular in France, and filled nearly all Europe. They are still quoted. Let us give you some of them:

"Who has deceived thee so oft as thyself?"

"Fly pleasures, and they will follow thee."

"Let thy child's first lesson be obedience, and the second will be what thou wilt."

"Industry need not wish."

"In things of moment, on thyself depend, Nor trust too far thy servant or thy friend; With private views, thy friend may promise fair, And servants very seldom prove sincere."

Besides these quaint sayings, which became a part of the proverbial wisdom of the world, Franklin had a comical remark for every occasion, as, when a boy, he advised his father to say grace over the whole pork barrel, and so save time at the table. He once admonished Jenny in regard to her spelling, and that after she was advanced in life, by telling her that the true way to spell wife was yf. After the treaty of peace with England, he thought it only a courtesy that America should return deported people to their native shores. Once in Paris, on receiving a cake labeled Le digne Franklin, which excited the jealousy of Lee and Dean, he said that the present was meant for Lee-Dean-Franklin, that being the pronunciation of the French label. Every event had a comical side for him.

Let us bring prosperous Benjamin Franklin back to Boston to see his widowed mother again, after the old story-book manner. She is nearly blind now, and we may suppose Jamie the Scotchman to be halting and old.

He comes into the town in the stagecoach at night. Boston has grown. The grand old Province House rises above it, the Indian vane turning hither and thither in the wind. The old town pump gleams under a lantern, as does the spring in Spring Lane, which fountain may have led to the settlement of the town. On a hill a beacon gleams over the sea. He passes the stocks and the whipping-post in the shadows.

There is a light in the window of the Blue Ball. He sees it. It is very bright. Is his mother at work now that she is nearly blind?

He dismounts. He passes close to the old window. His father is not in the room; he never will be there again. But an aged man is there. Who is he?

The man is reading—what? The most popular pamphlet or little book that ever appeared in the colonies; a droll story.

He knocks at the door. The old man rises and opens the door; the bell is gone.

"Abiah, there's a stranger here."

"Ask him who he is."

"Say that he used to work here many years ago, and that he knew Josiah Franklin well, and was acquainted with Ben."

"Tell him to come in," said the bent old woman with white hair.

The stranger entered, and avoided questions by asking them.

"What are you reading to-night, my good friend?" he asked.

"The Old Auctioneer," answered the aged man. "Have you read it?"

"Yes; it is on the taxes."

"So it is—I've read it twice over. I'm now reading it to Abiah. Let me tell you a secret—her son wrote it. My opinion is that it is the smartest piece of work that ever saw the light on this side of the water. What's yourn?"

"There's sense in it."

"What did he say his name was?" asked Abiah.

"Have you ever read any of Poor Richard's maxims?" asked the stranger quickly.

"Yes, yes; we have taken the Almanac for years. Ben publishes it."

"What did he say?" asked Abiah. "I can not hear as well as I once could.—Stranger, I heard you when you spoke loud at the door."

"Repeat some of 'Poor Richard's' sayings," said the stranger.

"You may well say 'repeat,'" said the old man. "I used to hear Ben Franklin say things like that when he was a 'prentice lad."

"Like what, my friend?"

"Like 'The noblest question in the world is what good may I do in it?' There! Like 'None preaches better than the ant, and she says nothing.' There!"

"I see, I see, my good friend, you seem to have confidence in Poor Richard?"

"Sir, I taught him much of his wisdom—he and I used to be great friends. I always knew that he had a star in his soul that would shine—I foresaw it all. I have the gift of second sight. I am a Scotchman."

"And you prophesied good things to him when he was a boy?"

"Yes, yes, or, if I did not, I only spoke in a discouraging way to encourage him. He and I were chums; we used to sit on Long Wharf together and prognosticate together. That was a kind of Harvard College to us. Uncle Ben was living then."