True to his home; a tale of the boyhood of Franklin

Front matter

TO • HIS HOME

BY

EZEKIAH-BUTTERWORTH

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. — The first day 1

II. — Uncle Benjamin, the poet 10

Chapter I. The First Day

It was the Sunday morning of the, 6th of January, 1706 (January 17th, old style), when a baby first saw the light in a poor tallow chandler's house on Milk Street, nearly opposite the Old South Church, Boston. The little stranger came into a large and growing family, of whom at a later period he might sometimes have seen thirteen children sit down at the table to very hard and simple fare.

" A baby is nothing new in this family," said Josiah Franklin, the father. " This is the fifteenth. Let me take it over to the church and have it christened this very day. There should be no time lost in christening. What say you, friends all? It is a likely boy, and it is best to start him right in life at once."

" People do not often have their children christened in church on the day of birth," said a lusty neighbor, " though if a child seems likely to die it might be christened on the day of its birth at home."

" This child does not seem likely to die," said the happy tallow chandler. " I will go and see the parson, and if he does not object I will give the child to the Lord on this January day, and if he should come to an3'thing he will have occasion to remember that I thought of the highest duty that I owed him when he first opened his eyes to the light."

The smiling and enthusiastic tallow chandler went to see the parson, and then returned to his home.

" Abiah," he said to his wife, " I am going to have the child christened. What shall his name be?"

Josiah Franklin, the chandler, who had emigrated to Boston town that he might enjoy religious freedom, had left a brother in England, who was an honest, kindly, large-hearted man, and " a poet."

"How would Benjamin do?" he continued; "brother's name. Benjamin is a family name, and a good one. Benjamin of old, into whose sack Joseph put the silver cup, was a right kind of a man. What do you say, Abiah Folger? "

" Benjamin is a good name, and a name lasts for life. But your brother Benjamin has not succeeded very well in his many undertakings."

" No, but in all his losses he has never lost his good name. His honor has shown over all. ' A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver or gold.' A man may get riches and yet be poor. It is he that seeks the welfare of others more than wealth for himself that lives for the things that are best."

" Josiah, this is no common boy — look at his head. We can not do for him as our neighbors do for their children. But we can give him a name to honor, and that will be an example to him. How would Folger do — Folger Franklin? Father Folger was a poet like your brother Benjamin, and he

THE FIRST DAY. 3

did well in life. That would unite the names of the two families."

John Folger, of Norwich, England, with his son Peter, came to this country in the year 1635 on the same shi]) that bore the family of Eev. Hugh Peters. This clergyman, who is known as a " regicide," or king murderer, and who suffered a most terrible death in London on the accession of Charles II, succeeded Eoger Williams in the church at Salem. He flourished during the times of Cromwell, but was sentenced to be hanged, cut down alive, and tortured, his body to be quartered, and his head exposed among the malefactors, on account of having consented to the execution of Charles I.

Among Hugh Peters's household was one Mary Morrell, a white slave, or purchased serving maid. She was a very bright and beautiful girl.

The passengers had small comforts on board the ship. The passage was a long one, and the time passed heavily.

Now the passengers who were most interesting to each other became intimate, and young Peter Folger and beautiful Mary Morrell of the Peterses became very interesting to each other and very social. Peter Folger began to ask himself the question, " If the fair maid would marry me, could I not purchase her freedom ? " He seems somehow to have found out that the latter could be done, and so Peter ofi'ered himself to the attractive servant of the Peterses. The two were betrothed amid the Atlantic winds and the rolling seas, and the roaring ocean could have little troubled them then, so happy were their anticipations of their life in the New World.

Peter purchased Marj^'s freedom of the Peterses, and so he bought the grandmother of that Benjamin Franklin who was to " snatch the thunderbolts from heaven and the scepter from tjTants," to sign the Declaration of Independence which brought forth a new order of government for mankind, and to form a treaty of peace with England which was to make America free.

Peter Folger and his bride first settled in Watertown, Mass., where the young immigrant became a very useful citizen. He studied the Indian tongue.

About 1660 the familv removed to Martha's Vineyard with Thomas Mayhew, of colonial fame, where Peter was employed as a school teacher and a land surveyor, and he assisted Mr. Mayhew in his work among the Indians. He went to Nantucket as a surveyor about 1662, and was induced to remove there as an interpreter and as land surveyor. He was assigned by the proprietors a place known as Roger's Field, and later as Jethro Folger's Lane, now a portion of the ]\Iaddequet Road. Their tenth child was Abiah, born August 15, 1667. She was the second wife of Josiah Franklin, tallow chandler, of the sign of the Blue Ball, Boston, and the mother of the boy whom she would like to have inherit so inspiring a name.

Peter Folger, the Quaker poet of the island of Nantucket, was a most worthy man. He lived at the beginning of the dark times of persecution, when Baptists and Quakers were in danger of being publicly whipped, branded, and deported or banished into the wilderness. Stories of the cruelty that followed these people filled the colonies, and caused the Quaker's heart

THE FIRST DAY. 5

to bleed and burn. He wrote a poem entitled A Looking-glass for the Times, in which he called upon New England to pause in her sins of intoleration and persecution, and threatened the judgments foretold in the Bible upon those who do injustice to God's children.

" Abiah," said the proud father, " I admire the character of your father. It stood for justice and human rights. But, wife, listen:

" Brother Benjamin has lost all of his ten children but one. I pity him. Wife, listen: Brother Benjamin is poor through no fault of his, but because he gave himself and all that he was to his family.

"Listen: It would touch his heart to learn that I had named this boy for him. It would show the old man that I had not forgotten him, but still thought of him.

" I can not do much for the boy, but I can give Brother Benjamin a home with me, and, as he is a great reader, he can instruct the boy by wise precept and a good example. If the boy will only follow brother's principles, he may make the name of Benjamin live.

"And once more: if we name the boy Benjamin, it will make Brother Benjamin feel that he has not lost all, but that he will have another chance in the world. How glad that would make the poor old man! I would like to name him as the boy's godfather. I do pity him, don't you? You have the heart of Peter Folger."

There was a silence.

"Abiah, what now shall the boy's name be?"

" Benjamin."

" You have chosjen that name out of your heart. May that name bring you joy! It ought to do so, since you have given up your own wish and breathed it out of your heart and conscience. To give up is to gain."

He took up the child.

" Then we will give that name to him now, and I will take the child and go to the church, and I will name Brother Benjamin as his godfather."

" It is a very cold day for the little one."

" And a healthy one on which to start out in the world. There is nothing like starting right and with a good name, which may the Lord help this cliild to honor! And, Abiah, that He will."

He wrapped the babe up warmly, and looked him full in the face.

Josiah Franklin was a genial, provident, hard-sensed man. He probably had no prophetic visions; no thought that the little one given him on this frosty January morning in the breezy town of Boston by the sea would command senates, lead courts, and sign a declaration of peace that would make possible a new order of government in the world, could have entered his mind. If the boy should become a good man, with a little poetic imagination like his Uncle Benjamin, the home poet, he would be content.

He opened the door of his one room on the lower floor of his house and went out into the cold with the child in his arms. In a short time he returned and laid little Benjamin in the arms of his mother.

" I hope the child's life will hold out as it has begun,"

THE FIRST DAY. Y

he added. "Benjamin FranJcUn, day one; started right. May Heaven help him to get used to the world!''

As poor as the tallow chandler was, he was hospitable on that day. He did not hold the birth of the little one — which really was an event of greater importance to the world than the birth of a king — as anything more than the simple growth of an honest family, who had left the crowded towns and a smithy in old England to enjoy freedom of faith and conscience and the opportunities of the Xew World. He wished to live where he might be free to enjoy his own opinions and to promote a colony where all men should have these privileges.

The honse in which Franklin was born is described as follows :

Its front npon the street was rudely clapboarded, and the sides and rear were protected from the inclemencies of a New England climate by large, rough shingles. In height the house was about three stories; in front, the second story and attic projected somewhat into the street, over the princiiDal story on the ground floor. On the lower floor of the main house there was one room only. This, which probably served the Franklins as a parlor and sitting-room, and also for the family eating-room, was about twenty feet square, and had two windows on the street; and it had also one on the passageway, so as to give the inmates a good view of Washington Street. In the center of the southerly side of the room was one of those noted large fireplaces, situated in a most capacious chimney; on the left of this was a spacious closet. On the ground floor, connected with the sitting-room through the entry, was the kitchen. The second story originally contained but one chamber, and in this the windows, door, fireplace, and closet were similar in number and position to those in the parlor beneath it. The attic was also originally one unplastered room, and had a window in front on the street, and two common attic windows, one on each side of the roof, near the back part of it.

Soon after this unprophetic event Josiah Franklin and Abiah his wife went to live at the sign of the Blue Ball, on what was then the southeast corner of Hanover and Union Streets. The site of the birth of Franklin was long made notable as the office of the Boston Post, a political paper whose humor was once proverbial. The site is still visited by strangers, and bears the record of the event which was to contribute so powerful an influence to the scientific and political history of the world.

Wendell Phillips used to say that there were two kinds of people in the world — one wh© went ahead and did something, and another, who showed how that thing ought to have been done in some other way. The boy belonged to the former class.

But I doubt if any reader of this volume was ever born to so hard an estate as this boy. Let us follow him into the story land of childhood. In Germany every child passes through fairyland, but there was no such land in Josiah Franklin's tallow shop, except when the busy man sometimes played the violin in the inner room and sang psalms to the music, usually in a very solemn tone.

There were not many homes in Boston at this period that had even so near an approach to fairyland as a violin. Those were hard times for children, and especially for those with lively

THE FIRST DAY. 9

imaginations, which gift little Benjamin had in no common degree. There were Indians in those times, and supposed ghosts and witches, but no passing clouds bore angels' chariots; there were no brownies among the wild rose bushes and the ferns. There was one good children's story in every home — that of " Joseph " in the Bible, still, as always, the best family story in all the world.

Chapter II. Uncle Benjamin, The Poet

Mrs. Franklin has said that she coukl hardly remember the time in her son's childhood when he could not read. He emerged almost from babyhood a reader, and soon began to " devour " — to use the word then applied to his habit — all the books that fell within his reach.

When about four years old he became much interested in stories told him by his father of his Uncle Benjamin, the poet, who lived in England, and for whom he had been named, and who, it was hoped, would come to the new country and be his godfather.

The family at the Blue Ball was quick to notice the tendencies of their children in early life. Little Benjamin Franklin developed a curious liking for a trumpet and a gun. He liked to march about to noise, and this noise he was pleased to make himself — to blow his own trumpet. The family wrote to Uncle Benjamin, the poet, then in England, in regard to this unpromising trait, and the good man returned the following letter in reply:

UNCLE BENJAMIN, THE POET. H

To my Namesal'e, on hearing of his Inclination to Martial

Affairs. July 7, 1710.

" Believe me, Ben, it is a dangerous trade; The sword has many marred as well as made; By it do many fall, not many rise — Makes many poor, few rich, not many wise; Fills towns with ruin, fields with blood beside; 'Tis sloth's maintainer, and the shield of pride; Fair cities, rich to-day in plenty flow. War fills with want to-morrow, and with woe; Euined estates, victims of vice, broken limbs, and scars Are the effects of desolatina; wars."

^to

One evening, as the tallow chandler was hurrying hither and thither in his apron and paper cap, the door opened with a sharp ring of the bell fastened by a string upon it. The paper cap bobbed up.

"Hoi, what now?" said the tallow chandler.

" A letter from England, sirrah. The Lively Nancy has come in. There it is."

The tallow chandler held the letter up to the fire, for it had been a melting day, as certain days on which the melting of tallow for the molds were called. He read " Benjamin Franklin," and said: " That's curious — that's Brother Ben's writing. I would know that the world over." He put the letter in his pocket. He saw Dame Franklin looking through the transom over the door, and shook his head.

He sat down with his large family to a meal of bread and milk, and then took the letter from his pocket and read it over to himself.

" Ben/' said he, " this is for you. I am going to read it. As I do so, you repeat after me the first letter of the first and of every line. Are you ready? Now.

" ' Be to thy parents an obedient son.' "

" B," said little Ben.

" ' Each day let duty constantly he done.' "

" E," the boy continued.

" ' Never give way to sloth, or lust, or pride.' "

" N, father."

" ' Just free to he from thousand ills beside.' "

" J, father."

" ' Above all ills be sure avoid the shelf.' "

" A, father."

"'Man's danger lies in Satan, sin, and self."'

" M, father."

" ' In virtue, learning, wisdom, progress mal:e.' "

"I, father."

" ' Ne'er shrink at suffering for thy Saviour's sahe.' "

" N, father. I know what that spells."

"What?"

" Benjamin."

" ' Fraud and all falsehood in thy dealings flee.' "

" F," said the boy.

" ' Beligious always in thy station be.' "

" E, father."

"'Adore the Malcer of thy inward heart.'"

" A, father."

UNCLE BENJAMIN, THE POET. . 13

<C i

Now's the accepted time, give Jiim thy heart.' " " N, father; and now I can guess the rest." " ' Keep a good conscience, 'tis a constant friend.' " " K, father."

" ' Like judge and witness this thy acts attend.' " «-L."

" ' In heart with decided hiee alone adore.' "

" ' None hut the Three in One forever more.' "

"And to whom are all these things written?"

" ' To Benjamin Franklin/ sir."

" Well, my boy, if you will only follow the advice of your Uncle Benjamin, the poet, you never will need any more instruction. — Wife, hear this: Brother Ben writes that he is coming to America as soon as he can settle his affairs, and when he arrives I will give over the training of little Ben to him. He is his godfather, and he takes a great interest in a boy that he has never seen. Sometimes people are drawn toward each other before they meet — there's a kind of sympathy in this world that is felt in ways unseen and that is prophetic. Your father was a poet, and Uncle Ben, he is one, after a fashion. I wonder what little Ben will be! "

He put on his paper cap and opened the door into the molding-room. The fire was dying out on the hearth, and the candles in the molds were cooling and hardening. He opened the weather door, causing the bell attached to it to ring. He stood looking out on the bowery street of Boston town.

On the hill rose the Xorth Church in the shadows near the sea. A horn rent the still air. A stage coach from Salem came rolling in and stopjjed at the Boston Stone, not far away. A little girl tripped down the street.

" A pound of candles, sir."

" Hoi, yes, yes," and he took some candles out of a mold and laid them in the scales. The girl courtesied, and the tallow chandler closed the door with a ting-a-ling.

Then Josiah sat down with his family and played the violin. He loved his brother Benjamin, and the thought of his coming made him a happy man.

One day the old man came. Soon after there happened a great event in the family.

It was a windy night. The ocean was dashing and foaming along the sea wall on the beach where Long Wharf, Lewis Wharf, and Eowe's Wharf now are. The stars shone brightly, and clouds flew scudding over the moon.

Abiah Franklin opened the weather door and looked out. She returned to her great chair slowly with a cloud in her face.

" It is a bad night for those on the sea," she said. " It is now nine years since Josiah went away. Where he found an ocean grave we shall never know. It is hard," she added, " to have hope leave you in this way. It is one long torture to live in suspense. There hasn't been a day since the first year after Josiah left us that my ear has not waited to hear a knock on the door on a night like this.

" Josiah, you may say that I have faith in the impossible, but I sometimes believe that I shall hear that knock yet.

UNCLE BENJAMIN, THE POET. 15

There is one Scripture that comforts me when I think that; it is, ' Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass.' "

Josiah Franklin sat silent. It was now indeed nine years since his son Josiah had left home against his will and gone to sea — " run away to sea/' as his departure was called. It was a kind of mental distemper in old New England times for a boy " to run away and go to sea."

There had been fearful storms on the coast. Abiah Franklin was a silent woman when the winds bended the trees and the waves broke loudly on the shore. She thought then; she inwardly prayed, but she said little of the storm that was in her heart.

" I shall never see Josiah again," at last said Josiah Franklin. " It is a pity; it is hard on me that the son who bears my name should leave me, to become a wanderer. Boys will do such things. I may have made his home too strict for him; if so, may the Lord forgive me. I have meant to do my best for all my children. — Ben, let Josiah be a warning to you; you have been having the boy fever to go to sea. Hear the winds blow and the sea dash! Josiah must have longed to be back by the fire on nights like these."

Josiah went to the window and tapped upon the pane. He did that often when his mind was troubled. To tap upon the pane eased his heartache. It was an old New England way.

Josiah took his violin, tuned it, and began to play while the family listened by the fading coals.

" I thought I heard something," said Abiah between one of the tunes.

"What was it, Abiali?" asked her husband.

" It sounded like a step."

" That's nothing strange."

" It sounded familiar," she said. " Steps are peculiar."

" Oh, I know of whom you are thinking," said Josiah. " May the Lord comfort you, for the winds and waves do not to-night."

He played again. His wife grew restless.

" Josiah," said she when he ceased playing, " you may say that I have fancies, but I thought I saw a face pass the window."

" That is likely, Abiah."

" But this one had a short chin and a long nose."

She choked, and her eyes were wet.

There came a rap upon the door. It was a strong hand that made it; there was a heart in the sound.

" I'll open the door, Josiah," said Abiah.

She removed the wooden bar with a trembling hand, and lifted the latch.

A tall, rugged form stood before her. She started back.

" Mother, don't you know me ? "

" Yes, Josiah, I knew that you were coming to-night."

She gazed into his eyes silently.

"Who told you, mother?"

"My soul."

" Well, I've come back like the prodigal son. Let me give you a smack. You'll take me in — but how about father? I thought I heard him playing the violin."

"Josiah, that is your voice!" exclaimed Josiah the elder.

UNCLE BENJAMIN, THE POET. 17

" Now my cup of joy is full and running over. Josiali, come in out of the storm."

Josiah Franklin rushed to the door and locked his son in his arms, but there was probably but little sentiment in the response.

" Now I hrww the parable of the prodigal son," said he. "^ I had only read it before. Come in! come in! There are brothers and sisters here whom you have never seen. Now we are all here."

Uncle Benjamin wrote a poem to celebrate young Josiah's return. It was read in the family, with disheartening results. Sailor Josiah said that he " never cared much for poetry." The poem may be found in the large biographies of Franklin.

Chapter III. Benjamin And Benjamin

An old man sat by an open fire in a strange-looking room with a little boy on his knee. Beside him was a middle-aged man, the father of the boy.

" Brother Josiah," said the old man, " I have had a hard, disappointed life, but I have done the best that I could, and there has nothing happened since my own children died and my hair turned gray that has made me so happy as that letter that you sent to me in England in which you told me that you had named this boy for me."

" It makes me happy to see you here by my fire to-night, with the boy in your lap," said the father. " Benjamin and Benjamin! My heart has been true to you in all your troubles and losses, and I would have helped you had I been able. How did you get up the resolution to cross the sea in your old age?"

" Brother Josiah, it was because my own son is here, and he was all that I had left of my own family. But that was not all. In one sense my own life has failed; I have come down to old age with empty hands. When your letter came saying that you had named this boy for me, and had made me his godfather, I saw that you pitied me, and that you had

BENJAMIN AND BENJAMIN. 19

a place for me in your heart. I thought of all the years that we had passed together when we were young; of the farm and forge in Ecton; of Banbury; of the chimes of Nottingham; of all that we were to each other then.

" I was all alone in London, and there my heart turned to you as it did when we were hoys. That gave me resolution to cross the sea, Brother Josiah, although my hair is white and my veins are thin.

" But that was not all, brother; he is a poor man indeed who gives up hope. When a man loses hope for himself, he wishes to live in another. The ancients used to pray that their sons might be nobler than themselves. When I read your letter that said that you had named this boy for me and had made me his godfather, you can not tell how life revived in me — it was like seeing a rainbow after a storm. I said to myself that I had another hope in this world; that I would live in the boy. I have come over to America to live in this boy.

"0 brother, I •never thought that I would see an hour hke this! I am poor, but I am happy. I am happy because you loved me after I became poor and friendless. That was your opportunity to show what your heart was. I am happy because you trusted me and gave my name to this boy.

" Brother Josiah, I have come over to America to return your love, in teaching this boy how to live and how to fulfill the best that is in him. A boy with your heart can succeed in life, even if he have but common gifts. The best thing that can be said of any man is that he is true-hearted. Brother, you have been true-hearted to me, and the boy inherits your nature, and I am going to be true-hearted to liim and to do all I can to make his life a blessing to you and the world. We do no self-sacrificing thing without fruit."

The old man put his arm about the boy, and said:

" Ben, little Ben, I loved you before I saw you, and I love you more than ever now. I have come across the ocean in my old age to be with you. I want you to like me, Ben."

" I do, uncle," said little Ben. " I would rather be with you than with any one. I am glad that you have come."

" That makes me happy, that makes my old heart happy. I did everything a man could do for his wife and children and fgr everybody. I was left alone in London, poor; I seemed to be a forsaken man, but this makes up for all."

" Benjamin and Benjamin! " said the younger brother, touching the strings of the violin that he held on his lap — " Benjamin and Benjamin! Brother Benjamin, how did you get the money to cross the ocean ? "

" I sold my goods and my pamphlets. Tliey were my life; I had put my life into them. But I sold them, for what were they if I could have the chance to live another life in little Ben?"