History of American Literature Part 7

He studied literature for two years after he graduated and then became a lawyer. He was appointed to the position of king's advocate-general, a high-salaried office. There came an order from England, allowing the king's officers to search the houses of Americans at any time on mere suspicion of the concealment of smuggled goods. Otis resigned his office and took the side of the colonists, attacking the const.i.tutionality of a law that allowed the right of unlimited search and that was really designed to curtail the trade of the colonies. He had the advantage of many modern orators in having something to say on his subject, in feeling deeply interested in it, and in talking to people who were also interested in the same thing. Without these three essentials, there cannot be oratory of the highest kind. We can imagine the voice of Otis trembling with feeling as he said in 1761:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: JAMES OTIS]

"Now one of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house. A man's house is his castle; and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle. This writ, if it should be declared legal, would totally annihilate this privilege. Custom-house officers may enter our houses, when they please; we are commanded to permit their entry. Their menial servants may enter, may break locks, bars, and everything in their way; and whether they break through malice or revenge, no man, no court, can inquire."

We may to-day be more interested in other things than in the homes and unrestricted trade of our colonial ancestors, but Otis was willing to give up a lucrative office to speak for the rights of the humblest cottager. He, like the majority of the orators of the Revolution, also possessed another quality, often foreign to the modern orator. What this quality is will appear in this quotation from his speech:--

"Let the consequences be what they will, I am determined to proceed. The only principles of public conduct that are worthy of a gentleman or a man are to sacrifice estate, ease, health, and applause, and even life, to the sacred calls of his country. These manly sentiments, in private life, make the good citizen; in public life, the patriot and the hero."

John Adams, who became the second President of the United States, listened to this speech for five hours, and called Otis "a flame of fire." "Then and there," said Adams, with pardonable exaggeration, "the child Independence was born."

PATRICK HENRY (1736-1799), a young Virginia lawyer, stood before the First Continental Congress, in 1774, saying:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: PATRICK HENRY]

"Where are your landmarks, your boundaries of Colonies? The distinctions between Virginians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American."

These words had electrical effect on the minds of his listeners, and helped to weld the colonies together. In 1775 we can hear him again speaking before a Virginian Convention of Delegates:--

"Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope.

We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts....

"I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past.

And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House? ...

"Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty G.o.d! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death."

It is hardly too much to say that these words have communicated to the entire American nation an intenser desire for liberty, that their effect has not yet pa.s.sed away, and that they may during the coming centuries serve to awaken Americans in many a crisis.

SAMUEL ADAMS (1722-1803), a Bostonian and graduate of Harvard, probably gave his time in fuller measure to the cause of independence than any other writer or speaker. For nine years he was a member of the Continental Congress. When there was talk of peace between the colonies and the mother country, he had the distinction of being one of two Americans for whom England proclaimed in advance that there would be no amnesty granted. We can seem to hear him in 1776 in the Philadelphia State House, replying to the argument that the colonists should obey England, since they were her children:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAMUEL ADAMS]

"Who among you, my countrymen, that is a father, would claim authority to make your child a slave because you had nourished him in his infancy?"

After he had signed the _Declaration of Independence,_ he spoke to the Pennsylvanians like a Puritan of old:--

"We have explored the temple of royalty, and found that the idol we have bowed down to has eyes which see not, ears that hear not our prayer, and a heart like the nether millstone. We have this day restored the Sovereign, to whom alone men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven, and with a propitious eye beholds His subjects a.s.suming that freedom of thought and dignity of self-direction which He bestowed on them."

These sentences plainly show the influence of biblical thought and diction.

A century before, this compound of patriot, politician, orator, and statesman would also have been a clergyman.

An examination of these three typical orators of the Revolution will show that they gained their power (1) from intense interest in their subject matter, (2) from masterful knowledge of that matter, due either to first-hand acquaintance with it or to liberal culture or to both, (3) from the fact that the subject of their orations appealed forcibly to the interest of that special time, (4) from their character and personality.

Most of what they said makes dry reading to-day, but we shall occasionally find pa.s.sages, like Patrick Henry's apotheosis of liberty, which speak to the ear of all time and which have in them something of a Homeric or Miltonic ring.

INCREASING INFLUENCE OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION.--Not one of the great orators of the Revolution was a clergyman. The power of the clergy in political affairs was declining, while the legal profession was becoming more and more influential. James Otis, Patrick Henry, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay (p. 71) were lawyers. Life was becoming more diversified, and there were avenues other than theology attractive to the educated man. At the same time, we must remember that the clergy have never ceased to be a mighty power in American life. They were not silent or uninfluential during the Revolution. Soon after the battle of Bunker Hill, John Adams wrote from Philadelphia to his wife in Boston, asking, "Does Mr. Wibird preach against oppression and other cardinal vices of the time? Tell him the clergy here of every denomination, not excepting the Episcopalian, thunder and lighten every Sabbath."

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, 1706-1790

[Ill.u.s.tration: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN]

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND LIFE.--Franklin's _Autobiography_ stands first among works of its kind in American literature. The young person who does not read it misses both profit and entertainment. Some critics have called it "the equal of Robinson Crusoe, one of the few everlasting books in the English language." In this small volume, begun in 1771, Franklin tells us that he was born in Boston in 1706, one of the seventeen children of a poor tallow chandler, that his branch of the Franklin family had lived for three hundred years or more in the village of Ecton, Northamptons.h.i.+re, where the head of the family, in Queen Mary's reign, read from an English _Bible_ concealed under a stool, while a child watched for the coming of the officers. He relates how he attended school from the age of eight to ten, when he had to leave to help his father mold and wick candles. His meager schooling was in striking contrast to the Harvard education of Cotton Mather and the Yale training of Jonathan Edwards, who was only three years Franklin's senior. But no man reaches Franklin's fame without an education.

His early efforts to secure this are worth giving in his own language:--

"From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the _Pilgrim's Progress_, my first collection was of John Bunyan's works in separate little volumes.... Plutarch's _Lives_ there was in which I read abundantly, and I still think that time spent to great advantage. There was also a book of De Foe's, called an _Essay on Projects_, and another of Dr. Mather's, called _Essays to do Good_, which perhaps gave me a turn of thinking that had an influence on some of the princ.i.p.al future events of my life.... Often I sat up in my room reading the greatest part of the night."

He relates how he taught himself to write by reading and reproducing in his own language the papers from Addison's _Spectator_. Franklin says that the "little ability" in writing, developed through his self-imposed tasks, was a princ.i.p.al means of his advancement in after life.

He learned the printer's trade in Boston, and ran away at the age of seventeen to Philadelphia, where he worked at the same trade. Keith, the proprietary governor, took satanic pleasure in offering to purchase a printing outfit for the eighteen-year-old boy, to make him independent.

Keith sent the boy to London to purchase this outfit, a.s.suring him that the proper letters to defray the cost would be sent on the same s.h.i.+p. No such letters were ever written, and the boy found himself without money three thousand miles from home. By working at the printer's trade he supported himself for eighteen months in London. He relates how his companions at the press drank six pints of strong beer a day, while he proved that the "Water-American," as he was called, was stronger than any of them. The workmen insisted that he should contribute to the general fund for drink.

He refused, but so many things happened to his type whenever he left the room that he came to the following conclusion: "Notwithstanding the master's protection, I found myself oblig'd to comply and pay the money, convinc'd of the folly of being on ill terms with those one is to live with continually." Such comments on the best ways of dealing with human nature are frequent in the _Autobiography_.

At the age of twenty, he returned to Philadelphia, much wiser for his experience. Here he soon had a printing establishment of his own. By remarkable industry he had at the age of forty-two made sufficient money to be able to retire from the active administration of this business. He defined leisure as "time for doing something useful." When he secured this leisure, he used it princ.i.p.ally for the benefit of others. For this reason, he could write in his _Autobiography_ at the age of seventy-six:--

"... were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a repet.i.tion of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition, to correct some faults of the first. So I might, besides correcting the faults, change some sinister accidents and events of it for others more favorable. But though this were denied, I should still accept the offer. Since such a repet.i.tion is not to be expected, the next thing like living one's life over again seems to be a recollection of that life."

The twentieth century shows an awakened sense of civic responsibility, and yet it would be difficult to name a man who has done more for his commonwealth than Franklin. He started the first subscription library, organized the first fire department, improved the postal service, helped to pave and clean the streets, invented the Franklin stove, for which he refused to take out a patent, took decided steps toward improving education and founding the University of Pennsylvania, and helped establish a needed public hospital. The _Autobiography_ shows his pleasure at being told that there was no such thing as carrying through a public-spirited project unless he was concerned in it.

His electrical discoveries, especially his identification of lightning with electricity, gained him world-wide fame. Harvard and Yale gave him honorary degrees. England made him a Fellow of the Royal Society and awarded him the Copley Medal. The foremost scientists in France gave him enthusiastic praise.

The _Autobiography_, ending with 1757, does not tell how he won his fame as a statesman. In 1764 he went to England as colonial agent to protest against the pa.s.sage of the Stamp Act. All but two and one half of the next twenty years he spent abroad, in England and France. The report of his examination in the English House of Commons, relative to the repeal of the Stamp Act, impressed both Europe and America with his wonderful capacity.

Never before had an American given Europe such an exhibition of knowledge, powers of argument, and shrewdness, tempered with tact and good humor. In 1773 he increased his reputation as a writer and threw more light on English colonial affairs by publis.h.i.+ng, in London, _Rules for Reducing a Great Empire to a Small One_, and _An Edict by the King of Prussia_.

In 1776, at the age of seventy, he became commissioner to the court of France, where he remained until 1785. Every student of American history knows the part he played there in popularizing the American Revolution, until France aided us with her money and her navy. It is doubtful if any man has ever been more popular away from home than Franklin was in France.

The French regarded him as "the personification of the rights of man." They followed him on the streets, gave him almost frantic applause when he appeared in public, put his portrait in nearly every house and on almost every snuff box, and bought a Franklin stove for their houses.

He returned to Philadelphia in 1785, revered by his country. He was the only man who had signed four of the most famous doc.u.ments in American history: the Declaration of Independence, the treaty of alliance with France, the treaty of peace with England at the close of the Revolution, and the Const.i.tution of the United States. He had also become, as he remains to-day, America's most widely read colonial writer. When he died in 1790, the American Congress and the National a.s.sembly of France went into mourning.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FACSIMILE OF THE t.i.tLE-PAGE TO "POOR RICHARD'S ALMANAC" FOR 1733]

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.--As an author, Franklin is best known for his philosophy of the practical and the useful. Jonathan Edwards turned his attention to the next world; Franklin, to this world. The gulf is as vast between these two men as if they had lived on different planets. To the end of his life, Franklin's energies were bent toward improving the conditions of this mundane existence. He advises honesty, not because an eternal spiritual law commands it, but because it is the best policy. He needs to be supplemented by the great spiritual teachers. He must not be despised for this reason, for the great spiritual forces fail when they neglect the material foundations imposed on mortals. Franklin was as necessary as Jonathan Edwards. Franklin knew the importance of those foundation habits, without which higher morality is not possible. He impressed on men the necessity of being regular, temperate, industrious, saving, of curbing desire, and of avoiding vice. The very foundations of character rest on regularity, on good habits so inflexibly formed that it is painful to break them. Franklin's success in laying these foundations was phenomenal. His _Poor Richard's Almanac_, begun in 1733, was one of his chief agencies in reaching the common people. They read, reread, and acted on such proverbs as the following, which he published in this _Almanac_ from year to year:--

[Footnote: The figures in parenthesis indicate the year of publication.]

"He has changed his one ey'd horse for a blind one" (1733).

"Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead" (1735).

"Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it" (1736).

"Fly pleasures and they'll follow you" (1738).

"Have you somewhat to do to-morrow; do it to-day" (1742).

"Tart words make no friends: a spoonful of honey will catch more flies than a gallon of vinegar" (1744).

In 1757 Franklin gathered together what seemed to him the most striking of these proverbs and published them as a preface to the _Almanac_ for 1758.

This preface, the most widely read of all his writings, has since been known as _The Way to Wealth_. It had been translated into nearly all European languages before the end of the nineteenth century. It is still reprinted in whole or part almost every year by savings banks and societies in France and England, as well as in the United States. "Dost thou love life?" asks Poor Richard in _The Way to Wealth_. "Then," he continues, "do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of." Franklin modestly disclaimed much originality in the selection of these proverbs, but it is true that he made many of them more definite, incisive, and apt to lodge in the memory. He has influenced, and he still continues to influence, the industry and thrift of untold numbers. In one of our large cities, a branch library, frequented by the humble and unlearned, reports that in one year his _Autobiography_ was called for four hundred times, and a life of him, containing many of Poor Richard's sayings, was asked for more than one thousand times.