True to His Home Part 1

True to His Home.

by Hezekiah b.u.t.terworth.

PREFACE.

THIS volume is an historical fiction, but the plan of it was suggested by biography, and is made to include the most interesting and picturesque episodes in the home side of the life of Benjamin Franklin, so as to form a connected narrative or picture of his public life.

I have written no book with a deeper sympathy with my subject, for, although fiction, the story very truthfully shows that the good intentions of a life which has seemed to fail do not die, but live in others whom they inspire. Uncle Benjamin Franklin, "the poet," who was something of a philosopher, and whose visions all seemed to end in disappointment, deeply influenced his nephew and G.o.dson, Benjamin Franklin, whom he morally educated to become what he himself had failed to be.

The conduct of Josiah Franklin, the father of Benjamin Franklin, in comforting his poor old brother in England by naming his fifteenth child for him, and making him his G.o.dfather, is a touching instance of family affection, to the memory of which the statesman was always true.

Uncle Benjamin Franklin had a library of pamphlets that was very dear to him, for in the margins of the leaves he had placed the choicest thoughts of his life amid great political events. He was very poor, and he sold his library in his old age; we may reasonably suppose that he parted with it among other effects to get money to come to America, that he might give his influence to "Little Ben," after his brother had remembered him in his desolation by giving his name to the boy. The finding of these pamphlets in London fifty years after the old man was compelled to sell them was regarded by Benjamin Franklin as one of the most singular events of his remarkable life.

Mr. Parton, in his Life of Franklin, thus alludes to the circ.u.mstance:

A strange occurrence brought to the mind of Franklin, in 1771, a vivid recollection of his childhood. A dealer in old books, whose shop he sometimes visited, called his attention one day to a collection of pamphlets, bound in thirty volumes, dating from the Restoration to 1715. The dealer offered them to Franklin, as he said, because many of the subjects of the pamphlets were such as usually interested him. Upon examining the collection, he found that one of the blank leaves of each volume contained a catalogue of its contents, and the price each pamphlet had cost; there were notes and comments also in the margin of several of the pieces. A closer scrutiny revealed that the handwriting was that of his Uncle Benjamin, the rhyming friend and counselor of his childhood. Other circ.u.mstances combined with this surprising fact to prove that the collection had been made by his uncle, who had probably sold it when he emigrated to America, fifty-six years before. Franklin bought the volumes, and gave an account of the circ.u.mstance to his Uncle Benjamin's son, who still lived and flourished in Boston. "The oddity is," he wrote, "that the bookseller, who could suspect nothing of any relation between me and the collector, should happen to make me the offer of them."

It may please the reader to know that "Mr. Calamity" was suggested by a real character, and that the incidents in the life of "Jenny,"

Franklin's favorite sister, are true in spirit and largely in detail. It would have been more artistic to have had Franklin discover Uncle Benjamin's "pamphlets" later in life, but this would have been, while allowable, unhistoric fiction.

Says one of the greatest critics ever born in America, in speaking of the humble birth of Franklin:

That little baby, humbly cradled, has turned out to be the greatest man that America ever bore in her bosom or set eyes upon. Beyond all question, as I think, Benjamin Franklin had the largest mind that has shone on this side of the sea, widest in its comprehension, most deep-looking, thoughtful, far-seeing, the most original and creative child of the New World.

For the last four generations no man has shed such copious good influence on America, nor added so much new truth to popular knowledge; none has so skillfully organized its ideals into inst.i.tutions; none has so powerfully and wisely directed the nation's conduct and advanced its welfare in so many respects. No man has so strong a hold on the habits or the manners of the people.

"The princ.i.p.al question in life is, What good can I do in the world?"

says Franklin. He learned to ask this question in his home in "beloved Boston." It was his purpose to answer this all-important question after the lessons that he had received in his early home, to which his heart remained true through all his marvelous career.

This is the seventh volume of the Creators of Liberty Series of books of historical fiction, based for the most part on real events, in the purpose of presenting biography in picture.

The former volumes of this series of books have been very kindly received by the public, and none of them more generously than the last volume, The Wampum Belt. For this the writer is very grateful, for he is a thorough believer in story-telling education, on the Pestalozzi and Froebel principle that "life must be taught from life," or from the highest ideals of beneficent character.

H. B.

28 WORCESTER STREET, BOSTON, Ma.s.s., _June, 1897_.

TRUE TO HIS HOME.

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 l.u.s.ty 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 anything 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 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 s.h.i.+p that bore the family of Rev.

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 Roger 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 pa.s.sengers had small comforts on board the s.h.i.+p. The pa.s.sage was a long one, and the time pa.s.sed heavily.

Now the pa.s.sengers 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 offered 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 antic.i.p.ations of their life in the New World.

Peter purchased Mary's freedom of the Peterses, and so he bought the grandmother of that Benjamin Franklin who was to "s.n.a.t.c.h the thunderbolts from heaven and the scepter from tyrants," 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, Ma.s.s., where the young immigrant became a very useful citizen. He studied the Indian tongue.

About 1660 the family 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 a.s.sisted 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 a.s.signed by the proprietors a place known as Roger's Field, and later as Jethro Folger's Lane, now a portion of the Maddequet 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 to bleed and burn. He wrote a poem ent.i.tled A Looking-gla.s.s 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 G.o.d'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.