True to His Home Part 10

"Did you put those stones into the water?"

"Yes, sir."

"What did you do that for?"

"To make a wharf, sir."

"'To make a wharf, sir!' Didn't you have the sense to know that those stones were building stones and belonged to the workmen?"

"No, sir; I didn't know that they belonged to any one. I thought that they belonged to everybody."

"You did, you little rascal! Then why did you wait to have the workmen go away before you put them into the water?"

"The workmen would have hindered us, sir. They don't think that improvements can be made by little shavers like us. I wanted to surprise them, sir--to show them what we could do, sir."

"Benjamin Franklin," said Josiah, "come here, and I will show you what I can do.--Stranger, the boy's G.o.dfather has come to live with us and to take charge of him, and he does need a G.o.dfather, if ever a stripling did."

Josiah Franklin laid his hand on the boy, and the workman went away. The father removed the boy's jacket, and showed him what he could do, the memory of which was not a short one.

"I did not mean any harm, father," young Benjamin said over and over.

"It was a mistake."

"My boy," said the tallow chandler, softening, "never make a second mistake. There are some people who learn wisdom from their first mistakes by never making second mistakes. May you be one of them."

"I shall never do anything that I don't think is honest, father. I thought stones and rocks belonged to the people."

"But there are many things that belong to the people in this world that you have no right to use, my son. When you want to make any more public improvements, first come and talk with me about them, or go to your Uncle Ben, into whose charge I am going to put you--and no small job he will have of it, in my thinking!"

Benjamin Franklin said, when he was growing old and was writing his own life, that his father _convinced_ him at the time of this event that "that which is not honest could not be useful."

We can see in fancy his father with a primitive switch thus _convincing_ him. He never forgot the moral lesson.

Where was Jamie the Scotchman during this convincing episode? When he heard that the little wharf-builder, bursting with desire for public improvement, had fallen into disgrace, he came upon him slyly:

"So you've been building a wharf for the boys of the town. When one begins so soon in life to improve the town, there can be no telling what he will do when he grows up. Perhaps you will become one of the great benefactors of Boston yet. Who knows?"

"We can't tell," said the future projector of Franklin Park, philosophically.

"No, that is a fact, bubby. Take your finger out of your mouth and go to cutting candle wicks. It must make a family proud to have in it such a promising one as you! You'll be apt to set something ablaze some day if you keep on as you've begun."

He did.

Jamie the Scotchman went out, causing the bell on the door to ring. He whistled l.u.s.tily as he went down the street.

Little Benjamin sat cutting wicks for the candle molds and wondering at the ways of the world. He had not intended to do wrong. He may have thought that the stones, although put aside by the workmen, were common property. He had made a mistake. But how are mistakes to be avoided in life? He would ask his Uncle Benjamin, the poet, when he should meet him. It was well, indeed, never to make a _second_ mistake, but better not to make any mistake at all. Uncle Benjamin was wise, and could write poetry. He would ask him.

Besides Jamie the Scotchman, who spent much time at the Blue Ball, little Benjamin's brother James seems to have looked upon him as one whose activities of mind were too obvious, and needed to be suppressed.

The evening that followed the disgrace of little Ben was a serious one in the Franklin family. Uncle Ben had "gone to meeting" in the Old South Church.

The shop, with its molded candles, dipped candles, ingot bars of soap, pewter molds, and kettles, was not an unpleasant place in the evening, and old sea captains used to drop in to talk with Josiah, and sometimes the leading members of the Old South Church came to discuss church affairs, which were really town affairs, for the church governed the town.

On this particular night little Ben sat in the corner of the shop very quietly, holding little Jane as usual. The time had come for a perfect calm in his life, and he himself was well aware how becoming was silence in his case.

Among those who used to come to the shop evenings to talk with Josiah and Uncle Ben, the poet, was one Captain Holmes. He came to-night, stamping his feet at the door, causing the bell to ring very violently and the faces of some of the Franklin children to appear in the window framed over the shop door. How comical they looked!

"Where's Ben to-night?" asked Captain Holmes.

Little Ben's heart thumped. He thought the captain meant _him_.

"He's gone to meetin'," said Josiah. "Come, sit down. Ben will be at home early."

Little Ben's heart did not beat so fast now.

"Where's that boy o' yourn?" asked the captain.

Ben's heart began to beat again.

"There, in the corner," said Josiah, with a doubtful look in his face.

"He'll be given to making public improvements when he grows up," said the captain. "But I hope that he will not take other people's property to do it. If there is any type of man for whom I have no use it is he who does good with what belongs to others."

The door between the shop and the living room opened, and the grieved, patient face of Abiah appeared.

"Good evening, Captain Holmes," said Abiah. "I heard what you said--how could I help it?--and it hurt me. No descendant of Peter Folger will ever desire to use other people's property for his own advantage. Ben won't."

"That's right, my good woman, stand up for your own. Every drop of an English exile's blood is better than its weight in gold."

"Ben is a boy," said Abiah. "If he makes an error, it will be followed by a contrite heart."

Little Ben could hear no more. He flew, as it were, up to the garret chamber and laid down on the trestle bed. A pet squirrel came to comfort him or to get some corn. He folded the squirrel in his bosom.

Ting-a-ling! It was Uncle Ben, the poet, whose name he had disgraced. He could endure no more; he began to sob, and so went to sleep, his little squirrel pitying him, perhaps.

There was another heart that pitied the boy. It was Uncle Ben's. Poor Uncle Ben! He sleeps now at the side of the Franklin monument in the Granary burying ground, and we like to cast a kindly glance that way as we pa.s.s the Park Street Church on Tremont Street, on the west side. It is a good thing to have good parents, and also to have a good uncle with a poetic mind and a loving heart.

There was one trait in little Benjamin's character that Josiah Franklin saw with his keen eye to business, and it gave him hope. He was diligent. One of Josiah Franklin's favorite texts of Scripture was, "Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men." This text he used to often repeat, or a part of it, and little Ben must have thought that it applied to him. Hints of hope, not detraction, build a boy.

Jamie the Scotchman had little expectation that puttering Ben would ever "stand before kings." Not he. He had not that kind of vision.

"Ah, boy, I could tell you a whole history of diligent boys who not only came to stand before kings, but who overturned thrones; and he who discrowns a king is greater than a king," said he one day. "Think what you might become."

"Maybe I will."

"Will what?"

"Be some one in the world."