True to His Home Part 19

He may have cried on Boston street:

"Blackboard--broadside!" or something like that. It would have been honorable advertising.

His success as a poet was instantaneous. His poem sold well. Compliments fell upon him like a sun shower. He wrote another poem of like value, and it sold "prodigiously." He thought indeed he was a great poet, and had started out on Shakespeare's primrose way to fame and glory. Alas!

how many under like circ.u.mstances have been deceived. He lived to call his ballads "wretched stuff." How many who thought they were poets have lived to take the same view of their work!

His second poem was called the Light-House Tragedy. It related to a recent event, and set the whole town to talking, and the admiration for the young poet was doubled.

In the midst of the great sale of his poems by himself, and of all the flatteries of the town, he went for approval to his father. The result was unexpected; the rain of suns.h.i.+ne changed into a winter storm indeed.

"Father, you have heard that I have become a poet?"

"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Josiah, in his paper cap and leather breeches.

"Like your Uncle Ben, my boy, and he amounted to nothing at all as a poet. A poet--my stars!"

"I thought that you looked upon Uncle Ben as the best man in all the world. The people love him. When he enters the Old South Church there is silence."

"That is all very true, my boy, but he lives between the heavens and the earth, and can not get up to the one or down to the other. Poets are beggars, in some way or other. They live in garrets among the mice and bats. Their country is the imagination, and that is the next door to nowhere. You a poet! What puckers my face up--_so_?"

"But my poetry sells, father," looking into his father's droll face, his heart sinking.

"Your poetry! It sells, my boy, because you are a little shaver and appear to be smart, and also because your rhymes refer to events in which everybody is interested. But, my son, your poetry, as you call it, has no merit in itself. It is full of all kinds of errors. It is style that makes a poem live; yours has no style."

"But, father, many people do not think so."

"But they will. You will think so some day."

"But isn't there something good in it?"

"Nothing, Ben. You never was born to be a poet. You have the ability to earn a living, same as I have done. Poets don't have that kind of ability; they beg. There are not many men who can earn a living by selling their fancies, which is mostly moons.h.i.+ne."

This was unsympathetic. Ben looked at the soap kettles and candle molds and wondered if these things had not blinded his father's poetic perceptions. There was no Vale of Tempe here.

But Josiah Franklin had hard common sense. Little Ben's dreams of poetic fame came down from the skies at one arrow. That was a bitter hour.

"If I can not be a poet," he thought, "I can still be useful," and he reverted from heroic ballads to stern old Cotton Mather's Essays to do Good. The fated poet is always left a like resource.

Yet many people who have not become poets, but who have risen to be eminent men, have had poetic dreams in early life; they have had the poetic mind. A little poetry in one's composition is no common gift; it is a stamp of superiority in some direction. Josiah Franklin was a wise man, but his views of poetry as such were of a low standard. Poetry is the highest expression of life, the n.o.blest exercise of the spiritual faculties.

So poor little Ben had soared to be laughed at again. But there was something out of the common stirring in him, and he would fly again some day. The victories of the vanquished are the brightest of all.

Franklin, after having been thus given over to the waste barrel by his father, now resolved to acquire a strong, correct, and impressive prose style of writing. He found Addison's Spectator one of the best of all examples of literary style, and he began to make it a study. In works of the imagination he read De Foe and Bunyan.

This good resolution was his second step up on the ladder of life.

Others were contributing to his brother James's paper, why should not he? But James, after the going out of the poetic meteor, might not be willing to consider his plain prose.

Benjamin Franklin has now written an article in plain prose, which he wishes to appear in his brother's paper. If it were accepted, he would have to put it into type himself, and probably to deliver the paper to its patrons. He is sixteen years old. He has become a vegetarian, and lives by himself, and seeks pleasure chiefly in books.

It is night. There are but few lamps in the Boston streets. With a ma.n.u.script hidden in his pocket Benjamin walks slyly toward the office of James Franklin, Printer, where all is dark and still. He looks around, tucks his ma.n.u.script suddenly under the office door, turns and runs. Oh, how he does glide away! Is he a genius or a fool? He wonders what his brother will say of the ma.n.u.script, when he reads it in the morning.

In the morning he went to his work.

Some friends of James came into the office.

"I have found something here this morning," said James, "that I think is good. It was tucked under the door. It seems to me uncommonly good. You must read it."

He handed it to one of his friends.

"That is the best article I have read for a long time," said one of the callers. "There is force in it. It goes like a song that whistles. It carries you. I advise you to use it. Everybody would read that and like it. I wonder who wrote it? You should find out. A person who can write like that should never be idle. He was born to write."

James handed it to another caller.

"There are brains in that ink. The piece flows out of life. Who do you think wrote it?"

"I have no idea," said James.--"Here, Ben, set it up. Here's nuts for you. If I knew who wrote it I would ask the writer to send in other articles."

Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography and Charles d.i.c.kens's novels have had a sale equaled by a few books in the world. The two authors began their literary life in a like manner, by tucking their ma.n.u.scripts under the editor's door at night and running away. They both came to wonder at themselves at finding themselves suddenly people of interest. Still, we could hardly say to the literary candidate, "Fling your article into the editor's room at night and run," though modesty, silence, and prudence are commendable in a beginner, and qualities that win.

What pen name did Ben Franklin sign to this interesting article? It was one that implies his purpose in life; you may read his biography in it--SILENCE DOGOOD.

The day after the name of Silence Dogood had attracted the attention of Boston town, Benjamin said to Jane, his sympathetic little sister:

"Jenny, let's go to walk this evening upon Beacon Hill. I have something to tell you."

They went out in the early twilight together, up the brow of the hill which the early settlers seem to have found a blackberry pasture, to the tree where they had gone with Uncle Benjamin on the showery, s.h.i.+ning midsummer Sunday.

"Can you repeat what Uncle Benjamin said to us here, two years ago?"

asked Ben.

"No; it was too long. You repeat it to me again and I will learn it."

"He said, 'More than wealth, or fame, or anything, is the power of the human heart, and that that power is developed in seeking the good of others.' Jenny, what did father say when he read the piece by Silence Dogood in the Courant?"

"He clapped his hand on his leather breeches so that they rattled; he did, Ben, and he exclaimed, 'That is a good one!' and he read the piece to mother, and she asked him who he supposed wrote it, and she shook her head, and he said, 'I wish that I knew.'"

"Would you like to know who wrote it, Jenny?"

"Yes. Do you know?"

"_I_ wrote it. Jenny, you must not tell. I am writing another piece.

James does not know. I tucked the ma.n.u.script under the door. I am going to put another one under the door at night."

"O Ben, Ben, you will be a great man yet, and I hope that I will live to see it. But why did you take the name of _Silence Dogood_?"

"That carries out Uncle Ben's idea. It stands for seeking the good of others quietly. That name is what I would like to be."

"It is what you will be, Ben. Uncle would say that the Franklin heart is in that name. If you should ever become a big man, Ben, and I should come to see you when we are old, I will say, 'Silence Dogood, more than wealth, more than fame, and more than anything else, is the power of the human heart.' There, I have quoted it correctly now. Maybe the day will come. Maybe we will live to be old, and you will write things that everybody will read, and I will take care of father and mother while you go out into the world."