True to His Home Part 25

No. Manhood is more than money, worth more than wealth. He went to the baker's and bought a twopenny roll; he ate it in his office, and then lay down on the floor of his office and went to sleep.

The boy's sleep was sweet. He had decided the matter in his own heart, and had given himself a first lesson in what we would to-day call the new education. In this case it was an editorial education.

It was a lovely winter morning. There was joy in all Nature; the air was clear and keen; the Schuylkill rippled bright in the glory of the sun.

He rose before the sun, and went to his work with a clear conscience, but probably dreading the anger of the patron when he should give him his decision.

When the baker's shop opened he may have bought another twopenny roll.

He certainly sat down and ate one, with a dipper of water.

In the later hours of the morning the door opened, and the patron came in with a beaming face.

"Have you read it?"

"Yes, I have read the article, sir."

"Won't that be a good one? What did you think of it?"

"That I ought not to use it."

"Why?" asked the man, greatly astonished.

"I can not be sure that it would not do injustice to the person whom you have attacked. There are always two sides to a case. I myself would not like to be publicly ridiculed in that manner. Detraction leads to detraction, and hatred begets hate."

"But you must have money, my Boston lad. Have you thought of that?" was the suggestion.

Franklin drew himself up in the strength and resolution of young manhood, and made the following answer, which we give, as we think, almost in his very words:

"I am sorry to say, sir, that I think the article is scurrilous and defamatory. But I have been at a loss, on account of my poverty, whether to reject it or not. I therefore put it to this issue. At night, when my work was done, I bought a twopenny loaf, on which I supped heartily, and then wrapping myself in my greatcoat slept very soundly on the floor until morning, when another loaf and a mug of water afforded a pleasant breakfast. Now, sir, since I can live very comfortably in this manner, why should I prost.i.tute my press to personal hatred or party pa.s.sion for a more luxurious living?"

This experience may be regarded as temporizing, but it was inward education in the right direction, a step that led upward. It shows the trend of the way, the end of which is the "path of the just, that leads more and more unto the perfect day."

A young man who was willing to eat a twopenny roll and to sleep on the floor of his pressroom for a principle, had in him the power that lifts life, and that sustains it when lifted. He who puts self under himself for the sake of justice has in him the gravitation of the skies. Uncle Ben's counsels were beginning to live in him. Jenny's girl's faith was budding in his heart, and it would one day bloom. He was turning to the right now, and he would advance. There are periods in some people's lives when they do not write often to their best friends; such a one had just pa.s.sed with Ben. During the Governor Keith misadventures he had not written home often, as the reader may well imagine. But now that he had come back to Philadelphia and was prosperous, the memory of loving Jenny began to steal back into his heart.

He had heard that Jenny, now at sweet sixteen, was famous for her beauty. He may have been jealous of her, we do not know; but he was apprehensive that she might become vain, and he regarded modesty, even at his early age of twenty-one or twenty-two, as a thing very becoming a blooming girl.

One day he wrote to her, "Jenny, I am going to send you a present by the next s.h.i.+p to Boston town."

The promise filled the girl's heart with delight. Her faith in him had never failed, nor had her love for him changed.

What would the present be?

She went to her mother to help her solve this riddle.

"Perhaps it will be a ring," she said. "I would rather have that from Ben than any other thing."

"But he would not send a ring by s.h.i.+p," said her mother, "but by the post chaise."

"True, mother; it can not be that. It may be a spinet. I think it is a spinet. He knows how we have delighted in father's violin. He might like to send me a harp, but what is a spinet but a harp in a box?"

"I think it may be that, Jenny. He would send a spinet by s.h.i.+p, and he knows how much we all love music."

"Yes, and he must see how many girls are adding the music of the spinet to their accomplishments."

"Wouldn't a spinet be rather out of place in a candle shop?" asked the mother.

"Not out of place in the parlor of a candle shop," said Jenny with dignity.

"Do you think that you could learn to play the spinet, Jenny?"

"I would, if Ben were to send me one. I have been true to Ben all along.

I have never given him up. He may get out of place in life, but he is sure to get back again. A true heart always does. I am sure that it is a spinet that he will send. I dreamed," she added, "that I heard a humming sound in the air something like a harp. I dreamed it in the morning, and morning dreams come true."

"A humming sound," said Josiah Franklin, who had come within hearing; "there are some things besides spinets that make humming sounds, and Ben must know how poor we are. I am glad that his heart is turning home again, after his _scattering_ adventures with the Governor. It is not every one who goes to sea without a rudder that gets back to port again."

Jenny dreamed daily of the coming s.h.i.+p and present. The s.h.i.+p came in, and one evening at dark an old sailor knocked at the door. He presently came in and announced that they had a "boxed-up" thing for one Jane Franklin on board the s.h.i.+p. Should he send it by the cartman to the house?

"Yes, yes!" cried Jenny. "Now I know it is a spinet I heard humming--I told you about it, mother."

The girl awaited the arrival of the gift with a flushed cheek and a beating heart. It came at last, and was brought in by candlelight.

It was indeed a "boxed-up" thing.

The family gathered around it--the father and mother, the boys and the girls.

Josiah Franklin broke open the box with his great claw hammer, which might have pleased an Ajax.

"O Jenny!" he exclaimed, "that will make a humming indeed. Ben has not lost his wits yet--or he has found them again."

"What is it? What is it, father?"

"The most sensible thing in all the world. See there, it is a spinning-wheel!"

Jane's heart sank within her. Her dreams vanished into the air--the delights of the return of Sindbad the Sailor were not to be hers yet.

The boys giggled. She covered her face with her hands to hide her confusion and to gain heart.

"I don't care," she said at last, choking. "I think Ben is real good, and I will _forgive him_. I can spin. The wheel is a beauty."

The gift was accompanied by a letter. In it Benjamin told her that he had heard that she had been much praised for her beauty, but that it was industry and modesty that most merited commendation in a young girl. The counsel was as homely as much of that that Uncle Benjamin used to give little Benjamin, but she choked down her feelings.

"Benjamin was thinking of you as well as of me when he sent me that present," she said to her mother. "I will make music with the wheel, and the humming will make us all happy. I think that Ben is real good--and a spinet would have been out of place here. I will write him a beautiful letter in return, and will not tell him how I had hoped for a spinet. It is all better as it is. That is best which will do the most good."

If Franklin sent a practical spinning-wheel to Jenny when she was a girl, with much advice in which there was no poetry, such a sense of homely duties soon pa.s.sed away. He came to send her beautiful presents of fabrics, "black and purple gowns," wearing apparel of elegant texture, and ribbons. When he became rich it was his delight to make happy the home of Jane Mecom--his poetic, true-hearted sister "Jenny,"

whose heart had beat to his in every step of his advancing life.

She became the mother of a large family of children, and when one of them ran away and went to sea she took all the blame of it to herself, and thought that if she had made his home pleasanter for him he would not have left it. In her self-blame she wrote to her brother to confess how she had failed in her duty toward the boy. Franklin read her heart, and wrote to her that the boy was wholly to blame, which could hardly have been comforting. Jenny would rather have been to blame herself.

There was but little wrong in this world in her eyes, except herself.

She saw the world through her own heart.