True to His Home Part 39

"Well, help me, then."

She lifted him, and they went back slowly to the street.

The city was deserted. The people were out to the hill. There was a crackling of dry boards in the bonfire, and the flame grew redder and redder, higher and higher.

They came to the State House. The old man looked up. The face of the house was bare; the king's arms were gone.

He sank down on the step of an empty house and began to tremble. He took out his silver snuffbox and held it shaking.

"For Queen Charlotte's sake, daughter," he said.

She touched the box, to please him.

"Gone," he said; "the king's arms are gone, and I have no wish to survive them. I feel the chill coming on--'tis the last time. Take the silver box, daughter; for my sake hide it, and always be true to the king's arms upon it. As for me, I shall never see the morning!"

He lay there in the moonlight, his eyes fixed on the State House where the king's arms had been.

The people came shouting back, bearing torches that were going out.

Houses were being illuminated.

He ceased to tremble. They sent for a medical man and for his near kin.

These people were among the mult.i.tude. They came late and found him lying in the moonlight white and cold.

The bells are ringing. Independence is declared. The king's rule in the province is gone forever. Benjamin Franklin's name commands the respect of lovers of liberty throughout the world. He is fulfilling the vision of Uncle Benjamin, the poet. He has added virtue to virtue, intelligence to intelligence, benevolence to benevolence, faith to faith. So the ladder of success ascends. Like his great-uncle Tom, his influence has caused the bells to ring; it will do so again.

Franklin heard of his great popularity in America while in England.

"Now I will call for the pamphlets," he said. He again walked alone in his room. He faced the future. "Not yet, not yet," he added, referring to the pamphlets. "The struggle for liberty has only begun. I will order the pamphlets when the colonies are free. The hopes in them will then be fulfilled, and not until then."

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

JENNY AGAIN.

FRANKLIN was suddenly recalled to America.

He stood at Samuel Franklin's door.

Samuel Franklin was an old man now.

"I have come to Boston once more," said Benjamin Franklin. "I would go to my parents' graves and the grave of Uncle Ben. But they are in the enemy's camp now. Samuel, I found your father's pamphlets in London."

"Is it possible? Where are they now?"

"I will return them to you when the colonies shall be free. The reading of them shall be a holiday in our old lives."

"I may never live to see that day. Benjamin, I am an old man. I want that you should will those pamphlets to my family."

The old men went out and stood by the gate late in the evening. The moon was rising over the harbor; it was a warm, still night. Sentries were pacing to and fro, for Boston was surrounded by sixteen thousand hostile men in arms.

The nine o'clock bell rang.

"I must go back to the camp," said Franklin, for he had met Samuel within the American lines.

"Cousin Benjamin, these are perilous times," said Samuel. "Justice is what the world needs. Make those pamphlets live, and return them with father's name honored in yours to my family."

"I will do so or perish. I am in dead earnest."

He ascended the hill and looked down on the British camps in Boston town.

Franklin had been sent to Cambridge as a commissioner to Was.h.i.+ngton's army at this time. It was October, 1775.

He longed to see his sister Jane--"Jenny"--once more. His sister was now past sixty years of age. Foreseeing the siege of Boston, he had written to her to come to Philadelphia and to make her home with him. But she was unwilling to remove from her own city and old home, though she was forced to find shelter within the lines of the American army.

One night, after her removal from Boston, there came a gentle knock at the door of her room. She opened it guardedly, and looked earnestly into the face of the stranger.

"Jenny!"

"My own brother!--do I indeed see you alive? Let me put my hand into yours once more."

He drew her to him.

"Jenny, I have longed for this hour."

"But what brings you here at this time? You did not come wholly to see me? Sit down, and let us bring up all the past again."

He sat down beside her, holding her hand.

"Jenny, you ask what brings me here. Do you remember Uncle Ben?"

"Whose name you bear? Never shall I forget him. The memory of a great man grows as years increase."

"Jenny, I've heard the bells in Ecton ring, and I found in Nottinghams.h.i.+re letters from Uncle Benjamin, and they coupled your name when you was a girl with mine when I was a boy; do you remember what he said to us on that showery summer day when all the birds were singing?"

"Yes, Ben--I must call you 'Ben'--he said that 'more than wealth, more than fame, more than anything, was the power of the human heart, and that that power grows by seeking the good of others.'"

"What he said was true, but that was not all he said."

"He told you to be true to your country--to live for the things that live."

"Jenny, that is why I am here. He told you to be true to your home. You have been that, Jenny. You took care of father when he was sick for the last time, and you antic.i.p.ated all his wants. I love you for that, Jenny."

"But it made me happy to do it, and the memory of it makes me happy now."

"And mother, you were her life in her old age. They are gone, both gone, but your heart made them happy when their steps were retreating. O Jenny, Jenny, your hair is turning gray, and mine is gray already. You have fulfilled Uncle Benjamin's charge under the trees. You have been true to your home."