Part 10 (2/2)

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.”

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