Part 11 (1/2)

”Sorry a boy you would make to 'stand before kings,' and I don't think you'll ever be likely to take off the crown from anybody. So your poor old father might as well leave that text out of the Scriptures. There are no pebbles in your sling of life. If there were, wonders would never cease. You are just your Uncle Ben over again. I'm sorry for ye, and for all.”

Little Ben looked sorry too, and he wondered if there really were in the text something prophetic for him, or if Jamie the Scotchman were the true seer. But many poor boys had come to stand before kings, and some such boys had left tyrants without a crown.

Jamie the Scotchman thought that he had the gift of ”second sight,” as a consciousness of future events was called, but he usually saw shadows.

He liked to talk to himself, walking with his hands behind him.

After his dire prophecy concerning the future of little Ben he walked down to Long Wharf with Uncle Benjamin, talking to himself for the latter to hear.

”Ye can't always tell,” said he; ”I didn't speak out of the true inward spirit when I said those things. It hurt the little shaver to tell him there was no future in him; I could see it did. The boy has a curious way of saying wise things; such words fly out of his mouth like swallows from a cave. If I were to take up a dead brand in the blacksmith's shop and he was around, as he commonly is, he would say, 'The more you handle a burned stick the s.m.u.ttier you become'; or if I were to pick up a horseshoe there, and say, 'For the want of a nail the shoe was lost,' he would answer, 'And for want of a shoe the horse was lost.' Then, after a time, he would add, 'For want of a horse the rider was lost,' and so on.

His mind works in that way. Maybe he'll become a philosopher.

Philosophers stand before kings. I now have the true inner sight and open vision. I can see a streak of light in that curious gift of his.

But blood tells, and his folks on his father's side were blacksmiths over in England, and philosophers don't come from the forge more'n eagles do from the hen yard.

”I said what I did to stimulate him. It cut the little shaver to the quick, didn't it? Now he wouldn't have been so cut if there had been nothing there. The Lord forgive me if I did wrong!”

He walked down the wharf to the end. Beyond lay the blue harbor and the green islands. The town had only some ten thousand inhabitants then, but several great s.h.i.+ps lay in the harbor under the three hills, two of which now are gone.

The harbor was girded with oaks and pines. Here and there a giant elm, still the glory of New England, lifted its bowery top like a cathedral amid towns of trees. Sea birds screamed low over the waters, and ospreys wheeled high in the air.

Jamie the Scotchman had not many things to occupy his thoughts, so he sat down to wonder as to what that curious Franklin boy might become.

A new thought struck him.

”He has French blood in him--the old family name used to be Franklein,”

he said to himself. ”Now what does that signify? French blood is gentle; it likes to be free. I don't see that it might not be a good thing to have; the French like to find out things and give away to others what they discover.”

A sh.e.l.l fell into the water before him from high in the air. The water spouted up, causing an osprey to swoop down, but to rise again.

Jamie the Scotchman turned his head.

”You, Ben? You follow me 'round everywhere. What makes ye, when I treat ye so?”

”If a boy didn't hope for anything he would never have the heartache.”

”True, true, my boy; and what of that?”

”I would rather expect something and have the heartache.”

”No one ever misses his expectations who looks for the heartache in this world. But what queer turns your mind does take, and what curious questions you do ask! Let us return to the Blue Ball.”

They did, through winding streets, one or more of which were said to follow the wanderings of William Blackstone's cow from the Common.

Boston still follows the same interesting animal.

There were windmills on the hills and tidemills near the water. There was a ferryboat between Boston and Charlestown, and on the now Chelsea side was the great Rumney Marsh. On the Common, which was a pasture, was a branching elm, a place of executions. Near it was a pond into which had been cast the Wis.h.i.+ng Stone around which, it was reported, that if one went three times at night and repeated the Lord's Prayer _backward_ at each circuit one might have whatever he wished for. Near the pond and the great tree were the Charles River marshes. Such was Boston in 1715-'20.