Part 14 (1/2)

”'I am glad that you are so well provided for, for you are a good man, and have a heart to feel for those in need.'

”'Neighbor, there is my woodpile. It is yours as well as mine. I would not feel warm if I were to sit down by my fire and remember that you and your wife and your children were cold. When you need any fuel, come to my woodpile and take all the wood that you want.'

”The man on the marsh went away, his head hanging down. I believe that there came into his heart the powerful resolution that he would never steal again, and we have no record that he ever did. The Governor's hope for him had made him another man.

”He came for the wood in his necessity one day. The Governor looked at him pleasantly.

”'Why did you not come to me before?'”

Josiah Franklin looked around on the group at the fireside, and opened the family Bible.

”Do you think that the Governor did right, Brother Ben?”

”Well, it isn't altogether clear to me.”

”What do you think, Abiah?”

”Father would have done as he did. He hindered no one, but helped every one. He saw life on that side.”

”Well, little Ben, what have you to say?”

”The Governor looked upon the heart, didn't he? He felt for the man.

Would it not be better for all to look that way? The worth of life depends upon those we help, lift, and make, not in those we destroy. I like the old Governor, I do, and I am sorry that there are not many more like him. That seems like a Luke story, father. Read a story from Luke.”

Josiah read a story from Luke.

There followed a long prayer, as usual. Then the children kissed their mother and Jenny and crept up to their chamber. The nine-o'clock bell had rung, and the streets were still. The watchman with his lantern went by, saying, ”Nine o'clock, and all is well!” None of the family heard him say, ”Ten o'clock, and all is well!” They were in slumberland after their hard, homely toil, and some of them may have been dreaming of the good old Governor, who followed literally the words of the Master who taught on the Mount of Beat.i.tudes.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE TREASURE-FINDER.

LITTLE Benjamin once had the boy fever to go to sea. This fever was a kind of nervous epidemic among the boys of the time, a disease of the imagination as it were. Many boys had it in Boston; they disappeared, and the town crier called out something like this:

”Hear ye!

Hear ye!

Boy lost--lost--lost!

Who returns him will be rewarded.”

He rang the bell as he cried. The crier's was the first bell that was rung in Boston.

But why did boys have this peculiar fever in Boston and other New England towns at this time? It was largely owing to the stories that were told them. Few things affect the imagination of a boy like a story.

De Foe's Robinson Crusoe was the live story of the times. Sindbad the sailor was not unknown.

Old sailors used to meet by the Town Pump and spin wonderful ”yarns,” as story-telling of the sea was then described.

But there was one house in Boston that in itself was a story. It was made of brick, and rose over the town, at the North End, in the ”Faire Green Lane,” now decaying Chatham Street. In it lived Sir William Phips, or Phipps, the first provincial Governor under the charter which he himself had brought from England.