Part 22 (1/2)

This indicated a true heart. But when the steward began to cook the fish that the sailors had caught, the frying of them did have a savory smell.

Young Franklin now began to be tempted from theory by appet.i.te. How could he get over his principles and share the meal with the sailors?

The cook seized a large fish to prepare it for the frying-pan. As he cut off its head and opened him he found in him a little fish.

”So you eat fish,” said Franklin, addressing the prize; ”then why may I not eat _you_?” He did so, and from this time left off his vegetarian habits, which habits, like his aspiration to be a poet, did credit to his heart.

His argument in this case had no force. The fish had not a moral nature, and because an animal or reptile without such a nature should eat other animals or reptiles would furnish no reason why a being governed by laws outside of himself should do the same.

October found him in New York, a Dutch town of less than ten thousand inhabitants. He was about eighteen years of age. New York then had little in common with the city of to-day. Its streets were marked by gable ends and cobble stones. Franklin applied for work to a printer there, and the latter commended him to go to Philadelphia. He followed the advice, going by sea, friendless and forlorn, with only a few s.h.i.+llings in his pocket.

He helped row the boat across the Delaware. He offered the boatman his fare.

”No,” said the boatman, ”I ought to take nothing; you helped row.”

Franklin had just one silver dollar and a s.h.i.+lling in copper coin. He insisted that the ferryman should take the coin. He said of this liberal sense of honor afterward that one is ”sometimes more generous when he has little money than when he has plenty.”

Philadelphia, the city of Penn, now rose before him, and he entered it a friendless lad, whom none knew and few could have noticed. Would any one then have dreamed that he would one day become the governor of the province?

Benjamin Franklin had now found the world indeed, and his brother James had lost the greatest apprentice that the world ever had. Both were blind. Each had needed that early training that develops the spiritual powers, and makes it a delight to say ”No” to all the lower pa.s.sions of human nature.

Josiah and Abiah Franklin had had great hopes of little Ben. The boy had a large brain and a tender heart. From their point of view they had trained him well. They had sent him to the Old South Church and had made him the subject of their daily prayers. In fact, these good people had done their best to make him a ”steady boy,” according to their light.

The education of the inner life was like a sealed book to them. But they were yet people upon whom a larger light was breaking. The poor old soap and candle maker went on with his business at the Blue Ball with a heavy heart.

”Gone, gone,” said Jamie the Scotchman. ”He'll find proverbs enough on his way of life. This is a hard world, but he has a heart to return to the right. I pity good Abiah Franklin, but we often have to trust where we can not see.”

CHAPTER XX.

LAUGHED AT AGAIN.

FRANKLIN'S first day in Philadelphia is well known to the world. He has related it in Addisonian English, and it has been read almost as widely as the adventures of Robinson Crusoe or Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.

We must give a part of the narrative here in his own language, for a merry girl is about to laugh at the Boston boy as she sees him pa.s.s, and he will cause this lovely girl to laugh with him many times in his rising career and in different spirit from that on the occasion when she first beheld him, the awkward and comical-looking boy wandering he knew not where on the street.

Let us follow him through his own narrative until he meets the eyes of Deborah Read, a fair la.s.s of eighteen.

On his arrival at Philadelphia, he tells us, he was in his working dress; his best clothes were to come by sea. He was covered with dirt; his pockets were filled with s.h.i.+rts and stockings. He was unacquainted with a single soul in the place, and knew not where to seek for a lodging. Fatigued with walking, rowing, and having pa.s.sed the night without sleep, he was extremely hungry, and all his money consisted of a Dutch dollar and about a s.h.i.+lling's worth of coppers, which latter he gave to the boatman for his pa.s.sage.

He walked toward the top of the street, looking eagerly on both sides, till he came to Market Street, where he met with a child with a loaf of bread. Often he had made his dinner on dry bread. He inquired of the child where he had bought the bread, and went straight to the baker's shop which the latter pointed out to him. He asked for some biscuits, expecting to find such as they had in Boston; but they made, it seems, none of that sort in Philadelphia. He then asked for a threepenny loaf.

They made no loaves of that price. Finding himself ignorant of the prices as well as of the different kinds of bread, he desired the baker to let him have threepenny worth of bread of some kind or other. The baker gave him three large rolls. He was surprised at receiving so much; he took them, however, and having no room in his pockets, he walked on with a roll under each arm, eating the third. In this manner he went through Market Street to Fourth Street, and pa.s.sed the house of Mr.

Read, the father of his future wife. The girl was standing at the door, observed him, and thought with reason that he made a very singular and grotesque appearance, and laughed merrily. We repeat the many-times-told tale in nearly his own words.

So here we find our young adventurer laughed at again. We can fancy the young girl standing on her father's doorsteps on that mellow autumn day.

There comes up the street a lad with two rolls of bread under his arm, and eating a third roll, his pockets full of the simpler necessities of clothing, which must have made him look like a ragman; everything about him was queer and seemingly wrong. She may have seen that he was just from the boat, and a traveler, but when did ever a traveler look so entirely out of his senses as this one did?

Never mind, Ben Franklin. You will one day stand in Versailles in the velvet robes of state, and the French king will give you his portrait framed in four hundred and eight diamonds.