Part 37 (1/2)

”Sir?”

”What are _you_ shouting for?”

”For the Stamp Act, sir!”

”That is right, my boy.”

”No, for Franklin!”

”For Franklin? Why, I have seen him carrying a lot of printing paper through the streets in a wheelbarrow! May time be gracious to me, so that I may see him hanged! Boy, see here----”

But the banners were moving into the green grove, and the boy had gone after them.

Benjamin Franklin returned to Philadelphia the most popular man in the colonies, and was elected a delegate to the Continental Congress.

”Only Heaven can save us now,” said troubled Mr. Calamity. ”There's treason in the air!”

The old gentleman was not a bad man; he saw life on the side of shadow, and had become blind to the sunny side of life. He was one of those natures that are never able to come out of the past.

The people amid the rising prosperity ceased to believe in old Mr.

Calamity as a prophet. He felt this loss of faith in him. He a.s.sumed the character of the silent wise man at times. He would pa.s.s people whom he had warned of the coming doom, shaking his head, and then turning around would strike his cane heavily on the pavement, which would cause the one he had left behind to look back. He would then lift his cane as though it were the rod of a magician.

”Old Mr. Calamity is coming,” said a Philadelphia schoolboy to another, one new school day in autumn. ”See, he is watching Franklin, and is trying to avoid meeting him.”

Their teacher came along the street.

”Why, boys, are you watching the old gentleman?”

”He is trying to avoid meeting Mr. Franklin, sir.”

”Calamity comes to avoid Industry,” said the teacher, as he saw the two men. Franklin was the picture of thrift, and his very gait was full of purpose and energy. ”I speak in parable,” said the teacher, ”but that old gentleman is always in a state of alarm, and he seems to find satisfaction in predicting evil, and especially of Mr. Franklin. The time was when the young printer avoided him--he was startled, I fancy, whenever he heard the cane on the pavement; he must have felt the force of the suggestion that Calamity was after him. Now he has become prosperous, and the condition is changed. Calamity flees from him. See, my boys, the two men.”

They stopped on the street.

Mr. Calamity pa.s.sed them on the opposite side, and Mr. Franklin came after him, walking briskly. The latter stopped at the door of his office, but the old gentleman hurried on. When he reached the corner of the street he planted his cane down on the pavement and looked around.

He saw the popular printer standing before his office door on the street. The two looked at each other. The old man evidently felt uncomfortable. He turned the corner, out of sight, when an extraordinary movement appeared.

Mr. Calamity reached back his long, ruffled arm, and his cane, in view of the philosopher, the teacher, and the boys, and shook the cane mysteriously as though he were writing in the air. He may have had in mind some figure of the ancient prophets. Up and down went the cane, around and around, with curves of awful import. It looked to those on the street he had left as though the sharp angle of the house on the corner had suddenly struck out a living arm in silent warning.

The arm and cane disappeared. A head in a wide-rimmed hat looked around the angle as if to see the effect of the writing in the air. Then the arm and cane appeared again as before. It was like the last remnant of a cloud when the body has pa.s.sed.

The teacher saw the meaning of the movement.

”Boys,” said he, ”if you should ever be pursued by Mr. Calamity in any form, remember the arm and cane. See Franklin laugh! Industry in the end laughs at Calamity, and Diligence makes the men who 'stand before kings.' It is the law of life. Detraction is powerless before will and work, and as a rule whatever any one dreams that he may do, he will do.”

The boys had received an object lesson, and would long carry in their minds the picture of the mysterious arm and cane.

In a right intention one is master of the ideal of life. If circ.u.mstances favor, he becomes conscious that life is no longer master of him, but that he is the master of life. This sense of power and freedom is n.o.ble; in vain does the shadow of Calamity intrude upon it; the visions of youth become a part of creations of the world; the dream of the architect is a mansion now; of the scientist, a road, a railway over rivers and mountains; of the orator and poet, thoughts that live.