Part 39 (1/2)
”Well, help me, then.”
She lifted him, and they went back slowly to the street.
The city was deserted. The people were out to the hill. There was a crackling of dry boards in the bonfire, and the flame grew redder and redder, higher and higher.
They came to the State House. The old man looked up. The face of the house was bare; the king's arms were gone.
He sank down on the step of an empty house and began to tremble. He took out his silver snuffbox and held it shaking.
”For Queen Charlotte's sake, daughter,” he said.
She touched the box, to please him.
”Gone,” he said; ”the king's arms are gone, and I have no wish to survive them. I feel the chill coming on--'tis the last time. Take the silver box, daughter; for my sake hide it, and always be true to the king's arms upon it. As for me, I shall never see the morning!”
He lay there in the moonlight, his eyes fixed on the State House where the king's arms had been.
The people came shouting back, bearing torches that were going out.
Houses were being illuminated.
He ceased to tremble. They sent for a medical man and for his near kin.
These people were among the mult.i.tude. They came late and found him lying in the moonlight white and cold.
The bells are ringing. Independence is declared. The king's rule in the province is gone forever. Benjamin Franklin's name commands the respect of lovers of liberty throughout the world. He is fulfilling the vision of Uncle Benjamin, the poet. He has added virtue to virtue, intelligence to intelligence, benevolence to benevolence, faith to faith. So the ladder of success ascends. Like his great-uncle Tom, his influence has caused the bells to ring; it will do so again.
Franklin heard of his great popularity in America while in England.
”Now I will call for the pamphlets,” he said. He again walked alone in his room. He faced the future. ”Not yet, not yet,” he added, referring to the pamphlets. ”The struggle for liberty has only begun. I will order the pamphlets when the colonies are free. The hopes in them will then be fulfilled, and not until then.”
CHAPTER x.x.xV.
JENNY AGAIN.
FRANKLIN was suddenly recalled to America.
He stood at Samuel Franklin's door.
Samuel Franklin was an old man now.
”I have come to Boston once more,” said Benjamin Franklin. ”I would go to my parents' graves and the grave of Uncle Ben. But they are in the enemy's camp now. Samuel, I found your father's pamphlets in London.”
”Is it possible? Where are they now?”
”I will return them to you when the colonies shall be free. The reading of them shall be a holiday in our old lives.”
”I may never live to see that day. Benjamin, I am an old man. I want that you should will those pamphlets to my family.”