Part 47 (1/2)
”Here are the thoughts of a man who told me when I was a poor boy in Boston town that I had a chance in the world.
”He told me not to be laughed down.
”He told me that diligence was power.
”He told me that I would be helped in helping others.
”He told me that justice was the need of mankind.
”He told me that to have influence with men I must overcome my conscious defects.
”He was poor, he was empty-handed, but Heaven gave to him the true vision of life. He committed that vision to me, and what he wished to be I have struggled to fulfill. These pamphlets are the picture of his mind, and that picture deserves to be hung in diamonds, and is more to me than the portrait of the king. Blessed be the memory of that old man, who taught my young life virtue, and gave it hope!
”Jenny, I have tried to live well.”
”You have been 'Silence Dogood,' the idea that Uncle Benjamin printed on your mind.”
”Jenny, I have heard the church bells--Uncle Tom's bells--of Nottingham ring. I found Uncle Benjamin's letters there--those that he wrote to his old friends from America. He lovingly described you and me. What days those were! Father was true to his home when he invited Uncle Benjamin to America. You have been true to your home, and my heart has been, through your hands. Jenny, I have given my house in Boston to you.”
The old woman wept.
”Jenny, you have loved, and your heart has been better than mine. Let me call the servants. These are hours when the soul is full--my soul is full. I ask for nothing more.”
CHAPTER XLII.
FOR THE LAST TIME.
SILENCE Dogood is an old man now--a very old man. He looks back on the spring and summer and autumn of life--it is now the time of the snow.
But there are sunny days in winter, and they came to him, though on the trees hang the snow, and the nights are long and painful.
What has Silence Dogood done in his eighty years now ending in calm, in dreams and silence? Let us look back over the past with him now. What a review it is!
He had founded literary and scientific clubs in his early life that had made not idlers, but men. He had founded the first subscription library in America. It had multiplied, and in its many branches had become a national influence.
He made a stove that was a family luxury, and showed how it might be enjoyed without a smoky chimney.
He had shown that lightning was electricity and could be controlled, and had disarmed the thunder cloud by a simple rod.
He had founded the High School in Pennsylvania.
He had encouraged the raising of silk.
He had helped found the Philadelphia Hospital, and had founded the American Philosophical Society.
He had promoted the scheme for uniting the colonies.