"Where, uncle?"

"To life--and graduate there as well as any of them."

"I would like to study Latin."

"Well, what is to hinder you, Ben? One only needs to learn the alphabet to learn all that can be known through books. You know _that_ now."

"I would like to learn French. Other boys can; I can not."

"The time will come when you can. The gates open before a purpose. You can study French later in life, and, it may be, make as good use of French as any of them."

"Why can not I do as other boys?"

"You can, Ben. You can so live that the Boston Latin School to which you can not go now will honor you some day."

"I would be sorry to see another boy feel as I have felt when I have seen the boys going to that school with happy faces to learn the things that I want to know. But father has done the best that he can for me."

"Yes, Ben, he has, and you only need to do the best that you can for yourself to graduate at the head of all in the school of life. I know how to feel for you, Ben. I have stood in shoes like yours many times.

When you have done as I have told you, then think of me. The world may soon forget me. I want you so to live that it will not as soon forget you."

The cloud pa.s.sed from the boy's face. Hope came to him, and he was merry again. He locked Jenny in his arms, whirled her around, and said:

"I am glad to hear the bells ring for other boys, even if I must go to my trade."

"I like the spirit of what you say," said Uncle Benjamin. "You have the blood of Peter Folger and of your Great-uncle Tom in your veins. Peter gave his heart to the needs of the Indians, and to toleration; your Great-uncle Tom started the subscription for the bells of Nottingham, and became a magistrate, and a just one. You may not be able to answer the bell of the Latin School, but if you are only true to the best that is in you, little Ben, you may make bells ring for joy. I can hear them now in my mind's ear. Don't laugh at your old uncle; you can do it, little Ben--can't he Jenny?"

"He just can--I can help him. Ben can do anything--he may make the Latin School bell ring for others yet--like Uncle Tom. He is the boy to do it, and I am the sister to help him to do it--ain't I, Uncle Benjamin?"

CHAPTER XVIII.

LITTLE BEN'S ADVENTURES AS A POET.

THAT was a charmed life that little Ben Franklin led in the early days of his apprenticeship. He always thought of provincial Boston as his "beloved city." When he grew old, the Boston of his boyhood was to him a delightful dream.

He and his father were on excellent terms with each other. His father, though a very grave, pious man, whose delight was to go to the Old South Church with his large family, allowed little Ben to crack his jokes on him.

He was accustomed to say long graces at meals, at which the food was not overmuch, and the hungry children many. One day, after he had salted down a large quant.i.ty of meat in a barrel, he was surprised to hear Ben ask:

"Father, why don't you say grace over it now?"

"What do you mean, Ben?"

"Wouldn't it be saving of time to say grace now over the whole barrel of provisions, and then you could omit it at meals?"

But the strong member of the Old South Church had no such ideas of religious economy as revealed his son's mathematical mind.

The Franklin family must have presented a lively appearance at church in old Dr. Joseph Sewell's day. They heard some sound preaching there, and Dr. Sewell lived as he preached. He was offered the presidency of Harvard College, but honors were as bubbles to him, and he refused it for a position of less money and fame, but of more direct spiritual influence, and better in accord with the modest views of his ability. He began to preach in the Old South Church when Ben was seven years of age; he preached a sermon there on his eightieth birthday.

These were fine old times in Boston town. Some linen spinners came over from Londonderry, in Ireland, and they established a spinning school.

They also brought with them the potato, which soon became a great luxury.

Josiah Franklin probably pastured his cows on the Common, and little Ben may often have sat down under the old elm by the frog pond and looked over the Charles River marshes, which were then where the Public Garden now is.

But the delight of the boy's life was still Uncle Benjamin, the poet.

The two read and roamed together. Now Ben had a poetic vein in him, a small one probably inherited from his grandfather Folger, and it began to be active at this time.

There were terrible stories of pirates in the air. They kindled the boy's lively imagination; they represented the large subject of retributive justice, and he resolved to devote his poetic sense to one of these alarming characters.

There was a dreadful pirate by the name of Edward Teach, but commonly called "Blackbeard." He was born in Bristol, England. He became the terror of the Atlantic coast, and had many adventures off the Carolinas.

He was at length captured and executed.

One day little Ben came to his brother James with a paper.

"James, I have been writing something, and I have come to read it to you."

"What?"

"Poetry."

"Like Uncle Ben's?"

"No; it is on Blackbeard."

James thought that a very interesting subject, and prepared to listen to his poet brother.

Little Ben unfolded the paper and began to read his lines, which were indeed heroic.

"Come, all you jolly sailors, You all so stout and brave!"

"Good!" said James. "That starts off fine."

Ben continued:

"Come, hearken and I'll tell you What happened on the wave."

"Better yet--I like that. Why, Uncle Ben could not excel that. What next?"

"Oh, 'tis of that b.l.o.o.d.y Blackbeard I'm going now to tell, And as how, by gallant Maynard, He soon was sent to _h.e.l.l_, With a down, down, down, derry down!"

James lifted his hands at this refrain after the old English ballad style.

"Ben, I'll tell you what we'll do. I'll print the verses for you, and you shall sell them on the street."

The poet Arion at his coronation at Corinth could not have felt prouder than little Ben at that hour. He would be both a poet and bookseller, and his brother would be his publisher.