Both of them married, and became parents long before his death. A few of his descendants are still living, though none, I think, bear the name of Franklin. Such is the material basis of facts and of dates. To understand the man, look at the most important scenes in his public life. I. A stout, hardy-looking boy, with a great head, twelve or fourteen years old, clad in knee breeches, with buckles in his shoes, is selling ballads in the streets of Boston, broadsides printed on a single sheet, containing what were called 66 "" varses in those times. One is "The Lighthouse Tragedy," giving an account of the shipwreck of Captain Worthylake and his two daughters, and the other, "The Capture of Blackbeard the Pirate." He wrote the "varses" himself, and printed them also. "Wretched stuff," he says, they were: no doubt of it. From eight to nine he has been in the grammar school, but less than a year; then in another public school for reading and writing for less than another year—a short time, truly; but he made rapid progress, yet "failed entirely in arithmetic." In school he studied hard. Out-of-doors he was a wild boy," a leader among the boys," and sometimes "led them into scrapes." After the age of ten he never saw the inside of a school-house as a pupil. Harvard College was near at home, and the Boston Latin School close by, its little bell tinkling to him in his father's shop; but poverty shut the door in his face. Yet he would learn. He might be born poor, he could not be kept ignorant. His birth to genius more than made up for want of academic breeding. He had educational helps at home. His father, a man of middle stature, well set, and very strong, was not only handy with tools, but " could draw prettily.” He played on the violin, and sang withal. Rather an austere Calvinist, a man of "sound understanding." Careless about food at table, he talked of what was "good, just, and prudent in the conduct of life," and not of the baked beans, the corned beef, or the rye and Indian bread. The father had a few books: Plutarch's "Lives," "Essays to do Good," by Cotton Mather, and besides, volumes of theological controversy and of New England divinity. Benjamin added some books of his own: Bunyan, Burton's Historical Collection; in all forty little volumes. He was fond of reading, and early took to writing poetry. Two children were born after him, making the family of the patriarchal number of seventeen. The father and mother were never sick. They died of old age, as we ought; he at eighty-nine, she at eighty-five. The apple mellowed or shriveled up, and then fell off. 5 There was an uncle Benjamin, like the nephew in many things, who lived the other side of the water for a long time, and subsequently came here. Now and then he shot a letter to the hopeful Benjamin this side the sea, poetical sometimes, whereof some fragments still remain; one addressed to him when he was four years old, the other when he was seventeen; one warning him against military propensities, which the baby in long clothes was thought to have displayed, the other encouraging the poetic aspiration. In fact, the uncle Benjamin, like the nephew, had an inclination for "varses," and the specimens of his which are extant are not so bad as some 66 varses "that have been written since his time. When the nephew was seven years old, the uncle, hearing of his poetic fervor, wrote ""Tis time for me to throw aside my pen When hanging sleeves read, write, and rhyme like men. Benjamin had glimpses of academic culture, for the father wished to make him a minister, thus consecrating "the tithe of his sons." But poverty forbade. The boy must work. So, when he was ten years old, the tallow-chandler tried him with the dips and molds of his own shop at the sign of the Blue Ball, then with the cutlery of his cousin Samuel, "bred to that trade in London; " but neither business suited him. These experiments continued for two years. Then, at the age of twelve, he was apprenticed to his brother James, a printer, afterwards an editor of the "New England Courant," the fourth newspaper published in America. James Franklin was a man not altogether respectable. During this apprenticeship Mr. Matthew Adams, a merchant, often lent Benjamin books, which he sat up the greater part of the night to read. This is the boy who is hawking his own ballads about the streets of the little colonial town of Boston. This is the first scene in his public life. There is nothing remarkable in it, nothing very promising. He makes no public appearance in Boston again. II. Next, in 1727, Franklin is a master printer on his own account, in his own hired house or shop in Market street, Philadelphia. A white board over the door tells the world that "Benjamin Franklin, Printer," may be found there. be found there. He has just printed his first job for five shillings. Since he left Massachusetts his life has been quite eventful. In Boston he wrote for his brother's newspaper, secretly at first, and after wards openly. He was nominally its editor, and perhaps also its poet. He quarreled with his brother James, ran away to Philadelphia, and has had a hard and tempestuous time of it. He did well as a journeyman printer in Philadelphia during his nineteenth and twentieth years. But the Governor took notice of him, swindled him, and sent him to England on a fool's errand. Wherever he fell he touched ground with his feet. In London he followed his craft nearly two years, making friends and foes. He was a wild young man, and led himself into dissipations and difficulties. He kept low company sometimes, not only of bad men, but of evil women also, spending a good deal of his earnings at plays and at public amusements. But even now, at twenty-one, he is industrious, temperate, frugal, forecasting, punctual, and that to an extraordinary degree. He works late and early, not disdaining to wheel home in a barrow the paper he bought for his trade. "He that would thrive, must rise at five:" he knew it before he was twenty. He had read many books, nay, studied them; the Spectator, the memorable things of Xenophon, Cocker's Arithmetic, books on navigation, which helped him to a little geometry, Locke on the Understanding, Shaftesbury, Collins, with the ecclesiastical replies to the free-thinkers; and in London he read many works not elsewhere accessible. He wrote, also, with simplicity, strength, and beauty, having taken great pains to acquire a neat and easy style. There is a diary of his, written when he was only twenty. He was now twenty-one. He soon became editor of the Pennsylvania Gazette, then bookseller, then almanac maker, then postmaster of Philadelphia, continuing always his printing trade. He had many irons in the fire, yet not one too many, for he was careful that none burned. The change from the boy of fourteen, selling ballads in Boston, to the youth of twenty-one, printing Quaker books, or to the mature man, printer and bookseller, is only a natural development. III. Now he is forty-six years old. In June, 1752, attended by his son twenty-one years old, he is in the fields near Philadelphia as a thunder-cloud comes up. He hoists a kite, covered with a silk handkerchief, an iron point at its head. He lets it fly towards the cloud. He holds by a short end of non-conducting silk the long string of hemp, a conductor of electricity. An iron key hangs at the jointing of the silk with the hemp. He touches the key. The lightning of heaven sparkles in his hand. The mystery is solved. The lightning of the heavens and the electricity of the chemist's shop are the same thing. The difference is only in quantity; in kind they are the same. An iron point will attract the lightning. A string of hemp or wire will conduct it to the ground. Thunder has lost its destructive terror. The greatest discovery of the century is made, the parent of many more not dreamed of then or yet. Truly this is a great picture. Between Franklin, the young printer of twenty-one, and Franklin, the philosopher, at forty-six, many events have taken place. The obscure printer of 1727 is now a famous man, inclining towards riches. He has had many social and civil honors. He has been justice of the peace (the title then meant something), afterwards alderman, clerk of the General Assembly, then member of the Assembly, then speaker, then postmaster of Philadelphia, then Postmaster-General of all the colonies. His Almanac has made him more widely |