"The rulers in the country, I do own them in the Lord; And such as are for government, with them I do accord. "But that which I intend hereby, "There's work enough to do besides, These liberal and just sentiments, expressed in the homely manner of the time, were years in advance of public opinion, though Peter assures us that "hundreds" of the people of Massachusetts were of the same mind as himself. Dr. Franklin was proud to reckon among his progenitors a man capable of thus rebuking his generation, and he quoted some of Peter Folger's roughest verses, with approbation. A tallow-chandler of thirty-four, with six young children, would have been an ill match for a young lady of twenty-two, the daughter of an honored scholar, if that tallow-chandler had not been a man to make it worth a woman's while to undergo, for his sake, unusual care and toil. Josiah Franklin was handsome, agreeable, accomplished, and wise. He was of medium stature, well formed, very strong, agile, and expert. His "limbs were made in England." He could draw prettily, had some skill in playing the violin, and his voice in singing was sonorous and pleasing. At the close of the day, when his labor was done, he would take his violin and accompany himself while he sang to his family the homely songs and hymns of his native land. The melody of his voice and violin sounded pleasantly through all the long life of his son, who recalled those evening scenes at home to the last of his days. He The whole of this poem, numbering more than a hundred stanzas, is printed in "Duyckinck's Cyclopedia of American Literature," i. 58. had an active, inquiring, genial mind, loved to see intelligent friends. at his table, and took great pleasure in conversation. Known to be a prudent, sincere, and friendly man, his advice was much sought by his neighbors, as well as by leading men concerned in the affairs of the town and the church. He was a genuine Franklin, blithe, prudent, and steadfast. So Abiah Folger took him and her share of the responsibilities of the Blue Ball. The daughter of Peter Folger, we may imagine, would be attracted rather than deterred, by the prospect of honorable labor. She proved a helpmeet to her husband, a mother to his children, and lent, I doubt not, a dextrous female hand in the shop on "melting days." Ten children were the fruit of their union: John, born in December, 1690; Peter, born November 22, 1692; Mary, born September 22, 1694; James, born February 4, 1697; Sarah, born July 9, 1699; Ebenezer, born September 20, 1701, who died in infancy; Thomas, born December 7, 1703; BENJAMIN, born January 6 (old style), 1706; Lydia, born August 3, 1706; Jane, born March 27, 1712, the pet and beauty of the family, Benjamin's favorite sister, his correspondent for sixty years." * It is probable that Benjamin Franklin derived from his mother the fashion of his body and the cast of his countenance. There are lineal descendants of Peter Folger who strikingly resemble Franklin in these particulars; one of whom, a banker of New Orleans, looks like a portrait of Dr. Franklin stepped out of its frame. But there the resemblance ends; for that poor rich old man, unmindful of his noble ancestry, is a bigot of slavery, having established a newspaper in 1862 solely to defend it. 1706, the year of Benjamin Franklin's birth, was the fourth of the reign of Queen Anne, and the year of Marlborough's victory at Ramillies. Pope was then a sickly dwarf, four feet high and nineteen years of age, writing, at his father's cottage in Windsor Forest, the Pastorals which, in 1709, gave him his first celebrity. Voltaire was a boy of ten, in his native village near Paris. Bolingbroke was a rising young member of the House of Commons, noted, like Fox at a later day, for his dissipation and his oratory. Addison, aged thirty-four, had written his Italian travels, but not the "Spectator," and was a thriving politician. Newton, at sixty-four, "Savage's Genealogical Dictionary of New England,” li. 200. his great work all done, was master of the Mint; had been knighted the year before, and elected President of the Royal Society in 1703. The grandfather of Goethe had just ceased to be a Frankfort tailor, and become a Frankfort innkeeper. Louis XIV. was King of France, and the first King of Prussia was reigning. The father of George Washington was a Virginia boy of ten; the father of John Adams was just entering Harvard College; and the father of Thomas Jefferson was not yet born. CHAPTER III. UNCLE BENJAMIN AND HIS ACROSTICS. FRANKLIN was born on a Sunday. The family lived then in Milk Street, opposite the Old South Church, within twenty yards of the church door. So the thankful father carried his new-born son across the street the same day, and had him baptized by the pastor, Dr. Willard; perhaps, even then, dedicating the tithe of his sons to the service of the Church. He named him Benjamin, in honor of his brother over the sea, the dyer of Leicester Fields. The record of his birth in the town register, and that of his baptism on the books of the Old South Church, are still shown. Soon after the birth of Benjamin, his father removed to a house at the corner of Hanover and Union Streets, where he lived the rest of his life. It was a small, but decent and comfortable, dwelling of wood. It is an advantage to a child to be reared in a numerous family. There is less danger of his being spoiled. There are more to love him, and he has more to love. He learns early to consider himself as only one person among many, and he is constantly reminded that others, as well as himself, have feelings, desires, and rights. Benjamin Franklin could recollect seeing twelve brothers and sisters at his father's table, all of whom grew to maturity and became parents. Both he and his sister Jane bore testimony to the happiness of their early home. "It was, indeed, a lowly dwelling," wrote she, "we were brought up in, but we were fed plentifully, made comfortable with fire and clothing, had seldom any contention among us; but all was harmony, especially between the heads, and they were universally respected."* Benjamin tells us, that his father, full as his table was, liked to have in the circle of young faces a sensible friend, with whom he could converse on some ingenious or useful topic, which might tend to improve the minds of his children. Neither father nor mother, he adds, ever had any sickness until many years after all their children were settled in life. In many passages in his letters he testifies to the cheerfulness and freedom that prevailed in the home of his childhood. Indeed, most men who have been noted for a disposition to see things in a favorable light, a turn of mind which Hume says it is more happy to possess than to be born to an estate of ten thousand a year, were the offspring of parents who were happy in one another, and who, therefore, received their children with welcome, and reared them with cheery fondness. Such men are more likely than others to have the gift of life in its completeness; and all unimpaired life is joyous. While Josiah Franklin had been prospering in Boston, these twenty-five years, his brother Benjamin had been enduring heavy sorrows and sore misfortunes in London. He had had ten children, but all of them had died but one son, Samuel, and he was leaving him for the land of promise, New England. His wife, too, died, and he had not prospered in business. But he kept a stout and cheerful heart through all; finding solace, like Cicero and Livy, in such literature as was within his grasp. He was a great collector of pamphlets, which he preserved in bound volumes, and took down in short-hand the sermons of his favorite preachers, which he preserved in the same manner. He was much addicted to singing the events of his time and family in rhyme, of about the quality of Peter Folger s "Looking-Glass." A man he was of many homely gifts and graces, abounding in love for his relatives and friends; but wanting in those traits which enable a dissenter, in troublous times, to avoid the consequences of holding unpopular opinions. He was too much of a politician for his own good, thought his great namesake. Bereaved thus of wife and children, the lonely old man heard, with great satisfaction, that there was a little Benjamin Franklin, "Letters to Benjamin Franklin from his Family and Friends," p. 160. on the other side of the ocean, so named after himself. He took great interest in the boy, and was one of his first instructors. Young Benjamin, as we shall see, derived only a very insignificant part of his education from schools. He was educated by his pure and happy Home, by Boston, by the events of his time, by his father's few books, and, especially in his earliest years, by this good old uncle. We catch our first glimpses of the boy in the rude poetry of Uncle Benjamin. There were frequent movements of troops, arrivals of armed fleets, and erection of defensive works, at Boston during the childhood of Franklin; England and France being at war, and Canada a French province. Benjamin, it seems, took the interest in such proceedings which boys always do, and this being duly reported to Uncle Benjamin, caused him to indite a few lines for his nephew's warning, which he inclosed in his next letter to America. Benjamin was four years and a half old when his father read the lines, "Sent to him," so Uncle Benjamin wrote, "upon a report of his inclination to martial affairs": "Believe me, Ben, it is a dangerous trade, The sword has many marred as well as made; rise Makes many poor, few rich, and fewer wise; Fair cities, rich to-day in plenty flow, War fills with want to-morrow, and with woe. Ruined estates, the nurse of vice, broke limbs and scars, A very compact epitome of the evils of war. Dr. Franklin himself, who inherited the family propensity for rhyming, and the family inability to rhyme well, could hardly have done it better. Only eight days after writing these lines, Uncle Benjamin, who probably sent something, in prose or verse, to his little nephew by every ship, wrote an acrostic on his name, which consisted of the good advice which uncles of that age were accustomed to give their nephews: |