CHAPTER XIX.
LEAVES BOSTON.
These were fine old times, but they were English times; English ideas ruled Boston town. There was little liberty of opinion or of the press in those days. The Franklins belonged to a few families who hoped to find in the province freedom of thought. James Franklin was a testy man, but he breathed free air, and one day in his paper, the Courant, he published the following simple sentences, the like of which any one might print anywhere in the civilized world to-day: "If Almighty God will have Canada subdued without the assistance of those miserable Savages, in whom we have too much confidence, we shall be glad that there will be no sacrifices offered up to the Devil upon the occasion; God alone will have all the glory."
What had he done? He had protested against the use of Indians in the war then being waged against Canada.
He was arrested on a charge that the article in which this paragraph appeared, and some like articles, "contained reflections of a very high nature." He was sentenced to a month's imprisonment and forbidden to publish the paper. So James went to jail, and he left the management of the paper to Benjamin.
This incident gives us a remarkable view of the times. But Boston was only following the English law and custom.
The printing office was now carried on in Benjamin's name. Little Ben grew and flourished, until his popularity excited the envy of his brother. One day they quarreled, and James, almost in the spirit of Cain, struck his bright, enterprising apprentice. Benjamin had a proud heart. He would not stand a blow from James without a protest. What was he to do?
He resolved to leave the office of his brother James forever. He did so, and tried to secure work elsewhere. His brother's influence prevented him from doing this. His resentment against his brother grew more bitter, and blinded him to all besides. This was conduct unworthy of a young philosopher. In his resentment he does not seem to have regarded the feelings of his good father, or the heart of his mother that would ache and find relief in tears at night, nor even of Jenny, whom he loved. He took a sloop for New York, and bade good-by to no one. The sail dipped down the harbor, and the three hills of Boston faded from his view.
He was now on the ocean, and out in the world alone. We are sorry to say that he faced life with such a deep resentment toward his brother in his heart. He afterward came to regard his going away in this manner as one of the mistakes of his life which he would wish to correct. His better heart came back again, true to his home.
He was not popular in Boston in his last days there. New influences had come into his life. He had loved argument and disputation, and there is a subtile manner of discussion called the "Socratic method," which he had found in Xenophon, in which one confuses an opponent by asking questions and never making direct assertions himself, but using the subjunctive mood. It is an art of entanglement. The boy had delighted in "twisting people all up," and making them contradict themselves after a perversion of the manner described by Xenophon in his Life of Socrates.
As religion and politics formed the principal subjects of these discussions, and he liked to take the unpopular view in order to throw his mental antagonist, he had fallen into disfavor, to which disesteem his brother's charges against him had added. These things made Jenny's heart ache, but she never ceased to believe in Ben.
Few boys ever left the city in provincial times with less promise of any great future, so far as public opinion is concerned. But, notwithstanding these errors of judgment, he still carried with him a purpose of being a benefactor, and his dream was to help the world. The star of this purpose ever shone before him in the deserts of his wanderings.
But how was he to succeed, after thus following his own personal feeling in matters like these? By correcting his own errors as soon as he saw them, and never repeating them again. This he did; he openly acknowledged his faults, and tried to make amends for them. He who confesses his errors, and seeks to retrieve them, has a heart and purpose that the public will love. But it is a higher and nobler life not to fall into such errors.
This was about the year 1723. A curious incident happened on the voyage to New York. Young Franklin had become a vegetarian—that is, he had been convinced that it was wrong to kill animals for food, and wrong to eat flesh of any kind.
The ship became becalmed, and the sailors betook themselves to fishing. Franklin loved to argue still, notwithstanding his unhappy experiences.
"Fishing is murder," said he. "Why should these inhabitants of the sea be deprived of their lives and opportunities of enjoyment? They have never done any one harm, and they live the lives for which Nature made them. They have the same right to liberty that they have to life."
This indicated a true heart. But when the steward began to cook the fish that the sailors had caught, the frying of them did have a savory smell.
Young Franklin now began to be tempted from theory by appetite. How could he get over his principles and share the meal with the sailors? The cook seized a large fish to prepare it for the frying-pan. As he cut off its head and opened him he found in him a little fish.
"So you eat fish," said Franklin, addressing the prize; "then why may I not eat you?" He did so, and from this time left off his vegetarian habits, which habits, like his aspiration to be a poet, did credit to his heart.
His argument in this case had no force. The fish had not a moral nature, and because an animal or reptile without such a nature should eat other animals or reptiles would furnish no reason why a being governed by laws outside of himself should do the same.
October found him in New York, a Dutch town of less than ten thousand inhabitants. He was about eighteen years of age. New York then had little in common with the city of to-day. Its streets were marked by gable ends and cobble stones. Franklin applied for work to a printer there, and the latter commended him to go to Philadelphia. He followed the advice, going by sea, friendless and forlorn, with only a few shillings in his pocket.
He helped row the boat across the Delaware. He offered the boatman his fare.
"No," said the boatman, "I ought to take nothing; you helped row."
Franklin had just one silver dollar and a shilling in copper coin. He insisted that the ferryman should take the coin. He said of this liberal sense of honor afterward that one is "sometimes more generous when he has little money than when he has plenty."
Philadelphia, the city of Penn, now rose before him, and he entered it a friendless lad, whom none knew and few could have noticed. Would any one then have dreamed that he would one day become the governor of the province?
Benjamin Franklin had now found the world indeed, and his brother James had lost the greatest apprentice that the world ever had. Both were blind. Each had needed that early training that develops the spiritual powers, and makes it a delight to say "No" to all the lower passions of human nature.
Josiah and Abiah Franklin had had great hopes of little Ben. The boy had a large brain and a tender heart. From their point of view they had trained him well. They had sent him to the Old South Church and had made him the subject of their daily prayers. In fact, these good people had done their best to make him a "steady boy," according to their light. The education of the inner life was like a sealed book to them. But they were yet people upon whom a larger light was breaking. The poor old soap and candle maker went on with his business at the Blue Ball with a heavy heart.
"Gone, gone," said Jamie the Scotchman. "He'll find proverbs enough on his way of life. This is a hard world, but he has a heart to return to the right. I pity good Abiah Franklin, but we often have to trust where we can not see."