"The world! The owls have not yet ceased to hoot in woods around Philadelphia, and he has a small world that is bounded by the hoot of an owl."
"My father used to say that he who is diligent in his business shall stand before kings," quoting the Scripture.
"Well, you may be as honest and as diligent in your business as you will, it is a small chance that you will ever have of standing before kings. What are you standing before now?—a wheelbarrow. That is as far as you have got. A promising young man it must be to stand before a wheelbarrow and talk about standing before kings!"
"But, sir, I ought not to be standing before a wheelbarrow. I ought to be going on and coining time."
"Well, go right along; you are on the way to Poverty Corner, and you will not need any guide post to find it; take up the handles of the wheelbarrow and go right on. Maybe the king will send a coach for you some day."
He did—more than one king did.
Franklin took the handles of the wheelbarrow, wondering which was the true prophet, his father's Scripture or cautious old Mr. Calamity. As he went on he heard the tap, tap, tap of the cane behind him, and a low laugh at times and the word "kings."
He came to the office, and taking a huge bundle of printing paper on his shoulder went in. The cane passed, tap, tap, tapping. It had an ominous sound. But after the tap, tap, tap of the cane had gone, Franklin could still hear his old father's words in his spiritual memory, and he believed that they were true.
We must continue the story of Mr. Calamity, so as to picture events from a Tory point of view. The incident of the wheelbarrow would long cause him to reproach the name of Franklin.
The Pennsylvania Gazette not only grew and became a source of large revenue, so that Franklin had no more need to wheel to his office printing paper with his own hands, but it crowned with honor the work of which he was never ashamed. The printing of the paper money of the province added to his name, the success that multiplies success began its rounds with the years, and middle life found him a rich man, and his late return from England a man with the lever of power that molds opinion.