Young Ben did not like his occupation in the candle shop. He worked with his hands while his heart was absent, and his imagination was even farther away.
He had a brother John who had helped his father when a boy, who married and moved to Rhode Island to follow there his father's trade as a candle and soap maker. John's removal doubled the usefulness of little Ben among the candle molds and soap kettles. He saw how this kind of work would increase as he grew older; he longed for a different occupation, something that would satisfy his mental faculties and give him intellectual opportunities, and his dreams went sailing to the seas and lands where his brother Josiah had been. There were palms in his fancy, gayly plumed birds, tropical waters, and a free life under vertical suns—India, the Spanish Main, the ports of the Mediterranean. He talked so much of going to sea that his father saw that his shop was not the place for this large-brained boy with an inventive faculty.
"Ben," said Josiah Franklin one day, "this is no place for you—you are not balanced like other boys; your head is canted the other way. You'll be running off to sea some day, just as Josiah did. Come, let us go out into the town, and I will try to find another place for you. You will have to become an apprentice boy."
"Anything, father, but this dull work. I seem here to be giving all my time to nothing. Soap and candles are good and useful things, but people can make them who can do nothing else. I want a place that will give me a chance to work with my head. What is my head for?"
"I don't know, Ben; it will take time to answer that. You do seem to have good faculties, if you are my son. I would be glad to have you do the very best that you are capable of doing, and Heaven knows that I would give you an education if I were able. Come, let us go."
They went out into the streets of Boston town. The place then contained something more than two thousand houses, most of them built of timber and covered with cedar shingles; a few of them were stately edifices of brick and tiles. It had seven churches, and they were near the sign of the Blue Ball: King's Chapel, Brattle Street, the Old Quaker, the New North, the New South, the New Brick, and Christ Church. There was a free writing school on Cornhill, a school at the South End, and another writing school on Love Lane. Ben Franklin could not enter these simple school doors for the want of means. To gain the Franklin Medal, provided by legacy of Benjamin Franklin, is now the high ambition of every Boston Latin schoolboy. There were fortifications on Fort Hill and a powder house on the Common. There were inns, taverns, and ordinaries everywhere. Boston was a town of inns with queer names; Long Wharf was the seaway to the ships. Chatham Street now was then a fair green lane; Salem Street was a place of property people or people of "quality."
In King's Chapel was a state pew for the royal Governors. On the pulpit stood an hourglass in a frame of brass. The pillars were hung with escutcheons of the king.
Ben may have passed the old Latin School which at first was established at a place just east of King's Chapel. If so, he must have wished to be entered there as a pupil again. The school has distributed his medals now for several generations. He may have passed the old inns like the Blue Anchor Tavern, or the Royal Exchange, or the fire of 1711 may have wiped out some of these old historic buildings, and new ones to take their places may have been rising or have been but recently completed. The old Corner Bookstore was there, for it was built directly after the fire of 1711. It is the oldest brick building now standing in the city, and one of the few on which little Ben's eyes could have rested. A new town arose after the fire.
Josiah Franklin and little Ben visited the workshops of carpenters, turners, glaziers, and others, but, although they had a good time together in the study, the kind father could not find a place that suited his son. Ben did not like to be apprenticed to any of the tradesmen that he met.
He had a brother James, of a bright mind but of no very amiable disposition, who was a printer. He had been to London to improve his trade, and on his return he became the one printer in the town.