But the strong member of the Old South Church had no such ideas of religious economy as revealed his son's mathematical mind.
The Franklin family must have presented a lively appearance at church in old Dr. Joseph Sewell's day. They heard some sound preaching there, and Dr. Sewell lived as he preached. He was offered the presidency of Harvard College, but honors were as bubbles to him, and he refused it for a position of less money and fame, but of more direct spiritual influence, and better in accord with the modest views of his ability. He began to preach in the Old South Church when Ben was seven years of age; he preached a sermon there on his eightieth birthday.
These were fine old times in Boston town. Some linen spinners came over from Londonderry, in Ireland, and they established a spinning school. They also brought with them the potato, which soon became a great luxury.
Josiah Franklin probably pastured his cows on the Common, and little Ben may often have sat down under the old elm by the frog pond and looked over the Charles River marshes, which were then where the Public Garden now is.
But the delight of the boy's life was still Uncle Benjamin, the poet. The two read and roamed together. Now Ben had a poetic vein in him, a small one probably inherited from his grandfather Folger, and it began to be active at this time.
There were terrible stories of pirates in the air. They kindled the boy's lively imagination; they represented the large subject of retributive justice, and he resolved to devote his poetic sense to one of these alarming characters.
There was a dreadful pirate by the name of Edward Teach, but commonly called "Blackbeard." He was born in Bristol, England. He became the terror of the Atlantic coast, and had many adventures off the Carolinas. He was at length captured and executed.
One day little Ben came to his brother James with a paper.
"James, I have been writing something, and I have come to read it to you."
"What?"