When Benjamin, at the age of sixteen, began to contribute to his brother's paper, he aimed at higher game even than the town pontiffs. He dared to lampoon Harvard College itself, the temple of learning where the clergy were formed, whose precincts he had hoped to tread, his father having dedicated this tenth son to the Church. He may have had his own father in mind when he wrote, in one of his early numbers, that every "peasant" who had the means proposed to send one of his children to this famous place; and as most of them consulted their purses rather than their children's capacities, the greater number of those who went thither were little better than blockheads and dunces. When he came to speak of the theological department of the college, he drew a pen caricature, having then no skill with the pencil: "The business of those who were employed in the temple of theology being laborious and painful, I wondered exceedingly to see so many go toward it; but while I was pondering this matter in my mind, I spied Pecunia behind a curtain, beckoning to them with her hand." He draws another when he says that the only remarkable thing he saw in this temple was one Plagius hard at work copying an eloquent passage from Tillotson's works to embellish his own.
This saucy boy, who had his "Hudibras" at his tongue's end, carried the satirical spirit with him to church on Sundays, and tried some of the brethren whom he saw there by the Hudibrastic standard. Even after his brother James had been in prison for his editorial conduct, Benjamin, who had been left in charge of the paper, drew with his subeditorial pen a caricature of a "Religious Knave, of all Knaves the Worst:" A most strict Sabbatarian, an exact observer not of the day only, but of the evening before and the evening after it; at church conspicuously devout and attentive, even ridiculously so, with his distorted countenance and awkward gesticulation. But try and nail him to a bargain! He will dissemble and lie, snuffle and whiffle, overreach and defraud, cut down a laborer's wages, and keep the bargain in the letter while violating its spirit. "Don't tell me," he cries; "a bargain is a bargain. You should have looked to that before. I can't help it now." Such was the religious knave invented by the author of "Hudibras," and borrowed by this Boston apprentice, who had, in all probability, never seen a character that could have fairly suggested the burlesque.
The authorities rose upon these two audacious brothers, and indicated how much need there was of such a sheet in Boston by ordering James Franklin to print it no more. They contrived to carry it on a while in Benjamin's name; but that sagacious youth was not long in discovering that the Mathers and their adherents were too strong for him, and he took an early opportunity of removing to a place established on the principle of doing without pontiffs. But during his long, illustrious career in Philadelphia as editor and public man he constantly acted in the spirit of one of the last passages he wrote before leaving Boston: "Pieces of pleasantry and mirth have a secret charm in them to allay the heats and tumults of our spirits, and to make a man forget his restless resentments. They have a strange power in them to hush disorders of the soul and reduce us to a serene and placid state of mind." He was the father of our humorous literature. If, at the present moment, America is contributing more to the innocent hilarity of mankind than other nations, it is greatly due to the happy influence of this benign and liberal humorist upon the national character. "Poor Richard," be it observed, was the great comic almanac of the country for twenty-five years, and it was Franklin who infused the element of burlesque into American journalism. He could not advertise a stolen prayer-book without inserting a joke to give the advertisement wings: "The person who took it is desired to open it and read the Eighth Commandment, and afterward return it into the same pew again; upon which no further notice will be taken."
This propensity was the more precious because it was his destiny to take a leading part in many controversies which would have become bitter beyond endurance but for "the strange power" of his "pieces of pleasantry and mirth" to "hush disorders of the soul." He employed both pen and pencil in bringing his excellent sense to bear upon the public mind. What but Franklin's inexhaustible tact and good-humor could have kept the peace in Pennsylvania between the non-combatant Quakers and the militant Christians during the long period when the province was threatened from the sea by hostile fleets and on land by savage Indians? Besides rousing the combatant citizens to action, he made them willing to fight for men who would not fight for themselves, and brought over to his side a large number of the younger and more pliant Quakers. Even in that early time (1747), while bears still swam the Delaware, he contrived to get a picture drawn and engraved to enforce the lessons of his first pamphlet, calling on the Pennsylvanians to prepare for defense. He may have engraved it himself, for he had a dexterous hand, and had long before made little pictures out of type-metal to accompany advertisements. Hercules sits upon a cloud, with one hand resting upon his club. Three horses vainly strive to draw a heavy wagon from the mire. The wagoner kneels, lifts his hands, and implores the aid of Hercules's mighty arm. In the background are trees and houses, and under the picture are Latin words signifying, "Not by offerings nor by womanish prayers is the help of gods obtained." In the text, too, when he essays the difficult task of reconciling the combatants to fighting for the non-combatants, he becomes pictorial, though he does not use the graver. "What!" he cries, "not defend your wives, your helpless children, your aged parents, because the Quakers have conscientious scruples about fighting!" Then he adds the burlesque picture: "Till of late I could scarce believe the story of him who refused to pump in a sinking ship because one on board whom he hated would be saved by it as well as himself."
JOIN or DIE
A Common Newspaper Heading in 1776; devised by Franklin in May, 1754, at the Beginning of the French War.
At the beginning of the contest which in Europe was the Seven Years' War, but in America a ten years' war, Franklin's pen and pencil were both employed in urging a cordial union of the colonies against the foe. His device of a snake severed into as many pieces as there were colonies, with the motto, "Join or Die," survived the occasion that called it forth, and became a common newspaper and handbill heading in 1776. It was he, also, as tradition reports, who exhibited to the unbelieving farmers of Pennsylvania the effect of gypsum, by writing with that fertilizer in large letters upon a field the words "This has been plastered." The brilliant green of the grass which had been stimulated by the plaster soon made the words legible to the passer-by. During his first residence in London as the representative of Pennsylvania he became intimately acquainted with the great artist from whom excellence in the humorous art of England dates—William Hogarth. The last letter that the dying Hogarth received was from Benjamin Franklin. "Receiving an agreeable letter," says Nichols, "from the American, Dr. Franklin, he drew up a rough draught of an answer to it." Three hours after, Hogarth was no more.
A few of Franklin's devices for the coins and paper money of the young republic have been preserved. He wished that every coin and every note should say something wise or cheerful to their endless succession of possessors and scrutinizers. Collectors show the Franklin cent of 1787, with its circle of thirteen links and its central words, "We are one" and outside of these, "United States." On the other side of the coin there is a noonday sun blazing down upon a dial, with the motto, "Mind your Business." He made the date say something more to the reader than the number of the year, by appending to it the word "Fugio" (I fly). Another cent has a central sun circled by thirteen stars and the words "Nova Constellatio." He suggested "Pay as you go" for a coin motto. Some of his designs for the Continental paper money were ingenious and effective. Upon one dingy little note, issued during the storm and stress of the Revolution, we see a roughly executed picture of a shower of rain falling upon a newly settled country, with a word of good cheer under it, "Serenabit" (It will clear). Upon another there is a picture of a beaver gnawing a huge oak, and the word "Perseverando." On another there is a crown resting upon a pedestal, and the words "Si recte facias" (If you do uprightly). There is one which represents a hawk and stork fighting, with the motto "Exitus in dubio est" (The event is in doubt); and another which shows a hand plucking branches from a tea-plant, with the motto "Sustain or Abstain."