"Because it is not an honourable business. You are not a poet, and can write nothing worthy of being printed."
"James approved of the pieces," said Benjamin, "and proposed that I should print and sell them."
"James is not a judge of poetry," replied his father. "It is wretched stuff, and I am ashamed that you are known as the author. Look here, let me show you wherein it is defective;" and here Mr. Franklin began to read it over aloud, and to criticise it. He was a man of sound sense, and competent to expose the faults of such a composition. He proceeded with his criticisms, without sparing the young author's feelings at all, until Benjamin himself began to be sorry that he had undertaken the enterprise.
"There, I want you should promise me," said his father, "that you will never deal in such wares again, and that you will stick to your business of setting up type."
"Perhaps I may improve by practice," said Benjamin, "so that I may yet be able to write something worthy of being read. You couldn't expect me to write very well at first."
"But you are not a poet," continued Mr. Franklin. "It is not in you, and, even if it was, I should not advise you to write it; for poets are generally beggars,—poor, shiftless members of society."
"That is news to me," responded Benjamin. "How does it happen, then, that some of their works are so popular?"
"Because a true poet can write something worthy of being read, while a mere verse-maker, like yourself, writes only doggerel, that is not worth the paper on which it is printed. Now I advise you to let verse-making alone, and attend closely to your business, both for your own sake and your brother's."
Mr. Franklin was rather severe upon Benjamin, although what he said of his verses was true. Still, it was a commendable effort in the boy to try to improve his mind. Some of the best poets who have lived wrote mere doggerel when they began. Many of our best prose-writers, too, were exceedingly faulty writers at first. It is a noble effort of a boy to try to put his thoughts into writing. If he does not succeed in the first instance, by patience, energy, and perseverance he may triumph at last. Benjamin might not have acted wisely in selling his verses about town, but his brother, so much older and more experienced than himself, should bear the censure of that, since it was done by his direction.
The decided opposition that Mr. Franklin showed to verse-making put a damper upon Benjamin's poetical aspirations. The air-castle that his youthful imagination had built, in consequence of the rapid sale of his literary wares, tumbled to ruin at once. He went back to the office and his work quite crest-fallen.