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CHAPTER XV.
"HAVE I A CHANCE?"

Blessed is he who lends good books to young people. There was such a man in Boston town named Adams, one hundred and ninety years ago. His influence still lives, for he lent such books to young Benjamin Franklin.

The boy was slowly learning what noble minds had done in the world; how they became immortal by leaving their thought and works behind them. His constant question was, What have I the chance or the opportunity to do? What can I do that will benefit others?

It was a November evening. The days were short; the night came on at six o'clock. These were the dark days of the year.

"There is to be a candle-light meeting in the South Church, and I must go," said Uncle Benjamin. "It will be pretty cold there to-night, Ben; you had better get the foot stove."

The foot stove was a tin or brass box in a wooden frame with a handle. It was filled with live coals, and was carried to the church by a handle, as one would carry a dinner pail.

Little Benjamin brought the stove out of a cupboard to the hearth, took out of it a pan, which he filled with hard coals and replaced it.

"Ben," said Uncle Ben, "you had better go along with us and carry the stove."

"I will go, too," said Josiah Franklin. "There is to be a lecture to-night on the book of Job. I always thought that that book is the greatest poem in all the world. Job arrived at a conclusion, and one that will stand. He tells us, since we can not know the first cause and the end, that we must be always ignorant of the deepest things of life, but that we must do just right in everything; and if we do that, everything which happens to us will be for our best good, and the very best thing that could happen whether we gain or lose, have or want. I may be a poor man, with my tallow dips, but I have always been determined to do just right. It may be that I will be blessed in my children – who knows? and then men may say of me, 'There was a man!'"

"'And he dwelt in the land of Uz'" said Uncle Ben.

"Wait for me a few minutes while I get ready," said Josiah Franklin. "I will have to shave."

The prospect of a lecture in the old South Church on the philosophical patriarch who dwelt in the land of Uz, and led his flocks, and saw the planets come and go in their eternal march, on the open plains or through the branches of pastoral palms, was a very agreeable one to little Ben.

He thought.

"Uncle Benjamin," he said, "a man who writes a book like Job leaves his thoughts behind him. He does not die like other men; his life goes on."

"Yes, that is what some people call an objective life. I call it a projective life. A man who builds men, or things, for the use of men, lives in the things he builds. He has immortality in this world. A man who builds a house leaves his thought in the form of the house he builds. If he make a road, he lives in the road; if he invent a useful thing, he lives in the invention. A man may live in a ship that he has caused to be constructed, or his mind may see the form of a church, a hall, or a temple, and he may so build after what he sees that he makes his thoughts creative, and he lives on in the things that he creates after he dies. It was so with the builders of cities, of the Pyramids. So Romulus – if there were such a man – lives in Rome, and Columbus in the lands that he discovered. The Pilgrim Fathers will always live in New England. Those who do things and make things leave behind them a life outside of themselves. I call such works a man's projected life."

Little Ben sat swinging the foot stove.

"He lives the longest in this world who invents the most useful things for others," continued Uncle Benjamin. "The thoughts of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton changed the world. Those men can never die."

Little Ben swung the stove in his hand.

Suddenly he looked up, and we fancy him to have said:

"Uncle Benjamin, have I a chance?"

Jamie the Scotchman came into the house, jingling the door bell as he shut the door.

"Philosophizing?" said he.

"Little Ben here is inquiring in regard to his chance of doing something in the world – of living so as to leave his thoughts in creative forms behind. What do you think about it, Jamie?"

"Well, I don't know; it is a pretty hard case. Drumsticks will make a noise, so any man may make himself heard if he will. Certain it is Ben has no gifts; at least, I have never discerned any. There are no Attic bees buzzing around him, none that I have seen, unless there be such things up in the attic, which would not be likely in a new house like this."

Uncle Ben pitied the little boy, whose feelings he saw were hurt.

"Jamie, I have read much, and have made some observation, and life tells me that character, industry, and a determined purpose will do much for a man that has no special gifts. The Scriptures do not say that a man of gifts shall stand before kings, but that the man 'diligent in his business' shall do so. Ben here can rise with the best of the world, and if he has thoughts, he can project them. It is thinking that makes men work. He thinks. – Ben, you can do anything that any one else of your opportunities has ever done. There – I hate to see the boy discouraged."

"The fifteenth child among seventeen children would not seem likely to have a very broad outlook," said Jamie, "but it is good to encourage him; it is good to encourage anybody. He is one of the human family, like all the rest of us. – Are you going to the lecture? I will go along with you."

Josiah Franklin was now ready to go, and the party started. Josiah carried a lantern, and little Benjamin the foot stove with the coals. As they walked along they met other people with lanterns and foot stoves.

Uncle Benjamin felt hurt at what Jamie had said, so he proceeded to encourage the boy as they went along.

"If you could invent a stove that would warm the whole church, you would have a projected life, for example," said he.

"Have I a chance?" asked again the future inventor of the Franklin stove.

"Or if you could print something original that might live; or found a society to study science – something might come out of that; or could make some scheme for a better government of the people in these parts; but that would be too great for you. There I go!"

Uncle Benjamin stumbled. Little Ben helped him up.

They came to the South Church, where many lanterns, foot stoves, and tallow dips were gathered, and shadowy forms were moving to and fro.

Little Ben set down the stove in the pew. The lecture began. He heard the minister read the sublime passage of the ancient poem beginning, "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said." He heard about the "morning stars singing together," the "sweet influences of Pleiades," and the question, "Canst thou bind the sea?"

The boy asked, "Have I a chance? have I a chance?" The discouraging words of Jamie the Scotchman hung over his mind like a cloud.

The influence of the coals led Josiah Franklin to slumberland after his hard day's work. Little Ben saw his father nod and nod. But Uncle Benjamin was in the Orient with the minister, having a hard experience for the good of life with the patriarch Job.

"Have I a chance?" The boy shed tears. If he had not gifts, he knew that he had personality, but there was something stirring within him that led his thoughts to seek the good of others.

The nine-o'clock bell rang. The lecture was over.

"Good – wasn't it?" said Jamie the Scotchman as they went out of the church and looked down to the harbor glimmering under the moon and stars, and added:

"Ben, you will be sure to have one thing to spur you on to lead that 'projected life' your Uncle Benjamin tells about."

"What is that, sir?"

"A hard time, like Job – a mighty hard time."

"The true way to knowledge," said Uncle Benjamin encouragingly.

Uncle Benjamin felt a hand in his great mitten. It was little Ben's. The confidence touched his heart.

"Ben, you are as likely to have a projected life as anybody. A man rises by overcoming his defects. Strength comes in that way."

Little Ben went through the jingling door with a heart now heavy, now light. He set down the lantern, and climbed up to his bed under the roof.

He was soon in bed, the question, "Have I a chance?" still haunting him.

In summer there would be the sound of the wings of the swallows or purple swifts in the chimney at night as they became displaced from their nests. He would start up to listen to the whirring wings, then sink into slumber, to awake a blithe, light-hearted boy again.

All was silent now. He could not sleep. His fancy was too wide awake. Was Uncle Benjamin right, or Jamie the Scotchman? Had he a chance?

CHAPTER XVI.
"A BOOK THAT INFLUENCED THE CHARACTER OF A MAN WHO LED HIS AGE."

"You must read good books," said Benjamin Franklin's godfather. "How sorry I am that I had to sell my pamphlets!"

Books have stamped their character on young men at the susceptible age and the turning points of life. But their influence for good or evil comes to receptive characters. "He is a genius," says Emerson, "who gives me back my own thoughts." The gospel says, "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."

Abraham Lincoln would walk twenty miles to borrow a law book, and would sit down on a log by the wayside to study it on his return from such a journey. Horace Greeley says that when he was a boy he would go reading to a woodpile. "I would take a pine knot," he said, "put it on the back log, pile my books around me, and lie down and read all through the long winter evenings." He read the kind of books for which his soul hungered. He read to find in books what he himself wished to be. A true artist sees and hears only what he wishes to see and hear. An active, earnest, resolute soul reads only that which helps him fulfill the haunting purpose of his life. Almost every great man's books that were his companions in early years were pictures of what he most wished to be and to do.

How many men have had their spiritual life quickened by a hymn! How many by a single poem! Homer and Ossian filled the imagination of Napoleon. Plutarch's Lives has helped form the characters of a thousand heroes, and Emerson placed Plutarch next to the Bible in the rank of beneficent influences. We would say to every boy, Read Plutarch; read the best books first.

A few books well read would be an education. Let a boy read the Bible, Josephus, Plutarch's Lives, Rawlinson's, Hallam's Macaulay's, Bancroft's, and Prescott's histories, Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Longfellow, and he would have a basis of knowledge of such substantial worth and moral and literary standard as to cause his intelligence to be respected everywhere and to become a power. Yet all these books could be purchased for twenty-five dollars, and the time that many waste in unprofitable reading for three years would be sufficient to master them.

"I am a part of all that I have met," says Tennyson, and a man becomes a part of all the books that color his mind and character. Ask a company of people what books they most sought in childhood, and you may have a mental photograph of each.

Benjamin Franklin says that his opinions and character were so greatly influenced by his reading Cotton Mather's Essays to do Good, that he owed to that book his rise in life. A boy, he says, should read that book with pen and note-book in hand.

Benjamin Franklin declared that it was in this book that he found the statements of the purposes in life that met his own views. "To do good," he said, was the true aim of existence, and the resolution became fixed in his soul to seek to make his life as beneficent as possible to all men. How to help somebody and to improve something became the dreams of his days and nights. "A high aim is curative," says Emerson. Franklin had some evil tendencies of nature and habit, but his purpose to live for the welfare of everybody and everything overcame them all in the end, and made him honestly confess his faults and try to make amends for his lapses. To do good was an impelling purpose that led him to the building of the little wharf, where boys might have firm footing whence to sail their boats, and it continued through many wiser experiences up to the magic bottle, in which was stored the revelation of that agent of the earth and skies that would prove the most beneficent of all new discoveries.

The book confirmed all that Uncle Benjamin had said. In it he saw what he should struggle to be: he put his resolution into this vision, and so took the first step on the ladder of life which was to give him a large view of human affairs.

He turned from the candle molds to Cotton Mather's strong pages, which few boys would care to read now, and from them, a little later, to Addison, and from both to talk with Jenny about what he would like to do and to become, and, like William Phips to the widow, he promised Jenny that they, too, should one day live in some "Faire Green Lane in Boston town." He would be true to his home – he and Jenny.

CHAPTER XVII.
BENJAMIN LOOKS FOR A PLACE WHEREIN TO START IN LIFE

Besides his instruction from encouraging Mr. Brownell and his Uncle Benjamin, little Benjamin Franklin had spent one year at school and several years of self-instruction under helps. His father needed him in the candle shop, and he could not give him a larger education with so many mouths to feed.

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.

One evening, between the violin and the Bible, Josiah Franklin suddenly said:

"Ben, you look here!"

"What, father?" asked the boy, starting.

"It all comes to me what you ought to do. You should become a printer."

"That I would like, father."

"Then the way is clear – let me apprentice you to James."

"Would he have me, father? We do not always get on well together. I want to learn the printer's trade; that would help me on to an education."

Josiah Franklin was now a happier man. Ben would have no more desire to go to sea. If he could become anything out of the ordinary, the printer's trade would be the open way.

He went to his son James and presented the matter. As a result, they drew up an indenture.

This indenture, which may be found in Franklin's principal biographies, was a very queer document, but follows the usual form of the times of George I. It was severe – a form by which a lad was practically sold into slavery, and yet it contained the demands that develop right conduct in life. Ben was not constituted to be an apprentice boy under these sharp conditions even to his own brother. But all began well. His mother, who worried lest he should follow the example of his brother Josiah, now had heart content. His father secured an apprentice, and probably had drawn up for him a like form of indenture.

Benjamin, too, was happy now. He saw that his new way of life led to somewhere – where? He would do his best to make it lead to the best in life. He started with a high resolve, which we are sorry he did not always fulfill in the letter, though the spirit of it never was lost.

His successor in the tallow shop does not seem to have been more happy than he. His name was Tinsley. There appeared in the New England Courant of 1722 the following queer advertisement, which we copy because it affords a picture of the times:

Ran away from his Master, Mr. Josiah Franklin, of Boston, Tallow-Chandler, on the first of this instant July, an Irish Man-servant, named William Tinsley, about 20 Years of Age, of a middle Stature, black Hair, lately cut off, somewhat fresh-coloured Countenance, a large lower Lip, of a mean Aspect, large Legs, and heavy in his Going. He had on, when he went away, a felt Hat, a white knit Cap, striped with red and blue, white Shirt, and neck-cloth, a brown coloured Jacket, almost new, a frieze Coat, of a dark Colour, grey yarn Stockings, leather Breeches, trimmed with black, and round to'd Shoes. Whoever shall apprehend the said runaway Servant, and him safely convey to his above said Master, at the blue Ball, in Union street, Boston, shall have forty Shillings Reward, and all necessary Charges paid.

As this advertisement was continued for three successive weeks, we are at liberty to conclude that William Tinsley was not "apprehended."

Let the reader be glad that he did not live in those days. The best of all ages is now.

"And so you have begun life as a printer?" said Uncle Benjamin. "A printer's trade is one after my own heart. It develops thought. If I could have only kept my pamphlets until now, you would have printed the notes that I made. One of them says that what people want is not favors or patronage of any kind, but justice. Remember that, Ben. What the world wants is justice. You may become a printer in your own right some day."

"I want to become one, uncle. That is just what is in my heart. I can see success in my mind."

"But you can do it if you will. Everything goes down before 'I will!' The Alps fell before Hannibal. Have a deaf ear, Ben, toward all who say 'You can't!' Such men don't count with those in the march; they are stragglers. Don't you be laughed down by anybody. Hold your head high; there is just as much royal blood in your veins as there is in any king on earth. There is no royal blood but that which springs from true worth. I put that down in my documents years ago.

"Life is too short to stop to quarrel with any one by the way. If a man calls you a fool, you need not come out under your own signature and deny it. Your life should do that. I am quoting from my pamphlets again.

"If you meet old Mr. Calamity in your way, the kind of man who tells you that you have no ground of expectation, and that everything in the world is going to ruin, just whistle, and luck will come to you, my boy. I only wish that I had my documents – my pamphlets, I mean. I would have left them to you in my will. In the present state of society one must save or be a slave – that also I wrote down in my documents. It is a pity that it is so, but it is. Save what you can while you are young, and it will give your mind leisure to work when you are older. That was in my pamphlets. I hope that I may live to see you the best printer in the colonies."

The boy absorbed the spirit of these proverbial sayings. They were to his liking and bent of mind. But there came into his young face a shadow.

"Uncle Ben, I know what you say is true. I have listened to you; now I would like you to hear me. You saw the boys going to the Latin School this morning?"

"Yes, Ben."

"I can not go there."

"O Ben! that is hard," said Jenny, who was by his side.

"But you can go to school, Ben," said Uncle Benjamin.

"Where, uncle?"

"To life – and graduate there as well as any of them."

"I would like to study Latin."

"Well, what is to hinder you, Ben? One only needs to learn the alphabet to learn all that can be known through books. You know that now."

"I would like to learn French. Other boys can; I can not."

"The time will come when you can. The gates open before a purpose. You can study French later in life, and, it may be, make as good use of French as any of them."

"Why can not I do as other boys?"

"You can, Ben. You can so live that the Boston Latin School to which you can not go now will honor you some day."

"I would be sorry to see another boy feel as I have felt when I have seen the boys going to that school with happy faces to learn the things that I want to know. But father has done the best that he can for me."

"Yes, Ben, he has, and you only need to do the best that you can for yourself to graduate at the head of all in the school of life. I know how to feel for you, Ben. I have stood in shoes like yours many times. When you have done as I have told you, then think of me. The world may soon forget me. I want you so to live that it will not as soon forget you."

The cloud passed from the boy's face. Hope came to him, and he was merry again. He locked Jenny in his arms, whirled her around, and said:

"I am glad to hear the bells ring for other boys, even if I must go to my trade."

"I like the spirit of what you say," said Uncle Benjamin. "You have the blood of Peter Folger and of your Great-uncle Tom in your veins. Peter gave his heart to the needs of the Indians, and to toleration; your Great-uncle Tom started the subscription for the bells of Nottingham, and became a magistrate, and a just one. You may not be able to answer the bell of the Latin School, but if you are only true to the best that is in you, little Ben, you may make bells ring for joy. I can hear them now in my mind's ear. Don't laugh at your old uncle; you can do it, little Ben – can't he Jenny?"

"He just can – I can help him. Ben can do anything – he may make the Latin School bell ring for others yet – like Uncle Tom. He is the boy to do it, and I am the sister to help him to do it – ain't I, Uncle Benjamin?"