The Life of Benjamin Franklin Part 11

CHAPTER XXIII.

Ben was naturally comic in a high degree, and this pleasant vein, greatly improved by his present golden prospects, betrayed him into many a frolic with Keimer, to whom he had prudently attached himself as a journeyman, until the Annis should sail. The reader will excuse Ben for these frolics when he comes to learn what were their aims; as also what an insufferable old creature this Keimer was. Silly as a b.o.o.bY, yet vain as a JAY, and garrulous as a PIE, he could never rest but when in a stiff argument, and acting the orator, at which he looked on Cicero himself as but a boy to him. Here was a fine target for Ben's SOCRATIC ARTILLERY, which he frequently played off on the old pomposo with great effect. By questions artfully put, he would obtain of him certain points, which Keimer readily granted, as seeing in them no sort of connexion with the matter in debate. But yet these points, when granted, like distant nets slyly hauling round a porpoise or sturgeon, would, by degrees, so completely circ.u.mvent the silly fish, that with all his flouncing and fury he could never extricate himself, but rather got more deeply entangled. Often caught in this way, he became at last so afraid of Ben's _questions_, that he would turn as mad when one of them was "_poked at him_," as a bull at sight of a scarlet cloak; and would not answer the simplest question without first asking, "_well, and what would you make of that?_" He came at length to form so exalted an opinion of Ben's talents for refutation, that he seriously proposed to him one day that they should turn out together and preach up a NEW RELIGION! Keimer was to preach and make the converts, and Ben to answer and put to silence the gainsayers. He said a _world of money_ might be made by it.

On hearing the outlines of this new religion, Ben found great fault with it. This he did only that he might have another frolic with Keimer; but his frolics were praiseworthy, for they all "leaned to virtue's side." The truth is, he saw that Keimer was prodigiously a hypocrite. At every whip-st.i.tch he could play the knave, and then for a pretence would read his Bible. But it was not the _moral part_ of the Bible, the sweet precepts and parables of the Gospel that he read.

No verily. Food so angelic was not at all to the tooth of his childish fancy, which delighted in nothing but the _novel_ and _curious_. Like too many of the saints now-a-days, he would rather read about the WITCH OF ENDOR, than the GOOD SAMARITAN, and hear a sermon on the _brazen candlesticks_ than on the LOVE OF G.o.d. And then, O dear! who was Melchizedeck? Or where was the land of Nod? Or, was it in the shape of a _serpent or a monkey_ that the devil tempted Eve? As he was one day poring over the pentateuch as busy after some nice game of this sort as a terrier on the track of a weazle, he came to that famous text where Moses says, "_thou shall not mar the corners of thy beard_." Aye! this was the divinity for Keimer. It struck him like a new light from the clouds: then rolling his eyes as from an apparition, he exclaimed, "miserable man that I am! and was I indeed forbidden to mar even the corners of my beard, and have I been all this time shaving myself as smooth as an eunuch! Fire and brimstone, how have you been boiling up for me, and I knew it not! h.e.l.l, deepest h.e.l.l is my portion, that's a clear case, unless I reform. And reform I will if I live. Yes, my poor naked chin, if ever I but get another crop upon thee and I suffer it to be touched by the unG.o.dly steel, then let my right hand forget her cunning."

From that day he became as shy of a razor as ever Samson was. His long black whiskers "_whistled in the wind_." And then to see how he would stand up before his gla.s.s and stroke them down, it would have reminded you of some ancient Druid, adjusting the _sacred Mistletoe_.

Ben could not bear that sight. Such shameless neglect of angel morality, and yet such fidgetting about a goatish beard! "Heavens, sir," said he to Keimer, one day in the midst of a hot argument,

"Who can think, with common sense, A smooth shaved face gives G.o.d offence?

Or that a whisker hath a charm, Eternal justice to disarm?"

He even proposed to him to get _shaved_. Keimer swore outright that he would never lose his beard. A stiff altercation ensued. But Keimer getting angry, Ben agreed at last to give up the beard. He said that, "as the beard at best was but an external, a mere excrescence, he would not insist on that as so very essential. But certainly sir,"

continued he, "there is one thing that is."

Keimer wanted to know what that was.

"Why sir," added Ben, "this turning out and preaching up a NEW RELIGION, is, without doubt, a very serious affair, and ought not to be undertaken too hastily. Much time, sir, in my opinion at least, should be spent in making preparation, in which, fasting should certainly have a large share."

Keimer, who was a great glutton, said he could _never fast_.

Ben then insisted that if they were not to fast altogether, they ought, at any rate, to abstain from animal food, and live as the saints of old did, on _vegetables_ and _water_.

Keimer shook his head, and said that if he were to live on vegetables and water, he should soon die.

Ben a.s.sured him that it was entirely a mistake. He had tried it often, he said, and could testify from his own experience that he was never more healthy and cheerful than when he lived on vegetables alone. "Die from feeding on vegetables, indeed! Why, sir, it contradicts reason; and contradicts all history, ancient and profane. There was Daniel, and his three young friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who fed on a vegetable diet, of choice; did they languish and die of it? or rather did they not display a rouge of health and fire of genius, far beyond those silly youths who crammed on all the luxuries of the royal table? And that amiable Italian n.o.bleman, Lewis Cornaro, who says of bread, that it was such a dainty to his palate, that he was almost afraid, at times, it was too good for him to eat; did he languish and die of this simple fare? On the contrary, did he not out-live three generations of gratified epicures; and after all, go off in his second century, like a bird of Paradise, singing the praises of Temperance and Virtue? And pray, sir," continued Ben, "where's the wonder of all this? Must not the blood that is formed of vegetables be the purest in nature? And then, as the spirits depend on the blood, must not the spirits secreted from such blood be the purest too? And when this is the case with the blood and spirits, which are the very life of the man, must not that man enjoy the best chance for such healthy secretions and circulations as are most conducive to long and happy life?"

While Ben argued at this rate, Keimer regarded him with a look which seemed to say, "Very true, sir; all this is very true; but still I cannot _go it_."

Ben, still unwilling to give up his point, thought he would make one more push at him. "What a pity it is," said he with a sigh, "that the blessings of so sublime a religion should be all lost to the world, merely for lack of a little fort.i.tude on the part of its propagators."

This was touching him on the right string; for Keimer was a man of such vanity, that a little flattery would put him up to any thing. So after a few _hems_ and _ha's_, he said, he believed he would, at any rate, make a trial of this new regimen.

Having thus carried his point, Ben immediately engaged a poor old woman of the neighbourhood to become their cook; and gave her off hand, written receipts for three and forty dishes; not one of which contained a single atom of fish, flesh, or fowl. For their first day's breakfast on the _new regimen_, the old woman treated them with a terrene of oatmeal gruel. Keimer was particularly fond of his breakfast, at which a nice beef-stake with onion sauce was a standing dish. It was as good as a farce to Ben, to see with what an eye Keimer regarded the terrene, when entering the room, in place of his stake, hot, smoking, and savory, he beheld this pale, meagre-looking slop.

"What have you got there?" said he, with a visage grum, and scowling eye.

"A dish of hasty pudding," replied Ben, with the smile of an innocent youth who had a keen appet.i.te, with something good to satisfy it--"a dish of nice hasty pudding, sir, made of oats."

"Of OATS!" retorted Keimer, with a voice raised to a scream.

"Yes, sir, _oats_," rejoined Ben,--"_oats_, that precious grain which gives such elegance and fire to our n.o.blest of quadrupeds, the horse."

Keimer growled out, that he was no horse to eat oats.

"No matter for that," replied Ben, "'tis equally good for men."

Keimer denied that any human being ever eat oats.

"Aye!" said Ben, "and pray what's become of the Scotch? Don't they live on oats; and yet, where will you find a people so 'bonny, blythe, and gay;' a nation of such wits and warriors."

As there was no answering this, Keimer sat down to the terrene, and swallowed a few spoonfuls, but not without making as many wry faces as if it had been so much jalap; while Ben, all smile and chat, breakfasted most deliciously.

At dinner, by Ben's order, the old woman paraded a trencher piled up with potatoes. Keimer's grumbling fit came on him again. "He saw clear enough," he said, "that he was to be poisoned."

"Poh, cheer up, man," replied Ben; "this is your right preacher's bread."

"Bread the d----l!" replied Keimer, snarling.

"Yes, bread, sir," continued Ben, pleasantly; "the bread of _life_, sir; for where do you find such health and spirits, such bloom and beauty, as among the honest-hearted IRISH, and yet for their breakfast, dinner, and supper, the potato is their tetotum; the _first_, _second_, and _third_ course." In this way, Ben and his old woman went on with Keimer; daily ringing the changes on oat-meal gruel, roasted potatoes, boiled rice, and so on, through the whole family of roots and grains in all their various genders, moods, and tenses.

Sometimes, like a restive mule, Keimer would kick up and show strong symptoms of flying the way. But then Ben would p.r.i.c.k him up again with a touch of his ruling pa.s.sion, vanity; "only think, Mr. Keimer," he would say, "only think what has been done by the founders of _new religions_: how they have enlightened the ignorant, polished the rude, civilized the savage, and made heroes of those who were little better than brutes. Think, sir, what Moses did among the stiff-necked Jews; what Mahomet did among the wild Arabs--and what you may do among these gentle drab-coated Pennsylvanians." This, like a spur in the flank of a jaded horse, gave Keimer a new start, and pushed him on afresh to his gruel breakfasts and potato dinners. Ben strove hard to keep him up to this gait. Often at table, and especially when he saw that Keimer was in good humour and fed kindly, he would give a loose to fancy, and paint the advantages of their new regimen in the most glowing colours. "Aye, sir," he would say, letting drop at the same time his spoon, as in an ecstasy of his subject, while his pudding on the platter cooled--"aye, sir, now we are beginning to live like men going a preaching indeed. Let your epicures gormandize their fowl, fish, and flesh, with draughts of intoxicating liquors. Such gross, inflammatory food may suit the brutal votaries of Mars and Venus. But our views, sir, are different altogether; we are going to teach wisdom and benevolence to mankind. This is a heavenly work, sir, and our minds ought to be heavenly. Now, as the mind depends greatly on the body, and the body on the food, we should certainly select that which is of the most pure and refining quality. And this, sir, is exactly the food to our purpose. This mild potato, or this gentle pudding, is the thing to insure the light stomach, the cool liver, the clear head, and, above all, those celestial pa.s.sions which become a preacher that would moralize the world. And these celestial pa.s.sions, sir, let me add, though I don't pretend to be a prophet, these celestial pa.s.sions, sir, were you but to stick to this diet, would soon shine out in your countenance with such apostolic majesty and grace, as would strike all beholders with reverence, and enable you to carry the world before you."

Such was the style of Ben's rhetoric with old Keimer. But it could not all do. For though these harangues would sometimes make him fancy himself as big as Zoroaster or Confucius, and talk as if he should soon have the whole country running after him, and worshipping him for the GREAT LAMA of the west; yet this divinity fit was too much against the grain to last long. Unfortunately for poor Keimer, the kitchen lay between him and his bishobp.r.i.c.k: and both nature and habit had so wedded him to that swinish idol, that nothing could divorce him. So after having been led by Ben a "_very d----l of a life_," as he called it, "_for three months_," his flesh-pot appet.i.tes prevailed, and he swore, "_by his whiskers, he would suffer it no longer_." Accordingly he ordered a nice roast pig for dinner, and desired Ben to invite a young friend to dine with them. Ben did so: but neither himself nor his young friend were any thing the better for the pig. For before they could arrive, the pig being done, and his appet.i.te beyond all restraint, Keimer had fallen on it and devoured the whole. And there he sat panting and torpid as an ANACONDA who had just swallowed a young buffaloe. But still his looks gave sign that the "_Ministers of Grace_" had not entirely deserted him, for at sight of Ben and his young friend, he blushed up to the eye lids, and in a glow of scarlet, which showed that he paid dear for his _whistle_, (gluttony) he apologized for disappointing them of their dinner. "Indeed, the smell of the pig," he said, "was so sweet, and the nicely browned skin so inviting, especially to him who had been _long starved_, that for the soul of him he could not resist the temptation to _taste it_--and then, O! if Lucifer himself had been at the door, he must have gone on, let what would have been the consequences." He said too, "that for his part he was glad it was a _pig_ and not a _hog_, for that he verily believed he should have bursted himself."--Then leaning back in his chair and pressing his swollen abdomen with his paws, he exclaimed with an awkward laugh, "_Well_, I don't believe I was ever cut out for a bishop!"--Here ended the farce: for Keimer never after this uttered another word about his NEW RELIGION.

Ben used, laughing, to say that he drew Keimer into this sc.r.a.pe that he might enjoy the satisfaction of _starving him out of his gluttony_.

And he did it also that he might save the more _for books and candles:_ their vegetable regimen costing him, in all, rather less than three cents a day! To those who can spend twenty times this sum on tobacco and whiskey alone, _three_ cents per day must appear a scurvy allowance, and of course poor Ben must be sadly pitied. But such philosophers should remember that all depends on our loves, whose property it is to make bitter things sweet, and heavy things light.

For example: to lie out in the darksome swamp with no other canopy but the sky, and no bed but the cold ground, and his only music the midnight owl or screaming alligator, seems terrible to servile minds; but it was joy to Marion, whose "_whole soul_," as general Lee well observes, "_was devoted to liberty and country_."

So, to shut himself up in a dirty printing-office, with no dinner but a bit of bread, no supper but an apple, must appear to every epicure as it did to Keimer, "_a mere d----l of a life_;" but it was joy to Ben, whose whole soul was on his _books_, as the sacred lamps that were to guide him to usefulness and glory.

Happy he who early strikes into the path of _wisdom_, and bravely walks therein till habit sprinkles it with roses. He shall be led as a lamb among the green pastures along the water courses of pleasure, nor shall he ever experience the pang of those

"Who see the right, and approve it too; Condemn the wrong--and yet the wrong pursue."

CHAPTER XXIV.

Ben, as we have seen, was never without a knot of choice spirits, like satellites, constantly revolving around him, and both receiving and reflecting light. By these satellites I mean young men of fine minds, and fond of books. He had at this time a _trio_ of such. The first was of the name of Osborne, the second Watson, and the third Ralph. As the two first were a good deal of the nature of wandering stars, which, though bright, soon disappear again, I shall let them pa.s.s away in silence. But the last, that's to say, Ralph, shone so long in the same sphere with Ben, both in America and Europe, that it will never do to let him go without giving the reader somewhat at least of a telescopic squint at him. James Ralph, then, was a young man of the first rate talents, ingenious at argument, of flowery fancy, most fascinating in his manners, and uncommonly eloquent. In short, he appears to have been built and equipped to run the voyage of life with as splendid success as any. But alas! as the seamen say of their ships, "_he took the wrong sheer_." Hence, while many a DULL GENIUS, with only a few plain-sailing virtues on board, such as honest industry, good humour, and prudence, have made fine weather through life, and come into port at last laden _up to the bends_ with riches and honours, this gallant PROA, this stately GONDOLA, the moment he was put to sea, was caught up in a Euroclydon of furious pa.s.sions and appet.i.tes that shivered his character and peace, and made a wreck of him at the very outset.

According to his own account, it appears that Ben was often haunted with fears that he himself had some hand in Ralph's disasters. Dr.

Franklin was certainly one of the wisest of mankind. But with all his wisdom he was still but a man, and therefore liable to err. Solomon, we know, was fallible; what wonder then young Franklin?

But here lies the difference between these two wise men, as to their errors. Solomon, according to scripture, was sometimes overcome of Satan, even in the bone and sinew of his strength; but the devil was too hard for Franklin only while he was in the _gristle_ of his youth.

The case was thus: among the myriads of books which came to his eager tooth, there was a most unlucky one on deism, written, 'tis said, by Shaftesbury, a man admirably calculated to pervert the truth; or, as Milton says of one of his fallen spirits, to make "_the worse appear the better reason_." Mark now this imposing writer--he does not utter you a word against religion; not he indeed: no, not for the world.

Why, sirs, he's the best friend of religion. He praises it up to the skies, as the sole glory of man, the strong pillar of his virtues, and the inexhaustible fountain of all his hopes. But then he cannot away with that false religion, that detestable superst.i.tion called christianity. And here, to set his readers against it, he gives them a most horrible catalogue of the cruelties and b.l.o.o.d.y persecutions it has always occasioned in the world; nay, he goes so far as to a.s.sert that christians are the _natural enemies of mankind_; "vainly conceiting themselves," says he, "to be the favourites of heaven, they look on the rest of the world but as 'heathen dogs' whom it is 'doing G.o.d service to kill,' and whose goods it is right to seize on, as spoil for the Lord's people! Who," he asks crowingly, "filled Asia with fire and sword in the b.l.o.o.d.y wars of the Crusades? The christians. Who depopulated the fine negro-coasts of Africa? The christians. Who extirpated many of the once glorious Indian nations of America? The christians; nay," continues he, "so keen are those christians for blood, that when they can't get their 'heathen dogs' to fall on, they fall on one another: witness the papist christians destroying the protestants, and the protestant christians destroying the papists. And still greater shame," says he, "to these sweet followers of the Lamb, these papist and protestant christians, when they can no longer worry each other, will worry those of their own party, as in numberless and shameful cases of the calvinists and arminians; nay, so p.r.o.ne are the christians to hate, that their greatest doctors even in their _pulpits_, instead of exhorting to piety and those G.o.dlike virtues, that make men honour and love one another, will fix on the vainest speculations; which, though not understood by one soul among them, yet serve abundantly to set them all by the ears; yes, they can hate one another:

"For believing that there are three persons in the G.o.dhead; or only one person.

"For believing that there are children in h.e.l.l not a span long; or for not believing it.