True to His Home Part 14

"'I am glad that you are so well provided for, for you are a good man, and have a heart to feel for those in need.'

"'Neighbor, there is my woodpile. It is yours as well as mine. I would not feel warm if I were to sit down by my fire and remember that you and your wife and your children were cold. When you need any fuel, come to my woodpile and take all the wood that you want.'

"The man on the marsh went away, his head hanging down. I believe that there came into his heart the powerful resolution that he would never steal again, and we have no record that he ever did. The Governor's hope for him had made him another man.

"He came for the wood in his necessity one day. The Governor looked at him pleasantly.

"'Why did you not come to me before?'"

Josiah Franklin looked around on the group at the fireside, and opened the family Bible.

"Do you think that the Governor did right, Brother Ben?"

"Well, it isn't altogether clear to me."

"What do you think, Abiah?"

"Father would have done as he did. He hindered no one, but helped every one. He saw life on that side."

"Well, little Ben, what have you to say?"

"The Governor looked upon the heart, didn't he? He felt for the man.

Would it not be better for all to look that way? The worth of life depends upon those we help, lift, and make, not in those we destroy. I like the old Governor, I do, and I am sorry that there are not many more like him. That seems like a Luke story, father. Read a story from Luke."

Josiah read a story from Luke.

There followed a long prayer, as usual. Then the children kissed their mother and Jenny and crept up to their chamber. The nine-o'clock bell had rung, and the streets were still. The watchman with his lantern went by, saying, "Nine o'clock, and all is well!" None of the family heard him say, "Ten o'clock, and all is well!" They were in slumberland after their hard, homely toil, and some of them may have been dreaming of the good old Governor, who followed literally the words of the Master who taught on the Mount of Beat.i.tudes.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE TREASURE-FINDER.

LITTLE Benjamin once had the boy fever to go to sea. This fever was a kind of nervous epidemic among the boys of the time, a disease of the imagination as it were. Many boys had it in Boston; they disappeared, and the town crier called out something like this:

"Hear ye!

Hear ye!

Boy lost--lost--lost!

Who returns him will be rewarded."

He rang the bell as he cried. The crier's was the first bell that was rung in Boston.

But why did boys have this peculiar fever in Boston and other New England towns at this time? It was largely owing to the stories that were told them. Few things affect the imagination of a boy like a story.

De Foe's Robinson Crusoe was the live story of the times. Sindbad the sailor was not unknown.

Old sailors used to meet by the Town Pump and spin wonderful "yarns," as story-telling of the sea was then described.

But there was one house in Boston that in itself was a story. It was made of brick, and rose over the town, at the North End, in the "Faire Green Lane," now decaying Chatham Street. In it lived Sir William Phips, or Phipps, the first provincial Governor under the charter which he himself had brought from England.

Sir William had been born poor, in Maine, and had made his great fortune by an adventure on the sea.

The story of Sindbad the Sailor was hardly more than a match for his, with its realities.

He was one of a family of twenty-six children; he had been taught to read and write when nearly grown up; had come to Boston as an adventurer, and had found a friend in a comely and sympathetic widow, who helped to educate him, and to whom he used to say:

"All in good time we will come to live in the brick house in the Faire Green Lane."

A Boston boy like young Franklin, among the pots and kettles of life, could not help recalling what this poor sailor lad had done for himself when he saw the brick house looming over the bowery lane.

The candle shop at the Blue Ball, that general place for story-telling by winter fires, when it was warm there and the winds were cold outside, often heard this story, and such stories as the Winthrop Silver Cup, which may still be seen; of lively Anne Pollard, who was the first to leap on sh.o.r.e here from the first boat load of pioneers as it came near the sh.o.r.e at the North End, when the hills were covered with blueberries; of old "sea dogs" and wonderful ships, like Sir Francis Drake and the Golden Hynde, or "Sir Francis and his shipload of gold,"

which ship returned to England one day with chests of gold, but not with Sir Francis, whose body had been left in many fathoms of sea! Ben listened to these tales with wonder, with Jenny by his side, leaning on him.

What was the story of Sir William Phipps, that so haunted the minds of Boston boys and caused their pulses to beat and the sea fever to rise?

It was known in England as well as in America; it was a wonder tale over the sea, for it was a.s.sociated with t.i.tled names. Uncle Ben knew it well, and told it picturesquely, with much moralizing.

Let us suppose it to be a cold winter's night, when the winds are abroad and the clouds fly over the moon. Josiah Franklin has played his violin, the family have sung "Martyrs"; the fire is falling down, and "people are going to meetin'," as a running of sparks among the soot was called, when such a thing happened in the back of the chimney.

Little Ben's imagination is hungry, and he asks for the twice-told tale of Sir William. He would be another Sir William himself some day.

By the dying coals Uncle Ben tells the story. What a story it was! No wonder that it made an inexperienced boy want to go to sea, and especially such boys as led an uneventful life in the ropewalk or in the candle shop!

Uncle Ben first told the incident of Sir William's promise to the widow who took him to her home when he was poor, that she should live in the brick house; and then he pictured the young sailor's wonderful voyages to fulfill this promise. He called the sailor the "Treasure-finder."

Let us snuggle down by the fire on this cold night in Boston town, beside little Ben and Jenny, and listen to the story.

Uncle Ben, mayhap, shakes his snuffbox, and says:

"That boy dreamed dreams in the daytime, but he was an honest man."

Uncle Ben rang these words like a bell in his story.

"He was an honest man; but a man in this world must save or be a slave, and young William's mind went sailing far away from the New England coast, and a-sailing went he. What did he find? Wonders! Listen, and I will tell you.

"William Phips, or Phipps, went to the Spanish Main, and he began to hear a very marvelous story there. The sailors loitering in the ports loved to tell the legend of a certain Spanish treasure ship that had gone down in a storm, and they imagined themselves finding it and becoming rich. The legend seized upon the fancy of William the sailor and entered his dreams. It was only a vague fancy at first, but in the twilight of one burning day a cool island of palms appeared, and as it faded away a sailor who stood watching it said to him:

"'There is a sunken reef off this coast somewhere; we are steering for it, and I have been told that it was on that reef that the Spanish treasure ship went down. They say that ship had millions of gold on board. I wonder if anybody will ever find her?'

"William, the sailor, started. Why might not he find her?--William was an honest man.

"It was early evening at sea. The shadows of night fell on the Bahama Islands. The sea and the heavens seemed to mingle. The stars were in the water; the heavens were there. A stranger on the planet could not have told which was the sea and which was the sky.

"The sails were limp. There was a silence around. The ship seemed to move through some region of s.p.a.ce. William Phipps sat by himself on the deck and dreamed. Many people dream, but it is of no use to dream unless you _do_.

"He seemed to see her again who had been the good angel of his life; he saw the gabled house in the bowery lane, and two faces looking out of the same window over Boston town.--William was honest.

"He dreamed that he himself was the captain of a ship. He saw himself in England, in the presence of the king. He is master of an expedition now, in his sea dream. He finds the sunken treasure ship. He is made rich by it, and he returns to Boston and buys the gabled house in the cool green lane by the sea. An honest man was Sir William. He was not _Sir_ William then.