True to His Home Part 23

WHAT kind of a man was Governor Sir William Keith? There are not many such, but one such may be found in almost every large community. He desired popularity, and he loved to please every one. He was constantly promising what he was not able to fulfill. He had a lively imagination, and he liked to think what he would do if he could for every bright person he met; and these things which he would like to do he promised, and his promises often ended in disappointment. It delighted him to see faces light up with hope. Did he intend to deceive? No. He had a heart to bless the whole world. He was for a time a very popular Governor, but he who had given away expectations that but disappointed so many hearts was at last disappointed in all his expectations. He was greatly pleased with young Benjamin Franklin when he first met him, just as he had been with many other promising young men. He liked a young man who had the hope of the future in his face. This young printer who had entertained Boston under the name of Silence Dogood won his heart on a further acquaintance, and so he used to invite him to his home. He there showed him how essential a good printer would be to the province; how such a young man as he would make a fortune; and he urged him to go back to his father in Boston and borrow money for such an enterprise. He gave him a long letter of commendation to his father, a droll missive indeed to carry to clear-sighted, long-headed Josiah Franklin.

With this grand letter and twenty-five pounds in silver in his pocket and a gold watch besides, and his vision full of rainbows, he returned to the Puritan town. He went to the printing office, which was again under the charge of his brother James. He was finely dressed, and as he had come back with such flattering prospects he had a grain of vanity.

He entered James's office. The latter looked at him with wide eyes, then turned from him coldly.

But Silence Dogood was not to be chilled. The printers flocked around him with wonder, as though he had been a returning Sindbad, and he began to relate to them his adventures in Philadelphia. James heard him with envy, doubtful of the land "where rocs flew away with elephants." But when Benjamin showed the men his watch, and finally shared with them a silver dollar in hospitalities, he fancied that his brother had come there to insult him, and he felt more bitterly toward him than ever before. Benjamin had much to learn in life. He and his brother, notwithstanding their good Quaker-born mother, had not learned the secret of the harmony of Abraham and Lot.

But one of these lessons of life our elated printer was to learn, and at once.

He returned to his home at the Blue Ball. His parents had not heard from him since he went away some seven months before, and they, though grieved at his conduct, received him joyfully. There was always an open door in Abiah Folger's heart. The Quaker blood of good Peter Folger never ceased to course warm in her veins.

Ben told his marvelous story. After the literary adventures of Silence Dogood in Boston, his parents could believe much, but when he came to tell of his intimacy with Sir William Keith, Governor of the Province of Pennsylvania, successor to the great William Penn, they knew not what to think. Either Sir William must be a singular man, or they must have underrated the ability of young Silence Dogood.

"This is great news indeed. But what proof do you bring of your good fortune, my son?" asked the level-headed Josiah, lifting his spectacles upon his forehead and giving his son a searching look.

Young Benjamin took from his pocket the letter of Sir William and laid it before his father. It indeed had the vice-royal seal of the province.

His father put down his spectacles from his forehead, and his wife Abiah drew up her chair beside him, and he read the letter to himself and then reviewed it aloud.

The letter told him what a wonderfully promising young man Benjamin was; how well he was adapted to become the printer of the province, and how he only needed a loan wherewith to begin business to make a fortune.

Josiah Franklin could not doubt the genuineness of the letter. He sat thinking, drumming on a soap shelf.

"But why, my boy, if you are so able and so much needed does not Governor Keith lend you the money himself?"

Ben sat silent. Not all the arts of the Socratic method could suggest any answer to this question.

"I am glad that you have an influential patron," said Josiah, "but to a man of hard sense it would seem very strange that he should not advance the money himself to help one so likely to become so useful to the province to begin business. People are seldom offered something for nothing in this world, and why this man has made himself your patron I can not see, even through my spectacles."

"He wishes, father, to make me a printer for the advancement of the province."

"Then why, my son, should not a governor of a rich province himself provide you with means to become a printer for the advancement of the province?"

Socrates himself could not have answered this question.

"Did you tell him that your father was an honest, hard-working soap boiler and candle maker?"

"No," said the young man.

"Benjamin, I have a large family, and I am unable to lend you the money that the Governor requests. But even if I had the money I should hesitate to let you have it for such a purpose. You are too young to start in business, and your character is not settled. That troubles me, Ben. Your character is not settled. You have made some bad mistakes already. You went away without bidding your mother good-by, and now return to me with a letter from the Governor of Pennsylvania who asks me to loan you money to set you up in business, because you are so agreeable and promising. O Ben, Ben, did you not think that I had more sense than that?"

Josiah lifted his spectacles up to his forehead, and looked his finely dressed son fully in the face. The pride of the latter began to shrink.

He saw himself as he was.

But Abiah pleaded for her large-brained boy--Abiah, whose heart was always open, in whom lived Peter Folger still. Jenny had but one thing to say. It was, "Ben, don't go back, don't go back."

"I will tell you what I will do," said Josiah. "I will write a letter to Governor Keith, telling him the plain truth of my circ.u.mstances. That is just right. If when you are twenty years of age you will have saved a part of the money to begin business, I will do what I can for you."

With this letter Silence Dogood returned to Philadelphia in humiliation.

We think it was this Silence Dogood who wrote the oft-quoted proverb, "A good kick out of doors is worth all the rich uncles in the world."

Young Franklin presented his father's letter to Governor Keith.

"Your father is too prudent," said the latter. "He says that you are too young and unsettled for business. Some people are thirty years old at eighteen. It is not years that are to be considered in this case, but fitness for work. I will start you in business myself."

Silence Dogood rejoiced. Here was a man who was "better than a father"--the "best man in all the world," he thought.

"Make out an inventory of the things that you need to begin the business of a printer, and I will send to London for them."

Benjamin did so, an inventory to the amount of one hundred pounds. He brought it to the Governor, who greatly surprised him by a suggestion.

"Perhaps," said Sir William, "you would like to go to London and get the machinery yourself. I would give you a letter of credit."

Was it raining gold?

"I would like to go to London," answered the young printer.

"Then I will provide for your journey. You shall go with Captain Annis."

This captain sailed yearly from Philadelphia to London.

Waiting the sailing of the ship months pa.s.sed away. Governor Keith entertained the young printer at his home. The sailing time came.

Franklin went to the office of the Governor to receive the letter of credit and promised letters of introduction.

"All in good time, my boy," said the Governor's clerk, "but the Governor is busy and can not see you now. If you will call on Wednesday you will receive the letters."

Young Franklin called at the office on the day appointed.

"All in good time, my boy," said the clerk. "The Governor has not had time to fix them up and get them ready. They will be sent to you on board the ship with the Governor's mail."

So Franklin went on board the ship. As the Governor's mail came on board he asked the captain to let him see the letters, but the latter told him that he must wait until the ship got under way.

Out at sea the Governor's letters were shown to him. There were several directed to people "in the care of Benjamin Franklin." He supposed these contained notes of introduction and the letter of credit, so he pa.s.sed happily over the sea.

He reached London December 24, 1724. He rushed into the grand old city bearing the letters directed in his care. He took the one deemed most important to the office of the gentleman to whom it was directed. "This letter is from Governor Keith, of the Province of Pennsylvania," said Franklin.

"I know of no such person," said the man. The latter opened the letter.

"Oh, I see," said he, "it is from one Riddleson. I have found him out to be a rascal, an exile, and refuse to entertain any communication from him."

Franklin's face fell. His heart turned heavy. He went out wondering.

"Was his father's advice sound, after all?"

The rest of the letters that had been directed in his care were not written by Governor Keith, but by people in the province to their friends, of which he had been made a postboy. There were in the mail no letters of introduction from Governor Keith to any one, and no letter of credit.

He found himself alone in London, that great wilderness of homes. Of Keith's conduct he thus speaks in his autobiography:

"What shall we think of a Governor playing such pitiful tricks, and imposing so grossly upon a poor ignorant boy? It was a habit he had acquired; he wished to please everybody, and having little to give, he gave expectations. He was otherwise an ingenuous, sensible man, a pretty good writer, and a good Governor for the people, though not for his const.i.tuents, the Proprietaries, whose instructions he sometimes disregarded. Several of our best laws were of his planning, and pa.s.sed during his administration."

He found work as a journeyman printer in London, and we are sorry to say lived like most journeymen printers there. But Silence Dogood had to make himself useful even among these unsettled people. He inst.i.tuted new ways of business and life of advantage to journeymen printers, and so kept the chain of his purpose lengthening.