Volume I Part 12 (2/2)

”'Tis time for me to throw aside my pen, When hanging sleeves read, write, and rhyme like men, This forward spring foretells a plenteous crop; For, if the bud bear grain, what will the top!

If plenty in the verdant blade appear, What may we not soon hope for in the ear!

When flowers are beautiful before they're blown, What rarities will afterward be shown.”

The uncle was living in New England when Josiah, Franklin's brother, who had run away to sea, and who had not been heard from for nine years, turned up again in Boston. That was a domestic event of entirely too much importance to be unsung by an uncle at once pious and poetical. So, after some vigorous references to the Deity, who

”Stills the storm and does a.s.swage Proud Dreadfull seas Death-Threatning Rage,”

the honest poet breaks out into this invocation in which he had every right to believe that the long-lost Josiah would heartily join:

”O Let men praise this mighty Lord, And all his Wondrous Works Record; Let all the Sons of men, before Whose Eyes those Works are Done, Adore.”

But his rhymes appear to have fallen upon an ear deaf to the appeals of both piety and poetry, for one of the poet's poetry books contains this resentful entry:

”The Third part of the 107 psalm, Which Follows Next, I composed to sing at First meeting with my Nephew Josiah Franklin, But being unaffected with G.o.ds Great Goodn's: In his many preservations and Deliverances, It was coldly Entertain'd.”

The extent to which his uncle Benjamin had been a politician in England was brought home to Franklin by a curious incident when he was in London. A second-hand book dealer, who knew nothing of the relations.h.i.+p between the two, offered to sell him a collection of pamphlets, bound in eight volumes folio, and twenty-four volumes, quarto and octavo, and containing all the princ.i.p.al pamphlets and papers on political topics, printed in England from the Restoration down to the year 1715. On examining them, Franklin was satisfied from the handwriting of the tables of contents, memoranda of prices and marginal notes in them, as well as from other circ.u.mstances, that his Uncle Benjamin was the collector, and he bought them. In all probability, they had been sold by the uncle, when he emigrated from England to New England more than fifty years before.

The _Autobiography_ does not mention the fact that Franklin had at least one aunt on the paternal side, but he had. In a letter in the year 1767 to Samuel Franklin, the grandson of his Uncle Benjamin, after stating that there were at that time but two of their relations bearing the name of Franklin living in England, namely, Thomas Franklin, of Lutterworth, in Leicesters.h.i.+re, a dyer, and his daughter, Sally, Franklin a.s.serts that there were besides still living in England Eleanor Morris, an old maiden lady, the daughter of Hannah, the sister of Franklin's father, and Hannah Walker, the granddaughter of John, the brother of Franklin's father, and her three sons. No Arab was ever made happier by the reception of a guest than was Franklin by the discovery of a new Franklin. In 1781, when a lady at Konigsberg, who was the granddaughter of a John Franklin, communicated to him certain facts about her family history, he replied in terms that left her no footing for a claim of relations.h.i.+p, but added affably, ”It would be a Pleasure to me to Discover a Relation in Europe, possessing the amiable Sentiments express'd in your Letter. I a.s.sure you I should not disown the meanest.” One of the statements of this letter was that he had exact accounts of every person of his family since the year 1555, when it was established in England. Such a thing as sensitiveness to his humble origin or the social obscurity of his kinsfolk could find no lodgment in a mind so capacious, a heart so kind, or a nature so full of manly self-respect as his. To say nothing more, he was too much of a philosopher not to realize how close even the high-born n.o.bleman, when detached from privilege and social superst.i.tion, is to the forked radish, to which elemental man has been likened. It is true that he once wrote to his sister Jane that he would not have her son Peter put the Franklin arms on soap of his making, and this has been cited as evidence that even Franklin had his petty modic.u.m of social pride. The imputation overlooks the reason that he gave, namely, that to use the Franklin coat of arms for such a purpose would look too much like an attempt to counterfeit the soap formerly made by Peter's uncle John. It was Franklin's true pride of character that disarmed the social arrogance which might otherwise have rendered him less triumphantly successful than he was in winning his way into the favor of the most accomplished men, and the most beautiful and elegant women, in France.

With regard to his generous conduct to his brother James we have already spoken. Of Jemmy, James' son, who became Franklin's apprentice at James'

request, we have a view in a letter from Franklin to his sister Jane in which he uses Jemmy as an ill.u.s.tration of how unreasonably her son Benny, when Mr. Parker's apprentice, might have complained of the clothes furnished to him by his master.

I never knew an apprentice [he said] contented with the clothes allowed him by his master, let them be what they would. Jemmy Franklin, when with me, was always dissatisfied and grumbling. When I was last in Boston, his aunt bid him go to a shop and please himself, which the gentleman did, and bought a suit of clothes on my account dearer by one half than any I ever afforded myself, one suit excepted; which I don't mention by way of complaint of Jemmy, for he and I are good friends, but only to show you the nature of boys.

What a good friend he proved to Jemmy, when the latter became his own master, we have seen. The _erratum_ of which Franklin was guilty in his relations to his brother James was fully corrected long before he left a will behind him conferring upon James' descendants the same measure of his remembrance as that conferred by him upon the descendants of his brother Samuel and his sisters.

Four of Franklin's brothers died young, and Josiah, his sea faring brother, perished at sea not long after he excited the dudgeon of his uncle Benjamin by his indifference to his uncle's line of thanksgiving.

As long as Franklin's brothers John and Peter were engaged, as their father had been, in the business of making soap and candles, Franklin a.s.sisted them by obtaining consignments of their wares from them, and advertising these wares in his newspaper, and selling them in his shop. Later, when he became Deputy Postmaster-General of the Colonies, he made John postmaster at Boston and Peter postmaster at Philadelphia. Referring to a visit that he paid to John at Newport, Franklin says in the _Autobiography_, ”He received me very affectionately, for he always lov'd me.” When John died in 1756 at the age of sixty-five, some years after his brother Benjamin had thoughtfully devised a special catheter for his use, the latter wrote to his sister Jane, ”I condole with you on the loss of our dear brother. As our number grows less, let us love one another proportionably more.”

John's widow he made postmistress at Boston in her husband's place.

Peter Franklin died in 1766 in the seventy-fourth year of his age. As soon as the news of Peter's death reached Franklin in London, he wrote a most feeling letter to Peter's widow, Mary.

It has pleased G.o.d at length [he said] to take from us my only remaining Brother, and your affectionate Husband, with whom you have lived in uninterrupted Harmony and Love near half a Century.

Considering the many Dangers & Hards.h.i.+ps his Way of Life led him into, and the Weakness of his Const.i.tution, it is wonderful that he lasted so long.

It was G.o.d's Goodness that spared him to us. Let us, instead of repining at what we have lost, be thankful for what we have enjoyed.

He then proceeds, in order to allay the widow's fears as to her future, to tell her that he proposes to set up a printing house for her adopted son to be carried on in partners.h.i.+p with her, and to further encourage this son if he managed well.[26]

Of Franklin's brother Samuel, we know but little.

Franklin's oldest sister, Elizabeth Dowse, the wife of Captain Dowse, lived to a very great age, and fell into a state of extreme poverty. When he was consulted by her relations in New England as to whether it was not best for her to give up the house in which she was living, and to sell her personal effects, he sent a reply full of wise kindness.

As _having their own way_ is one of the greatest comforts of life to old people [he said], I think their friends should endeavour to accommodate them in that, as well as in anything else. When they have long lived in a house, it becomes natural to them; they are almost as closely connected with it, as the tortoise with his sh.e.l.l; they die, if you tear them out of it; old folks and old trees, if you remove them, it is ten to one that you kill them; so let our good old sister be no more importuned on that head. We are growing old fast ourselves, and shall expect the same kind of indulgences; if we give them, we shall have a right to receive them in our turn.

And as to her few fine things, I think she is in the right not to sell them, and for the reason she gives, that they will fetch but little; and when that little is spent, they would be of no further use to her; but perhaps the expectation of possessing them at her death may make that person tender and careful of her, and helpful to her to the amount of ten times their value.

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