UNCLE TOM, WHO ROSE IN THE WORLD.
LITTLE Ben had some reasons to dread the visits of his two stately aunts
from Nantucket, the schoolmarms, whom his mother called "the girls."
But one November day, as he came home after the arrival of the stage
from Salem, he was met at the door by his uncle with the question:
"Who do you think has come?"
"I don't know, uncle. Josiah?"
"No."
"Brother John from Rhode Island? Esther and Martha from school? Zachary
from Annapolis?"
"Not right yet."
"Esther and Martha from school at Nantucket?"
"Yes; and your Aunt Hannah and Aunt Prudence have come with them, with
bandboxes, caps, snuffboxes, and all. They came on the sloop. It is a
time for little boys to be quiet now, and to keep guinea pigs and such
things well out of sight."
"How long are _they_ going to stay, uncle?"
By "they" he referred to his aunts.
"A week or more, I guess. This will be your still week."
"But I can not keep still, uncle; I am a boy."
Little Benjamin went into the home room and there met his stately aunts,
the school teachers.
There was a great fire in the room, and the pewter platters shone there
like silver. His aunts received him kindly, but in a very condescending
way. They had not yet discovered any "personality" in the short, little
boy of the numerous family.
The aunts delighted in imparting moral instruction, and they saw in
little Ben, as they thought, a useful opportunity for such culture.
That night the family, with the aunts from Nantucket, sat down by the
great fire under the shining platters to hear Uncle Benjamin relate a
marvelous story. Every family has one wonder story, and this was the one
wonder story of the Franklin side of the family. Uncle Benjamin wished
the two "aunts" to hear this story "on his side of the house."
"There was only one of our family in England who ever became great, and
that was my Uncle Thomas," he began.
"Only think of that, little Ben," said Aunt Hannah Folger, "only one."
"Only one," said Aunt Prudence Folger, "and may you become like him."
"He was born a smith, and so he was bred, for it was the custom of our
family that the eldest son should be a smith--a Franklin."
"Sit very still, my little boy," said the two aunts, "and you shall be
told what happened. He was a smith."
"There was a man in our town," continued Uncle Ben, "whose name was
Palmer, and he became an esquire."
"Maybe that _you_ will become an esquire," said Aunt Esther to Ben.
"He became an esquire," said Aunt Prudence. "Sit very still, and you
shall hear."
"This man liked to encourage people; he used to say good things of them
so as to help them grow. If one encourage the good things which one
finds in people it helps them. It is a good thing to say good words."
"If you do not say too many," said Josiah Franklin. "I sometimes think
we do to little Ben."
"Well, this Esquire Palmer told Uncle Tom one day that he would make a
good lawyer. Tom was very much surprised, and said, 'I am poor; if I had
any one to help me I would study for the bar.' 'I will help you,' said
Esquire Palmer. So Uncle Tom dropped the hammer and went to school."
"And _you_ may one day leave the candle shop and go to school," said
Aunt Esther, moralizing.
"I hope so," said little Ben humbly.
"Not but that the candle shop is a very useful place," said the other
aunt.
"Uncle Tom read law, and began to practice it in the town and county of
Northampton. He was public-spirited, and he became a leader in all the
enterprises of the county, and people looked up to him as a great man.
Everything that he touched improved."
"Just think of that," said Aunt Esther to Ben. "Everything that he
touched improved. That is the way to make success for yourself--help
others."
"May you profit by his example, Ben," said Aunt Prudence, bobbing her
cap border.
"He made everything better--the church, the town, the public ways, the
societies, the homes. He was a just man, and he used to say that what
the world wanted was _justice_. Everybody found him a friend, except he
who was unjust. And at last Lord Halifax saw how useful he had become,
and he honored him with his friendship. When he died, which was some
fourteen years ago, all the people felt that they had lost a friend."
The two aunts bowed over in reverence for such a character. Aunt Esther
did more than this. She put her finger slowly and impressively on little
Ben's arm, and said:
"It may be that you will grow up and be like him."
"Or like Father Folger," added Aunt Prudence, who wished to remind Uncle
Benjamin that the Folgers too had a family history.
Little Ben was really impressed by the homely story which he now heard a
second time. It presented a looking-glass to him, and he saw himself in
it. He looked up to his Uncle Ben with an earnest face, and said:
"I would like to help folks, too; why can I not, if Uncle Tom did?"
"A very proper remark," said Aunt Esther.
"Very," said Aunt Prudence.
"Good intentions are all right," said Josiah Franklin. "They do to sail
away with, but where will one land if he has not got the steering gear?
That is a good story, Brother Ben. Encourage little Ben here all you
can; it may be that you might have become a man like Uncle Tom if you
had had some esquire to encourage you."
The aunts sat still and thought of this suggestion.
Then Josiah played on his violin, and the two aunts told tales of the
work of _their_ good father among the Indians of Martha's Vineyard and
Nantucket.
A baby lay in Abiah Franklin's arms sleeping while these family stories
were related. It was a girl, and they had named her Jane, and called her
"Jenny."
Amid the story-telling Jenny awoke, and put out her arms to Ben.
"The baby takes to Ben," said the mother. "The first person that she
seemed to notice was Ben, and she can hardly keep her little eyes off of
him."
Ben took little Jenny into his arms.
As Uncle Benjamin grew older the library of pamphlets that he had sold
and on whose margins he had written the best thoughts of his life
haunted him. He would sometimes be heard to exclaim:
"Those pamphlets! those pamphlets!"
"Why do you think so much of the lost pamphlets, uncle?" said little
Ben.
"Hoi, Ben, hoi! 'tis on your account, Ben. I want you to have them, Ben,
and read them when you are old; and I want my son Samuel to have them,
although his mind does not turn to philosophy as yours does. It tore my
heart to part with them, but I did it for you. One must save or be a
slave. You see what it is to be poor. But it is all right, Ben, as the
book of Job tells us; all things that happen to a man with good
intentions are for his best good."
It was Uncle Benjamin's purpose to mold the character of his little
godson. He had the Froebel ideas, although he lived before the time of
the great apostle of soul education.
"The first thing for a boy like you, Ben, is to have a definite purpose,
and the next is to have fixed habits to carry forward that purpose, to
make life automatic."
"What do you mean by _automatic_, uncle?"
"Your heart beats itself, does it not? You do not make it beat. Your
muscles do their work without any thought on your part; so the stomach
assimilates its food. The first thing in education, more than
cultivation of memory or reason, is to teach one to do right, right all
the time, because it is just as the heart beats and the muscles or the
stomach do their work. I want so to mold you that justice shall be the
law of your life--so that to do right all the time will be a part of
your nature. This is the first principle of home education."
Little Ben only in part comprehended this simple philosophy.
"But, uncle," said he, "what should be my purpose in life?"
"You have the nature of your great-uncle Tom--you love to be doing
things to help others, just as he did. The purpose of your life should
be to improve things. Genius creates things, but benevolence improves
things. You will understand what I mean some day, when you shall grow up
and go to England and hear the chimes of Northampton ring."
Uncle Benjamin liked to take little Ben out to sea. They journeyed so
far that they sometimes lost sight of the State House, the lions and
unicorns, and the window from which new kings and royal governors had
been proclaimed.
These excursions were the times that Uncle Ben sought to mold the will
of little Ben after the purpose that he saw in him. He told him the
stories of life that educate the imagination, that help to make fixed
habit.
"If I only had those pamphlets," he said on these excursions, "what a
help they would be to us! You will never forget those pamphlets, will
you, Ben?"