About this time, which was somewhere in his sixteenth year, Ben
lighted on a very curious work, by one _Tryon_, recommending vegetable
diet altogether, and condemning "_animal food as a great crime_." He
read it with all the avidity of a young and honest mind that wished to
renounce error and embrace truth. "_From start to pole_," as the
racers say, his conscience was under the lash, pointing at him as the
dreadful SARCOPHAGIST, or MEAT-EATER alluded to by this severe writer.
He could not, without horror reflect, that, young as he was, his
stomach had yet been the grave of hundreds of lambs, pigs, birds, and
other little animals, "_who had never injured him_." And when he
extended the dismal idea over the vast surface of the globe, and saw
the whole human race pursuing and butchering the poor brute creation,
filling the sea and land with cries and blood and slaughter, he felt a
depression of spirits with an anguish of mind that strongly tempted
him, not only to detest man, but even to charge God himself with
cruelty. But this distress did not continue long. Impatient of such
wretchedness, he set all the powers of his mind to work, to discover
designs in all this, worthy of the Creator. To his unspeakable
satisfaction he soon made these important discoveries. 'Tis true, said
he, man is constantly butchering the inferior creatures. And it is
also true that they are constantly devouring one another. But after
all, shocking as this may seem, it is but _dying_: it is but giving up
life, or returning a something which was not their own; which for the
honour of his goodness in their enjoyment, was only lent them for a
season; and which, therefore, they ought not to think hard to return.
Now certainly, continued Ben, all this is very clear and easy to be
understood. Well then, since all life, whether of man or beast, or
vegetables, is a kind loan of God, and to be taken back again, the
question is whether the way in which we see it is taken back is not
the _best way_. It is true, life being the season of enjoyment, is so
dear to us that there is no way of giving it up which is not shocking.
And this horror which we feel at the thought of having our own lives
taken from us we extend to the brutes. We cannot help feeling shocked
at the butcher killing a lamb, or one animal killing another. Nay,
tell even a child who is looking with smiles on a good old family
horse that has just brought a bag of flour from the mill, or a load of
wood from the forest, that this his beloved horse will by and by be
eaten up of the buzzards, and instantly his looks will manifest
extreme distress. And if his mother, to whom he turns for
contradiction of this horrid prophecy, should confirm it, he is struck
dumb with horror, or bursts into strong cries as if his little heart
would break at thought of the dismal end to which his horse is coming.
These, though very amiable, are yet the amiable weaknesses of the
child, which, it is the duty of man to overcome. This animal was
created of his God for the double purpose of doing service to man, and
of enjoying comfort himself. And when these are accomplished, and that
life which was only lent him is recalled, is it not better that
nature's scavengers, the buzzards, should take up his flesh and keep
the elements sweet, than that it should lie on the fields to shock the
sight and smell of all who pass by? The fact is, continued Ben, I see
that all creatures that live, whether men or beasts, or vegetables,
are doomed to die. Now were it not a greater happiness that this
universal calamity, as it appears, should be converted into an
universal blessing, and this _dying_ of all be made the _living_ of
all? Well, through the admirable wisdom and goodness of the Creator,
this is exactly the case. The vegetables all die to sustain animals;
and animals, whether birds, beasts, or fishes, all die to sustain man,
or one another. Now, is it not far better for them that they should be
thus continually changing into each other's substance, and existing in
the wholesome shapes of life and vigour, than to be scattered about
dying and dead, shocking all eyes with their ghastly forms, and
poisoning both sea and air with the stench of their corruption?
This scrutiny into the economy of nature in this matter, gave him such
an exalted sense of nature's Great Author, that in a letter to his
father, to whom he made a point of writing every week for the benefit
of his corrections, he says, though I was at first greatly angered
with Tryon, yet afterwards I felt myself much obliged to him for
giving me such a hard nut to crack, for I have picked out of it one of
the sweetest kernels I ever tasted. In truth, father, continues he,
although I do not make much noise or show about religion, yet I
entertain a most adoring sense of the GREAT FIRST CAUSE; insomuch that
I had rather cease to exist than cease to believe him ALL WISE AND
BENEVOLENT.
In the midst, however, of these pleasing speculations, another
disquieting idea was suggested.--Is it not cruel, after giving life to
take it away again so soon? The tender grass has hardly risen above
the earth, in all its spring-tide green and sweetness, before its
beauty is all cropped by the lamb; and the playful lamb, full dressed
in his snow-white fleece, has scarcely tasted the sweets of existence,
before he is caught up by the cruel wolf or more cruel man. And so
with every bird and fish: this has scarcely learned to sing his song
to the listening grove, or that to leap with transport from the limpid
wave, before he is called to resign his life to man or some larger
animal.
This was a horrid thought, which, like a cloud, spread a deep gloom
over Ben's mind. But his reflections, like the sunbeams, quickly
pierced and dispersed them.
These cavillers, said he, in another letter, are entirely wrong. They
wish, it seems, _long life_ to the creatures; the Creator wishes them
a _pleasant_ one. They would have but a few to exist in a _long_ time;
_he_ a great many in a _short_ time. Now as youth is the season of
gaiety and enjoyment, and all after is comparatively insipid, is it
not better, before that pleasant state is ended in sorrow, the
creature should pass away by a quick and generally easy fate, and
appear again in some other shape? Surely if the grass could reason, it
would prefer, while fresh and beautiful, to be cropped by the lamb and
converted into his substance, than, by staying a little longer, to
disfigure the fields with its faded foliage. And the lamb too, if he
could but think and choose, would ask for _a short life and a merry
one_, rather than, by staying a little longer, degenerate into a
ragged old sheep, snorting with the rattles, and dying of the rot, or
murrain.
But though Ben, at the tender age of sixteen, and with no other aid
than his own strong mind, could so easily quell this host of
atheistical doubts, which Tryon had conjured up; yet he hesitated not
to become his disciple in another tenet. Tryon asserted of animal
food, that though it gave great strength to the body, yet it
contributed sadly to grossness of blood and heaviness of mind; and
hence he reasoned, that all who wish for cool heads and clear thoughts
should make their diet principally of vegetables. Ben was struck with
this as the perfection of reason, and entered so heartily into it as a
rare help for acquiring knowledge, that he instantly resolved, fond as
he was of flesh and fish, to give both up from that day, and never
taste them again as long as he lived. This steady refusal of his to
eat meat, was looked on as a very inconvenient singularity by his
brother, who scolded him for it, and insisted he should give it up.
Ben made no words with his brother on this account.--Knowing that
avarice was his ruling passion, he threw out a bait to James which
instantly caught, and without any disturbance produced the
accommodation he wished. "Brother," said he to him one day as he
scolded; "you give three shillings and six pence a week for my diet at
this boarding-house; give me but _half_ that money and I'll diet
myself without any farther trouble or expense to you." James
immediately took him at his word and gave him in hand his week's
ration, one shilling and nine pence, which after the Boston exchange,
six shillings to the dollar, makes exactly thirty-seven and a half
cents. Those who often give one dollar for a single dinner, and five
dollars for a fourth of July dinner, would look very blue at an
allowance of thirty-seven and a half cents for a whole week. But Ben
so husbanded this little sum, that after defraying all the expenses of
his table, he found himself at the end of the week, near twenty cents
in pocket--thus expending not quite three cents a day! This was a
joyful discovery to Ben--twenty cents a week, said he, and fifty-two
weeks in the year; why, that is upwards of ten dollars in the twelve
months! what a noble fund for books! Nor was this the only benefit he
derived from it; for, while his brother and the journeymen were gone
to the boarding-house to devour their pork and beef, which, with
lounging and picking their teeth, generally took them an hour, he
stayed at the printing-office; and after dispatching his frugal meal,
of boiled potatoe, or rice; or a slice of bread with an apple; or
bunch of raisins and a glass of water, he had the rest of the time for
study. The pure fluids and bright spirits secreted from such simple
diet, proved exceedingly favourable to that clearness and vigour of
mind, and rapid growth in knowledge which his youthful soul delighted
in.
I cannot conclude this chapter without making a remark which the
reader has perhaps anticipated--that it was by this simple regimen,
vegetables and water, that the Jewish seer, the holy Daniel, while a
youth, was of PROVIDENCE made fit for all the learning of the East;
hence arose his bright visions into futurity, and his clear pointings
to the far distant days of the Messiah, when the four great brass and
iron monarchies of Media, Persia, Grecia, and Rome, being overthrown,
Christ should set up his last golden monarchy of LOVE, which, though
faint in the beginning as the first beam of the uncertain dawn, shall
yet at length brighten all the skies, and chase the accursed clouds of
sin and suffering from the abodes of man and beast.
In like manner, it was on the simple regimen of vegetables and water,
the easy purchase of three cents a day, that the same PROVIDENCE
raised up our young countryman to guard the last spark of perfect
liberty in the British colonies of North America. Yes, it was on three
cents' worth of daily bread and water, that young Ben Franklin
commenced his collection of that blaze of light, which early as 1754,
showed the infant and unsuspecting colonies their RIGHTS and their
DANGERS--and which afterwards, in 1764, blasted the treasonable stamp
act--and finally, in '73 and '74, served as the famed star of the
East, to guide Washington and his wise men of the revolution, to the
cradle of liberty, struggling in the gripe of the British Herod, lord
North. There rose the battle of God for an injured people; there
spread the star-spangled banner of freedom; and there poured the blood
of the brave, fighting for the rights of man under the last republic.
O that God may long preserve this precious vine of his own right hand
planting, for his own glory and the happiness of unborn millions!
But the reader must not conclude that Ben, through life, tied himself
up to a vegetable diet. No. Nature will have her way. And having
designed man partly carnivorous, as his canine teeth, his lengthened
bowels, and his flesh-pot appetites all evince, she will bring him
back to the healthy mixture of animal food with vegetable, or punish
his obstinacy with diarrhoea and debility. But she had no great
difficulty in bringing Ben back to the use of animal food. According
to his own account, no nosegay was ever more fragrant to his
olfactories than was the smell of fresh fish in the frying pan. And as
to his objection to such a savory diet on account of its stupifying
effects on the brain, he easily got the better of that, when he
reflected that the witty queen Elizabeth breakfasted on beef-stake;
that sir Isaac Newton dined on pheasants; that Horace supped on fat
bacon; and that Pope both breakfasted, dined, and supped on shrimps
and oysters. And for the objection taken from the cruelty of killing
innocent animals, for their flesh, he got over that by the following
curious accident:--On his first voyage to New-York, the vessel halting
on the coast for lack of breeze, the sailors all fell to fishing for
cod, of which they presently took great numbers and very fine. Instead
of being delighted at this sight, Ben appeared much hurt, and began to
preach to the crew on their "injustice," as he called it, in thus
taking away the lives of those poor little fish, who, "_had never
injured them, nor ever could_." The sailors were utterly dum-founded
at such queer logic as this. Taking their silence for conviction, Ben
rose in his argument, and began to play the orator quite outrageously
on the main deck. At length an old wag of a boatswain, who had at
first been struck somewhat aback by the strangeness of this attack,
took courage, and luffing up again, with a fine breeze of humour in
his weather-beaten sail, called out to Ben, "_Well, but my young
Master preacher, may not we deal by these same cod here, as they deal
by their neighbours._"
"To be sure," said Ben.
"Well then, sir, see here," replied the boatswain, holding up a stout
fish, "see here what a whaler I took just now out o' the belly of that
cod!" Ben looking as if he had his doubts, the boatswain went on, "O
sir, if you come to that, you shall have _proof_;" whereupon he laid
hold of a large big-bellied cod that was just then flouncing on the
deck, and ripping him open, in the presence of Ben and the crew,
turned out several young cod from his maw.
Here, Ben, well pleased with this discovery, cried out, Oho! villains!
is that the game you play with one another under the water! Unnatural
wretches! What! eat one another! Well then, if a cod can eat his own
brother, I see no reason in nature why man may not eat him. With that
he seized a stout young fish just fresh from his native brine, and
frying him in all haste, made a very hearty meal. Ben never after
this, made any more scruples about animal food, but ate fish, flesh,
or fowl, as they came in his way, without asking any questions for
conscience sake.