Some men are great soldiers. Some are great law-makers. Some men write
great books. Some men make great in-ven-tions. Some men are great
speakers.
Now you are going to read about a man that was great in none of these
things. He was not a soldier. He was not a great speaker. He was never
rich. He was a poor school-teacher. He never held any office.
And yet he was a great man. He was great for his goodness.
He was born in France. But most of his life was passed in
Phil-a-del-phi-a before the Rev-o-lu-tion.
He was twenty-five years old when he became a school-teacher. He
thought that he could do more good in teaching than in any other way.
School-masters in his time were not like our teachers. Children were
treated like little animals. In old times the school-master was a
little king. He walked and talked as if he knew every-thing. He wanted
all the children to be afraid of him.
But Ben-e-zet was not that kind of man. He was very gentle. He treated
the children more kindly than their fathers and mothers did. Nobody in
this country had ever seen a teacher like him.
He built a play-room for the children of his school. He used to take
them to this room during school time for a little a-muse-ment. He
man-aged each child as he found best. Some he could persuade to be
good. Some he shamed into being good. But this was very dif-fer-ent
from the cruel beatings that other teachers of that time gave their
pupils.
Of course the children came to love him very much. After they grew to
be men and women, they kept their love for the good little
schoolmaster. As long as they lived they listened to his advice.
There were no good school-books in his time. He wrote some little books
to make learning easier to his pupils. He taught them many things not
in their books. He taught them to be kind to brutes, and gentle with
one another. He taught them to be noble. He made them despise every
kind of meanness.
He was a great teacher. That is better than being a great soldier.
Ben-e-zet was a good man in many ways. He was the friend of all poor
people. Once he found a poor man suf-fer-ing with cold for want of a
coat. He took off his own coat in the street and put it on the poor
man, and then went home in his shirt sleeves.
In those days negroes were stolen from Af-ri-ca to be sold into
A-mer-i-ca. Ben-e-zet wrote little books against this wrong. He sent
these books over all the world almost. He also tried to persuade the
white men of his own country to be honest and kind with the Indians.
Great men in other countries were pleased with his books. They wrote
him letters. When any of them came to this country, they went to see
him. They wanted to see a man that was good to everybody. His house was
a plain one. But great men liked to sit at the table of the good
schoolmaster.
There was war between the English and French at that time. Can-a-da
belonged to the French. Our country belonged to the English. There was
a country called A-ca-di-a. It was a part of what is now No-va
Sco-ti-a. The people of A-ca-di-a were French.
[Illustration: Departure of the Acadians]
The English took the A-ca-di-ans away from their homes. They sent them
to various places. Many families were divided. The poor A-ca-di-ans
lost their homes and all that they had.
Many hundreds of these people were sent to Phil-a-del-phi-a. Benezet
became their friend. As he was born in France, he could speak their
lan-guage. He got a large house built for some of them to stay in. He
got food and clothing for them. He helped them to get work, and did
them good in many other ways.
One day Benezet’s wife came to him with a troubled face. She said,
“There have been thieves in the house. Two of my blankets have been
stolen.”
“Never mind, my dear,” said Benezet, “I gave them to some of the poor
A-ca-di-ans.”
One old Acadian was afraid of Benezet. He did not see why Benezet
should take so much trouble for other people. He thought that Benezet
was only trying to get a chance to sell the Acadians for slaves. When
Benezet heard this, he had a good laugh.
Many years after this the Rev-o-lu-tion broke out. It brought trouble
to many people. Benezet helped as many as he could.
After a while the British army took Phil-a-del-phi-a. They sent their
soldiers to stay in the houses of the people. The people had to take
care of the soldiers. This was very hard for the poor people.
One day Benezet saw a poor woman. Her face showed that she was in
trouble.
“Friend, what is the matter?” Benezet said to her. She told him that
six soldiers of the British army had been sent to stay in her house.
She was a washer-woman. But while the soldiers filled up the house she
could not do any washing. She and her children were in want.
Benezet went right away to see the gen-er-al that was in command of the
soldiers. The good man was in such a hurry that he forgot to get a
pass. The soldiers at the gen-er-al’s door would not let him go in.
At last some one told the gen-er-al that a queer-looking fellow wanted
to see him.
“Let him come up,” said the general.
The odd little man came in. He told the general all about the troubles
of the poor washer-woman. The general sent word that the soldiers must
not stay any longer in her house.
The general liked the kind little man. He told him to come to see him
again. He told the soldiers at his door to let Benezet come in
when-ever he wished to.
Soon after the Rev-o-lu-tion was over, Benezet was taken ill. When the
people of Phil-a-del-phi-a heard that he was ill, they gathered in
crowds about his house. Every-body loved him. Every-body wanted to know
whether he was better or not. At last the doctors said he could not get
well. Then the people wished to see the good man once more. The doors
were opened. The rooms and halls of his house were filled with people
coming to say good-bye to Benezet, and going away again.
When he was buried, it seemed as if all Phil-a-del-phi-a had come to
his fu-ner-al. The rich and the poor, the black and the white, crowded
the streets. The city had never seen so great a fu-ner-al.
In the company was an A-mer-i-can general. He said, “I would rather be
An-tho-ny Benezet in that coffin than General Wash-ing-ton in all his
glory.”