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THE LATE BENJAMIN
FRANKLIN.
[“Never put off till to-morrow what you
can do day after to-morrow just as well.”—B.
F.]
THIS party was one of those
persons whom they call Philosophers.
He was twins,
being born simultaneously in two
different houses in the city of Boston.
These houses remain unto this day,
and have signs upon them worded
in accordance with the facts. The
signs are considered well enough to
have, though not necessary, because
the inhabitants point out the two
birth-places to the stranger anyhow,
and sometimes as often as several
times in the same day. The subject of this memoir was of a vicious disposition,
and early prostituted his talents to the invention of maxims and aphorisms
His simplest acts, also, were contrived with a view to their being held up for
the emulation of boys for ever—boys who might otherwise have been happy.
It was in this spirit that he became the son of a soap-boiler, and probably for
no other reason than that the efforts of all future boys who tried to be anything
might be looked upon with suspicion unless they were the sons of soap-boilers.
With a malevolence which is without parallel in history, he would work all day,
and then sit up nights, and let on to be studying algebra by the light of a
smouldering fire, so that all other
boys might have to do that also, or
else have Benjamin Franklin thrown
up to them. Not satisfied with these
proceedings, he had a fashion of
living wholly on bread and water,
and studying astronomy at meal
time—a thing which has brought
affliction to millions of boys since,
whose fathers had read Franklin's
pernicious biography.
His maxims were full of animosity
towards boys. Nowadays
a boy cannot follow out a single
natural instinct without tumbling
over some of those everlasting aphorisms
and hearing from Franklin on
the spot. If he buys two cents' worth of peanuts, his father says, “Remember
what Franklin has said, my son—`A groat a day's a penny a year;”' and the
comfort is all gone out of those peanuts. If he wants to spin his top when he
has done work, his father quotes, “Procrastination is the thief of time.” If
he does a virtuous action, he never gets any thing for it, because “Virtue is
its own reward.” And that boy is hounded to death and robbed of his natural
rest, because Franklin said once, in one of his inspired flights of malignity—
Makes a man healthy and wealthy and wise.”
As if it were any object to a boy to be healthy and wealthy and wise on such
terms. The sorrow that that maxim has cost me through my parents' experimenting
on me with it, tongue cannot tell. The legitimate result is my present state
of general debility, indigence, and mental aberration. My parents used to have
me up before nine o'clock in the morning, sometimes, when I was a boy. If
they had let me take my natural rest, where would I have been now? Keeping
store, no doubt, and respected by all.
And what an adroit old adventurer the subject of this memoir was! In
order to get a chance to fly his kite on Sunday he used to hang a key on the
string and let on to be fishing for lightning. And a guileless public would go
home chirping about the “wisdom” and the “genius” of the hoary Sabbath-breaker.
If anybody caught him playing “mumble-peg” by himself, after the
age of sixty, he would immediately appear to be ciphering out how the grass
grew—as if it was any of his business. My grandfather knew him well, and he
says Franklin was always fixed—always ready. If a body, during his old age,
happened on him unexpectedly when he was catching flies, or making mud
pies, or sliding on a cellar-door, he would immediately look wise, and rip out a
maxim, and walk off with his nose in the air and his cap turned wrong side
before, trying to appear absent-minded and eccentric. He was a hard lot.
He invented a stove that would smoke your head off in four hours by the
clock. One can see the almost devilish satisfaction he took in it by his giving
it his name.
He was always proud of telling how he entered Philadelphia for the first time,
with nothing in the world but two shillings in his pocket and four rolls of
bread under his arm. But really, when you come to examine it critically, it
was nothing. Anybody could have done it.
To the subject of this memoir belongs the honor of recommending the army
to go back to bows and arrows in place of bayonets and muskets. He observed,
with his customary force, that the bayonet was very well under some circumstances,
but that he doubted whether it could be used with accuracy at a long
range.
Benjamin Franklin did a great many notable things for his country, and
made her young name to be honored in many lands as the mother of such a son.
It is not the idea of this memoir to ignore that or cover it up. No; the simple
idea of it is to snub those pretentious maxims of his, which he worked up with
a great show of originality out of truisms that had become wearisome platitudes
as early as the dispersion from Babel; and also to snub his stove, and his military
inspirations, his unseemly endeavor to make himself conspicuous when he
entered Philadelphia, and his flying
his kite and fooling away his time
in all sorts of such ways when he
ought to have been foraging for soap-fat,
or constructing candles. I merely
desired to do away with somewhat of
the prevalent calamitous idea
among heads of families that
Franklin acquired his great genius by
working for nothing, studying by
moonlight, and getting up in the
night instead of waiting till morning
like a Christian; and that this
programme, rigidly inflicted, will
make a Franklin of every father's
fool. It is time these gentlemen
were finding out that these execrable eccentricities of instinct and conduct are
only the evidences of genius, not the creators of it. I wish I had been the father
of my parents long enough to make them comprehend this truth, and thus
prepare them to let their son have an easier time of it. When I was a child I
had to boil soap, notwithstanding my father was wealthy, and I had to get up
early and study geometry at breakfast, and peddle my own poetry, and do everything
just as Franklin did, in the solemn hope that I would be a Franklin some
day. And here I am.
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