Sketches New and Old
Page 30
THE LATE BENJAMIN FRANKLIN--[Written about 1870.]
["Never put off till to-morrow what you can do day after to-morrow justas well."--B. F.]
This party was one of those persons whom they call Philosophers. He wastwins, being born simultaneously in two different houses in the city ofBoston. These houses remain unto this day, and have signs upon themworded in accordance with the facts. The signs are considered wellenough to have, though not necessary, because the inhabitants point outthe two birthplaces to the stranger anyhow, and sometimes as often asseveral times in the same day. The subject of this memoir was of avicious disposition, and early prostituted his talents to the inventionof maxims and aphorisms calculated to inflict suffering upon the risinggeneration of all subsequent ages. His simplest acts, also, werecontrived with a view to their being held up for the emulation of boysforever--boys who might otherwise have been happy. It was in this spiritthat he became the son of a soap-boiler, and probably for no other reasonthan that the efforts of all future boys who tried to be anything mightbe looked upon with suspicion unless they were the sons of soap-boilers.With a malevolence which is without parallel in history, he would workall day, and then sit up nights, and let on to be studying algebra by thelight of a smoldering fire, so that all other boys might have to do thatalso, or else have Benjamin Franklin thrown up to them. Not satisfiedwith these proceedings, he had a fashion of living wholly on bread andwater, and studying astronomy at meal-time--a thing which has broughtaffliction to millions of boys since, whose fathers had read Franklin'spernicious biography.
His maxims were full of animosity toward boys. Nowadays a boy cannotfollow out a single natural instinct without tumbling over some of thoseeverlasting aphorisms and hearing from Franklin, on the spot. If he buystwo cents' worth of peanuts, his father says, "Remember what Franklin hassaid, my son--'A grout a day's a penny a year"'; and the comfort is allgone out of those peanuts. If he wants to spin his top when he has donework, his father quotes, "Procrastination is the thief of time." If hedoes a virtuous action, he never gets anything for it, because "Virtue isits own reward." And that boy is hounded to death and robbed of hisnatural rest, because Franklin, said once, in one of his inspired flightsof malignity:
Early to bed and early to rise Makes a man healthy and wealthy and wise.
As if it were any object to a boy to be healthy and wealthy and wise onsuch terms. The sorrow that that maxim has cost me, through my parents,experimenting on me with it, tongue cannot tell. The legitimate result ismy present state of general debility, indigence, and mental aberration.My parents used to have me up before nine o'clock in the morningsometimes when I was a boy. If they had let me take my natural restwhere would I have been now? Keeping store, no doubt, and respected byall.
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 keyon the string and let on to be fishing for lightning. And a guilelesspublic would go home chirping about the "wisdom" and the "genius" of thehoary Sabbath-breaker. If anybody caught him playing "mumblepeg" byhimself, after the age of sixty, he would immediately appear to beciphering out how the grass grew--as if it was any of his business.My grandfather knew him well, and he says Franklin was alwaysfixed--always ready. If a body, during his old age, happened on himunexpectedly when he was catching flies, or making mud-pies, or slidingon 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 sidebefore, 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 theclock. One can see the almost devilish satisfaction he took in it by hisgiving it his name.
He was always proud of telling how he entered Philadelphia for the firsttime, with nothing in the world but two shillings in his pocket and fourrolls of bread under his arm. But really, when you come to examine itcritically, it was nothing. Anybody could have done it.
To the subject of this memoir belongs the honor of recommending the armyto go back to bows and arrows in place of bayonets and muskets.He observed, with his customary force, that the bayonet was very wellunder some circumstances, but that he doubted whether it could be usedwith 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 sucha 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 thathad become wearisome platitudes as early as the dispersion from Babel;and also to snub his stove, and his military inspirations, his unseemlyendeavor to make himself conspicuous when he entered Philadelphia, andhis flying his kite and fooling away his time in all sorts of such wayswhen he ought to have been foraging for soap-fat, or constructingcandles. I merely desired to do away with somewhat of the prevalentcalamitous idea among heads of families that Franklin acquired his greatgenius by working for nothing, studying by moonlight, and getting up inthe night instead of waiting till morning like a Christian; and that thisprogram, rigidly inflicted, will make a Franklin of every father's fool.It is time these gentlemen were finding out that these execrableeccentricities 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 longenough to make them comprehend this truth, and thus prepare them to lettheir son have an easier time of it. When I was a child I had to boilsoap, notwithstanding my father was wealthy, and I had to get up earlyand study geometry at breakfast, and peddle my own poetry, and doeverything just as Franklin did, in the solemn hope that I would be aFranklin some day. And here I am.