USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > St. Botolph's town; an account of old Boston in colonial days > Part 13
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The Boston of Franklin's Boyhood 243
to his library, and very kindly lent me such books as I chose to read. I now took a fancy to poetry and made some little pieces. My brother, thinking it might turn to account, en- couraged me, and put me on composing occa- sional ballads. One was called 'The Light- house Tragedy,' and contained an account of the drowning of Capt. Worthilake with his two daughters. The other was a sailor's song on the taking of Teach (or Blackbeard) the pirate. They were wretched stuff, in the Grub-Street- ballad style; and, when they were printed, he sent me about the town to sell them. The first sold wonderfully, the event being recent, hav- ing made a great noise. This flattered my van- ity; but my father discouraged me by ridicu- ling my performances, and telling me verse- makers were generally beggars. So I escaped being a poet, most probably a very bad one."
But he taught himself to write excellent Eng- lish prose by modelling his style upon that of Addison and Steele.
" About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator. It was the third. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With this
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view I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, tried to complete the pa- pers again by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand.
" Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should have ac- quired before that time if I had gone on mak- ing verses, since the continual occasion for words of the same import, to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind and make me mas- ter of it. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collection of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavoured to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences and complete the paper.
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This was to teach me method in the arrange- ment of thoughts.
" By comparing my work afterward with the original, I discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleas- ure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to im- prove the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think that I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious. My time for these exercises and for reading was at night after work or before it began in the morning, or on Sundays, when I contrived to be in the printing-house alone, evading as much as I could the common attendance on public worship, which my father used to exact of me when I was under his care, and which, indeed, I still thought a duty, though I could not, as it seemed to me, afford time to practise it."
Additional time - and additional money, too - for the indulgence of his love of books came to Franklin about this time through his adop- tion of a vegetarian diet. Meat had always been rather disagreeable to him, so he pro- posed to his brother that he should give him weekly half the money paid for his board, and let him board himself. His brother agreeing,
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he had opportunity, while the others were at meals, to be alone in the printing-house with his books.
" Despatching presently my light repast, which often was no more than a biscuit or a slice of bread," he writes, " a handful of rai- sins or a tart from the pastry-cook, and a glass of water, I had the rest of the time for study, in which I made the greater progress from that greater clearness of head and quicker appre- hension which usually attend temperance in eating and drinking."
Sixteen years before that Sunday morning when the baby Benjamin was born the first American newspaper had been printed in Bos- ton. It was a sheet of four pages, seven inches by eleven, with two columns on a page, and at the top of the first page the words, " Publick Occurrences, both Foreign and Domestic," printed in large letters. It was designed to be published once a month, or oftener, " if any glut of occurrences happened."
By reason of an unfortunate allusion in the first number to a political misunderstanding between those in high authority, Publick Oc- currences died, immediately after its initial issue. No successor appeared until 1704, when John Campbell, postmaster of Boston, a dull,
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ignorant Scottish bookseller, began to put out a weekly sheet called the Boston News-Letter, which was for many years the only newspaper in America.
Newspapers went free of postage in those days. It was quite natural, therefore, that the publishing privilege should fall into the hands of postmasters. Usually when a postmaster lost his office he sold out his newspaper to his successor; but when John Campbell ceased to preside over the Boston mails, he refused to dispose of his paper, a fact which induced his successor, William Brocker, to set up, in De- cember, 1719, a sheet of his own, the Boston Gazette. This paper James Franklin was em- ployed to print.
Postmasters in those days were, of course, appointed from England, and before Brocker had been in office many months he found him- self in turn superseded. James Franklin, how- ever, having incurred some expense for the sake of printing the Gazette and being en- amoured of publishing, determined that he would now start a paper of his own. It thus came about that on August 7, 1721, appeared the first number of the New England Courant.
The papers previously published in the col- ony had been either very dull or very pious.
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But this journal, from the beginning, showed the trenchant pen and free mind which appears to have been a Franklin habit. The Mathers did not at all approve of it, and the boy Ben- jamin probably had no need to stop at their door when he " carried the papers through the streets to the customers," after having set up the type with his own hands and printed the sheets from the old press now in the posses- sion of the Bostonian Society.
The fortunes of this paper, and of Franklin while connected with it, have been better told by the person chiefly concerned than I could ever tell them. Hear him then: " My brother had some ingenious men among his friends, who amused themselves by writing little pieces for this paper, which gained it credit and made it more in demand, and these gentlemen often visited us. Hearing their conversations, and their accounts of the approbation their papers were received with, I was excited to try my hand among them; but, being still a boy, and suspecting that my brother would object to printing anything of mine in his paper if he knew it to be mine, I contrived to disguise my hand, and, writing an anonymous paper, I put it at night under the door of the printing-house. " It was found in the morning, and commu-
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nicated to his writing friends when they called in as usual. They read it, commented on it in my hearing, and I had the exquisite pleasure of finding it met with their approbation, and that, in their different guesses at the author, none were named but men of some character among us for learning and ingenuity. I sup- pose now that I was rather lucky in my judges, and that perhaps they were not really so very good ones as I then esteemed them.
" Encouraged, however, by this, I wrote and conveyed in the same way to the press several more papers which were equally approved; and I kept my secret till my small fund of sense for such performances was pretty well ex- hausted, and then I discovered it, when I began to be considered a little more by my brother's acquaintance, and in a manner that did not quite please him, as he thought - probably with reason - that it tended to make me too vain. And perhaps this might be one occasion of the differences that we began to have about this time.
" Though a brother, he considered himself as my master and me as his apprentice, and accordingly expected the same services from me as he would from another, while I thought he demeaned me too much in some things he
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required of me, who from a brother expected more indulgence. Our disputes were often brought before our father, and I fancy I was either generally in the right or else a better pleader, because the judgment was generally in my favour. But my brother was passionate, and had often beaten me, which I took ex- tremely amiss; and, thinking my apprentice- ship was very tedious, I was continually wish- ing for some opportunity of shortening it, which at length offered in a manner unex- pected. (I fancy his harsh and tyrannical treatment of me might be a means of impress- ing me with that aversion to arbitrary power that has stuck to me through my whole life.)
" One of the pieces in our newspaper on some political point, which I have now forgot- ten, gave offence to the Assembly. He was taken up, censured, and imprisoned for a month, by the speaker's warrant, I suppose, because he would not discover his author. I, too, was taken up and examined before the council; but, though I did not give them any satisfaction, they contented themselves with admonishing me, and dismissed me perhaps as an apprentice who was bound to keep his mas- ter's secrets.
" During my brother's confinement, which I
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resented a good deal, notwithstanding our private differences, I had the management of the paper; and I made bold to give our rulers some rubs in it, which my brother took very kindly, while others began to consider me in an unfavourable light, as a young genius that had a turn for libelling and satire. My brother's discharge was accompanied with an order from the House (a very odd one) that ' JAMES FRANKLIN SHOULD NO LONGER PRINT THE PAPER CALLED THE " NEW ENGLAND COU- RANT,'' EXCEPT IT BE FIRST SUPERVISED BY THE SECRETARY OF THIS PROVINCE.'
" There was a consultation held in our printing-house among his friends what he should do in this case. Some proposed to evade the order by changing the name of the paper; but my brother seeing inconveniences in that, it was finally concluded on, as a better way, to let it be printed for the future under the name of Benjamin Franklin. And, to avoid the censure of the Assembly that might fall on him as still printing it by his appren- tice, the contrivance was that my old indenture should be returned to me, with a full discharge on the back of it, to be shown on occasion; but, to secure to him the benefit of my service, I was to sign new indentures for the remainder
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of the term, which were to be kept private. A very flimsy scheme it was. However, it was immediately executed, and the paper went on accordingly under my name for several months."
The next number of the Courant announced that " the late Publisher of this Paper, finding so many Inconveniences would arise by his carrying the Manuscripts and publick News to be supervis'd by the Secretary as to render his carrying it on unprofitable, has intirely dropt the Undertaking."
Possibly the display of his own name in big type as publisher of a newspaper bred in Ben- jamin something more of self-importance than he had hitherto had. In any case, he and his brother got on very badly after this. There were knocks and cuffs and general unbrotherly treatment, which Benjamin, as a high-spirited lad, soon found unendurable. These blows had the effect, too, of inspiring in the younger Franklin a determination to be tricky, -just as his brother had been with the authorities. So " a fresh difference arising between us two I took upon me to assert my freedom, presu- ming that he would not venture to produce the new indentures. It was not fair in me to take this advantage, and this I therefore reckon one
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of the first errata of my life; but the unfair- ness of it weighed little with me when under the impressions of resentment for the blows his passion too often urged him to bestow upon me, though he was otherwise not an ill-natured man. Perhaps I was too saucy and provoking.
" When he found I would leave him, he took care to prevent my getting employment in any other printing-house of the town, by going round and speaking to every master, who ac- cordingly refused to give me work. I then thought of going to New York as the nearest place where there was a printer. ... My friend Collins, therefore, undertook to manage a little for me. He agreed with the captain of a New York sloop for my passage. So I sold some of my books to raise a little money, was taken on board privately, and, as we had a fair wind, in three days I found myself in New York, near three hundred miles from home, a boy of but seventeen, without the least recom- mendation to or knowledge of any person in the place, and with very little money in my pocket."
Franklin had now left for ever the Boston of his boyhood. Not many times in his life, in- deed, did he return there. But, when a famous man, he wrote, to be placed over the graves of
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his parents in the old Granary burying ground, this epitaph which touchingly connects, for all time, his talents with the city of his birth :
Josiah Franklin and Abiah, his wife, Lie here interred. They lived lovingly together in wedlock Fifty-five years. And without an estate or any gainful employ- ment, By constant labour and honest industry, Maintained a large family comfortably, And brought up thirteen children and seven grandchildren reputably. From this instance, reader, Be encouraged to diligence in thy calling, And distrust not Providence. He was a pious and prudent man ; She a discreet and virtuous woman. Their youngest son, In filial regard to their memory, Places this stone.
SAMUEL SEWALL
XII
A PURITAN PEPYS
WHAT the Diary of Samuel Pepys is to sev- enteenth century England the Diary of Samuel Sewall is to the Boston of the Puritan era. This invaluable contribution to New England literature covers more than fifty-five years of old Boston life and covers it, too, at a time when that life was putting itself into form. It is therefore a rich mine of history, a veritable storehouse of old ways and social customs. The man who wrote it was a part of all that he met and he was, besides, a red-blooded healthy-minded human being in an age which too many people think wholly given over to disagreeable asceticism. We cannot do better, then, than follow for a chapter Sewall's varied career as he himself traces it for us in the vivid pages of his mental and spiritual day-book.
At the outset we must do the old judge the justice to believe that, - to him, - New Eng- land was a colony with a mission. In a speech
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made in 1723 after Lieutenant-Governor Dum- mer had taken the oath of office he said: " The people you have to do with are a part of the Israel of God and you may expect to have of the prudence and patience of Moses communi- cated to you for your conduct. It is evident that our Almighty Saviour counselled the first planters to remove hither and settle here; and they dutifully followed his advice; and there- fore he will never leave nor forsake them nor theirs." All his life long Sewall strove to help the Lord do the work he felt to be marked out for the Puritans. . We must bear this in mind when the judge of the witches seems narrow to us. But he does not often so seem for he was a generous-minded man, temperamentally and physically easy-going in spite of his Puri- tan training. The Reverend N. H. Chamber- lain, who has written most entertainingly of " Sewall and the World He Lived In " attrib- utes the endearing qualities of his hero to the fact that he was much more Saxon than Dane, and came from the English South Land where the sun is warmer than in the North, the gar- dens and orchards fuller.
Moreover, none of the Sewalls had suffered from persecution. Samuel's great-grand- father, beyond whom the family cannot be
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traced, made a fortune as a linen-draper at Coventry and was several times elected mayor. His life was then an eminently successful one. The mayor's eldest son, however, was a Puri- tan of such strong convictions that he sent Sewall's father, Henry, to New England. But the climate of Newbury, where Henry Sewall took up land, did not agree with the family and they returned to the mother country. Thus it happened that Samuel Sewall was born in Bishopstoke, Hampshire, England, in 1647 and spent the impressionable years of his young life in a background where orchards flourished mightily, where cock-fighting was a favourite sport and where roast beef and attendant good things exercised a potent formative influence.
When the boy Samuel was nine the family returned to America. His account of their landing at Boston is given thus naïvely : " We were about eight weeks at sea where we had nothing to see but water and sky; so that I began to fear that I should never get to shore again; only I thought the captains and the mariners would not have ventured themselves, if they had not hopes of getting to land again. On the Lord's Day my mother kept aboard; but I went ashore; the boat grounded and I was carried out in arms, July 6, 1661."
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The future Diarist was educated at his father's house in Newbury by a private tutor and at Harvard College, from which he was graduated in 1671. Three years later he took his master's degree, an occasion which he de- scribed thus in a letter written to his son, Joseph, when he (Sewall) was a grown man: " In 1674 I took my second degree and Mrs. Hannah Hull, my dear wife, your honoured mother was invited by Doctor Hoar and his lady (her kinsfolk) to be with them awhile at Cambridge. She saw me when I took my de- gree and set her affection on me, though I knew nothing of it until after our marriage which was February 28, 1675-76. Governor Bradstreet married us." Sewall's thesis on this interesting commencement day was a Latin discourse on original sin!
For of course the young man was ministeri- ally minded and, at this stage of his career, bade fair to follow the profession of most Har- vard men of the day. Very likely, too, he would have kept on with his preaching but for the fact that, after a supplementary year or two at Cambridge, it was made easy for him to enter the business and the family of John Hull, the New England mint-master. Hull was now old and Sewall seems to have been en-
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trusted, almost at once, with the correspond- ence appertaining to the merchant branch of his profession. Ere long the Diarist is im- porting and exporting on his own account.
First, though, came his marriage with the bouncing Hannah Hull, a lady whose weight played a more important part in her charms, than has been the case with any other hero- ine of romance. Hawthorne is chiefly respon- sible for this, of course, for he has described in fascinating fashion the marriage of Sewall to this, his first wife. But if Sewall did get his wife's weight in pine-tree shillings when he got her he had not stipulated for this or any other dowry. " The mint-master was especially pleased with his new son-in-law be- cause he had courted Miss Betsy out of pure love," we are told, " and had said nothing at all about her portion." It is good for us to remember this passage when we read the story of Judge Sewall's later courtships.
About a year after his marriage Sewall joined the Old South Church and having ful- filled this pre-requisite to citizenship, he was (in 1678) made a freeman. In 1681 he was appointed master of the public printing-press, an office which he held for some three years printing public and religious documents, and
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especially the Assembly's Catechism, five hun- dred copies of which he gave away to the chil- dren of his relations. Sewall had now gone to live at Cotton Hill, on Tremont street, almost opposite King's Chapel burying ground, on property which once belonged to Sir Harry Vane. In the colony records we find (1684) : - " In answer of the petition of Sam' Sewall Esq, humbly showing that his house of wood in Boston, at the hill where the Revd John Cotton former dwelt, which house is consider- ably distant from other building and standeth very bleak, he humbly desiring the favour of this court to grant him liberty to build a small porch of wood, about seven foot square, to break off the wind from the fore door of said house, the court grants his request."
A pleasant glimpse of the social life of the period is gained from an entry made in the Diary the spring following the building of this porch: " June 20, Carried my wife to Dor- chester to eat Cherries and Raspberries, chiefly to ride and take the air; the time my wife and Mrs. Flint spent in the orchard I spent in Mr. Flint's study reading Calvin on the Psalms." The following January he tells us that the cold was so extreme that the " harbour is frozen up and to the Castle, so cold that the sacramental
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bread is frozen pretty bad and rattles sadly as broken into the plates."
From November, 1688, to November, 1689, Sewall was abroad combining with the business of helping Increase Mather make terms with the King's government the pleasure of renew- ing family friendships in the land of his birth. There was naturally a good deal of sermon- hearing mingled with these occupations and we find one excellent description of the fashion in which the Lord's supper was administered in England at the church of that Dr. Annesley of whom we have already heard as Dunton's father-in-law. " The Dr. went all over the meeting first, to see who was there, then spake something of the sermon, then read the words of institution, then prayed and eat and drunk himself, then gave to every one with his own hand, dropping pertinent expressions. In our pew said, ' Now our Spikenard should give its smell; ' and said to me ' Remember the death of Christ.' The wine was in quart glass bot- tles. The deacon followed the Doctor and when his cup was empty filled it again; as at our pew all had drunk but I, he filled the cup and then gave it to me; said as he gave it - must be ready in new obedience and stick at nothing for Christ."
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To Cambridge and to Oxford, the colleges where many of the Puritan preachers had been educated, Sewall made pious pilgrimages with Mather and between whiles he ate and drank with his numerous relatives. At " Cousin Jane Holt's " he had " good bacon, veal and parsnips, very good shoulder of mutton and a fowl roasted, good currant suet pudding and the fairest dish of apples I have eat in Eng- land."
But he was very glad to get back to Boston for that city was now his dear home and he was one of its most useful citizens. In 1683 he is a deputy to the General Court from West- field, as his father-in-law, John Hull, had been before him - it being then possible for a man to be elected from a town other than that in which he lived - and he belonged to the Bos- ton Fire Department and to the Police and Watch. In business he was prospering might- ily and so was able May 23, 1693, to lay the corner-stone of his new house, next Cotton Hill, " with stones gotten out of the Common." Two years later we find the house completed and Governor Bradstreet " drinking a glass or two of wine, eating some fruit and taking a pipe or two of tobacco " under its substantial
THE DEANE WINTHROP HOUSE, WINTHROP
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roof. " Wished me joy of the house and de- sired our prayers," comments the Diary.
Picnics and weddings were favourite diver- sions with Sewall. The Diary records one fes- tivity of the former class held Oct. 1, 1697, the refreshments for which consisted of "first, honey, butter curds and cream. For dinner very good roast lamb, turkey, fowls and apple pie. After dinner sung the 121 Psalm. A glass of spirits my wife sent stood upon a joint stool which Simon W. jogging it fell down and broke all to shivers. I said it was a lively emblem of our fragility and mortality."
Not long after this our Diarist attended the wedding of Atherton Haugh, his ward, and Mercy Winthrop, daughter of Deane Winthrop, at the latter's house which still stands in the town bearing his name. "Sang a Psalm to- gether," writes Sewall in describing the occa- sion. " I set St. David's tune." None of the many duties which Sewall discharged was bet- ter done than that which had to do with settling his young people in life. On several occasions we find the Diary saying: " Prayed for good matches for my children as they grow up; that they may be equally yoked." It was the Puri- tan habit to marry, not once, but several times,
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