Part 4

But all Philadelphia began to wonder soon at the doings at the big white house where Benjamin Franklin lived. The neighbors were used to hearing busy sounds of hammering and tinkering coming from the back where Mr. Franklin had built himself a workshop. Now, however, he sent away for a small forge and its flying sparks could be seen and the sound of its bellows heard in the stillness of the long, cold winter nights. Great slabs of iron were unloaded for him at the wharf, and for days no one saw him. He was shut up in his workshop and from morning until night passers-by heard ringing blows on iron coming from it as if it were the shop of some country blacksmith.

“Benjamin Franklin wastes his time,” said some of the Philadelphians. “He should be in the town hall, helping us to settle some of our land disputes.”

But others spoke more kindly of the man of helpful hands.

“Mr. Franklin is making Philadelphia truly a City of Friends by being the best Friend of us all,” they said.

None could explain Benjamin Franklin’s present occupation, though.

In the middle of the winter Beth and William and their mother went to a friend’s house to stay for a week. Mrs. Arnold was not well, and the house was very cold. The week for which they were invited lengthened into two, then three.

“We must go home,” Mrs. Arnold said at last. “Mr. Franklin said that he would stop this afternoon and help William carry the carpet bag. It is time that we began our work again.”

As they took their homeward way through the snow, they noticed, again, the happy smile on Mr. Franklin’s kind face. He held the handle of the bag with one hand and Beth’s chilly little fingers with the other. He was the spryest of them all as they hurried on. They understood why, as they opened the door of their home.

They started, at first, wondering if, by any chance they had come to the wrong house. No, there were the familiar things just as they had left them; the row of shining copper pans on the wall, the polished candlesticks on the mantel piece, the warming pan in the corner and the braided rag rugs on the floor. But the house was as warm as summer. They had never felt such comforting heat in the winter time before. The fireplace, that had been all too tiny, was gone. In its place, against the chimney, was a crude iron stove, partly like a fireplace in shape, but with a top and sides that held and spread the heat of the glowing fire inside until the whole room glowed with it.

“That is my surprise,” Mr. Franklin explained, rubbing his hands with pleasure as he saw the wonder and delight in the faces of the others, “an iron genie to drive out the cold and frighten away the frosts. You can cook on it, or hang the kettle over the coals. It will keep the coals alive all night and not eat up as much fuel as your draughty fireplace did. This is my winter gift to my dear Friend Arnolds.”

“Oh, how wonderful! How can we thank you for it? We, who were so poor, are the richest family in all Philadelphia now. Now I shall be able to work!” the children’s mother said.

Beth and William put out their hands to catch the friendly warmth of the fire in this, the first stove, in the City of Friends. It warmed them through and through. Then William examined its rough mechanism so that he would be able to tend it, and Beth bustled about the room, filling the shining brass teakettle and putting a spoonful of tea in the pot to draw a cup for their mother and Mr. Franklin. At last she turned to him, her blue eyes looking deep in his.

“You are so good to us,” Beth said. “Why did you work so hard to invent and make this iron stove for us?”

The kindest Friend that old Philadelphia ever had stopped a second to think. He never knew the reason for his good deeds. They were as natural as the flowering of the broom corn in his garden. At last he spoke:

“Because of your warm hearts, little Friend,” he said. “Not that they needed any more heat, but that you may see their glow reflected in the fires you kindle in my stove.”

And so may we feel the kindly warmth of Benjamin Franklin’s heart in our stoves, which are so much better, but all modelled after the one he made for his neighbors in the Quaker City of long ago.

A BOSTON TEA PARTY

“Is it, think you, because her father is the President of the Continental Congress that Susan Boudinot behaves so?” Abigail whispered the question across the aisle of the Dame’s school in old Boston to one of the other little old-time lassies.

“Perhaps that is it. Look at her now. She minds it not in the least that she must sit in the dunce’s corner. She is smiling with those red lips and big blue eyes of hers as though she were not in disgrace,” the other little girl whispered back.

From other corners of the schoolroom came whispered comments about the wilful little Susan.

“What did Susan do that she was put in the dunce’s corner?”

“Indeed she did a great deal to try the good Dame’s patience. She tied the braids of Mercy Wentworth and Prudence Talbot together so tightly that when the Dame called upon Mercy to bring her copy book to her to show its pothooks, Prudence was well nigh dragged too. As if this were not enough, Susan put sand in the ink and made it so thick as to spoil the good Dame’s copperplate writing.”

The school was hushed, though, as the Dame who taught it entered and took her seat behind the desk, a quaint figure in her black gown, white apron, great spectacles and smoothly-parted back hair. All the children of these old Colony days, seated in front of her on the hard benches, bent their heads low again over their spellers or slates. Their hair was smoothly cropped or tightly braided. Only the wayward little girl, perched high upon the dunce’s stool, wore her hair in a mass of tangled curls. They gleamed like gold in the sunshine that filtered in through the window. Susan’s hair was like her own wilful little self, impatient of bounds and training.

As the Dame had returned to the room Susan’s lips had drooped a little and lost their smile. She cast her eyes toward the toes of her buckled shoes just above which ruffled the dainty white frills of her pantalettes. She crossed her hands demurely in the lap of her short-waisted, rose-sprigged gown. Presently, though, Susan looked up and glanced out of the school window. There was the green Boston Common, and the white meeting-house, and the brick mansions with their wide white doorways and brass knockers. Susan could see in fancy as far as the sea front, where she knew there were British ships at anchor with the fishing smacks and the merchant vessels of the Colonies.

These were troubled times, as Susan well knew, for the settlers in the new land. She heard her father speak of the growing discontent of the Colonies against the stern rule of the English King, and their disinclination to pay taxes on goods when they were allowed no representation in Parliament.

Only that morning, as Susan had pouted and frowned when her mother tried to comb out her twisting, tangling curls, there had been the sound of loud voices in the next room where her father received his business callers. Susan’s sweet-faced mother had sighed.

“Ah, Susan dear, why do you add to our troubles by being such a wilful little lass. Hear you not the voices in the other room? It is the King’s collector, and your father is trying to explain to him that the Congress feels it especially unjust to be obliged to pay a tax on tea—that pleasant beverage that is so much drunk at the Boston parties. I know not how it will all come out, and my heart is aching for the trouble that I feel will come. Be good, dear child. This will help us as you can in no other way.”

Susan had thrown her arms about her mother’s neck in a burst of love.

“I will be good, dear mother. I will be good,” she had exclaimed, for at heart there was no kinder child in all Boston than little Mistress Susan Boudinot. The scene came back to her now and she turned toward her teacher, the Dame, reaching out her slim little arms imploringly. What right had she, a little girl, to be naughty when her country was in such dire peril, she thought?

“I will be good,” she said in a burst of penitent tears as the Dame motioned kindly to her to leave the dunce’s corner. “I do not know why I was moved to tie Mercy and Prudence together by their hair except it was what the elder speaks of in meeting as the old Adam coming out of one. And I am sorry indeed about the ink.”

“That will do,” the Dame said, trying not to smile. “Take your seat, Susan, and write at least ten times, ‘Be ye kind to one another,’ in your copy book, and remember to keep it treasured in your mind as well as on the white pages.”

Susan slipped gladly into her place beside Abigail and was soon scratching away with her quill pen as industriously as any of the others.

School was not out until late in the afternoon, and Susan, surrounded by Abigail and Mercy and Prudence and many of the other little Colonial maidens, took their merry way through the narrow, brick-paved streets of old Boston. In their flowered poke bonnets, round silk capes, and full skirts they looked like a host of blossoms of as many different colors—lavender, green, pink, and blue. At the gate of one of the old mansions not far from the Common, Susan, her curls flying and her cheeks rosy from the warm sea air, waved her hand in good-bye.

“I would invite you all to come in for a game of battledore and shuttlecock in the garden, but my mother was not feeling well when I left her this morning and I see her beckoning to me from her window.” She darted through the door and up the wide staircase. She found her mother almost in tears.

“There is to be a party at the Royal Governor’s house,” Madam Boudinot exclaimed, “this very afternoon, and there will be no one to represent your father’s family, for I feel far too ill to put on my best dress and go. Many prominent people will be there representing the Colonists and the King. Oh, what shall I do!”

Susan considered a moment, at the same time capably fetching the lavender salts for her mother, and putting cloths wet with toilet water on her aching head. Then she had an idea, for there was much wisdom packed away in the curl-crowned head of nine-year-old Mistress Susan.

“Do you set your mind and heart at rest, dearest mother,” she said. “I will do my hair up so.” Standing in front of an oval, gilt-framed mirror, Susan caught a few of her curls at the back. She pulled them up to the top of her head, and fastened them there with a band of velvet, while the rest hung in a golden shower over her shell pink ears.

“There,” Susan exclaimed. “I look as old as a miss of fourteen and I can be quite as dignified. I will put on my best silk dress, and my silk hose, and my Sunday shoes with the silver buckles.” As she spoke, Susan pulled out boxes and opened a chest and drawers. Then she stood in front of her mother, her arms loaded with finery. She made a quaint little curtsey.

“The family of the President of the Continental Congress will be represented at the Royal Governor’s party,” she said. “Mistress Susan Boudinot will take the place of Madam Boudinot.”

A space of a half-hour later a dignified little lady stepped out of the door of the Boudinot mansion and into a waiting chaise. Susan held her head very high. Was not her hair done up for the first time, and its mass of ringlets pinned with one of her mother’s tortoise-shell combs? Her buff brocade dress was made with a lace underbody. A polonaise and deep frills of lace edged the elbow-length, close-fitting sleeves and fell as far as the small white hands. A blue locket on a strip of narrow black velvet ribbon was hung about the little girl’s throat, and over it all was thrown a ruffled cape of her mother’s lined with fur. As the chaise rattled away toward the Governor’s mansion her mother’s parting words to her repeated themselves over and over again in Susan’s mind.

“Be a good child, Susan, and do not forget for a moment that you are representing your father and, through him, the Congress.”

It was a gay scene in which little Mistress Susan soon found herself. The Governor’s parlor was very beautiful with its high-backed mahogany chairs and great bowls of roses. A huge sideboard was loaded with cakes and sweets, and the great round table covered with a lace cloth was set with priceless blue and white china. There was a crowd of people, Whig and Tory. Lovely young ladies of the Colonies in powdered hair and stiff silks, and young men, their hair worn in powdered queues, mingled gaily. After paying her respects to the wife of the Governor, Susan found a corner where she could sit quietly and watch the party. She was not unseen, though. Many eyes had noted the dainty charm of the little maid and the sweetness of her tone as she had said, gracefully, to her hostess:

“My mother, Madame Boudinot, sends her respects to the Governor’s wife and regrets that she can not bring them in person. I am the daughter of Madame Boudinot and my father is the President of the Continental Congress.”

“And a polite little girl, indeed,” the hostess had replied, smiling, as she turned and presented the little girl to her husband, the Royal Governor, and representative of the King.

Many eyes, both Whig and Tory, had been cast at the corner where little Mistress Susan sat demurely.

“The new land has winsome daughters,” said an Englishman.

“And plucky ones,” retorted an American.

But Susan’s eyes were fixed on the goodies that were being brought in now by the servants; great silver trays loaded with confections of all kinds. The blue plates were passed to the guests. Soft glowing candles sent their glimmering light over the tall crystal goblets and bowls of fruits. Then Susan saw a silver urn brought in and set upon the table in front of the Governor’s wife, who poured the fragrant tea into the blue cups.

“Here is your cup of tea, little Mistress Susan,” she said.

Susan took the blue cup in her hand; but, suddenly, its very touch changed her from the prim little maid she had been before to a small creature of rebellion. The amber, steaming tea in the blue cup was, to Susan, one of the marks of her country’s lack of independence. Must the Colonies pay a tax on tea to the King across the ocean, and still be allowed no representation in Parliament? How, Susan wondered, could those other girls of the Colonies, years older than she, sit there so placidly sipping their tea and seeming to enjoy it so much? Suddenly she recalled her mother’s words:

“Do not forget for a moment that you are representing your father, and through him, the Congress.”

Susan had made up her mind what she would do. Her girlish spirit of rebellion that sometimes led her to play such pranks as she had that day in school suddenly turned to the will power that made the Colonists win their fight for freedom in the American Revolution. Susan rose, cup in hand, and took her way across the room, the rustling of her silk skirts calling the attention of the tea drinkers to her. At an open window she stopped and deliberately tipped her cup, throwing the tea, untasted, on the grass outside. Then she set the empty cup down upon the table.

At first there was a hush. Then the gentlemen laughed to see the little girl, flushed now with confusion, seated on the edge of a high chair and tapping upon the floor with one high-heeled slipper.

“The spirit of the Colonies,” said the Royal Governor smiling. “I foresee that we shall have to tame it.”

But in spite of his mocking words Susan saw that more than one of the guests who claimed the cause of the Colonies their own set down their tea and drank no more of it. The first laughter died away. There was a thoughtful quiet during the remainder of the party.

Years and years ago it was, but the brave rebellion of little Mistress Susan has come down to the children of to-day in story as one of the helps in the winning for America of her independence.

THE DEACON’S GRASSHOPPER

On their way to and from school, the boys and girls of old Boston cast curious glances toward the shop of Deacon Shem Drowne.

It was over one hundred and fifty years ago, and they were Colonial children. The boys wore short coats and long trousers, and the little girls long, plain skirts almost touching the tops of their shoes. When it rained, as it often did in the long chilly days of late winter, they wrapped themselves in heavy capes and ran between the drops, for they had no umbrellas.

But rain, or no rain, Samuel, and Abigail and the others could not pass the deacon’s tiny window. Through it they knew they might have a peep at his strange craft. Even the sound of his hammer thrilled them.

He was a coppersmith of old Boston, and his shop of one room was down near the wharves where British ships lay at anchor and the fishermen plied their trade all day. On Sundays Deacon Drowne went to the white meeting-house on the Common and passed the contribution basket, and rapped the head of any child who went to sleep during the sermon.

When Monday came, though, the Deacon was a very different person. He put on a little round cap and a short leather apron. He perched himself upon a stool beside his work bench and chuckled like some little, wizened gnome of the mountain as he looked at his sheets of copper and brass, his scissors, dies, and the many hammers, large and small, that he used for shaping metals.

The trade of a coppersmith was not one to interest children greatly in those days. The Deacon had to patch some housewife’s preserving kettle, or make copper toes for the shoes of a little Colonial lad who had worn out the leather too soon to suit his father’s sense of economy. Sometimes he had a clock to mend, or a teakettle that needed a new handle.

None of these were unusual enough tasks so to attract the boys and girls of Boston. They were familiar with teakettles, having to fill them so often, and copper toes on their shoes hurt their feet. It was something quite different that drew them to the window and door of the coppersmith.

“What do you suppose Deacon Drowne will have hidden under his work bench to-day?” Samuel would ask.

“Oh, I do not know. I am curious to see. Is he not a person of great skill and many surprises?” Abigail would reply.

It was quite true. The old coppersmith saw possibilities in his craft that would have amazed his patrons who thought that the Deacon’s mind was bent all day long on patches and wires. When his day’s work was over the old coppersmith closed his shutter and lighted a candle. He lighted, too, a small stove in which he could heat his metals and weld them into queer and curious shapes. It seemed to him that the sheets of copper and brass in which he worked were too beautiful for the commonplace uses to which he had to put them.

His mind went back to the days of his boyhood in England when he lived on a farm near the sea and could watch the ships beyond the fields where the sea lay, blue and clear. As these thoughts came to him, he welded his metals to make the figures that his memory painted for him. No wonder the children were excited at what the coppersmith would show them that he had made over night!

He would beckon to them to cross his threshold. Then, with his eyes twinkling like stars through his spectacles, he would hold up in triumph something that he had made. Once it was a little brass rooster, shining and beautiful from his comb to the last tail feather. Once the Deacon showed the children a curious little admiral made of copper and holding a telescope as he looked far off at an imaginary sea. Then, to please them, he made a small Indian of copper; the figure was complete even to the feathers in his headdress.

How the children did laugh, though, when Deacon Drowne showed them a copper grasshopper that he had welded! It was so much larger than a real grasshopper that it looked like some strange dragon. It quite filled the tiny shop, its long slender legs stretching in every direction.

“Why did you make it?” the children asked.

The old coppersmith chuckled as he replied.

“To show what can be done with my shining metal,” he said proudly. “It took skill to bend those legs and make the veins in a grasshopper’s wings.”

“What will you do with it, Deacon Drowne?” asked the children.

The old man shook his head.

“Perhaps it has no use,” he said, looking sadly at the copper grasshopper sprawled out before him.

That was what the sober people of Boston thought, too, all except Mr. Peter Faneuil.

No one could quite understand Mr. Peter Faneuil. He had inherited quite a fortune, but he lived in a simple way and was fonder of children and the sea than of wearing fine broadcloth and having a coach. He joined the children one day when they went to Deacon Drowne’s shop and he saw the grasshopper. They had thought that Mr. Peter Faneuil would laugh at it. He did not even smile. He looked at the shining copper wings and the delicate workmanship of the slim legs. Then he grasped the coppersmith’s toil-hardened hand.

“It is a wonderful piece of work,” he said. “It ought to be placed where every one in Boston could see it.”

The Deacon smiled with happiness as Mr. Faneuil and the children left him. He touched the grasshopper’s perfectly shaped head.

“How could that be?” he said wonderingly.

The years went on, and at last no one heard Deacon Drowne’s hammering, for he was too old to work any longer at his trade. The children grew up, and Samuel graduated from Harvard College. He was called Samuel Adams now, and was quite an influential young man in Boston. He was one of those called to attend a meeting in Boston at which an important decision was to be made.

Should, or should not Boston accept a gift that Mr. Peter Faneuil wished to make the city from his boundless wealth? He wished to build for Boston a public hall. But this was the unusual part of his wish. The hall was to have a market on the ground floor where the incoming ships could display their fruits and tea and cloth, and the housewives of Boston might come and buy. On the top of the hall there was to be a high tower, and on top of the tower a weathervane that the sailors could see at quite a distance from shore.

“Where shall we transact our important business in this hall?” the meeting asked Dr. Peter Faneuil.

“Over the market,” was his quick reply.

Then they argued the question and wrangled about it. A market in a public building did not seem fitting to them, even though there was no public market in Boston at that time. Neither did a weathervane on top of the tower seem suitable. Some were for it, and more were against it. It did not matter that the hall was to be a free-will gift to Boston. They wished no new ideas to break in upon the old ones that belonged to England and the King.

Samuel Adams and his friends were opposed to the idea, but suddenly Mr. Peter Faneuil sent a message to Samuel that made him smile and change his mind. The meeting closed, and the day was carried for Mr. Peter Faneuil. He was to build his hall just as he wished, and give it to Boston.