Chapter 6

To whom did King Charles the Second owe a large sum of money? How did he pay his debt? What did the king name the country? What does the name mean? What has been found there? What is said about the Friends or Quakers? What did Penn want the land here for? How were the Quakers then treated in England? What did Penn do in 1682? Tell what the king said to Penn and what Penn replied. What city did Penn begin to build here? What does Philadelphia mean? What did Penn and the Indians do? What did the English general do about the great elm in the Revolution? Tell about Penn's dinner with the Indians. Did the Indians trouble the Quakers? What is said of the growth of Philadelphia? What was done there in the Revolution? Tell what you can about Penn's last days. Where is he buried?

GENERAL JAMES OGLETHORPE[1] (1696-1785).

102. The twelve English colonies in America; General Oglethorpe makes a settlement in Georgia.--We have seen[2] that the first real colony or settlement made in America by the English was in Virginia in 1607. By the beginning of 1733, or in about a hundred and twenty-five years, eleven more had been made, or twelve in all. They stretched along the seacoast, from the farthest coast of Maine to the northern boundary of Florida, which was then owned by the Spaniards.[3]

The two colonies farthest south were North Carolina and South Carolina. In 1733 James Oglethorpe, a brave English soldier, who afterward became General Oglethorpe, came over here to make a new settlement. This new one, which made just thirteen[4] in all, was called Georgia in honor of King George the Second, who gave a piece of land for it, on the seacoast, below South Carolina.

[Footnote 1: Oglethorpe (O'gel-thorp).]

[Footnote 2: See paragraph 37.]

[Footnote 3: Because the Spaniards had settled it in 1565; see paragraph 30.]

[Footnote 4: These thirteen colonies or settlements were: First, the four New England colonies (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode island; Maine was then part of Massachusetts, and Vermont was claimed by both New Hampshire and New York). Secondly, four middle colonies (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, with Delaware). Thirdly, five southern colonies (Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia).]

103. What it was that led General Oglethorpe to make this new settlement.--General Oglethorpe had a friend in England who was cast into prison for debt. There the unfortunate man was so cruelly treated that he fell sick and died, leaving his family in great distress.

The General felt the death of his friend so much that he set to work to find out how other poor debtors lived in the London prisons. He soon saw that great numbers of them suffered terribly. The prisons were crowded and filthy. The men shut up in them were ragged and dirty; some of them were fastened with heavy chains, and a good many actually died of starvation.

General Oglethorpe could not bear to see strong men killed off in this manner. He thought that if the best of them--those who were honest and willing to work--could have the chance given them of earning their living, that they would soon do as well as any men. It was to help them that he persuaded the king to give the land of Georgia.

104. Building the city of Savannah; what the people of Charleston, South Carolina, did; a busy settlement; the alligators.--General Oglethorpe took over thirty-five families to America in 1733. They settled on a high bank of the Savannah[5] River, about twenty miles from the sea. The general laid out a town with broad, straight, handsome streets, and with many small squares or parks. He called the settlement Savannah from the Indian name of the river on which it stands.

The people of Charleston, South Carolina, were glad to have some English neighbors south of them that would help them fight the Spaniards of Florida, who hated the English, and wanted to drive them out. They gave the newcomers a hundred head of cattle, a drove of hogs, and twenty barrels of rice.

The emigrants set to work with a will, cutting down the forest trees, building houses, and planting gardens. There were no idlers to be seen at Savannah: even the children found something to do that was helpful.

Nothing disturbed the people but the alligators. They climbed up the bank from the river to see what was going on. But the boys soon taught them not to be too curious. When one monster was found impudently prowling round the town, they thumped him with sticks till they fairly beat the life out of him. After that, the alligators paid no more visits to the settlers.

[Footnote 5: Savannah (Sa-van'ah).]

105. Arrival of some German emigrants; "Ebenezer";[6] "blazing" trees.--After a time, some German Protestants, who had been cruelly driven out of their native land on account of their religion, came to Georgia. General Oglethorpe gave them a hearty welcome. He had bought land of the Indians, and so there was plenty of room for all. The Germans went up the river, and then went back a number of miles into the woods; there they picked out a place for a town. They called their settlement by the Bible name of Ebenezer,[7] which means "The Lord hath helped us."

There were no roads through the forests, so the new settlers "blazed" the trees; that is, they chopped a piece of bark off, so that they could find their way through the thick woods when they wanted to go to Savannah. Every tree so marked stood like a guide-post; it showed the traveller which way to go until he came in sight of the next one.

[Footnote 6: Ebenezer (Eb-e-ne'zer).]

[Footnote 7: See I Sam. vii. 12.]

106. Trying to make silk; the queen's American dress.--The settlers hoped to be able to get large quantities of silk to send to England, because the mulberry-tree grows wild in Georgia, and its leaves are the favorite food of the silkworm.[8] At first it seemed as if the plan would be successful, and General Oglethorpe took over some Georgia silk as a present to the queen of England. She had a handsome dress made of it for her birthday; it was the first American silk dress ever worn by an English queen. But after a while it was found that silk could not be produced in Georgia as well as it could in Italy and France, and so in time cotton came to be raised instead.

[Footnote 8: Silkworm: a kind of caterpillar which spins a fine, soft thread of which silk is made.]

107. Keeping out the Spaniards; Georgia powder at Bunker Hill; General Oglethorpe in his old age.--The people of Georgia did a good work in keeping out the Spaniards, who were trying to get possession of the part of the country north of Florida. Later, like the settlers in North Carolina and South Carolina, they did their part in helping to make America independent of the rule of the king of England. When the war of the Revolution began, the king had a lot of powder stored in Savannah. The people broke into the building, rolled out the kegs, and carried them off. Part of the powder they kept for themselves, and part they seem to have sent to Massachusetts; so that it is quite likely that the men who fought at Bunker Hill may have loaded their guns with some of the powder given them by their friends in Savannah. In that case the king got it back, but in a somewhat different way from what he expected.

General Oglethorpe spent the last of his life in England. He lived to a very great age. Up to the last he had eyes as bright and keen as a boy's. After the Revolution was over, the king made a treaty or agreement, by which he promised to let the United States of America live in peace. General Oglethorpe was able to read that treaty without spectacles. He had lived to see the colony of Georgia which he had settled become a free and independent state.

108. Summary.--In 1733 General James Oglethorpe brought over a number of emigrants from England, and settled Savannah, Georgia. Georgia was the thirteenth English colony; it was the last one established in this country. General Oglethorpe lived to see it become one of the United States of America.

At the beginning of 1733 how many English colonies were there in America? Who was General Oglethorpe? What did he do? Why was the new settlement called Georgia? Tell what happened to a friend of General Oglethorpe's. What did he wish to do for the poor debtors? What is said about the settlement of Savannah? What about the German emigrants and Ebenezer? What about raising silk? What good work did the people of Georgia do? What about Georgia powder in the Revolution? What is said of General Oglethorpe in old age?

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790).

109. Growth of Philadelphia; what a young printer was doing for it.--By the year 1733, when the people of Savannah[1] were building their first log cabins, Philadelphia[2] had grown to be the largest city in this country,--though it would take more than seventy such cities to make one as great as Philadelphia now is.

Next to William Penn,[3] the person who did the most for Philadelphia was a young man who had gone from Boston to make his home among the Quakers. He lived in a small house near the market. On a board over the door he had painted his name and business; here it is:

[Footnote 1: See paragraph 104.]

[Footnote 2: See paragraph 99.]

[Footnote 3: See paragraph 96.]

110. Franklin's newspaper and almanac;[4] how he worked; standing before kings.--Franklin was then publishing a small newspaper, called the _Pennsylvania Gazette_.[5] To-day we print newspapers by steam at the rate of two or three hundred a minute; but Franklin, standing in his shirtsleeves at a little press, printed his with his own hands. It was hard work, as you could see by the drops of sweat that stood on his forehead; and it was slow as well as hard. The young man not only wrote himself most of what he printed in his paper, but he often made his own ink; sometimes he even made his own type.[6] When he got out of paper he would take a wheelbarrow, go out and buy a load, and wheel it home. To-day there are more than three hundred newspapers printed in Philadelphia; then there were only two, and Franklin's was the better of those two.

Besides this paper he published an almanac, which thousands of people bought. In it he printed such sayings as these: "_He who would thrive[7] must rise at five_," and "_If you want a thing well done, do it yourself._" But Franklin was not contented with simply printing these sayings, for he practised them as well.

Sometimes his friends would ask him why he began work so early in the morning, and kept at it so many hours. He would laugh, and tell them that his father used to repeat to him this saying of Solomon's: "_Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men._"[8]

At that time the young printer never actually expected to stand in the presence of a king, but years later he met with five; and one of them, his friend the king of France, gave him his picture set round with diamonds.

[Footnote 4: Almanac (al'ma-nak).]

[Footnote 5: Gazette (ga-zet'): a newspaper.]

[Footnote 6: Type: the raised metal letters used in printing are made by melting lead and some other metals together and pouring the mixture into molds.]

[Footnote 7: Thrive: to get on in business, to prosper.]

[Footnote 8: See Prov. xxii. 29.]

111. Franklin's boyhood; making tallow candles; he is apprenticed[9] to his brother; how he managed to save money to buy books.--Franklin's father was a poor man with a large family. He lived in Boston, and made soap and candles. Benjamin went to school two years; then, when he was ten years old, his father set him to work in his factory, and he never went to school again. He was now kept busy filling the candle-molds with melted grease, cutting off the ends of the wicks, and running errands. But the boy did not like this kind of work; and, as he was very fond of books, his father put him in a printing-office. This office was carried on by James Franklin, one of Benjamin's brothers. James Franklin paid a small sum of money each week for Benjamin's board; but the boy told him that if he would let him have half the money to use as he liked, he would board himself. James was glad to do this. Benjamin then gave up eating meat, and, while the others went out to dinner, he would stay in the printing-office and eat a boiled potato, or perhaps a handful of raisins. In this way, he saved up a number of coppers every week; and when he got enough laid by, he would buy a book.

But James Franklin was not only a mean man, but a hot-tempered one; and when he got angry with his young apprentice,[10] he would beat and knock him about. At length the lad, who was now seventeen, made up his mind that he would run away, and go to New York.

[Footnote 9: Apprenticed: bound by a written agreement to learn a trade of a master, who is bound by the same agreement to teach the trade.]

[Footnote 10: Apprentice: one who is apprenticed to a master to learn a trade. See footnote 9.]

112. Young Franklin runs away; he goes to New York, and then to Philadelphia.--Young Franklin sold some of his books, and with the money paid his passage to New York by a sailing-vessel--for in those days there were no steamboats or railroads in America. When he got to New York, he could not find work, so he decided to go on to Philadelphia.

He started to walk across New Jersey to Burlington, on the Delaware River, a distance of about fifty miles; there he hoped to get a sail-boat going down the river to Philadelphia. Shortly after he set out, it began to rain hard, and the lad was soon wet to the skin and splashed all over with red mud; but he kept on until noon, then took a rest, and on the third day he reached Burlington and got passage down the river.

113. Franklin's Sunday walk in Philadelphia; the rolls; Miss Read; the Quaker meeting-house.--Franklin landed in Philadelphia on Sunday morning (1723). He was tired and hungry; he had but a single dollar in the world. As he walked along, he saw a bake-shop open. He went in and bought three great, puffy rolls for a penny[11] each. Then he started up Market Street, where he was one day to have his newspaper office. He had a roll like a small loaf of bread tucked under each arm, and he was eating the other as though it tasted good to him. As he passed a house, he noticed a nice-looking young woman at the door. She seemed to want to laugh; and well she might, for Franklin appeared like a youthful tramp who had been robbing a baker's shop. The young woman was Miss Deborah[12] Read. A number of years later Franklin married her. He always said that he could not have got a better wife.

Franklin kept on in his walk until he came to the Delaware. He took a hearty drink of river water to settle his breakfast, and then gave away the two rolls he had under his arm to a poor woman with a child. On his way back from the river he followed a number of people to a Quaker meeting-house. At the meeting no one spoke. Franklin was tired out, and, not having any preacher to keep him awake, he soon fell asleep, and slept till the meeting was over. He says, "This was the first house I was in, or slept in, in Philadelphia."

[Footnote 11: Penny: an English coin worth two cents.]

[Footnote 12: Deborah (Deb'o-rah).]

114. Franklin finds work; he goes back to Boston on a visit; he learns to stoop.--The next day the young man found some work in a printing-office. Six months afterward he decided to go back to Boston to see his friends. He started on his journey with a good suit of clothes, a silver watch, and a well-filled purse.

While in Boston, Franklin went to call on a minister who had written a little book[13] which he had been very fond of reading. As he was coming away from the minister's house, he had to go through a low passage-way under a large beam. "Stoop! Stoop!" cried out the gentleman; but Franklin did not understand him, and so hit his head a sharp knock against the beam. "Ah," said his friend, as he saw him rubbing his head, "you are young, and have the world before you; _stoop_ as you go through it, and you will miss many hard thumps." Franklin says that this sensible advice, which was thus beat into his head, was of great use afterward; in fact, he learned then how to stoop to conquer.

[Footnote 13: The name of this book, written by the Rev. Cotton Mather, was _Essays to do Good_.]

115. Franklin returns to Philadelphia; he goes to London; water against beer.--Franklin soon went back to Philadelphia. The governor of Pennsylvania then persuaded him to go to London, telling him that he would help him to get a printing-press and type to start a newspaper in Philadelphia.

When Franklin reached London, he found that the governor was one of those men who promise great things, but do nothing. Instead of buying a press, he had to go to work in a printing-office to earn his bread. He stayed in London more than a year. At the office where he worked the men were great beer-drinkers. One of his companions bought six pints a day. He began with a pint before breakfast, then took another pint at breakfast, then a pint between breakfast and dinner, then a pint at dinner, then a pint in the afternoon, and, last of all, a pint after he had done work. Franklin drank nothing but water. The others laughed at him, and nicknamed him the "Water-American"; but after a while they had to confess that he was stronger than they were who drank so much strong beer.

The fact was that Franklin could beat them both at work and at play. When they went out for a bath in the Thames,[14] they found that their "Water-American" could swim like a fish; and he so astonished them that a rich Londoner tried to persuade him to start a swimming-school to teach his sons, but Franklin had stayed in England long enough, and he now decided to go back to Philadelphia.

[Footnote 14: Thames (Tems). London is on the river Thames.]

116. Franklin sets up his newspaper; "sawdust pudding."--After his return to America, Franklin labored so diligently that he was soon able to set up a newspaper of his own. He tried to make it a good one. But some people thought that he spoke his mind too freely. They complained of this to him, and gave him to understand that if he did not make his paper to please them, they would stop taking it or advertising in it.

Franklin heard what they had to say, and then invited them all to come and have supper with him. They went, expecting a feast, but they found nothing on the table but two dishes of corn-meal mush and a big pitcher of cold water. That kind of mush was then eaten only by very poor people; and because it was yellow and coarse, it was nicknamed "sawdust pudding."

Franklin gave everybody a heaping plateful, and then, filling his own, he made a hearty supper of it. The others tried to eat, but could not. After Franklin had finished his supper, he looked up, and said quietly, "My friends, any one who can live on 'sawdust pudding' and cold water, as I can, does not need much help from others." After that, no one went to the young printer with complaints about his paper. Franklin, as we have seen,[15] had learned to stoop; but he certainly did not mean to go stooping through life.

[Footnote 15: See paragraph 114.]

117. Franklin's plan of life; what he did for Philadelphia.--Not many young men can see their own faults, but Franklin could. More than that, he tried hard to get rid of them. He kept a little book in which he wrote down his faults. If he wasted half an hour of time or a shilling of money, or said anything that he had better not have said, he wrote it down in his book. He carried that book in his pocket all his life, and he studied it as a boy at school studies a hard lesson. By it he learned three things,--first, to do the right thing; next, to do it at the right time; last of all, to do it in the right way.

As he was never tired of helping himself to get upward and onward, so, too, he was never tired of helping others. He started the first public library in Philadelphia, which was also the first in America. He set on foot the first fire-engine company and the first military company in that city. He got the people to pave the muddy streets with stone; he helped to build the first academy,--now called the University of Pennsylvania,--and he also helped to build the first hospital.

118. Franklin's experiments[16] with electricity; the wonderful bottle; the picture of the king of England.--While doing these things and publishing his paper besides, Franklin found time to make experiments with electricity. Very little was then known about this wonderful power, but a Dutchman, living in the city of Leyden[17] in Holland, had discovered a way of bottling it up in what is called a Leyden Jar. Franklin had one of these jars, and he was never tired of seeing what new and strange thing he could do with it.

He contrived a picture of the king of England with a movable gilt crown on his head. Then he connected the crown by a long wire with the Leyden Jar. When he wanted some fun he would dare any one to go up to the picture and take off the king's crown. Why that's easy enough, a man would say, and would walk up and seize the crown. But no sooner had he touched it than he would get an electric shock which would make his fingers tingle as they never tingled before. With a loud Oh! Oh! he would let go of the crown, and start back in utter astonishment, not knowing what had hurt him.

[Footnote 16: Experiments: here an experiment is a trial made to discover something unknown. Franklin made these experiments or trials with electricity and with thunder clouds in order to find out what he could about them.]

[Footnote 17: Leyden: see map in paragraph 62.]

119. The electrical kite.--But Franklin's greatest experiment was made one day in sober earnest with a kite. He believed that the electricity in the bottle, or Leyden Jar, was the same thing as the lightning we see in a thunder-storm. He knew well enough how to get an electric spark from the jar, for he had once killed a turkey with it for dinner; but how could he get a spark from a cloud in the sky?

He thought about it for a long time; then he made a kite out of a silk handkerchief, and fastened a sharp iron point to the upright stick of the kite. One day, when a thunder-storm was seen coming up, Franklin and his son went out to the fields. The kite was raised; then Franklin tied an iron key to the lower end of the string. After waiting some time, he saw the little hair-like threads of the string begin to stand up like the bristles of a brush. He felt certain that the electricity was coming down the string. He put his knuckle close to the key, and a spark flew out. Next, he took his Leyden Jar and collected the electricity in that. He had made two great discoveries, for he had found out that electricity and lightning are the same thing and he had also found how to fill his bottle directly from the clouds: that was something that no one had ever done before.