True to His Home: A Tale of the Boyhood of FranklinButterworth, Hezekiah
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True to His Home: A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin
Butterworth, Hezekiah
Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790 -- Fiction
If Uncle Ben, the poet, could have seen this day, how would his heart
have rejoiced!
Jane Mecom--Jenny--heard of the fame of her brother by every paper
brought by the post. She delighted to tell her old mother the weekly
news about Benjamin. One day, when he had received honors from one of
the great scientific societies, Abiah said to her daughter:
"You helped Ben in his early days--I can see now that you did."
"How, mother?"
"By believing in him when hardly any one else did. We build up people by
believing in them. My dim eyes see it all now. I love to think of the
past," she continued, "when you and Ben were so happy together--the days
of Uncle Benjamin. I love to think of the old family Thanksgivings. What
wonderful days were those when the old clock-cleaner came! How he took
the dumb, dusty clock to pieces, and laid it out on the table! How Ben
would say, 'you can never make that clock tick again!' and you, Jenny,
whose faith never failed, would answer, 'Yes, Ben, he can!' How the old
man would break open a walnut and extract the oil from the meat, and
apply it with a feather to the little axles of the wheels, and then put
the works together, and the clock would go better than before! Do you
remember it, Jane? How, then, your wondering eyes would look upon the
clock miracle and delight in your faith, and say, 'I told you so, Ben.'
How he would kiss you in your happiness that your prophecy had come
true. He had said 'No' that you might say 'Yes.'"
"Do you think that his thoughts turn home, mother?"
There was a whir of wings in the chimney.
"More to a true nature than a noisy applause of the crowd is the simple
faith of one honest heart," said Abiah Folger in return. "In the silence
and desolation of life, which may come to all, such sympathy is the
only fountain to which one can turn. Our best thoughts fly homeward like
swallows to old chimneys, where they last year brooded over their young,
and center in the true hearts left at the fireside. Every true heart is
true to his home, and to the graves of those with whom it shared the
years when life lay fair before it. Yes, Jane, he thinks of you."
She was right. Jenny had helped her brother by believing in him when he
most needed such faith.
There is some good angel, some Jenny, who comes into every one's life.
Happy is he who feels the heart touch of such an one, and yields to such
unselfish spiritual visions. To do this is to be led by a gentle hand
into the best that there is in life.
In sacred hours the voices of these home angels come back to the silent
chambers of the heart. We then see that our best hopes were in them, and
wish that we could retune the broken chords of the past. The home voice
is always true, and we find it so at last.
Franklin had little of his sister's sentiment, but when he thought of
the old days, and of the simple hearts that were true to him there, he
would say, "Beloved Boston." His heart was in the words. Boston was the
town of Jenny.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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