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CHAPTER X

About this time, which was somewhere in his sixteenth year, Ben lighted on a very curious work, by one Tryon, recommending vegetable diet altogether, and condemning "animal food as a great crime." He read it with all the avidity of a young and honest mind that wished to renounce error and embrace truth. "From start to pole," as the racers say, his conscience was under the lash, pointing at him as the dreadful Sarcophagist, or Meat-eater alluded to by this severe writer. He could not, without horror reflect, that, young as he was, his stomach had yet been the grave of hundreds of lambs, pigs, birds, and other little animals, "who had never injured him." And when he extended the dismal idea over the vast surface of the globe, and saw the whole human race pursuing and butchering the poor brute creation, filling the sea and land with cries and blood and slaughter, he felt a depression of spirits with an anguish of mind that strongly tempted him, not only to detest man, but even to charge God himself with cruelty. But this distress did not continue long. Impatient of such wretchedness, he set all the powers of his mind to work, to discover designs in all this, worthy of the Creator. To his unspeakable satisfaction he soon made these important discoveries. 'Tis true, said he, man is constantly butchering the inferior creatures. And it is also true that they are constantly devouring one another. But after all, shocking as this may seem, it is but dying: it is but giving up life, or returning a something which was not their own; which for the honour of his goodness in their enjoyment, was only lent them for a season; and which, therefore, they ought not to think hard to return.

Now certainly, continued Ben, all this is very clear and easy to be understood. Well then, since all life, whether of man or beast, or vegetables, is a kind loan of God, and to be taken back again, the question is whether the way in which we see it is taken back is not the best way. It is true, life being the season of enjoyment, is so dear to us that there is no way of giving it up which is not shocking. And this horror which we feel at the thought of having our own lives taken from us we extend to the brutes. We cannot help feeling shocked at the butcher killing a lamb, or one animal killing another. Nay, tell even a child who is looking with smiles on a good old family horse that has just brought a bag of flour from the mill, or a load of wood from the forest, that this his beloved horse will by and by be eaten up of the buzzards, and instantly his looks will manifest extreme distress. And if his mother, to whom he turns for contradiction of this horrid prophecy, should confirm it, he is struck dumb with horror, or bursts into strong cries as if his little heart would break at thought of the dismal end to which his horse is coming. These, though very amiable, are yet the amiable weaknesses of the child, which, it is the duty of man to overcome. This animal was created of his God for the double purpose of doing service to man, and of enjoying comfort himself. And when these are accomplished, and that life which was only lent him is recalled, is it not better that nature's scavengers, the buzzards, should take up his flesh and keep the elements sweet, than that it should lie on the fields to shock the sight and smell of all who pass by? The fact is, continued Ben, I see that all creatures that live, whether men or beasts, or vegetables, are doomed to die. Now were it not a greater happiness that this universal calamity, as it appears, should be converted into an universal blessing, and this dying of all be made the living of all? Well, through the admirable wisdom and goodness of the Creator, this is exactly the case. The vegetables all die to sustain animals; and animals, whether birds, beasts, or fishes, all die to sustain man, or one another. Now, is it not far better for them that they should be thus continually changing into each other's substance, and existing in the wholesome shapes of life and vigour, than to be scattered about dying and dead, shocking all eyes with their ghastly forms, and poisoning both sea and air with the stench of their corruption?

This scrutiny into the economy of nature in this matter, gave him such an exalted sense of nature's Great Author, that in a letter to his father, to whom he made a point of writing every week for the benefit of his corrections, he says, though I was at first greatly angered with Tryon, yet afterwards I felt myself much obliged to him for giving me such a hard nut to crack, for I have picked out of it one of the sweetest kernels I ever tasted. In truth, father, continues he, although I do not make much noise or show about religion, yet I entertain a most adoring sense of the Great First Cause; insomuch that I had rather cease to exist than cease to believe him all wise and benevolent.

In the midst, however, of these pleasing speculations, another disquieting idea was suggested.—Is it not cruel, after giving life to take it away again so soon? The tender grass has hardly risen above the earth, in all its spring-tide green and sweetness, before its beauty is all cropped by the lamb; and the playful lamb, full dressed in his snow-white fleece, has scarcely tasted the sweets of existence, before he is caught up by the cruel wolf or more cruel man. And so with every bird and fish: this has scarcely learned to sing his song to the listening grove, or that to leap with transport from the limpid wave, before he is called to resign his life to man or some larger animal.

This was a horrid thought, which, like a cloud, spread a deep gloom over Ben's mind. But his reflections, like the sunbeams, quickly pierced and dispersed them.

These cavillers, said he, in another letter, are entirely wrong. They wish, it seems, long life to the creatures; the Creator wishes them a pleasant one. They would have but a few to exist in a long time; he a great many in a short time. Now as youth is the season of gaiety and enjoyment, and all after is comparatively insipid, is it not better, before that pleasant state is ended in sorrow, the creature should pass away by a quick and generally easy fate, and appear again in some other shape? Surely if the grass could reason, it would prefer, while fresh and beautiful, to be cropped by the lamb and converted into his substance, than, by staying a little longer, to disfigure the fields with its faded foliage. And the lamb too, if he could but think and choose, would ask for a short life and a merry one, rather than, by staying a little longer, degenerate into a ragged old sheep, snorting with the rattles, and dying of the rot, or murrain.

But though Ben, at the tender age of sixteen, and with no other aid than his own strong mind, could so easily quell this host of atheistical doubts, which Tryon had conjured up; yet he hesitated not to become his disciple in another tenet. Tryon asserted of animal food, that though it gave great strength to the body, yet it contributed sadly to grossness of blood and heaviness of mind; and hence he reasoned, that all who wish for cool heads and clear thoughts should make their diet principally of vegetables. Ben was struck with this as the perfection of reason, and entered so heartily into it as a rare help for acquiring knowledge, that he instantly resolved, fond as he was of flesh and fish, to give both up from that day, and never taste them again as long as he lived. This steady refusal of his to eat meat, was looked on as a very inconvenient singularity by his brother, who scolded him for it, and insisted he should give it up. Ben made no words with his brother on this account.—Knowing that avarice was his ruling passion, he threw out a bait to James which instantly caught, and without any disturbance produced the accommodation he wished. "Brother," said he to him one day as he scolded; "you give three shillings and six pence a week for my diet at this boarding-house; give me but half that money and I'll diet myself without any farther trouble or expense to you." James immediately took him at his word and gave him in hand his week's ration, one shilling and nine pence, which after the Boston exchange, six shillings to the dollar, makes exactly thirty-seven and a half cents. Those who often give one dollar for a single dinner, and five dollars for a fourth of July dinner, would look very blue at an allowance of thirty-seven and a half cents for a whole week. But Ben so husbanded this little sum, that after defraying all the expenses of his table, he found himself at the end of the week, near twenty cents in pocket—thus expending not quite three cents a day! This was a joyful discovery to Ben—twenty cents a week, said he, and fifty-two weeks in the year; why, that is upwards of ten dollars in the twelve months! what a noble fund for books! Nor was this the only benefit he derived from it; for, while his brother and the journeymen were gone to the boarding-house to devour their pork and beef, which, with lounging and picking their teeth, generally took them an hour, he stayed at the printing-office; and after dispatching his frugal meal, of boiled potatoe, or rice; or a slice of bread with an apple; or bunch of raisins and a glass of water, he had the rest of the time for study. The pure fluids and bright spirits secreted from such simple diet, proved exceedingly favourable to that clearness and vigour of mind, and rapid growth in knowledge which his youthful soul delighted in.

I cannot conclude this chapter without making a remark which the reader has perhaps anticipated—that it was by this simple regimen, vegetables and water, that the Jewish seer, the holy Daniel, while a youth, was of Providence made fit for all the learning of the East; hence arose his bright visions into futurity, and his clear pointings to the far distant days of the Messiah, when the four great brass and iron monarchies of Media, Persia, Grecia, and Rome, being overthrown, Christ should set up his last golden monarchy of Love, which, though faint in the beginning as the first beam of the uncertain dawn, shall yet at length brighten all the skies, and chase the accursed clouds of sin and suffering from the abodes of man and beast.

In like manner, it was on the simple regimen of vegetables and water, the easy purchase of three cents a day, that the same Providence raised up our young countryman to guard the last spark of perfect liberty in the British colonies of North America. Yes, it was on three cents' worth of daily bread and water, that young Ben Franklin commenced his collection of that blaze of light, which early as 1754, showed the infant and unsuspecting colonies their rights and their dangers—and which afterwards, in 1764, blasted the treasonable stamp act—and finally, in '73 and '74, served as the famed star of the East, to guide Washington and his wise men of the revolution, to the cradle of liberty, struggling in the gripe of the British Herod, lord North. There rose the battle of God for an injured people; there spread the star-spangled banner of freedom; and there poured the blood of the brave, fighting for the rights of man under the last republic. O that God may long preserve this precious vine of his own right hand planting, for his own glory and the happiness of unborn millions!

But the reader must not conclude that Ben, through life, tied himself up to a vegetable diet. No. Nature will have her way. And having designed man partly carnivorous, as his canine teeth, his lengthened bowels, and his flesh-pot appetites all evince, she will bring him back to the healthy mixture of animal food with vegetable, or punish his obstinacy with diarrhœa and debility. But she had no great difficulty in bringing Ben back to the use of animal food. According to his own account, no nosegay was ever more fragrant to his olfactories than was the smell of fresh fish in the frying pan. And as to his objection to such a savory diet on account of its stupifying effects on the brain, he easily got the better of that, when he reflected that the witty queen Elizabeth breakfasted on beef-stake; that sir Isaac Newton dined on pheasants; that Horace supped on fat bacon; and that Pope both breakfasted, dined, and supped on shrimps and oysters. And for the objection taken from the cruelty of killing innocent animals, for their flesh, he got over that by the following curious accident:—On his first voyage to New-York, the vessel halting on the coast for lack of breeze, the sailors all fell to fishing for cod, of which they presently took great numbers and very fine. Instead of being delighted at this sight, Ben appeared much hurt, and began to preach to the crew on their "injustice," as he called it, in thus taking away the lives of those poor little fish, who, "had never injured them, nor ever could." The sailors were utterly dum-founded at such queer logic as this. Taking their silence for conviction, Ben rose in his argument, and began to play the orator quite outrageously on the main deck. At length an old wag of a boatswain, who had at first been struck somewhat aback by the strangeness of this attack, took courage, and luffing up again, with a fine breeze of humour in his weather-beaten sail, called out to Ben, "Well, but my young Master preacher, may not we deal by these same cod here, as they deal by their neighbours."

"To be sure," said Ben.

"Well then, sir, see here," replied the boatswain, holding up a stout fish, "see here what a whaler I took just now out o' the belly of that cod!" Ben looking as if he had his doubts, the boatswain went on, "O sir, if you come to that, you shall have proof;" whereupon he laid hold of a large big-bellied cod that was just then flouncing on the deck, and ripping him open, in the presence of Ben and the crew, turned out several young cod from his maw.

Here, Ben, well pleased with this discovery, cried out, Oho! villains! is that the game you play with one another under the water! Unnatural wretches! What! eat one another! Well then, if a cod can eat his own brother, I see no reason in nature why man may not eat him. With that he seized a stout young fish just fresh from his native brine, and frying him in all haste, made a very hearty meal. Ben never after this, made any more scruples about animal food, but ate fish, flesh, or fowl, as they came in his way, without asking any questions for conscience sake.

CHAPTER XI

Except the admirable Crichton, I have never heard of a genius that was fitted to shine in every art and science. Even Newton was dull in languages; and Pope used to say of himself, that "he had as leave hear the squeal of pigs in a gate, as hear the organ of Handel!" Neither was our Ben the "omnis homo" or "Jack of all trades." He never could bear the mathematics! and even arithmetic presented to him no attractions at all. Not that he was not capable of it; for, happening about this time, still in his sixteenth year, to be laughed at for his ignorance in the art of calculation, he went and got himself a copy of old Cocker's Arithmetic, one of the toughest in those days, and went through it by himself with great ease. The truth is, his mind was at this time entirely absorbed in the ambition to be a finished writer of the English language; such a one, if possible, as the Spectator, whom he admired above all others.

While labouring, as we have seen, to improve his style, he laid his hands on all the English Grammars he could hear of. Among the number was a treatise of that sort, an old shabby looking thing, which the owner, marking his curiosity in those matters, made him a present of. Ben hardly returned him a thankee, as doubting at first whether it was worth carrying home. But how great was his surprise, when coming towards the close of it, he found, crammed into a small chapter, a treatise on the art of disputation, after the manner of Socrates. The treatise was very short, but it was enough for Ben; it gave an outline, and that was all he wanted. As the little whortle-berry boy, on the sands of Cape May, grabbling for his breakfast in a turtle's nest, if he but reaches with his little hand but one egg, instantly laughs with joy, as well knowing that all the rest will follow, like beads on a string. So it was with the eager mind of Ben, when he first struck on this plan of Socratic disputation. In an instant his thoughts ran through all the threads and meshes of the wondrous net; and he could not help laughing in his sleeve, to think what a fine puzzling cap he should soon weave for the frightened heads of Collins, Adams, and all others who should pretend to dispute with him. But the use which he principally had in view to make of it, and which tickled his fancy most, was how completely he should now confound those ignorant and hypocritical ones in Boston, who were continually boring him about religion. Not that Ben ever took pleasure in confounding those who were honestly desirous of showing their religion by their good works; for such were always his esteem and delight. But he could never away with those who neglected justice, mercy, and truth, and yet affected great familiarities with the Deity, from certain conceited wonders that Christ had wrought in them. As no youth ever more heartily desired the happiness of man and beast than Ben did, so none ever more seriously resented that the religion of love and good works tending to this, should be usurped by a harsh, barren puritanism, with her disfigured faces, whine and cant. This appeared to him like Dagon overturning the Ark of God with a vengeance. Burning with zeal against such detestable phariseeism he rejoiced in his Socratic logic as a new kind of weapon, which he hoped to employ with good effect against it. He studied his Socrates day and night, and particularly his admirable argumentations given by Xenophon, in his book, entitled "Memorable things of Socrates;" and in a little time came to wield his new artillery with great dexterity and success.

But in all his rencontres with the false christians, he adhered strictly to the spirit of Socrates, as being perfectly congenial to his own. Instead of blunt contradictions and positive assertions, he would put modest questions; and after obtaining of them concessions of which they did not foresee the consequences, he would involve them in difficulties and embarrassments, from which they could never extricate themselves. Had he possessed a vanity capable of being satisfied with the triumph of wit over dulness, he might long have crowed the master cock of this Socratic pit. But finding that his victories seldom produced any practical good; that they were acquired at a considerable expense of time, neglect of business, and injury of his temper, which was never formed for altercation with bigots, he abandoned it by degrees, retaining only the habit of expressing himself with a modest diffidence. And not only at that time, but ever afterwards through life, it was remarked of him, that in argument he rarely used the words certainly, undoubtedly, or any others that might convey the idea of being obstinately conceited of his own opinion. His ordinary phrases were—I imagine—I suppose--or, it appears to me, that such a thing is so and so—or, it is so, if I am not mistaken. By such soothing arts he gradually conciliated the good will of his opponents, and almost always succeeded in bringing them over to his wishes. Hence he used to say, it was great pity that sensible and well-meaning persons should lessen their own usefulness by a positive and presumptuous way of talking, which only serves to provoke opposition from the passionate, and shyness from the prudent, who rather than get into a dispute with such self-conceited characters, will hold their peace, and let them go on in their errors. In short, if you wish to answer one of the noblest ends for which tongues were given to rational beings, which is to inform or to be informed, to please and to persuade them, for heaven's sake, treat their opinions, even though erroneous, with great politeness.