nd his father were on excellent terms with each other. His father,
though a very grave, pious man, whose delight was to go to the Old South
Church with his large family, allowed little Ben to crack his jokes on
him.

He was accustomed to say long graces at meals, at which the food was not
overmuch, and the hungry children many. One day, after he had salted
down a large quantity of meat in a barrel, he was surprised to hear Ben
ask:

"Father, why don't you say grace over it now?"

"What do you mean, Ben?"

"Wouldn't it be saving of time to say grace now over the whole barrel of
provisions, and then you could omit it at meals?"

But the strong member of the Old South Church had no such ideas of
religious economy as revealed his son's mathematical mind.

The Franklin family must have presented a lively appearance at church
in old Dr. Joseph Sewell's day. They heard some sound preaching there,
and Dr. Sewell lived as he preached. He was offered the presidency of
Harvard College, but honors were as bubbles to him, and he refused it
for a position of less money and fame, but of more direct spiritual
influence, and better in accord with the modest views of his ability. He
began to preach in the Old South Church when Ben was seven years of age;
he preached a sermon there on his eightieth birthday.

These were fine old times in Boston town. Some linen spinners came over
from Londonderry, in Ireland, and they established a spinning school.
They also brought with them the potato, which soon became a great
luxury.

Josiah Franklin probably pastured his cows on the Common, and little Ben
may often have sat down under the old elm by the frog pond and looked
over the Charles River marshes, which were then where the Public Garden
now is.

But the delight of the boy's life was still Uncle Benjamin, the poet.
The two read and roamed together. Now Ben had a poetic vein in him, a
small one probably inherited from his grandfather Folger, and it began
to be active at this time.

There were terrible stories of pirates in the air. They kindled the
boy's lively imagination; they represented the large subject of
retributive justice, and he resolved to devote his poetic sense to one
of these alarming characters.

There was a dreadful pirate by the name of Edward Teach, but commonly
called "Blackbeard." He was born in Bristol, England. He became the
terror of the Atlantic coast, and had many adventures off the Carolinas.
He was at l