_George._ "Ah, but look here! We"ve drawn him _riding to church_, you know!"]
And what a part eating and drinking play in English life and English art! Every body appears to give dinners occasionally, and all the dealers in vegetables seem to stand ready to serve as waiters at five shillings for an evening. Food is a common topic of conversation, and it is a civility for people to show an interest in one another"s alimentary pleasures. "Glad to see yer feed so beautiful, Mrs. B----,"
remarks a portly host to a corpulent lady, his Christmas guest. "Thank yer, Mr. J----," says she, with knife and fork at rest and pointing to the ceiling; "I"m doin" lovely." Again, old Mr. Brown, entertaining young Mr. Green, says, with emphasis, "That wine, sir, has been in my cellar four-and-twenty years come last Christmas--four-and-twenty years, sir!" To which innocent Mr. Green, anxious to say something agreeable, replies, "Has it really, sir? What must it have been when it was new?"
Little Emily asks her mother, "What is capital punishment?" Master Harry replies, "Why, being locked up in the pantry! _I_ should consider it so." Even at the theatres, we may infer from some of the pictures, ale and porter are handed round between the acts of the play. In one picture we see two lovers looking upon the sky; poetical Augustus says, "Look, Edith! how lovely are those fleecy cloudlets, dappled over the--" Edith (not in a spirit of burlesque) replies, "Yes, "xactly like gravy when it"s getting cold--isn"t it?" Then we have two gentlemen in the enjoyment of a little dinner, one of a long series given in the absence of the family at Boulogne. The master of the house receives a telegram.
He reads it, heaves a deep sigh, and says, dolefully, "It"s all up!"
Bachelor friend asks, "What"s the matter?" Paterfamilias replies, "Telegram! She says they"ve arrived safe at Folkestone, and will be home about 10.30." No more little dinners. Only a wife and children for comfort. And here are two of Mr. Du Maurier"s pretty children eating slices of bread too thinly spread with jam, and Ethel says, with thoughtful earnestness, "I dare say the queen and her courtiers eat a whole pot of jam every day, Harry!" There are many hundreds of pictures in _Punch_ which show a kind of solemn interest in the repair of wasted tissue never seen in this country. It is evident that the English have a deep delight in the act of taking sustenance which is to us unknown. Mr.
Thackeray himself, in speaking of an Englishman"s first gla.s.s of beer on returning home from a long journey in other lands, casts his eyes to heaven and gives way to something like enthusiasm.
[Ill.u.s.tration: John Tenniel.]
Many pictures bring into juxtaposition extremes of civilization rarely witnessed in America. So many traps are set for ignorance in this country that a child can scarcely hope to get by them all, and escape into maturity an absolute dolt. Observe this conversation between a squire and a villager: "Hobson, they tell me you"ve taken your boy away from the national school. What"s that for?" ""Cause the master ain"t fit to teach un. He wanted to teach my boy to spell taters with a P."
Here, again, is a scene in a London picture-gallery that presents a curious incongruity. A group is standing before one of the works of Ary Scheffer, and an East-ender, catalogue in hand, makes this comment upon the artist"s name: ""Ary Scheffer! Hignorant fellers, these foreigners, Bill! Spells "Enery without the Haitch!" In New York we have doubtless people that would be as incongruous as this in such a scene, but they do not visit picture-galleries. Nor have we among us a photographer who could essay to bring a smile to a sitter"s face by saying, "Just look a little pleasant, miss: think of _"im_!" It is evident from many hundreds of such sketches that there are great numbers of people in England who exercise difficult callings, hold responsible positions, dress in silk and broadcloth, and are in many particulars accomplished and well equipped for the stress of city life, who are dest.i.tute of mental culture to a degree which is a.s.sociated in our minds only with squalor and degradation.
The spirit of caste, which appears to be only less strong in England than in India, affords countless opportunities to English comic art.
Imagine a coster-monger profusely and laboriously apologizing to a well-dressed pa.s.ser-by for presuming to speak to him in order to let him know that his coat-tail is burning: "You"ll excuse my addressin" of you, sir--common man in a manner of speakin"--gen"leman like you, sir--beggin" pardon for takin" the liberty, which I should never "a thought of doin" under ordinary succ.u.mstances, sir, only you didn"t seem to be aware on it, but it struck me as I see you agoin" along as you were _afire_, sir!" During the delivery of this apology combustion had continued, and Brown"s coat-tail was entirely consumed, his box of fusees having ignited some seconds before the coster-monger began his discourse. A few years ago _Punch_ gave a little "Sea-side Drama" that ill.u.s.trates another phase of the same universal foible. Mrs. De Tomkyns to her husband: "Ludovic dear, there"s Algernon playing with a strange child! Do prevent it." "How on earth am I to prevent it?" "Tell its parents Algernon is just recovering from the scarlet fever." Mr. De Tomkyns accordingly makes this fict.i.tious statement to the father of the obnoxious child, who replies, "It"s all right, sir; so"s our little girl." _Punch_ hits it fairly, too, in a pictured _tete-a-tete_ between Mr. Shoddy and Mrs. Sharp. Mr. Shoddy remarks, as he sips his coffee, that he never feels safe from the ubiquitous British sn.o.b until he is south of the Danube. To this Mrs. Sharp responds by asking, "And what do the--a--South Danubians say, Mr. Shoddy?"
The moral feeling of the _Punch_ artists is so generally sound that it is surprising to find them often taking the wrong and popular side of the "conflict of ages" between mistress and maid. But if they usually laugh with the mistress and at the maid, they occasionally laugh with the maid and at the mistress; and truly the wildest absurdity attributed to the British servant seems venial compared with the thoughtless arrogance of the typical British mistress. _Punch_ does not wholly neglect her morals. Another hundred volumes or so will doubtless bring her over to Sydney Smith"s opinion, that _all_ the virtues and graces are not to be had for seven pounds per annum. It was a happy retort upon "No Irish need apply," to present an English servant-girl peremptorily leaving a place because she had discovered that the family was Irish, alleging that her friends would never forgive her if they knew she had lived in an Irish family. The picture, too, is good of a pretty servant walking home in the evening behind an elderly and ill-favored lady to "protect" her from insult. _Punch_ wishes to know who is to protect the pretty girl on her return through London streets alone. We see also from numberless pictures that the British mistress deems it her right to control the dress of the British maid. When crinoline came in, she thought it impudent in a servant to wear it; but when crinoline went out, she deemed it no less presuming in her to lay it aside.
For some years past the pictures of children and their ways by Mr. Du Maurier have been among the most pleasing efforts of comic art in England. There is not the faintest intimation in them of the malevolent or sarcastic. All good fathers, all good mothers, and all persons worthy to become such, delight in them. They are such pictures as we should naturally expect from an artist who was himself the happy father of a houseful of happy children, and who consequently looked upon all the children of the world in a fond, parental spirit. Surely no Bohemian, no hapless dweller in a boarding-house, no desolate frequenter of clubs, no one not sharing in the social life of his time, could so delightfully represent and minister to it. Du Maurier vindicates the generation that has produced Gavarni and Woodhull. He reminds us from week to week that children are the sufficient compensation of virtuous existence, worth all the rest of its honors and delights.
The recent agitation in England of questions relating to religion has not escaped the caricaturist. For two centuries or more the caricaturists of Great Britain have been hearty Protestants, though not long Puritan, and we still find them laughing at the fulminations of the testy old clergyman who lives in the Vatican. Nor have they failed to reflect upon the too evident fact that it is the contentions of clergymen in England that have blocked the way into the national school.
The old-fashioned penny broadside, all alive with figures and words, has been revived by "Gegeef," to promote the secularization of the schools.
In one of them all the parties to the controversy are exhibited--the candidate for the mastership of a Government school, who "believes in Colenso and geology, but don"t mind teaching Genesis to oblige;" the minister who holds up the text, "One faith, one baptism," but demands that the baptism taught should be _his_ baptism; Thomas Paine, too, who points to his "Age of Reason," and says, "When you finish, _I_ shall have something to say;" the compromiser, who is willing to have Bible lessons given in the schools, provided they are given "without comment;"
and, of course, the radical Bradlaugh, who demands secularization pure and simple. The same draughtsman, whose zeal is more manifest than his skill, has attempted to show, in various penny sheets, that amidst all those sectarian conflicts the one true light for the guidance of bewildered men is Science.
The only hit, however, in caricature, which these controversies have suggested is the "Soliloquy of a Rationalistic Chicken." It has had great currency in England among the clergy, many of whom have a.s.sisted in spreading it abroad; and even secularists have found it pa.s.sable--as a caricature. Another recent "sensation" was the caricature by Mr. Matt Morgan, in the _Tomahawk_, which represented the Prince of Wales "_following_" the ghost of his predecessor, George IV. It had a great currency at the time, and may have served a good purpose in warning an amiable and well-disposed prince to be more careful of appearances.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Soliloquy of a Rationalistic Chicken. (S. J. Stone, London, 1873.)
How do I know I ever _was_ inside?
Now I reflect, it is, I do maintain, Less than my reason, and beneath my pride, To think that I could dwell In such a paltry, miserable cell As that old sh.e.l.l.
Of course I couldn"t! How could _I_ have lain, Body and beak and feathers, legs and wings, And my deep heart"s sublime imaginings, In there?
I meet the notion with profound disdain; It"s quite incredible; since I declare (And I"m a chicken that you can"t deceive) _What I can"t understand I won"t believe._ What"s that I hear?
My mother cackling at me! Just her way, So prejudiced and ignorant _I_ say; So far behind the wisdom of the day.
What"s old I _can"t_ revere.
Hark at her! "You"re a silly chick, my dear, That"s quite as plain, alack!
As is the piece of sh.e.l.l upon your back!"
How bigoted! upon my back, indeed!
I don"t believe it"s there, For I can"t _see_ it; and I do declare, For all her fond deceivin", _What I can"t see, I never will believe in!_]
[Ill.u.s.tration: _The P{****}e of W{***}s to K{**}g G{****}e IV._ (_loq._). "I"ll follow thee!"--MATT MORGAN, in the _Tomahawk_, 1867.]
During the life-time of the venerable Cruikshank comic art in England has won the consideration due to a liberal profession, and now enjoys a fair share of reward as well as honor. He found the comic artist something of a Bohemian; he leaves him a solvent and respectable householder. He may have visited Gillray at work in the little room behind his publisher"s shop; and he doubtless often enjoyed the elegant hospitality of John Leech, one of the first in his branch of art to attain the solid dignity of a front-door of his own. It is mentioned to the credit of Richard Doyle, son of HB, that when he resigned his connection with _Punch_ on account of its caricatures of Wiseman and the Pope, he gave up an income of eight hundred pounds a year. There is no worthy circle in Great Britain where the presence of a Tenniel, a Leech, a Du Maurier, a Doyle, or a Cruikshank would not be felt as an honor and their society valued as a privilege. England owes them grat.i.tude and homage. They have not been always right, but they have nearly always meant to be. Nothing malign, nothing unpatriotic, nothing impure, nothing mean, has borne their signature; and in a vast majority of instances they have led the laughter of their countrymen so that it harmonized with humanity and truth.
CHAPTER XXV.
EARLY AMERICAN CARICATURE.
Benjamin Franklin was the first American caricaturist. That propensity of his to use pictures whenever he desired to affect strongly the public mind was an inheritance from the period when only a very small portion of the people could read any other than pictorial language. Among the relics of his race preserved in Boston there is an ill.u.s.trated handbill issued by his English uncle Benjamin, after whom he was named, which must have been a familiar object to him from the eighth year of his age.
Uncle Benjamin, a London dyer when James II. fled from England, wishing to strengthen the impression made by his printed offer to "dye into colors" cloth, silk, and India calico, placed at the head of his bill a rude wood-cut of an East Indian queen taking a walk, attended by two servants, one bearing her train and the other holding over her an umbrella. At the door of his shop, too, in Princes Street, near Leicester Fields, a figure of an Indian queen appealed to the pa.s.ser-by.
Such was the custom of the time. The diffusion of knowledge lessened the importance of pictorial representation; but the mere date of Franklin"s birth--1706--explains in some degree his habitual resort to it. Nearly all the ancient books were ill.u.s.trated in some way, and nearly every ancient building appears to have had its "sign." When Franklin was a boy in Boston a gilt Bible would have directed him where to buy his books, if he had had any money to buy them with. A gilt sheaf probably notified him where to get those three historic rolls with which he made his entry into Philadelphia. The figure of a mermaid invited the thirsty wayfarer to beer, and an anchor informed sailors where sea-stores were to be had.
The royal lion and unicorn, carved in wood or stone, marked public edifices. Over the door of his father"s shop, where soap and candles were sold, he saw a blue ball, which still exists, bearing the legible date 1698. Why a blue ball? He was just the boy to ask the question. A lad who could not accept grace before meat without wishing to know why it were not better to say grace once for all over the barrel of pork, would be likely to inquire what a blue ball had in common with soap and candles. His excellent but not gifted sire probably informed him that the blue ball was a relic of the time when he had carried on the business of a dyer, and that he had continued to use it for his new vocation because he "had it in the house." Benjamin, the gifted, was the boy to be dissatisfied with this explanation, and to suggest devices more in harmony with the industry carried on within, so that the very incongruity of his father"s sign may have quickened his sense of pictorial effect.
Franklin lived long, figured in a great variety of scenes, accomplished many notable things, and exhibited versatility of talent--man of business, inventor, statesman, diplomatist, philosopher; and in each of these characters he was a leader among leaders; but the ruling habit of his mind, his _forte_, the talent that he most loved to exercise and most relished in others, was humor. He began as a humorist, and he ended as a humorist. The first piece of his ever printed and the last piece he ever wrote were both satirical: the first, the reckless satire of a saucy apprentice against the magnates of his town; the last, the good-tempered satire of a richly gifted, benevolent soul, cognizant of human weakness, but not despising it, and intent only upon opening the public mind to unwelcome truth--as a mother makes a child laugh before inserting the medicine spoon. So dominant was this propensity in his youthful days, that if he had lived in a place where it had been possible to subsist by its exercise, there had been danger of his becoming a professional humorist, merging all the powers of his incomparable intellect in that one gift.
Imagine Boston in 1722, when this remarkable apprentice began to laugh, and to make others laugh, at the oppressive solemnities around him and above him. Then, as now, it was a population industrious and moral, extremely addicted to routine, habitually frugal, but capable of magnificent generosity, bold in business enterprises, valiant in battle, but in all the high matters averse to innovation. Then, as now, the clergy, a few important families, and Harvard College composed the ruling influence, against which it was martyrdom to contend. But then, as now, there were a few audacious spirits who rebelled against these united powers, and carried their opposition very far, sometimes to a wild excess, and thus kept this n.o.blest of towns from sinking into an inane respectability. The good, frugal, steady-going, tax-paying citizen, who lays in his coal in June and buys a whole pig in December, would subdue the world to a vast monotonous prosperity, crushing, intolerable, if there were no one to keep him and the public in mind that, admirable as he is, he does not exhaust the possibilities of human nature. When we examine the portraits of the noted men of New England of the first century and a half after the settlement, we observe in them all a certain expression of _acquiescence_. There is no audacity in them. They look like men who could come home from fighting the French in Canada, or from chasing the whale among the icebergs of Labrador, to be scared by the menaces of a pontiff like Cotton Mather. They look like men who would take it seriously, and not laugh at all, when Cotton Mather denounced the Franklins, for poking fun at him in their newspaper, as guilty of wickedness without a parallel. "Some good men,"
said he, "are afraid it may provoke Heaven to deal with this place as never any place has yet been dealt withal."
Never was a community in such sore need of caricature and burlesque as when James Franklin set up in Boston, in 1721, the first "sensational newspaper" of America, the _Courant_, to which his brother Benjamin and the other rebels and come-outers of Boston contributed. The Mathers, as human beings and citizens of New England, were estimable and even admirable; but the interests of human nature demand the suppression of pontiffs. These Mathers, though naturally benevolent, and not wanting in natural modesty, had attained to such a degree of pontifical arrogance as to think _Boston_ in deadly peril because a knot of young fellows in a printing-office aimed satirical paragraphs at them. Increase Mather called upon the Government to "suppress such a cursed libel," lest "some awful judgment should come upon the land, and the wrath of G.o.d should rise, and there should be no remedy." It is for such men that burlesque was made, and the Franklins supplied it in abundance. The _Courant_ ridiculed them even when they were gloriously in the right. They were enlightened enough and brave enough to recommend inoculation, then just brought from Turkey by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. The young doctors who wrote for the paper a.s.sailed the new system, apparently for no other reason than because Increase and Cotton Mather were its chief defenders.
When Benjamin, at the age of sixteen, began to contribute to his brother"s paper, he aimed at higher game even than the town pontiffs. He dared to lampoon Harvard College itself, the temple of learning where the clergy were formed, whose precincts he had hoped to tread, his father having dedicated this tenth son to the Church. He may have had his own father in mind when he wrote, in one of his early numbers, that every "peasant" who had the means proposed to send one of his children to this famous place; and as most of them consulted their purses rather than their children"s capacities, the greater number of those who went thither were little better than blockheads and dunces. When he came to speak of the theological department of the college, he drew a pen caricature, having then no skill with the pencil: "The business of those who were employed in the temple of theology being laborious and painful, I wondered exceedingly to see so many go toward it; but while I was pondering this matter in my mind, I spied _Pecunia_ behind a curtain, beckoning to them with her hand." He draws another when he says that the only remarkable thing he saw in this temple was one Plagius hard at work copying an eloquent pa.s.sage from Tillotson"s works to embellish his own.
This saucy boy, who had his "Hudibras" at his tongue"s end, carried the satirical spirit with him to church on Sundays, and tried some of the brethren whom he saw there by the Hudibrastic standard. Even after his brother James had been in prison for his editorial conduct, Benjamin, who had been left in charge of the paper, drew with his subeditorial pen a caricature of a "Religious Knave, of all Knaves the Worst:" A most strict Sabbatarian, an exact observer not of the day only, but of the evening before and the evening after it; at church conspicuously devout and attentive, even ridiculously so, with his distorted countenance and awkward gesticulation. But try and nail him to a bargain! He will dissemble and lie, snuffle and whiffle, overreach and defraud, cut down a laborer"s wages, and keep the bargain in the letter while violating its spirit. "Don"t tell me," he cries; "a bargain is a bargain. You should have looked to that before. I can"t help it now." Such was the religious knave invented by the author of "Hudibras," and borrowed by this Boston apprentice, who had, in all probability, never seen a character that could have fairly suggested the burlesque.
The authorities rose upon these two audacious brothers, and indicated how much need there was of such a sheet in Boston by ordering James Franklin to print it no more. They contrived to carry it on a while in Benjamin"s name; but that sagacious youth was not long in discovering that the Mathers and their adherents were too strong for him, and he took an early opportunity of removing to a place established on the principle of doing without pontiffs. But during his long, ill.u.s.trious career in Philadelphia as editor and public man he constantly acted in the spirit of one of the last pa.s.sages he wrote before leaving Boston: "Pieces of pleasantry and mirth have a secret charm in them to allay the heats and tumults of our spirits, and to make a man forget his restless resentments. They have a strange power in them to hush disorders of the soul and reduce us to a serene and placid state of mind." He was the father of our humorous literature. If, at the present moment, America is contributing more to the innocent hilarity of mankind than other nations, it is greatly due to the happy influence of this benign and liberal humorist upon the national character. "Poor Richard," be it observed, was the great comic almanac of the country for twenty-five years, and it was Franklin who infused the element of burlesque into American journalism. He could not advertise a stolen prayer-book without inserting a joke to give the advertis.e.m.e.nt wings: "The person who took it is desired to open it and read the Eighth Commandment, and afterward return it into the same pew again; upon which no further notice will be taken."
This propensity was the more precious because it was his destiny to take a leading part in many controversies which would have become bitter beyond endurance but for "the strange power" of his "pieces of pleasantry and mirth" to "hush disorders of the soul." He employed both pen and pencil in bringing his excellent sense to bear upon the public mind. What but Franklin"s inexhaustible tact and good-humor could have kept the peace in Pennsylvania between the non-combatant Quakers and the militant Christians during the long period when the province was threatened from the sea by hostile fleets and on land by savage Indians?
Besides rousing the combatant citizens to action, he made them willing to fight for men who would not fight for themselves, and brought over to his side a large number of the younger and more pliant Quakers. Even in that early time (1747), while bears still swam the Delaware, he contrived to get a picture drawn and engraved to enforce the lessons of his first pamphlet, calling on the Pennsylvanians to prepare for defense. He may have engraved it himself, for he had a dexterous hand, and had long before made little pictures out of type-metal to accompany advertis.e.m.e.nts. Hercules sits upon a cloud, with one hand resting upon his club. Three horses vainly strive to draw a heavy wagon from the mire. The wagoner kneels, lifts his hands, and implores the aid of Hercules"s mighty arm. In the background are trees and houses, and under the picture are Latin words signifying, "Not by offerings nor by womanish prayers is the help of G.o.ds obtained." In the text, too, when he essays the difficult task of reconciling the combatants to fighting for the non-combatants, he becomes pictorial, though he does not use the graver. "What!" he cries, "not defend your wives, your helpless children, your aged parents, because the Quakers have conscientious scruples about fighting!" Then he adds the burlesque picture: "Till of late I could scarce believe the story of him who refused to pump in a sinking ship because one on board whom he hated would be saved by it as well as himself."
[Ill.u.s.tration: JOIN or DIE
A Common Newspaper Heading in 1776; devised by Franklin in May, 1754, at the Beginning of the French War.]
At the beginning of the contest which in Europe was the Seven Years"
War, but in America a ten years" war, Franklin"s pen and pencil were both employed in urging a cordial union of the colonies against the foe.
His device of a snake severed into as many pieces as there were colonies, with the motto, "_Join or Die_," survived the occasion that called it forth, and became a common newspaper and handbill heading in 1776. It was he, also, as tradition reports, who exhibited to the unbelieving farmers of Pennsylvania the effect of gypsum, by writing with that fertilizer in large letters upon a field the words "_This has been plastered_." The brilliant green of the gra.s.s which had been stimulated by the plaster soon made the words legible to the pa.s.ser-by.
During his first residence in London as the representative of Pennsylvania he became intimately acquainted with the great artist from whom excellence in the humorous art of England dates--William Hogarth.
The last letter that the dying Hogarth received was from Benjamin Franklin. "Receiving an agreeable letter," says Nichols, "from the American, Dr. Franklin, he drew up a rough draught of an answer to it."
Three hours after, Hogarth was no more.
A few of Franklin"s devices for the coins and paper money of the young republic have been preserved. He wished that every coin and every note should say something wise or cheerful to their endless succession of possessors and scrutinizers. Collectors show the Franklin cent of 1787, with its circle of thirteen links and its central words, "_We are one_"
and outside of these, "_United States_." On the other side of the coin there is a noonday sun blazing down upon a dial, with the motto, "_Mind your Business_." He made the date say something more to the reader than the number of the year, by appending to it the word "_Fugio_" (I fly).
Another cent has a central sun circled by thirteen stars and the words "_Nova Constellatio_." He suggested "_Pay as you go_" for a coin motto.
Some of his designs for the Continental paper money were ingenious and effective. Upon one dingy little note, issued during the storm and stress of the Revolution, we see a roughly executed picture of a shower of rain falling upon a newly settled country, with a word of good cheer under it, "_Serenabit_" (It will clear). Upon another there is a picture of a beaver gnawing a huge oak, and the word "_Perseverando_." On another there is a crown resting upon a pedestal, and the words "_Si recte facias_" (If you do uprightly). There is one which represents a hawk and stork fighting, with the motto "_Exitus in dubio est_" (The event is in doubt); and another which shows a hand plucking branches from a tea-plant, with the motto "_Sustain or Abstain_."
The famous scalp hoax devised by Franklin during the Revolutionary war, for the purpose of bringing the execration of civilized mankind upon the employment of Indians by the English generals, was vividly pictorial.
Upon his private printing-press in Paris he and his grandson struck off a leaf of an imaginary newspaper, which he called a "Supplement to the Boston _Independent Chronicle_." For this he wrote a letter purporting to be from "Captain Gerrish, of the New England Militia," accompanying eight packages of "scalps of our unhappy country folks," which he had captured on a raid into the Indian country. The captain sent with the scalps an inventory of them, supposed to be drawn up by one James Crawford, a trader, for the information of the Governor of Canada.
Neither Swift nor De Foe ever surpa.s.sed the ingenious naturalness of this fict.i.tious inventory. It was indeed _too_ natural, for it was generally accepted as a genuine doc.u.ment, and would even now deceive almost any one who should come upon it unawares. Who could suspect that these "eight packs of scalps, cured, dried, hooped, and painted, with all the Indian triumphal marks" upon them, had never existed except in the imagination of a merry old plenipotentiary in Paris? There were "forty-three scalps of Congress soldiers, stretched on black hoops four inches diameter, the inside of the skin painted red, with a small black spot to denote their being killed with bullets;" and there were "sixty-two farmers, killed in their houses, marked with a hoe, a black circle all around to denote their being surprised in the night." Other farmers" scalps were marked with "a little red foot," to show that they stood upon their defense; and others with "a little yellow flame," to show that they had been burned alive. To one scalp a band was fastened, "supposed to be that of a rebel clergyman." Then there were eighty-eight scalps of women, and "some hundreds of boys and girls." The package last described was "a box of birch-bark containing twenty-nine little infants" scalps of various sizes, small white hoops, white ground, no tears, and only a little black knife in the middle to show they were ripped out of their mothers" bellies." The trader dwells upon the fact that most of the farmers were young or middle-aged, "there being _but_ sixty-seven _very_ gray heads among them; which makes the service more essential." Every detail of this supplement was worked out with infinite ingenuity, even to the editor"s postscript, which stated that the scalps had just reached Boston, where thousands of people were flocking to see them.
Franklin was more than a humorist; he was an artist in humor. In other words, he not only had a lively sense of the absurd and the ludicrous, but he knew how to exhibit them to others with the utmost power and finish. His grandson, who lived with him in Paris during the Revolutionary period, a very good draughtsman, used to ill.u.s.trate his humorous papers, and between them they produced highly entertaining things, only a few of which have been gathered. The Abbe Morellet, one of the gay circle who enjoyed them, remarks that in his sportive moods Franklin was "Socrates mounted on a stick, playing with his children."
To this day, however, there are millions who regard that vast and somewhat disorderly genius, who was one of the least sordid and most generous of all recorded men, as the mere type of penny prudence. Even so variously informed a person as the author of "A Short History of the English People," published in 1875, speaks of the "close-fisted Franklin."