Chapter 2

Up to Boston Town

A cold March wind whistled around Johnny’s knit cap. He clutched his father’s black cloak tightly as they rode through the snow on Betsy, the family horse.

They came to a small schoolhouse sitting under a big tree. “Whoa, Betsy,” Father said.

“Thank you, Father!” Johnny slipped down from the horse. “That was better than walking over a mile through the snowdrifts.”

“You’ll have to walk home at four o’clock, Johnny. I have a long ride to visit sick folk and make calls. I won’t come back this way.”

“Yes, sir.” Johnny looked down the road at the Adams farmhouse. He saw no sign of his friend Jay. It wasn’t eight o’clock yet, when Dame School started on winter mornings.

Inside, the school room was cold. Several of the older boys were trying to build up the fire. Their breaths steamed in the cold air.

Dame Belcher, the teacher, sat holding her fingers to the fire. A piece of sewing lay in her lap. She looked like a plump brown hen with a big white cap tied under its chin.

Johnny kept on his coat and mittens. He bowed to Dame Belcher and said, “Good morrow, Mistress.” Then he sat down on a form, a plank or wooden bench.

He took off the hornbook that hung around his neck. This hornbook was a piece of wood shaped like a paddle. A piece of paper about three by four inches square was fastened to it. The letters of the alphabet, a verse, and the Lord’s Prayer were printed on it. A thin sheet of horn, through which he could read the letters, covered the paper. All children learned their letters from the horn book.

Sister Mary had given Johnny hers. Now that she was eight, she would no longer go to Dame School. Father planned to teach her at home.

Johnny opened the copybook he had made by folding sheets of large brown paper together. He took out his lead plummet, the small stick of lead which he used to write. He began to print his name carefully in his copybook.

School was still new to him, for he had just been going since his sixth birthday in January. After the morning prayer, Dame Belcher asked Jay Adams to pass out fresh goose quills. She mixed ink powder and water for the ink pots.

Johnny scratched out his name on the paper with his quill pen. He wished the ink wouldn’t spatter so much. “But you can really tell what the letters are,” he thought.

He showed his copybook to Will Salter, who sat next to him. Will looked and snickered.

“What’s wrong? Can’t you read it?” Johnny whispered crossly.

Will put his hand over his mouth and laughed. “Just about. The letters are crooked and there’s a blot—”

“Will Salter!” Dame Belcher stood before the boys. She gave Will a sharp rap on the head with her thimble. “Put on the dunce cap and stand in the corner for laughing and whispering.”

Will hung his head and slowly went to the corner of the room.

“You will go there, too, John Hancock, if you whisper more.” She looked at his copybook. “Humph! A parson’s son must do better. Keep working, young man.”

“Yes, mistress,” Johnny said, his face hot. He looked back to where Jay Adams sat with the older boys. They were reading their New England Primers. Jay grinned and winked.

Johnny forgot his troubles with writing when he finally reached home at dusk. The race home from school and a rousing snowball attack on Daisy, the roaming black pig, had warmed him in the chill air.

He burst into the kitchen. “I’m home!” he called out. The good smell of an Indian pudding of corn meal and molasses cooking made him hungry. The pudding was boiling in a copper kettle that hung from a pothook over the fire in the big fireplace.

Father rested with his boots off before the blazing fire. He was reading a letter aloud to Mother. She held two-year-old Ebenezer in her lap. Mary was knitting a long wool stocking.

Mother looked up and smiled. “Welcome, son. A letter for Father was waiting at the tavern. It’s from Uncle Tom. His gout, his sore foot, still keeps him from paying us a visit.”

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Johnny was disappointed.

“He says the road will soon be cleared by the farmers’ ox teams. The weather is sure to turn better. He wants us to come in to Boston.”

“Huzzah!” Johnny shouted and jumped for joy.

Father shook his head. “Little Ebenezer’s cough is bad, and I feel unwell tonight, son. We must put it off.”

“It’s only ten miles or so, Father,” Mary dared to say.

Johnny held his breath. Father looked stern and said, “Mary! We shall wait.”

A month later Johnny and Mary rode through Boston’s arched brick gates on Boston Neck. The town was almost surrounded by water. A mile of narrow mudflats, called the Neck, tied it to the mainland.

On one side Johnny looked out over wide Boston Harbor, spotted with islands and the Castle Island Fort. On the other side he saw the Charles River flowing down to the harbor.

Uncle Tom’s carriage rolled up Cornhill Street. Here the houses stood close together. The horses’ hoofs struck the cobblestones sharply as the carriage passed rattling carts and people hurrying to and fro.

This was not Johnny’s first visit to the great Hancock house on Beacon Hill. But he did not remember the house clearly from earlier visits.

“Isn’t it exciting to travel alone, John?” Mary laughed and squeezed his hand. Father still was not well, and Mother wouldn’t leave him. She had let the children come alone.

“Yes,” Johnny nodded, with one hand on his new three-cornered hat.

Prince, the coachman, turned the carriage west up Beacon Street to Beacon Hill, the highest of Boston’s three hills. The street ran along a wide green field in which cows were grazing.

“That’s Boston Common,” Mary cried. The Common’s forty acres stretched down to the banks of the Charles River.

Just then Johnny saw Uncle Tom’s house. “There it is! Isn’t it fine?” he said. A fence on a low stone wall ran in front of the stone mansion.

Prince stopped the carriage. Johnny jumped out and ran up the tree-bordered walk. He banged on the brass door knocker until a servant opened the wide doors. And there stood Uncle Tom and Aunt Lydia in the large central hall. They welcomed the children with a hug.

“I’ve stayed home from my ‘counting-room’ and store this morning to wait for you young ones,” Uncle Tom said with a big smile.

Servants took the children’s boxes up to separate guest rooms, for they were to stay two weeks in Boston.

“We’ve waited dinner for you,” Aunt Lydia said. She led the way into the dining room. Servants seated them at a large mahogany table. There were forks for everyone, and dishes of rare china as well as the usual pewter.

Uncle Tom urged Johnny to eat more of the fresh roast meat, the chicken pies, and jellies. His face grew redder and redder as he ate his meal and drank from his silver tankard. “Eat well and you’ll be strong,” he declared.

When he left in his carriage he said, “Tomorrow you and Mary shall visit the zoo at the docks. There are other surprises there for good boys and girls.” He winked and chuckled.

Johnny had never seen a zoo. “Is it like Noah’s Ark in my primer?” he asked.

“Goodness, no! It’s better than pictures.” His aunt’s eyebrows went up and her black eyes smiled at him. “Wait and see.”

Johnny thought he couldn’t wait, but he slept soundly in his deep feather bed after all. Morning came before he knew it.

When he saw the waterfront the next day, Johnny thought it was wonderful. He loved the smell of the sea, of fresh and dried fish, and of tarred rope that hung over the busy seaport. The closer the carriage came to the wharfs edging the shore, the stronger the smell grew.

Mary held her nose with her small gloved fingers. “Braintree smells better,” she said.

Prince pulled in the horses at the head of Long Wharf. The town’s largest wharf stretched from busy King Street a half-mile out into the harbor. Warehouses, stores, and fish markets were built on one side of the wharf. Large ships tied up on the other side. (Image 2.1)

Image 2.1: Mary held her nose with her small gloved fingers. “Braintree smells better,” she said.

Johnny stared at strange sailors in belled blue trousers and tarred pigtails. Sea captains, clerks with ledgers, fish peddlers with tin horns or bells crowded and pushed.

“Oys! Buy any oys?” an oysterman called. He carried his wares in a sack on his back.

Hay wagons and two-wheeled carts loaded with firewood rumbled back and forth all day, Uncle Thomas said. But even above Boston’s noise, Johnny could hear the cries of swooping gulls and the beat of the sea.

Uncle Thomas stopped at a wooden shed on the wharf. Inside a wooden cage in the shed sat a large white bear.

“O-o-oh!” Johnny gasped. “What kind is it? I thought bears were brown or black.”

“This is a polar bear. It lives far north where the land is always white with snow.”

The children laughed at the tricks of a dancing dog brought from Europe. They saw bright birds and a chattering brown monkey, too. But they turned quickly away from the sight of a pirate’s head pickled in a jar.

“Now it’s time for the big surprise,” Uncle Tom declared. He waved his gold-headed cane toward the next largest wharf two blocks away. “It’s near Clark’s Wharf. We shall walk.”

Johnny and Mary thought it was fun to stare into the tiny shop windows as they walked up Anne Street into Fish Street. A leather shop, a chemist’s, a baker’s, and a sail-maker’s all slowed their steps.

“Here is the Revere silver shop,” Uncle Tom said as they passed on. “I do business with silversmith Revere. Here we are!” He stopped in front of a shop. “It’s Mr. Fletcher’s store.”

They stepped inside. It looked like other stores to Johnny. Imported cloth, candlesticks, tea, paper, and hardware were laid out on shelves. Uncle Tom led the way to a door in the back. A clerk came up to them.

“We wish to see the town,” Uncle Tom said. “That will be four shillings, six pence.” The clerk took the coins with a smile.

Johnny and Mary looked at each other in surprise. What could cost so much to see?

Spread out on a wide table was a tiny toy town. “Why, it’s Boston Town!” Johnny guessed with a laugh. “See all the church steeples and the docks and ships!”

They heard a whirring noise, and everything started to move. The wheels of the coaches and carts in the narrow streets began to turn. The ships sailed in and out of the harbor. A little powder mill in one corner started working.

Johnny darted from side to side of the busy town in his excitement. “How does it work?”

Mary clapped her hands daintily.

“Heh, heh! Knew you’d like it, lad. Would buy it for you, but old Fletcher won’t sell. He says there are twelve hundred gears and wheels making this thing run. Now I have business to attend to. We’ll come back again.”

“Just a little longer, please, sir?”

“Another time, another time.” Before Johnny knew it, he was standing in the cold April sunshine outside the shop.

A handsome young fellow about seventeen walked up to Uncle Tom. “Your pardon, sir. May I speak to you? It’s private business.”

“Heh? What?” Uncle Tom looked surprised. The boy was dressed plainly and his wavy black hair was tied neatly back of his neck. He wore no hat. “What private business could you have? See my clerk.” Uncle Tom started to move on.

“Wait, sir.” The young fellow forced a smile. “You know Mr. Gerrish and his book shop?”

“I should. I was apprenticed to his father. I got my start by learning the book-binding business from him.”

“True, sir,” said the young man.

“As I have just learned it there, I would like to work for you, sir.”

“Heh? Why do you not stay with Gerrish?”

“Because, sir, I heard about you often in my seven years. I was bound out to Mr. Gerrish as an apprentice, but I’m free now.”

“You’re an orphan? English?”

“Irish, begorra! The name’s Tim O’Toole, sir. I have a fine tale for the youngsters, if you’ll let them listen.”

“Do listen, Uncle,” Johnny begged. He liked this young man and wanted his Uncle Thomas to hire him.

Uncle Tom waved his cane at Prince, who waited near by with the carriage. “We’ll sit in my carriage. You may stand beside it and tell your story, but I promise nothing.”

After they had seated themselves, Tim O’Toole said, “You have heard many a sad tale, sadder, maybe, than mine, but I wish no sadder tale on any soul.” He gave a great sigh and rolled his dark eyes at Johnny and Mary.

They sighed in return. Their eyes didn’t leave his face.

“My mother died in Ireland when I was a lad of ten. My father was a sea captain. Not knowing what to do with me, he took me to sea with him. We sailed for America. On the way over here he died suddenly. The crew buried him at sea.” He took a deep breath.

“Go on, go on,” ordered Uncle Tom.

“Begorra, sir, that crew—that crew did a terrible thing. The next day a shipload of orphan boys and girls hailed us. These orphans were on their way to be bound out for service in America, the captain of their ship said.

“The crew sold me to that captain of the orphan ship, sir, and he brought me to Boston Town. He bound me out to Samuel Gerrish. There I’ve worked these seven years.”

He stopped, and then rushed on. “I’m a good worker and write a fine hand. My master will have to admit that. Won’t you try me, please?”

Johnny held his breath. Uncle Tom looked at him, a slight smile on his lips. Johnny said, “Say yes, please, sir.”

“Call at my counting-room tomorrow, O’Toole. Ask for my chief clerk. I’ll have him check on you. Maybe he can find a place for you somewhere.”

“Thank you, sir.” Tim bowed low. “I’ll be there early. God bless you all!”

“Good luck, Tim O’Toole,” Johnny called.

“A likeable lad,” Uncle Tom chuckled. “He can tell a sad tale, can’t he?”

“Yes, I like him,” Johnny said. “Don’t you, Mary? I hope I see him again the next time I come to Boston.”

“Maybe that won’t be very soon,” Mary said with a wise look. “I’ve had a wonderful time, Uncle Tom, but it’s too noisy here in Boston. And smelly, too. I like to live in Braintree best, I think.”

“Braintree is dull,” Johnny said stoutly. “I wish we could live here. When I grow up I want to be a general or a sea captain and sail the seven seas. Then I can live in Boston when I’m not at sea or fighting a war somewhere.”