“Perhaps it has no use,” he said, looking sadly at the copper grasshopper sprawled out before him.
That was what the sober people of Boston thought, too, all except Mr. Peter Faneuil.
No one could quite understand Mr. Peter Faneuil. He had inherited quite a fortune, but he lived in a simple way and was fonder of children and the sea than of wearing fine broadcloth and having a coach. He joined the children one day when they went to Deacon Drowne’s shop and he saw the grasshopper. They had thought that Mr. Peter Faneuil would laugh at it. He did not even smile. He looked at the shining copper wings and the delicate workmanship of the slim legs. Then he grasped the coppersmith’s toil-hardened hand.
“It is a wonderful piece of work,” he said. “It ought to be placed where every one in Boston could see it.”
The Deacon smiled with happiness as Mr. Faneuil and the children left him. He touched the grasshopper’s perfectly shaped head.
“How could that be?” he said wonderingly.
The years went on, and at last no one heard Deacon Drowne’s hammering, for he was too old to work any longer at his trade. The children grew up, and Samuel graduated from Harvard College. He was called Samuel Adams now, and was quite an influential young man in Boston. He was one of those called to attend a meeting in Boston at which an important decision was to be made.
Should, or should not Boston accept a gift that Mr. Peter Faneuil wished to make the city from his boundless wealth? He wished to build for Boston a public hall. But this was the unusual part of his wish. The hall was to have a market on the ground floor where the incoming ships could display their fruits and tea and cloth, and the housewives of Boston might come and buy. On the top of the hall there was to be a high tower, and on top of the tower a weathervane that the sailors could see at quite a distance from shore.
“Where shall we transact our important business in this hall?” the meeting asked Dr. Peter Faneuil.
Then they argued the question and wrangled about it. A market in a public building did not seem fitting to them, even though there was no public market in Boston at that time. Neither did a weathervane on top of the tower seem suitable. Some were for it, and more were against it. It did not matter that the hall was to be a free-will gift to Boston. They wished no new ideas to break in upon the old ones that belonged to England and the King.