Chapter 1

Ben was unenthused about filling the new prescription for the widow Jenkins. She was a dour old sour-puss with a horrible wart over her left eye and many in the town thought her to be a witch. If it worked, he would never be complemented for his accuracy but if it failed he would surely be blamed as the culprit. It was a curse handed down to him because of the shocking lack of moderation on the part of his father to in his daily excess in imbibing spirits. At least, it seemed that way to him because he had done nothing to cause such disfavor with the Gods.

It had come as a shock to him to learn that his family's waning fortunes had necessitated his apprenticeship to the local apothecary instead of traveling to the College and that the secrets of the Roman and Greek cultures would remain a mystery to him. Not that he was all that inspired about book-learning, but he knew it would put him one-up on the other sons of distinguished families and insure his success in later life. Now all that had ground to a complete halt and he was mired in the drug dispensing business like a petty trader in people's needs.

When the old druggist died without heirs, it was just natural for Ben to take over the business and soon he had cornered the market on the dispensing of potions and cures in all parts of the booming community. Most people tended to like Ben because he was a constant optimist and was prone to making friends no matter what their social status or station in life. One of his sidelines was the brokerage of money for persons or businesses that had short-term cash flow difficulties. The interest derived from such transactions funded his import-export business that operated without either name or sanction from the nearby port.

Ben was quite the reader and the knowledge he gained from his reading far surpassed what he could have ever learned in school. By the time he was of age, he had already earned enough money to pay off his family debts and also pay the note on his mother's home in full. It put a smile on her face before she departed this world for her reward in the great unknown.

There was a lot of talk in the town about the unfairness of the taxes foisted on the folk by a distant monarch with absolutely no idea about the hardships of colonial life. The new colonies were decidedly raw and lacking in many of the social niceties of a European lifestyle but there were a certain atmosphere that smelled of freedom to most that more than compensated for the loss of the frills and pomp of Monarchy and Parliaments.

Because Ben was so well-liked, he was made the Lieutenant in charge of the village militia. While that sounded grand on the surface, the militia was comprised of two elderly males with service on the continent. Experience that they would rather forget entirely and not bring to the surface of their mind to be certain. In addition to this unwanted wealth of experience, there were a total of fourteen volunteers mostly in their teens who thought the idea of fighting the savages to be more exciting than fishing in the waters of the bay. They only had ten rifles between them and in fact only two of those were actual rifles like the ones the Pennsylvania boys all seemed to have from childhood. The remainder was the old world style blunderbusses that seemed better suited to making a lot of noise than actually hitting what they were aimed at.

The only news they received was from the news gazette in Boston that made a publication only three times each week with some literary inserts from some authors of various topics of interest. The shipping news was the most popular because it reported the sailings and landings of ships of interest to the local inhabitants who were much attuned to their success or failure in commerce or destination.

There had been rumors of late of new taxes to harass the common working folk of the colonies and Ben was keeping a watchful eye on the progress of such profit cutting mechanisms from the halls of government back in their land of birth that still ran the systems of governance in the New World. He was well aware that even the most innocuous of changes could spell the difference between financial success and ruin with the development of unintended consequences. Fortunately, there was little to report and life went on without much interference from abroad.

A German settler with a fat happy wife and ten small children took up residence in the village with a small printing press in their luggage and knowledge of typesetting that made the advent of a daily newspaper a much-needed boon to the population. Ben saw first-hand the power of the small printing press and vowed to make use of it whenever possible.

Two years earlier, Ben had run away from home to join the State led militia fighting in the seven years' war with the French and Indians. He had learned how to fight under the leadership of the woods trained frontiersmen and learned lessons in tactics that stood him well in later years. He was happy at home with his mother and other siblings but longed to return to the battle and answered that call yet again receiving a minor leg wound in the process.

Now that he was back in the village, he could turn his attentions to the business and try to undo the harm his thoughtless father had caused with his gambling and drinking to excess. It was a lesson that helped him escape the pattern of male disintegration that seemed to afflict the male population when afforded little excitement or diversion to occupy their life.

He noticed the piousness of a young girl called Margaret and soon claimed her as his spouse bringing her to bed and having a child before the first year of marriage was complete.