Johnny Tremain

1. The gulls are the first to wake as the sun rises in Boston. When the church bells ring, hundreds of sleepy women wake their households. In a little house on Fish Street, Mrs. Lapham stands at the bottom of the attic ladder, shouting for Johnny to get Dove and Dusty up. The three boys are apprenticed to Mr. Lapham, Mrs. Lapham’s elderly father in law—and though Johnny is 14, two years younger than Dove, he rules almost the entire house. Dove resents Johnny for this and so hits  him, pretending it’s an accident. As the older boys fight, 11-year-old Dusty watches: he worships Johnny and doesn’t like Dove, but he and Dove both resent how Johnny lords over them. Secretly, Dove admires Johnny too. The boys could be friends, if Johnny wanted—but Johnny prefers to bully Dove.

Johnny leads the way down the ladder. Mr. Lapham is still in his bedroom reading the Bible, and in the other bedroom, Mrs. Lapham’s daughter Cilla is brushing little Isannah’s hair. As they do every morning, Cilla and Isannah insult Johnny as he heads to the kitchen, where Mrs. Lapham is hard at work with her two older daughters, Madge and Dorcas. It was decided long ago that in a few years, Johnny will be a great silversmith, marry Cilla (who’s “spindly” but better than Madge or Dorcas), and inherit Mr. Lapham’s silver business. Beautiful Isannah, on the other hand, is considered not worth the trouble to raise, as she’s sickly. Cilla takes on most of the trouble of caring for Isannah.

Downstairs, Johnny tells Dove and Dusty to get to work and then unlocks the silver shop himself. As he picks up his tools, he thinks of Mr. Lapham warning him to thank God for making him such a skilled artisan, rather than lording his good fortune over the other boys. Johnny doesn’t let such warnings bother him, though. Instead, when Dove returns with water, Johnny tells him to remake a spoon he made incorrectly yesterday. Just as Dove gets down a crucible to melt the spoon, Isannah floats in to announce that breakfast is ready.

2. Elderly Mr. Lapham sits at the head of the table at breakfast. When the meal is over, he asks Johnny to read from the Bible; he usually picks verses that try to teach the reader something about their character. Cilla desperately wants to learn to read, so she follows along with Johnny’s finger. Mr. Lapham has Johnny read two verses from Proverbs: “When pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly is wisdom” and “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” His ears burning, Johnny explains that God doesn’t like pride and probably wouldn’t like him. Mr. Lapham tells Johnny to swear to be humble and modest, and to stop making Dusty and Dove feel bad for being less intelligent. Johnny is incensed.

3. Though Johnny tries to be humble, he fails miserably. This is in part because while Mr. Lapham is a fine silversmith, he never writes down orders or listens to customers’ requests—so Johnny has to do it, and then he has to tell Mr. Lapham what must happen. So, after setting everyone (even Mr. Lapham) their tasks, Johnny checks the coal stores. He does tidy some spilled coal himself, but he loses himself in dreams of being a master silversmith. Madge and Dorcas interrupt his reverie with news: Mr. Hancock is ordering a sugar basin, and Mr. Lapham will get it wrong if Johnny doesn’t hurry to write the order down. Feeling full of himself, Johnny scolds Mr. Hancock’s enslaved boy, Jehu, not to let the horse and carriage trample the Laphams’ nonexistent flowers. Johnny slips into the shop.

Mr. Hancock is the richest man in New England; he owns Hancock’s wharf and even the Laphams’ house. His patronage could lift the Laphams out of poverty, and Johnny knows this. Johnny fetches a notebook and pencil, hisses to Dove and Dusty to look busy, and then focuses on recording Mr. Hancock’s requirements. Mr. Lapham doesn’t acknowledge when Mr. Hancock pulls out the cream pitcher that the new sugar basin should match. It’s old-fashioned, but beautiful. The handles are winged women, and it will be Johnny’s job to sculpt and cast two matching ones. Without thinking, Johnny asks if John Coney made this piece. But when he looks at the maker’s mark, it’s Mr. Lapham’s. Johnny had no idea his master could make such beautiful pieces.

The men reminisce about Mr. Lapham making the original set 40 years ago, and then Mr. Hancock asks if Mr. Lapham can have the sugar basin done by Monday. Mr. Lapham starts to refuse, but seeing Mrs. Lapham peeking into the shop excitedly, Johnny interjects and tells Mr. Hancock they can get it done. Secretly, Mr. Lapham is grateful that Johnny stepped in. A minute after Mr. Hancock leaves, Jehu enters the shop with coins for the apprentices. Mr. Lapham mutters that Mr. Hancock just wants the boys to vote for him when they’re adults. He never votes for Mr. Hancock; Mr. Hancock is too busy conspiring with Sam Adams to stir up trouble with England and doesn’t read his Bible enough.

4. It’s oppressively hot by midday. Mr. Lapham spent the morning working but now, he’s napping. Without him around, Dove and Dusty have gone swimming. Johnny is hard at work on an enlarged version of the pitcher handle. He goes to dinner late; everyone knows Mr. Lapham’s success on Mr. Hancock’s order depends on Johnny, so Johnny can be late if he wants. Cilla serves him and then returns to her drawing slate. She and Isannah announce that she’s drawing a maker’s mark for when Johnny is a master smith. Johnny scoffs at Cilla’s work and says that when he’s a master smith, he’s going to use all three of his initials. Cilla has never met someone with three names and seems impressed, but Johnny won’t share what his middle name is.

5. Johnny goes to bed late, having made an exact replica of the winged woman. Still, it’s not right. He decides to sleep on an old mattress in the kitchen, but in the middle of the night, Cilla wakes Johnny up. Isannah is threatening to vomit if she doesn’t get some air, so Cilla asks Johnny to help her get down to the wharf. Grumbling, Johnny picks up the little girl and carries her to the end of the wharf. There’s a delightful breeze there, and the three sit and enjoy it. After a while, Isannah puts her head in Cilla’s lap, and Cilla leans on Johnny’s shoulder.

When Cilla asks, Johnny reveals his middle name: Lyte. He suspects he’s related to wealthy Merchant Lyte (they also share the same first name), but he’s not sure. To entertain Isannah, Johnny tells her about how wildly rich the Lytes are: they drink pearls and servants sweep up silver and gold. Then, Johnny tells Cilla about his mother, who died a week before Johnny was apprenticed to Mr. Lapham. He adored his mother, and she wanted Johnny to work hard and be something. She was born Lavinia Lyte, and she told Johnny never to approach the Lytes unless he has nothing left. In that case, Johnny is to show Merchant Lyte his cup and beg for help. It’s now almost dawn, and Johnny promises to show Cilla his cup when they get back home.

6. After putting Isannah to bed, Johnny grabs his cup out of his chest in the attic. The silver cup is what inspired him to be a silversmith, but now, he’s critical of the chunky cup. It’s engraved with the Lytes’ crest, an eye rising out of the sea, the eyelashes like rays of the sun. The Lytes put it on everything. Cilla is in awe. She reads the family motto—“Let there be Lyte”—just as the sun comes up, but she ruins the magical moment by suggesting that the eye might be setting, not rising.