They talked together long: of Josiah, now gone; of Uncle Benjamin, long dead; and of Parson Sewell, and the deacons of the South Church, who had pa.s.sed away.

The door opened. Jenny again stood before him. She led on a boy by the hand, and said to her portly brother:

"This, Benjamin, is Benjamin."

They talked together until the tears came.

He heard the whir of the swallows' wings in the chimney.

"The swallows come back," he said, "but they will never come again. It fills my heart with tenderness to hear these old home sounds."

"No, _they_ will never come back from the mosses and ferns under the elms," said his mother. "The orioles come, the orchards bloom, and summer lights up the hills, and the leaves fall, but they will know no more changes or seasons. And I am going after their feet into the silence, Ben; I have almost got through. You have been a true son in the main, and Jenny has never stepped aside from the way. Always be good to Jenny."

"Jenny, always be true to mother, and I will be as true to you."

"Brother, I shall always be true to my home."

CHAPTER XXIX.

"THOSE PAMPHLETS."

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN loved to meet Samuel Franklin, Uncle Benjamin's son, who also had caught the gentle philosopher's spirit, and was making good his father's intention. Samuel was a thrifty man in a growing town.

"It is the joy of my life to find you so prosperous," said Franklin, "for it would have made your father's heart happy could he have known that one day I would find you so. Samuel, your father was a good man. I shall never cease to be grateful for his influence over me when I was a boy. He was my schoolmaster."

"Yes, my father was a good man, and I never saw it as I do now. I was not all to him that I ought to have been. He was a poor man; he lived as it were on ideas, and people were accustomed to look upon him as a man who had failed in life."

"He will never fail while you are a man of right influence," said Franklin. "He lives in you."

"I feel his influence more and more every day," said Samuel.

"Samuel Franklin, I do. Success does not consist in popularity or money-making. Right influence is success in life. I have been an unworthy G.o.dson of your father, but I am more than ever determined to carry out the principles that he taught me; they are the only things that will stand in life; as for the rest, the grave swallows all. Your father's life shall never be a failure if my life can bring to it honor.

"Samuel, I have not always done my best, but I resolve more and more to be worthy of the love of all men when I think of what a character your father developed. He thought of himself last. He did not die poor. His hands were empty, but not his heart, and there sleeps no richer man in the Granary burying ground than he.

"Samuel, he parted with his library containing the notes of his best thoughts in life in his efforts to come to America to give me the true lessons in life because I bore his name. It was a brotherly thought indeed that led my father who loved him to name me for him."

"You speak of his library--his collection of religious books and pamphlets, which he wrote over with his own ideas; you have touched a tender spot in my heart. He wanted that I should have those pamphlets, and that I should try to recover them through some London agent. You are going to London. Do you think that they could be recovered after so many years?"

"Samuel, there is a strange thing that I have observed. It is this: When a man looks earnestly for a thing that some one has desired him to have, his mind is curiously influenced and has strange directions. It is like blindfolded children playing hot and cold. There is some strange instinct in one who seeks a hidden object for his own or others' good that leads his feet into mysterious ways. I have much faith in that hidden law. Samuel, I may be able to find those pamphlets; I thought of them when I was in London. If I do, I will buy them at whatever cost, and will bring them to you, and may both of us try to honor the name of that loving, forgiving, n.o.ble man until we see each other again. It may be that when I shall come here another time, if I do, I will bring with me the pamphlets."

"If you were to find them, I would indeed believe in a special Providence."

The two parted. Poor Uncle Benjamin had sold his books for money, but was his life a failure, or was he never living more n.o.bly than now?

Franklin went to the Granary burying ground, where the old man slept.

Great elms stood before the place. He thought of what his parents had been, how they had struggled and toiled, and how glad they were that Uncle Benjamin had come to them for his sake. He resolved to erect a monument there.

He recalled Uncle Benjamin's teaching, that a man rises by overcoming his defects, and so gains strength.

He had tried to profit by the old man's lesson in answer to his own question, "Have I a chance?"

He had not only struggled to make strong his conscious weaknesses of character, but those of his mental power as well.

His old pedagogue, Mr. Brownell, had been unable to teach him mathematics. In this branch of elementary studies he had proved a failure and a dunce. But he had struggled against this defect of Nature, as against all others, with success.

He was going to London as the agent of the colonies. He would carry back to England those principles that the old man had taught him, and would live them there. His Uncle Benjamin had written those principles in his "pamphlets," and again in his own life. Would he ever see these doc.u.ments which had in fact been his schoolbooks, but which had come to him without the letter, because the old man had been too poor to keep the books?

CHAPTER x.x.x.

A STRANGE DISCOVERY.

FRANKLIN went to London.

Franklin loved old bookstores. There were many in London, moldy and musty, in obscure corners, some of them in cellars and in narrow pa.s.sageways, just off thronging streets.

One day, when he was sixty years of age, just fifty years after his a.s.sociation with Uncle Benjamin, he wandered out into the byways of the old London bookstores.

It was early spring; the winter fogs of London had disappeared, the squares were turning green, the hedgerows blooming, the birds were singing on the thorns. Such a sunny, blue morning might have called him into the country, but he turned instead into the flowerless ways of the book stalls. He wandered about for a time and found nothing. Then he thought of old Humphrey, of whom he had bought books perhaps out of pity. There was something about this man that held him; he seemed somehow like a link of the unknown past. He compelled him to buy books that he did not want or need.

"This is a fine spring morning," said old Humphrey, as he saw the portly form of Franklin enter the door. "I have been thinking of you much of late. I do not seem to be able to have put you out of my mind; and why should I, a fine gentleman like you, and uncommonly civil. I have something that I have been allotting on showing you. It is very curious; it is a library of thirty-six volumes of pamphlets, and it minds me that a more interesting collection of pamphlets was never made. I read them myself in lonesome days when there is no trade. Let me show you one of the volumes."

"No, never mind, my friend. I could not buy the whole library, however interesting it might be. I will look for something smaller. This is a very old bookstore."

"Ay, it is that. It has been kept here ever since the times of the Restoration, and before. My wife's father used to keep it when he was an old man and I was a boy. And now I am an old man. I must show you one of those books or pamphlets. They are all written over."

Benjamin Franklin sat down on a stool in the light, and took up an odd volume of the Canterbury Tales.

Old Humphrey lighted a candle and went into a dark recess. He presently returned, bringing one of the thirty-six volumes of pamphlets.

"My American friend, if one liked old things, and the comments of one dead and gone, this library of pamphlets would be food for thought. Just look at this volume!"

He struck the book against a shelf to remove the dust, and handed it to Franklin.

The latter adjusted his spectacles to the light, and turned over the volume.

"As you say," he said to old Humphrey, "it is all written over."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A STRANGE DISCOVERY.]