roposed that I
should print and sell them."

"James is not a judge of poetry," replied his father. "It is wretched
stuff, and I am ashamed that you are known as the author. Look here,
let me show you wherein it is defective;" and here Mr. Franklin began
to read it over aloud, and to criticise it. He was a man of sound
sense, and competent to expose the faults of such a composition. He
proceeded with his criticisms, without sparing the young author's
feelings at all, until Benjamin himself began to be sorry that he had
undertaken the enterprise.

"There, I want you should promise me," said his father, "that you will
never deal in such wares again, and that you will stick to your
business of setting up type."

"Perhaps I may improve by practice," said Benjamin, "so that I may yet
be able to write something worthy of being read. You couldn't expect
me to write very well at first."

"But you are not a poet," continued Mr. Franklin. "It is not in you,
and, even if it was, I should not advise you to write it; for poets
are generally beggars,--poor, shiftless members of society."

"That is news to me," responded Benjamin. "How does it happen, then,
that some of their works are so popular?"

"Because a true poet can write something worthy of being read, while a
mere verse-maker, like yourself, writes only doggerel, that is not
worth the paper on which it is printed. Now I advise you to let
verse-making alone, and attend closely to your business, both for your
own sake and your brother's."

Mr. Franklin was rather severe upon Benjamin, although what he said of
his verses was true. Still, it was a commendable effort in the boy to
try to improve his mind. Some of the best poets who have lived wrote
mere doggerel when they began. Many of our best prose-writers, too,
were exceedingly faulty writers at first. It is a noble effort of a
boy to try to put his thoughts into writing. If he does not succeed in
the first instance, by patience, energy, and perseverance he may
triumph at last. Benjamin might not have acted wisely in selling his
verses about town, but his brother, so much older and more experienced
than himself, should bear the censure of that, since it was done by
his direction.

The decided opposition that Mr. Franklin showed to verse-making put a
damper upon Benjamin's poetical aspirations. The air-castle that his
youthful imagination had built, in consequence of the rapid sale of
his literary wares, tumbled to r