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ld be made. "He is a young man about my age, a printer, and he is going to New York to get work," replied John. "Why don't he get work in Boston?" inquired the captain. John saw that there was no evading the captain's questions, and so he suddenly resolved to fabricate a story, in other words, to tell a base lie. "Well," said John, "if I must tell you the whole story, the case is this. He is a young fellow who has been flirting with a girl, who wants to marry him, and now her parents are determined that he shall marry her, and he is determined that he will not, and he proposes to remove secretly to New York. He would have come to see you himself, but it is not safe for him to appear out so publicly, and therefore he sent me to do the business." A youth who can fabricate a falsehood so unblushingly as John did this is a candidate for ruin. The reader will not be surprised to learn, before the whole story is told, that he became a miserable, wicked man. This single lie proved that he was destitute of moral principle, and would do almost anything to carry his project. For some unaccountable reason, the captain was taken with this device, and consented to carry Benjamin to New York. He arranged to receive him clandestinely, and to have him on his way before any suspicion of his plans was awakened. John hastened to inform Benjamin of the success of his enterprise, and to congratulate him upon his fair prospect of getting away. "Money is the next thing," said Benjamin. "I can't go without money. I must sell my books for something, though I dislike to part with them." "They will sell quick enough," said John, "and will bring you a very pretty sum to start with." Benjamin lost no time in disposing of his little library for what it would bring, and he managed to get his clothes together without exciting suspicion; and, with the assistance of John, he boarded the sloop privately just before she sailed. "Good luck to you, Ben," said John, as they shook hands. "Good bye," answered Benjamin with a heavy heart, just beginning to feel that he was going away from home. "See that you tell no tales out of school." Thus they parted; and the sloop sailed for New York, where she arrived in three days. Benjamin did not know a person in that city, nor had he a single letter of recommendation to any one, and the money in his pocket was but a trifle. It was in October, 1723, that he arrived in New York. Think of a
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