on as you have had at home."

"I did know better," frankly confessed Benjamin.

"And that makes your guilt so much the greater," added his father. "Do
you think you will learn a lesson from this, and never do the like
again?"

"I will promise that I never will."

Thus frankly did Benjamin confess his wrong, and ever after look upon
that act with regret. In mature age he referred to it, and called it
one of the first evil acts of his life. It was the second time he
_paid too dear for his whistle_.

If seems that the workmen missed their stones, when they first reached
the spot in the morning, and they soon discovered them nicely laid
into a wharf. The proprietor was indignant, and exerted himself to
learn who were the authors of the deed, and in the course of the day
he gained the information, and went directly, and very properly, to
their parents, to enter complaint. Thus all the boys were exposed, and
received just rebuke for their misdemeanor. Benjamin was convinced, as
he said of it many years afterwards, "that that which is not honest,
could not be truly useful."

We have referred to Benjamin's habit of reading. It had been his
custom to spend his evenings, and other leisure moments, in reading.
He was much pleased with voyages, and such writings as John Bunyan's.
The first books he possessed were the works of Bunyan, in separate
little volumes. After becoming familiar with them, he sold them in
order to obtain the means to buy "Burton's Historical Collections,"
which were small, cheap books, forty volumes in all. His father, also,
possessed a good number of books for those times, when books were
rare, and these he read through, although most of them were really
beyond his years, being controversial writings upon theology. His love
of reading was so great, that he even read works of this character
with a degree of interest. In the library, however, were three or four
books of somewhat different character. There was "Plutarch's Lives,"
in which he was deeply interested; also Defoe's "Essay on Projects."
But to no one book was he more indebted than to Dr. Mather's "Essay
to do Good." From this he derived hints and sentiments which had a
beneficial influence upon his after life. He said, forty or fifty
years afterwards, "It gave me a turn of thinking that had an influence
on some of the principal future events of my life." And he wrote to a
son of Cotton Mather, "I have always set a greater value on the
charact