terian and lived in Boston.

The boy was not religious, for he never "went forward," and only went to
church because he had to, and read "Plutarch's Lives" with much more
relish than he did "Saints' Rest." But he had great curiosity and asked
questions until his mother would say, "Goodness gracious, go and play!"

And as the boy wasn't very religious or very fond of work, his father and
mother decided that there were only two careers open for him: the mother
proposed that he be made a preacher, but his father said, send him to sea.

To go to sea under a good strict captain would discipline him, and to send
him off and put him under the care of the Reverend Doctor Thirdly would
answer the same purpose--which course should be pursued? But Pallas
Athene, who was to watch over this lad's destinies all through life,
preserved him from either.

His parents' aspirations extended even to his becoming captain of a
schooner or pastor of the First Church at Roxbury. And no doubt he could
have sailed the schooner around the globe in safety, or filled the pulpit
with a degree of power that would have caused consternation to reign in
the heart of every other preacher in town; but Fate saved him that he
might take the Ship of State, when she threatened to strand on the rocks
of adversity, and pilot her into peaceful waters, and to preach such
sermons to America that their eloquence still moves us to better things.

Parents think that what they say about their children goes, and once in an
awfully long time it does, but the men who become great and learned
usually do so in spite of their parents--which remark was first made by
Martin Luther, but need not be discredited on that account.

Ben's oldest brother was James. Now, James was nearly forty; he was tall
and slender, stooped a little, and had sandy whiskers, and a nervous
cough, and positive ideas on many subjects--one of which was that he was a
printer. His apprentice, or "devil," had left him, because the devil did
not like to be cuffed whenever the compositor shuffled his fonts. James
needed another apprentice, and proposed to take his younger brother and
make a man of him if the old folks were willing. The old folks were
willing and Ben was duly bound by law to his brother, agreeing to serve
him faithfully, as Jacob served Laban, for seven years and two years more.

Science has explained many things, but it has not yet told why it
sometimes happens that when seventeen eggs