ather there and tell stories about witches and wizards that would have
made your flesh creep, and left you afraid to go to bed, even with a
guinea pig in your room.

"Your Great-uncle Thomas was always inventing things to benefit the
people. At last he invented a way by which it might rain and rain, and
there might be freshets and freshets, and yet their meadows would not be
overflown. The water would all run off from the meadows like rain from a
duck's back. He made a kind of drain that ran sideways. Now the pious
Brownites thought that this was flying in the face of Providence, and
people began to talk mysteriously about him at the World's End.

"But it was not that which I have heavy on my mind or light on my mind,
for it is a happy thought. There are not many romantic things in our
family history. The Franklins were men of the farm, forge, and fire. But
there was one thing in our history that was poetry. It was this--listen
now.

"What was the name of that man to whom I sold the pamphlets?" he asked
in an aside.

"Axel."

"That is right--always remember that name--Axel.

"Now listen to that other thing. Your uncle, or great-uncle Thomas,
started a subscription for a chime of bells. The family all loved
music--that is what makes your father play the violin. Your Great-uncle
Thomas loved music in the air. You may be able to buy a spinet for Jenny
some day.

"Now your Great-uncle Thomas's soul is, as it were, in those chimes of
Nottingham. I pray that you may go to England some day before you die
and hear the chimes of Nottingham. You will hear a part of your own
family's soul, my boy. It is the things that men do that live. If you
ever find the pamphlets, which are myself--myself that is gone--you will
read in them my thoughts on the Toleration Act, and on Liberty, and on
the soul, and the rights of man. What was the man's name?"

"Axel."

"Right."

Little Jenny, who loved to follow little Ben, had come down to the wharf
to hear "Uncle Benjamin talk." She had joined them in the boat on the
sunny water. She had become deeply interested in Uncle Tom and the
chimes of Nottingham.

"Uncle Ben," she asked, "was Uncle Tom ever laughed at?"

"Yes, yes; the old neighbors who would hang about the smithy used to
laugh at him. They thought him visionary. Why did you ask me that?"

"What makes people who come to the shop laugh at Ben? It hurts me. I
think Ben is real good. He is good to me, and I am always going