--JANE'S LAST VISIT 299
XLII.--FOR THE LAST TIME 307
XLIII.--A LESSON AFTER SCHOOL 311
APPENDIX.--FRANKLIN'S FAMOUS PROVERB STORY OF THE OLD
AUCTIONEER 314

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

FACING PAGE

Little Ben's adventure as a poet _Frontispiece_

Uncle Benjamin's secret 52

"Are you going to swim back to London?" 156

A strange discovery 215

The destruction of the royal arms 247

Franklin's last days 295

TRUE TO HIS HOME.

CHAPTER I.

THE FIRST DAY.

IT was the Sunday morning of the 6th of January, 1706 (January 17th, old
style), when a baby first saw the light in a poor tallow chandler's
house on Milk Street, nearly opposite the Old South Church, Boston. The
little stranger came into a large and growing family, of whom at a later
period he might sometimes have seen thirteen children sit down at the
table to very hard and simple fare.

"A baby is nothing new in this family," said Josiah Franklin, the
father. "This is the fifteenth. Let me take it over to the church and
have it christened this very day. There should be no time lost in
christening. What say you, friends all? It is a likely boy, and it is
best to start him right in life at once."

"People do not often have their children christened in church on the day
of birth," said a lusty neighbor, "though if a child seems likely to die
it might be christened on the day of its birth at home."

"This child does not seem likely to die," said the happy tallow
chandler. "I will go and see the parson, and if he does not object I
will give the child to the Lord on this January day, and if he should
come to anything he will have occasion to remember that I thought of the
highest duty that I owed him when he first opened his eyes to the
light."

The smiling and enthusiastic tallow chandler went to see the parson, and
then returned to his home.

"Abiah," he said to his wife, "I am going to have the child christened.
What shall his name be?"

Josiah Franklin, the chandler, who had emigrated to Boston town that he
might enjoy religious freedom, had left a brother in England, who was an
honest, kindly, large-hearted man, and "a poet."

"How would Benjamin do?" he continue