in New York, a Dutch town of less than ten thousand
inhabitants. He was about eighteen years of age. New York then had
little in common with the city of to-day. Its streets were marked by
gable ends and cobble stones. Franklin applied for work to a printer
there, and the latter commended him to go to Philadelphia. He followed
the advice, going by sea, friendless and forlorn, with only a few
shillings in his pocket.

He helped row the boat across the Delaware. He offered the boatman his
fare.

"No," said the boatman, "I ought to take nothing; you helped row."

Franklin had just one silver dollar and a shilling in copper coin. He
insisted that the ferryman should take the coin. He said of this liberal
sense of honor afterward that one is "sometimes more generous when he
has little money than when he has plenty."

Philadelphia, the city of Penn, now rose before him, and he entered it a
friendless lad, whom none knew and few could have noticed. Would any one
then have dreamed that he would one day become the governor of the
province?

Benjamin Franklin had now found the world indeed, and his brother James
had lost the greatest apprentice that the world ever had. Both were
blind. Each had needed that early training that develops the spiritual
powers, and makes it a delight to say "No" to all the lower passions of
human nature.

Josiah and Abiah Franklin had had great hopes of little Ben. The boy had
a large brain and a tender heart. From their point of view they had
trained him well. They had sent him to the Old South Church and had made
him the subject of their daily prayers. In fact, these good people had
done their best to make him a "steady boy," according to their light.
The education of the inner life was like a sealed book to them. But they
were yet people upon whom a larger light was breaking. The poor old soap
and candle maker went on with his business at the Blue Ball with a heavy
heart.

"Gone, gone," said Jamie the Scotchman. "He'll find proverbs enough on
his way of life. This is a hard world, but he has a heart to return to
the right. I pity good Abiah Franklin, but we often have to trust where
we can not see."

CHAPTER XX.

LAUGHED AT AGAIN.

FRANKLIN'S first day in Philadelphia is well known to the world. He has
related it in Addisonian English, and it has been read almost as widely
as the adventures of Robinson Crusoe or Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.

We must give a part of the narrati