y.
No printer was ever heard of among the immortals. A printer just
prints--that is all. Solomon never printed anything, did he?"

"I never read that he did, sir."

"Nor Shakespeare?"

"I never heard that he did, sir."

"A printer has no chance to rise; he just builds the ark for Noah to
sail in, and is left behind himself."

"I hope to print some of my own thoughts, sir."

"You do? Ha! ha! ha! Who do you think is going to read them? Your own
thoughts--that does give me a stitch in the side, and makes me laugh so
loud and swing my cane so high that it sets the cats and dogs to
running. See them go over the garden fence! I shall watch your course,
and when you begin to scatter your ideas about in the world, I hope I
will be living to gather some of them up. I hope they will never lead a
revolution!"

Franklin's "Ca Ira" were the words that led the French Revolution.

FOOTNOTE:

[B] The old gentleman who suggests this character was named Mickle or
Mikle.

CHAPTER XXIV.

FRANKLIN'S STRUGGLES WITH FRANKLIN.

AT the age of fifteen Franklin had avowed himself a deist, or theist,
which must have grieved his parents, who were people of positive
Christian faith. He loved to argue, and when he had learned the Socratic
art of asking questions so as to lead one to confuse himself, and of
answering questions in the subjunctive mood, he sought nothing more than
disputations in the stanch Puritan town. His intimate friends were
deists, but they came to early failure through want of faith or any
positive moral conviction. Governor Keith was a deist.

The reader may ask what we mean by a deist here. A deist or theist in
Franklin's time was one who believed in a God, but questioned the
Christian faith and system. He was not an atheist. He held that a
personal governing power directed all things after his own will and
purpose. Under the providence of this Being things came and went, and
man could not know how or why, but could simply believe that all that
was was for the good of all.

At the age of twenty-two young Franklin began to see that life without
faith had no meaning, but was failure. In the omnipotence of spiritual
life and power the soul must share or die. Negations or denials did not
satisfy him. This was a positive world, governed by spiritual law. To
disobey these laws was loss and death.

He had been doing wrong. He had done wrong in yielding to his personal
feelings in leaving home in the manner