would go better than before! Do you
remember it, Jane? How, then, your wondering eyes would look upon the
clock miracle and delight in your faith, and say, 'I told you so, Ben.'
How he would kiss you in your happiness that your prophecy had come
true. He had said 'No' that you might say 'Yes.'"

"Do you think that his thoughts turn home, mother?"

There was a whir of wings in the chimney.

"More to a true nature than a noisy applause of the crowd is the simple
faith of one honest heart," said Abiah Folger in return. "In the silence
and desolation of life, which may come to all, such sympathy is the
only fountain to which one can turn. Our best thoughts fly homeward like
swallows to old chimneys, where they last year brooded over their young,
and center in the true hearts left at the fireside. Every true heart is
true to his home, and to the graves of those with whom it shared the
years when life lay fair before it. Yes, Jane, he thinks of you."

She was right. Jenny had helped her brother by believing in him when he
most needed such faith.

There is some good angel, some Jenny, who comes into every one's life.
Happy is he who feels the heart touch of such an one, and yields to such
unselfish spiritual visions. To do this is to be led by a gentle hand
into the best that there is in life.

In sacred hours the voices of these home angels come back to the silent
chambers of the heart. We then see that our best hopes were in them, and
wish that we could retune the broken chords of the past. The home voice
is always true, and we find it so at last.

Franklin had little of his sister's sentiment, but when he thought of
the old days, and of the simple hearts that were true to him there, he
would say, "Beloved Boston." His heart was in the words. Boston was the
town of Jenny.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

HOME-COMING IN DISGUISE.

THERE is a very delightful fiction, which may have blossomed from fact,
which used to be found in schoolbooks, under the title of "The Story of
Franklin's Return to his Mother after a Long Absence."

It would have been quite like him to have returned to Boston in the
guise of a stranger. Some one has said that he had a joke for
everything, and that he would have put one into the Declaration of
Independence had he been able.

The tendency to make proverbs that Franklin showed in his early years
grew, and if he were not indeed as wise as King Solomon, no one since
the days of that Oriental mo