To BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,' sir."

"Well, my boy, if you will only follow the advice of your Uncle
Benjamin, the poet, you never will need any more instruction.--Wife,
hear this: Brother Ben writes that he is coming to America as soon as he
can settle his affairs, and when he arrives I will give over the
training of little Ben to him. He is his godfather, and he takes a great
interest in a boy that he has never seen. Sometimes people are drawn
toward each other before they meet--there's a kind of sympathy in this
world that is felt in ways unseen and that is prophetic. Your father was
a poet, and Uncle Ben, he is one, after a fashion. I wonder what little
Ben will be!"

He put on his paper cap and opened the door into the molding-room. The
fire was dying out on the hearth, and the candles in the molds were
cooling and hardening. He opened the weather door, causing the bell
attached to it to ring. He stood looking out on the bowery street of
Boston town.

On the hill rose the North Church in the shadows near the sea. A horn
rent the still air. A stage coach from Salem came rolling in and stopped
at the Boston Stone, not far away. A little girl tripped down the
street.

"A pound of candles, sir."

"Hoi, yes, yes," and he took some candles out of a mold and laid them in
the scales. The girl courtesied, and the tallow chandler closed the door
with a ting-a-ling.

Then Josiah sat down with his family and played the violin. He loved his
brother Benjamin, and the thought of his coming made him a happy man.

One day the old man came. Soon after there happened a great event in the
family.

It was a windy night. The ocean was dashing and foaming along the sea
wall on the beach where Long Wharf, Lewis Wharf, and Rowe's Wharf now
are. The stars shone brightly, and clouds flew scudding over the moon.

Abiah Franklin opened the weather door and looked out. She returned to
her great chair slowly with a cloud in her face.

"It is a bad night for those on the sea," she said. "It is now nine
years since Josiah went away. Where he found an ocean grave we shall
never know. It is hard," she added, "to have hope leave you in this way.
It is one long torture to live in suspense. There hasn't been a day
since the first year after Josiah left us that my ear has not waited to
hear a knock on the door on a night like this.

"Josiah, you may say that I have faith in the impossible, but I
sometimes believe that I shall hear that knock yet.