s desired him to have,
his mind is curiously influenced and has strange directions. It is like
blindfolded children playing hot and cold. There is some strange
instinct in one who seeks a hidden object for his own or others' good
that leads his feet into mysterious ways. I have much faith in that
hidden law. Samuel, I may be able to find those pamphlets; I thought of
them when I was in London. If I do, I will buy them at whatever cost,
and will bring them to you, and may both of us try to honor the name of
that loving, forgiving, noble man until we see each other again. It may
be that when I shall come here another time, if I do, I will bring with
me the pamphlets."

"If you were to find them, I would indeed believe in a special
Providence."

The two parted. Poor Uncle Benjamin had sold his books for money, but
was his life a failure, or was he never living more nobly than now?

Franklin went to the Granary burying ground, where the old man slept.
Great elms stood before the place. He thought of what his parents had
been, how they had struggled and toiled, and how glad they were that
Uncle Benjamin had come to them for his sake. He resolved to erect a
monument there.

He recalled Uncle Benjamin's teaching, that a man rises by overcoming
his defects, and so gains strength.

He had tried to profit by the old man's lesson in answer to his own
question, "Have I a chance?"

He had not only struggled to make strong his conscious weaknesses of
character, but those of his mental power as well.

His old pedagogue, Mr. Brownell, had been unable to teach him
mathematics. In this branch of elementary studies he had proved a
failure and a dunce. But he had struggled against this defect of Nature,
as against all others, with success.

He was going to London as the agent of the colonies. He would carry
back to England those principles that the old man had taught him, and
would live them there. His Uncle Benjamin had written those principles
in his "pamphlets," and again in his own life. Would he ever see these
documents which had in fact been his schoolbooks, but which had come to
him without the letter, because the old man had been too poor to keep
the books?

CHAPTER XXX.

A STRANGE DISCOVERY.

FRANKLIN went to London.

Franklin loved old bookstores. There were many in London, moldy and
musty, in obscure corners, some of them in cellars and in narrow
passageways, just off thronging streets.

One day, when