ams in your
life change into realities. I believe that all you now have in your
heart to do will be done. Benjamin, these are great dreams."

"It may be that I will be sent abroad again."

"Benjamin, we may be very old when we meet again. But the colonies will
be made free, and you will live to give a medal to the schools of Boston
town. I must prophesy for you now, for Uncle Benjamin is gone. I began
life with you--you carried me in your arms and led me by the hand. We
used to sit by the east windows together; may we some day sit down
together by the windows of the west and review the book of life, and
close the covers. We may then read in spirit the pamphlets of Uncle
Ben."

There was a thunder of guns at the Castle. War ships were coming into
the harbor from the bay. Franklin beheld them with indignation.

"The people must not only have justice," he said, "they must have
liberty."

They returned by the Cambridge road under the bowery elms. It would be a
long time before they would see each other again.

In such beneficent thoughts of Boston the Franklin medal had its origin.
It was coined out of his heart, that echoed wherever it went or was
destined to go, "Beloved Boston!"

CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.--A MYSTERY.

THE fame of Benjamin Franklin now filled America. On the continent of
Europe he was held to be the first citizen of America. In France he was
ranked among the sages and philosophers of antiquity, and his name
associated with the greatest benefactors of the human race. It was his
electrical discovery that gave him this solid and universal fame, but
his Poor Richard's proverbs, which had several times been translated
into French, were greatly quoted on the continent of Europe, and made
his popularity as unique as it was general.

The old Boston schoolmaster who probably taught little Ben to flourish
with his pen could have little dreamed of the documents of state to
which this curious characteristic of the pen would be attached. Four of
these documents were papers that led the age, and became the charters of
human freedom and progress and began a new order of government in the
world. They were the Declaration of Independence, the Alliance with
France, the Treaty of Peace with England, and the draft of the
Constitution of the United States.

In his service as agent of the colonies and as a member of the
Continental Congress his mind clearly saw how valuable to the A