make your life
a blessing to your father, who has been a true brother to me. I will
tell you the whole story of the pamphlets some day."

"Uncle, I love you more than ever before, because you sold the treasures
for me. I wish that I might grow up and help folks, so that my name
might honor yours.

"You can make it that, my boy. If you will let me teach you, you may
make it that. There can nothing stand before a will that wills to do
good. It is the heart that has power, my boy. My life will not have been
lost if I can live in you."

"I have not much time for educating my children," said the younger
brother. "I am going to give over the training of the boy to you. True
education begins with the heart first, so as to make right ideas fixed
in the mind and right habits, in the conduct. It may be little that I
can send him to school, but it is what you can do for him that will give
him a start in life. I want you to see that he starts right in life. I
leave his training to you. I have a dozen mouths to feed, and small time
for anything but toil."

He tuned his violin and played an old English air. There were candle
molds in the room, long rows of candle wicks, great kettles, a gun, a
Bible, some old books, and a fireplace with a great crane, hooks, and
andirons.

Little Benjamin looked up into the old man's face and laid his hand on
his shoulder.

"I am glad father did not forget you," said he.

The old man's lip quivered.

"He has been a true brother to me. Always remember that, boy, as long as
you live. It is such memories as that that teach. His heart is true to
me now as when we used to leave the forge and roam the woods of Banbury
together in springtime, when the skylark rose out of the meadows and the
hedgerows bloomed. It is good for families to be so true to each other.
If one member of a family lacks anything, it is good for another to
make up for it. Yes, boy, your father has a good heart, else you would
not now be in my arms."

"Why do you cry, papa?" said the boy, for his father's eyes were filled
with tears which coursed down his cheeks. Something that aged Benjamin
had said about the forge, the nightingale, or the thorn had touched his
heart.

"We can never be young again, brother," said Josiah Franklin. "I shall
never see the thorn bloom or hear the nightingale sing as I once did.
No, no, no; but I am glad that I have brought you and Ben together. That
would have pleased our old mother's heart,