hy do you reprove me? I am doing the best I can, sir."

The teacher knew the words to be true. The boys that heard the question
turned with a kind of chivalrous feeling toward their dull companion,
who was doing his best against poverty, limited gifts, and many
disadvantages in life. The old school of Charles Sumner, Wendell
Phillips, and Phillips Brooks is not wanting in true sympathy with any
manly struggle in life.

The teacher answered: "Master Elwell, I have done wrong in reproving
you. He does well who does his best. You are doing well."

Frank Elwell won the Franklin medal by doing his best. On the evening
after his graduation he stood before his teacher and asked:

"Master Lowell" (for so we will call the teacher, and use the old term
in the vocative case), "Master Lowell, did you ever know any boy to
struggle against defects like mine?"

"Yes, my boy, I have."

"Did he succeed in life?"

"He did. He became the first citizen of Boston, and is so regarded
still."

"Who was it, sir?"

"Look at your medal. It was Benjamin Franklin himself."

Reader, Frank Elwell perhaps is _you_.

"More than wealth, more than fame, more than any other thing, is the
power of the human heart." Live for influences--live for the things that
live, and let the best influences of the Peter Folgers and Benjamin
Franklins of your family live on in you, and live after you. You will do
well in life and will succeed in life if you do your best; and if your
ideal seems to fail in you, it will not fail in the world, in whose
harvest field no good intention perishes.

Be true to those who have faith in you, and _to_ their faith in you, and
help others by believing in the best that is in them. Those who have the
most faith in you are your truest friends. An Uncle Benjamin and a Jenny
are among the choicest characters that can enter the doors of life, and
we will see it so at the end.

Do good, and you can not fail.

"Do thou thy work; it shall succeed
In thine or in another's day,
And if denied the visitor's meed,
Thou shalt not miss the toiler's pay."

APPENDIX.

FRANKLIN'S FAMOUS PROVERB STORY OF THE OLD AUCTIONEER.

"FRIENDS," said the old auctioneer, "the taxes are indeed very heavy. If
those laid on by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we
might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more
grievous to some of us. We are taxed twic