to be poor. But it is all right, Ben, as the
book of Job tells us; all things that happen to a man with good
intentions are for his best good."

It was Uncle Benjamin's purpose to mold the character of his little
godson. He had the Froebel ideas, although he lived before the time of
the great apostle of soul education.

"The first thing for a boy like you, Ben, is to have a definite purpose,
and the next is to have fixed habits to carry forward that purpose, to
make life automatic."

"What do you mean by _automatic_, uncle?"

"Your heart beats itself, does it not? You do not make it beat. Your
muscles do their work without any thought on your part; so the stomach
assimilates its food. The first thing in education, more than
cultivation of memory or reason, is to teach one to do right, right all
the time, because it is just as the heart beats and the muscles or the
stomach do their work. I want so to mold you that justice shall be the
law of your life--so that to do right all the time will be a part of
your nature. This is the first principle of home education."

Little Ben only in part comprehended this simple philosophy.

"But, uncle," said he, "what should be my purpose in life?"

"You have the nature of your great-uncle Tom--you love to be doing
things to help others, just as he did. The purpose of your life should
be to improve things. Genius creates things, but benevolence improves
things. You will understand what I mean some day, when you shall grow up
and go to England and hear the chimes of Northampton ring."

Uncle Benjamin liked to take little Ben out to sea. They journeyed so
far that they sometimes lost sight of the State House, the lions and
unicorns, and the window from which new kings and royal governors had
been proclaimed.

These excursions were the times that Uncle Ben sought to mold the will
of little Ben after the purpose that he saw in him. He told him the
stories of life that educate the imagination, that help to make fixed
habit.

"If I only had those pamphlets," he said on these excursions, "what a
help they would be to us! You will never forget those pamphlets, will
you, Ben?"

CHAPTER VIII.

LITTLE BEN SHOWS HIS HANDWRITING TO THE FAMILY.

MR. GEORGE BROWNELL kept a writing school, and little Ben was sent to
him to learn to write his name and to "do sums."

Franklin did indeed learn to write his name--very neatly and with the
customary flourish. In this respect he grea