hose
things were that I sold; they were the things most precious of all to
me, and among them were--were my pamphlets."

The old man bowed over, and his lip quivered.

"What were your pamphlets, uncle? You said that you would explain to me
what they were."

"Ben, there are some things that we come to possess that are a part of
ourselves. Our heart goes into them--our blood--our life--our hope. It
was so with my pamphlets, Ben. This is the secret I have to tell.

"I loved the cause of the Commonwealth--Cromwell's days. In the last
days of the Commonwealth, when I had but little money to spare, I used
to buy pamphlets on the times. When I had read a pamphlet, thoughts
would come to me. I did not seem to think them; they came to me, and I
used to note these thoughts down on the margins of the leaves in the
pamphlets. Those thoughts were more to me than anything that I ever had
in life."

"I would have felt so too, uncle."

"Years passed, and I had a little library of pamphlets, the margins
filled with my own thoughts. Poetry is the soul's vision, and I wrote my
poetry on those pamphlets. Ben, oh, my pamphlets! my pamphlets! They
were my soul; all the best of me went into them.

"Well, Ben, times changed. King Charles returned, and the Commonwealth
vanished, but I still added to my pamphlets for years and years. Then I
heard of you. I always loved Brother Josiah, and my son was on this side
of the water, and the longing grew to sail for America, where my heart
then was, as I have told you."

"I see how you felt, uncle."

"I dreamed how to get the money; I prayed for the money. One day a
London bookseller said to me: 'You have been collecting pamphlets. Have
you one entitled Human Freedom'? I answered that I had, but that it was
covered with notes. He asked me to let him come to my lodgings and read
it. He came and looked over all my pamphlets, and told me that a part of
the collection had become rare and valuable; that they might have a
value in legal cases that would arise owing to the change in the times.
He offered to buy them. I refused to sell them, on account of what I had
written on the margins of the leaves. What I wrote were my revelations.

"He went away. Then my loneliness increased, and my longing to come to
America. I could sell my valuables, and among them the pamphlets, and
this would give me money wherewith to make the great change."

"You sold them, uncle?"

"When I thought of Brother Josiah,