Part 16 (2/2)

Little Ben set down the stove in the pew. The lecture began. He heard the minister read the sublime pa.s.sage of the ancient poem beginning, ”Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said.” He heard about the ”morning stars singing together,” the ”sweet influences of Pleiades,” and the question, ”Canst thou bind the sea?”

The boy asked, ”Have I a chance? have I a chance?” The discouraging words of Jamie the Scotchman hung over his mind like a cloud.

The influence of the coals led Josiah Franklin to slumberland after his hard day's work. Little Ben saw his father nod and nod. But Uncle Benjamin was in the Orient with the minister, having a hard experience for the good of life with the patriarch Job.

”Have I a chance?” The boy shed tears. If he had not gifts, he knew that he had personality, but there was something stirring within him that led his thoughts to seek the good of others.

The nine-o'clock bell rang. The lecture was over.

”Good--wasn't it?” said Jamie the Scotchman as they went out of the church and looked down to the harbor glimmering under the moon and stars, and added:

”Ben, you will be sure to have one thing to spur you on to lead that 'projected life' your Uncle Benjamin tells about.”

”What is that, sir?”

”A hard time, like Job--a mighty hard time.”

”The true way to knowledge,” said Uncle Benjamin encouragingly.

Uncle Benjamin felt a hand in his great mitten. It was little Ben's. The confidence touched his heart.

”Ben, you are as likely to have a projected life as anybody. A man rises by overcoming his defects. Strength comes in that way.”

Little Ben went through the jingling door with a heart now heavy, now light. He set down the lantern, and climbed up to his bed under the roof.

He was soon in bed, the question, ”Have I a chance?” still haunting him.

In summer there would be the sound of the wings of the swallows or purple swifts in the chimney at night as they became displaced from their nests. He would start up to listen to the whirring wings, then sink into slumber, to awake a blithe, light-hearted boy again.

All was silent now. He could not sleep. His fancy was too wide awake.

Was Uncle Benjamin right, or Jamie the Scotchman? Had he a chance?

CHAPTER XVI.

”A BOOK THAT INFLUENCED THE CHARACTER OF A MAN WHO LED HIS AGE.”

”YOU must read good books,” said Benjamin Franklin's G.o.dfather. ”How sorry I am that I had to sell my pamphlets!”

Books have stamped their character on young men at the susceptible age and the turning points of life. But their influence for good or evil comes to receptive characters. ”He is a genius,” says Emerson, ”who gives me back my own thoughts.” The gospel says, ”He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”

Abraham Lincoln would walk twenty miles to borrow a law book, and would sit down on a log by the wayside to study it on his return from such a journey. Horace Greeley says that when he was a boy he would go reading to a woodpile. ”I would take a pine knot,” he said, ”put it on the back log, pile my books around me, and lie down and read all through the long winter evenings.” He read the kind of books for which his soul hungered.

He read to find in books what he himself wished to be. A true artist sees and hears only what he wishes to see and hear. An active, earnest, resolute soul reads only that which helps him fulfill the haunting purpose of his life. Almost every great man's books that were his companions in early years were pictures of what he most wished to be and to do.

How many men have had their spiritual life quickened by a hymn! How many by a single poem! Homer and Ossian filled the imagination of Napoleon.

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