Part 32 (2/2)

Great elms stood before the place. He thought of what his parents had been, how they had struggled and toiled, and how glad they were that Uncle Benjamin had come to them for his sake. He resolved to erect a monument there.

He recalled Uncle Benjamin's teaching, that a man rises by overcoming his defects, and so gains strength.

He had tried to profit by the old man's lesson in answer to his own question, ”Have I a chance?”

He had not only struggled to make strong his conscious weaknesses of character, but those of his mental power as well.

His old pedagogue, Mr. Brownell, had been unable to teach him mathematics. In this branch of elementary studies he had proved a failure and a dunce. But he had struggled against this defect of Nature, as against all others, with success.

He was going to London as the agent of the colonies. He would carry back to England those principles that the old man had taught him, and would live them there. His Uncle Benjamin had written those principles in his ”pamphlets,” and again in his own life. Would he ever see these doc.u.ments which had in fact been his schoolbooks, but which had come to him without the letter, because the old man had been too poor to keep the books?

CHAPTER x.x.x.

A STRANGE DISCOVERY.

FRANKLIN went to London.

Franklin loved old bookstores. There were many in London, moldy and musty, in obscure corners, some of them in cellars and in narrow pa.s.sageways, just off thronging streets.

One day, when he was sixty years of age, just fifty years after his a.s.sociation with Uncle Benjamin, he wandered out into the byways of the old London bookstores.

It was early spring; the winter fogs of London had disappeared, the squares were turning green, the hedgerows blooming, the birds were singing on the thorns. Such a sunny, blue morning might have called him into the country, but he turned instead into the flowerless ways of the book stalls. He wandered about for a time and found nothing. Then he thought of old Humphrey, of whom he had bought books perhaps out of pity. There was something about this man that held him; he seemed somehow like a link of the unknown past. He compelled him to buy books that he did not want or need.

”This is a fine spring morning,” said old Humphrey, as he saw the portly form of Franklin enter the door. ”I have been thinking of you much of late. I do not seem to be able to have put you out of my mind; and why should I, a fine gentleman like you, and uncommonly civil. I have something that I have been allotting on showing you. It is very curious; it is a library of thirty-six volumes of pamphlets, and it minds me that a more interesting collection of pamphlets was never made. I read them myself in lonesome days when there is no trade. Let me show you one of the volumes.”

”No, never mind, my friend. I could not buy the whole library, however interesting it might be. I will look for something smaller. This is a very old bookstore.”

”Ay, it is that. It has been kept here ever since the times of the Restoration, and before. My wife's father used to keep it when he was an old man and I was a boy. And now I am an old man. I must show you one of those books or pamphlets. They are all written over.”

Benjamin Franklin sat down on a stool in the light, and took up an odd volume of the Canterbury Tales.

Old Humphrey lighted a candle and went into a dark recess. He presently returned, bringing one of the thirty-six volumes of pamphlets.

”My American friend, if one liked old things, and the comments of one dead and gone, this library of pamphlets would be food for thought. Just look at this volume!”

He struck the book against a shelf to remove the dust, and handed it to Franklin.

The latter adjusted his spectacles to the light, and turned over the volume.

”As you say,” he said to old Humphrey, ”it is all written over.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: A STRANGE DISCOVERY.]

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