at I have met," says Tennyson, and a man becomes a
part of all the books that color his mind and character. Ask a company
of people what books they most sought in childhood, and you may have a
mental photograph of each.

Benjamin Franklin says that his opinions and character were so greatly
influenced by his reading Cotton Mather's Essays to do Good, that he
owed to that book his rise in life. A boy, he says, should read that
book with pen and note-book in hand.

Benjamin Franklin declared that it was in this book that he found the
statements of the purposes in life that met his own views. "To do good,"
he said, was the true aim of existence, and the resolution became fixed
in his soul to seek to make his life as beneficent as possible to all
men. How to help somebody and to improve something became the dreams of
his days and nights. "A high aim is curative," says Emerson. Franklin
had some evil tendencies of nature and habit, but his purpose to live
for the welfare of everybody and everything overcame them all in the
end, and made him honestly confess his faults and try to make amends for
his lapses. To do good was an impelling purpose that led him to the
building of the little wharf, where boys might have firm footing whence
to sail their boats, and it continued through many wiser experiences up
to the magic bottle, in which was stored the revelation of that agent of
the earth and skies that would prove the most beneficent of all new
discoveries.

The book confirmed all that Uncle Benjamin had said. In it he saw what
he should struggle to be: he put his resolution into this vision, and so
took the first step on the ladder of life which was to give him a large
view of human affairs.

He turned from the candle molds to Cotton Mather's strong pages, which
few boys would care to read now, and from them, a little later, to
Addison, and from both to talk with Jenny about what he would like to do
and to become, and, like William Phips to the widow, he promised Jenny
that they, too, should one day live in some "Faire Green Lane in Boston
town." He would be true to his home--he and Jenny.

CHAPTER XVII.

BENJAMIN LOOKS FOR A PLACE WHEREIN TO START IN LIFE.

BESIDES his instruction from encouraging Mr. Brownell and his Uncle
Benjamin, little Benjamin Franklin had spent one year at school and
several years of self-instruction under helps. His father needed him in
the candle shop, and he could not give him a large