ength captured and executed.

One day little Ben came to his brother James with a paper.

"James, I have been writing something, and I have come to read it to
you."

"What?"

"Poetry."

"Like Uncle Ben's?"

"No; it is on Blackbeard."

James thought that a very interesting subject, and prepared to listen to
his poet brother.

Little Ben unfolded the paper and began to read his lines, which were
indeed heroic.

"Come, all you jolly sailors,
You all so stout and brave!"

"Good!" said James. "That starts off fine."

Ben continued:

"Come, hearken and I'll tell you
What happened on the wave."

"Better yet--I like that. Why, Uncle Ben could not excel that. What
next?"

"Oh, 'tis of that bloody Blackbeard
I'm going now to tell,
And as how, by gallant Maynard,
He soon was sent to _hell_,
With a down, down, down, derry down!"

James lifted his hands at this refrain after the old English ballad
style.

"Ben, I'll tell you what we'll do. I'll print the verses for you, and
you shall sell them on the street."

The poet Arion at his coronation at Corinth could not have felt prouder
than little Ben at that hour. He would be both a poet and bookseller,
and his brother would be his publisher.

He may have cried on Boston street:

"Blackboard--broadside!" or something like that. It would have been
honorable advertising.

His success as a poet was instantaneous. His poem sold well. Compliments
fell upon him like a sun shower. He wrote another poem of like value,
and it sold "prodigiously." He thought indeed he was a great poet, and
had started out on Shakespeare's primrose way to fame and glory. Alas!
how many under like circumstances have been deceived. He lived to call
his ballads "wretched stuff." How many who thought they were poets have
lived to take the same view of their work!

His second poem was called the Light-House Tragedy. It related to a
recent event, and set the whole town to talking, and the admiration for
the young poet was doubled.

In the midst of the great sale of his poems by himself, and of all the
flatteries of the town, he went for approval to his father. The result
was unexpected; the rain of sunshine changed into a winter storm indeed.

"Father, you have heard that I have become a poet?"

"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Josiah, in his paper cap and leather breeches.
"Like your Uncle B