ing
of his life could the old man have seen what has now happened. Father
Humphrey, one's heart's desires bring about strange things. They shape
events after a man is dead. It seems to me as though I had been directed
here. Father Humphrey, what do you think of such things?"

"Well, I don't know. From the time that I first saw you my mind was
turned to the pamphlets. I don't know why. Perhaps the owner's thought,
or desires, or prayers led me. It is all very strange."

"Yes, it is very strange," said Franklin, again walking to and fro with
his hands behind him. "I wish that all good men's works could be
fulfilled in this way."

"How do you know that they are not?"

"Let us hope that they are."

"This is all very strange."

"Very strange, very strange. It is the greatest of blessings in life to
have had good ancestors. Uncle Ben was a good old man. I owe much to
him, and now I seem to have met with him again--Uncle Benjamin, my
father's favorite brother, who used to carry me sailing and made the
boat a schoolroom for me in the harbor of Boston town."

He added to himself in an absent way: "Samuel Franklin and I have
promised to live so as to honor the character of this old man. I have a
great task before me, and I can not tell what the issue will be, but I
will hold these pamphlets and keep them until I can look into Samuel's
face and say, 'England has done justice to America, and your father's
influence has advanced the cause of human rights in the world.'"

Would that day ever come?

He went to Ecton, in Nottinghamshire, with his son, and there heard the
chimes in the steeple that had been placed there by Thomas Franklin's
influence. He visited the graves of his ancestors and the homes of many
poor people who bore the Franklin name. He found three letters that his
Uncle Benjamin had written home. He read in them the names of himself
and Jenny. How his heart must have turned home on that visit! A
biographer of Franklin tells his story in a beautiful simplicity that
leaves no call for fictitious enlargement. He says: "Franklin discovered
a cousin, a happy and venerable old maid; 'a good, clever woman,' he
wrote, 'but poor, though vastly contented with her situation, and very
cheerful'--a genuine Franklin, evidently. She gave him some of his Uncle
Benjamin's old letters to read, with their pious rhymings and acrostics,
in which occurred allusions to himself and his sister Jane when they
were children. Continuin