e pamphlets in London fifty years after the old man was
compelled to sell them was regarded by Benjamin Franklin as one of the
most singular events of his remarkable life.

Mr. Parton, in his Life of Franklin, thus alludes to the circumstance:

A strange occurrence brought to the mind of
Franklin, in 1771, a vivid recollection of his
childhood. A dealer in old books, whose shop he
sometimes visited, called his attention one day to
a collection of pamphlets, bound in thirty
volumes, dating from the Restoration to 1715. The
dealer offered them to Franklin, as he said,
because many of the subjects of the pamphlets were
such as usually interested him. Upon examining the
collection, he found that one of the blank leaves
of each volume contained a catalogue of its
contents, and the price each pamphlet had cost;
there were notes and comments also in the margin
of several of the pieces. A closer scrutiny
revealed that the handwriting was that of his
Uncle Benjamin, the rhyming friend and counselor
of his childhood. Other circumstances combined
with this surprising fact to prove that the
collection had been made by his uncle, who had
probably sold it when he emigrated to America,
fifty-six years before. Franklin bought the
volumes, and gave an account of the circumstance
to his Uncle Benjamin's son, who still lived and
flourished in Boston. "The oddity is," he wrote,
"that the bookseller, who could suspect nothing of
any relation between me and the collector, should
happen to make me the offer of them."

It may please the reader to know that "Mr. Calamity" was suggested by a
real character, and that the incidents in the life of "Jenny,"
Franklin's favorite sister, are true in spirit and largely in detail. It
would have been more artistic to have had Franklin discover Uncle
Benjamin's "pamphlets" later in life, but this would have been, while
allowable, unhistoric fiction.

Says one of the greatest critics ever born in America, in speaking of
the humble birth of Franklin:

That little baby, humbly cradled, has turned out
to be the greatest man that America ever bore in
her bosom or set eyes upon. Beyond all question,