's heart began to beat again.

"There, in the corner," said Josiah, with a doubtful look in his face.

"He'll be given to making public improvements when he grows up," said
the captain. "But I hope that he will not take other people's property
to do it. If there is any type of man for whom I have no use it is he
who does good with what belongs to others."

The door between the shop and the living room opened, and the grieved,
patient face of Abiah appeared.

"Good evening, Captain Holmes," said Abiah. "I heard what you said--how
could I help it?--and it hurt me. No descendant of Peter Folger will
ever desire to use other people's property for his own advantage. Ben
won't."

"That's right, my good woman, stand up for your own. Every drop of an
English exile's blood is better than its weight in gold."

"Ben is a boy," said Abiah. "If he makes an error, it will be followed
by a contrite heart."

Little Ben could hear no more. He flew, as it were, up to the garret
chamber and laid down on the trestle bed. A pet squirrel came to comfort
him or to get some corn. He folded the squirrel in his bosom.

Ting-a-ling! It was Uncle Ben, the poet, whose name he had disgraced. He
could endure no more; he began to sob, and so went to sleep, his little
squirrel pitying him, perhaps.

There was another heart that pitied the boy. It was Uncle Ben's. Poor
Uncle Ben! He sleeps now at the side of the Franklin monument in the
Granary burying ground, and we like to cast a kindly glance that way as
we pass the Park Street Church on Tremont Street, on the west side. It
is a good thing to have good parents, and also to have a good uncle with
a poetic mind and a loving heart.

There was one trait in little Benjamin's character that Josiah Franklin
saw with his keen eye to business, and it gave him hope. He was
diligent. One of Josiah Franklin's favorite texts of Scripture was,
"Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings;
he shall not stand before mean men." This text he used to often repeat,
or a part of it, and little Ben must have thought that it applied to
him. Hints of hope, not detraction, build a boy.

Jamie the Scotchman had little expectation that puttering Ben would ever
"stand before kings." Not he. He had not that kind of vision.

"Ah, boy, I could tell you a whole history of diligent boys who not only
came to stand before kings, but who overturned thrones; and he who
discrowns a king is greater