chance of escape"). Nor did he ever see a vessel, with its white pouty sails, glide like a snowy summer cloud across the bay toward the silver ring of the horizon without wondering what the sailors would find beyond it, and longing to be with the crew, to visit strange countries and people, and see what the earth was like, and whether it was really true that there was no end to the world, nor any place where one could stand on the brink of it, and look down into the great well of space below.

For the last hour or two, however, the youth had laid aside his ship tools, and, having given his sister instructions about the sail she had promised to make for him, had taken from his pocket the book which his brother-in-law, Captain Holmeshe who had married his half-sister Ruth, and was master of a sloop-had brought him that day (as he ran in at dinner-time just to shake hands with them all), on his return from his last voyage to England. Benjamin had been burning to read the volume all the day long; for it was entitled "The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Mariner, by Daniel De Foe," and the captain had told him that it had "only just been published in London" at the time when he had set sail from that port.

From his earliest childhood the little fellow had been "passionately fond" of reading, and all the halfpence his big brothers and his Uncle Benjamin gave him he was accustomed to devote to the purchase of books.* A new book, therefore,

* "From my infancy," says our hero, in the narrative of his boyhood, "I was passionately fond of reading, and all the money that came into my hands was laid out in the purchasing of books. I was very fond of voyages. My father's little library consisted chiefly of works on polemic divinity, most of which I read. I have often regretted that, at a time when I had such a thirst for knowledge, more

was the greatest treat that could possibly have been offered him, and such a one as his brotherin-law had brought him (for he had already turned over the leaves, and seen that it was about a sailor cast away on a desert island) was more than he could keep his eyes off till bedtime.

It had been like a red-hot coal in his pocket all day.

So, now that his mast was "stepped," and Deborah was getting on with the sail, young Benjamin had got the volume spread open on his knees, and was too deeply absorbed in the marvelous history of Crusoe's strange island life to think either of the wicks, the rushes, or the mould for the "cast candles," or even the punishment that surely awaited him for his neglect.

Again and again his mother had entreated him to put down the volume and go on with the wicks.

66

Benjamin," she would cry aloud, to rouse the lad from the trance he had fallen into, "do give over reading till after work-time, there's a good child!"

The eager boy, however, sat with his nose almost buried in the leaves, and, without raising his eyes from the book, merely begged to be allowed to read to the end of "that chapter;" though no sooner was one finished than the pages were turned over to learn the length of the next, and another begun.

"I wish Captain Holmes had never brought you the book!" the kind-hearted mother would exclaim, with a sigh, while she tapped the treadle of her wheel the quicker for the thought—interproper books had not fallen in my way. There was among them 'Plutarch's Lives,' which I read abundantly, and still think that time spent to great advantage. There was also a book of De Foe's, called 'An Essay on Projects.'"

jecting the next minute, as she heard the shopbell tinkle, and stretched up her neck, as usual, to look over the blind, and see who was the newcomer: "Why, there's your Uncle Benjamin got back from meeting, I declare! It will only lead, I'm afraid, to fresh words between you and your father. Your head, Ben, is too full of the sea already, without any vain story-books of sailors' adventures to lead you astray."

"I am sure it was very kind of the captain," little Ben would reply, "to make me such a nice present; but he always brings every one of us something at the end of each voyage. I can't talk to you, though, just now, mother; for, if I was to get the strap for it, I couldn't break off in the middle of this story-it's so nice and interesting, you can't tell;" and the lad again bent his head over the pages, so that the long hair, that usually streamed down upon his shoulders, hung over the leaves, and he kept tossing the locks peevishly back as he gloated over the text.

In a moment he was utterly lost again in the imaginary scenes before him; and then he no more heard his mother tell him that she was sure it was time to think about putting the shutters up, than if he had been fast asleep. Neither could sister Deborah get a word from him, even though she wanted instructions as to where to place the little "reef-points" upon his mimic main-sail.

"Benjamin! Benjamin!" cried the mother, as she rose from her wheel and shook the boy, to rouse him from his trance, “do you know, sirrah, that your father will be in to supper directly, and here you haven't cut so much as one bundle of wicks all the day through? How shall I be able to screen you again from his anger, so strict as he is ?"

The boy stared vacantly, as though he had been

suddenly waked up out of a deep slumber, and began to detail the incidents of the story he had just read, after the fashion of boys in general, from the time when stories were first invented. "Crusoe gets shipwrecked, you know, mother," he started off, "and then he makes a raft, and goes off to the vessel, you know, and saves a lot of things from the ship, you know, and then, you know"

"There! there! have done, boy!" cried the mother, in alarm; "this madness for the sea will be the ruin of you. Just think of the life Josiah Franklin has led since he went off as a cabin-boy, shortly after your father's first wife died; for, though he was the late Mrs. Franklin's pet child, I've heard your father say that he shut his doors upon him when he came back shoeless and shirtless at the year's end, and whatever has become of the poor boy now, the Lord above only knows."*

"But, mother," persisted the lad, whose brain was still so inflamed by the excitement of the wondrous narrative that he could neither speak nor think of any thing else, "only let me tell you about what I have been reading-it's so beautiful --and then I'll listen patiently to whatever you've got to say;" and, without waiting for an answer, Ben began again: "Well, you know, mother, Crusoe gets a barrel or two of gunpowder from off the wreck, you know, and some tools as well; and

"I continued thus employed," says Franklin, in his Autobiography, "in my father's business for two years-that is, till I was twelve years old; and then my brother John, who was bred to that business, having left my father, and married, and set up for himself at Rhode Island, there was every appearance that I was destined to supply his place, and become a tallow-chandler. But my dislike to the trade continuing, my father had apprehensions that, if he did not put me to one more agreeable, I should break loose to go to sea, as my brother Josiah had done, to his great vexation."

then he sets to work, you know, and builds himself a hut on the uninhabited island."

The dame paid no heed to the incidents detailed by the lad, but kept stretching her neck over the curtain of the glass door, and watching first the figure of her husband in the shop, and then glancing at the wooden clock against the wall, as if she dreaded the coming of the supper-hour, when she knew his father would be sure to demand of Benjamin an account of his day's work.

She was about to snatch the book from the boy's hands, and remove the cottons and the rushes out of sight, when suddenly the voice of the father, calling for Benjamin to bring him the wicks, dispelled the boy's dream, and made the mother tremble almost as much as it did the lad himself.

"Oh, mother, you'll beg me off once more, won't you?" sobbed the penitent Benjamin, as his disobedience now flashed upon him, for he knew how often his father had pardoned him for the same fault, and that he had warned him that no entreaties should prevent him punishing him severely for the next offense.

"Benjamin, I say!" shouted the voice, authoritatively, from the shop.

"Go to him, child," urged the mother, as she patted her pet boy (for he was the youngest) on the head to give him courage, "and confess your fault openly like a little man. You know the store your father sets upon a 'contrite heart,' she added, in the conventicle cast of thought peculiar to the early settlers in New England; "and rest assured, if he but sees you repentant, his anger will give way; for the aim of all punishment, Benjamin, is to chasten, and not to torture; and penitence does that through the scourging of the spirit, which the other accomplishes through the suffering of the body."