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."

"Go you instead of me, mother-do, now, there's a dear. You will, won't you, eh ?" begged the little fellow, as he curled his arm coaxingly about her waist, and looked up at her through his tears. "Do you tell him, mother, I never shall be able to keep to the horrid candle-work, for I hate itthat I do; and though every night, when I lie awake, I make vows that I will not vex him again, but strive hard at whatever he gives me to do, still, when the next day comes, my heart fails me, and my spirit keeps pulling my body away" (the boy had caught the Puritanical phrases of the time), "and filling my head with the delight of being on the water; and then, for the life of me, I can't keep away from my voyage-books, or my little ship, or something that reminds me of the sea. If you'd only get him to let me go with Captain Holmes" and, as the dame turned her head away, he added quickly, "just for one voyage, dear mother--to see how I like it-oh! I'd -I'd-I don't know what I'd not do for you, mother dear; I'd bring you and Deborah home such beautiful things then, and—”

The boyish protestations were suddenly cut short by the sight of the brown paper cap in the shop moving toward the parlor; so, without waiting to finish the sentence, the affrighted lad flung open the side door leading to the staircase, and scampered up to his room, with an imaginary parent following close at his heels.

Here the little fellow threw himself on the "trestle-bed" that stood in one corner of the garret, and lay for a time too terrified for tears; for his conscience converted the least noise into the approach of his father's footsteps, so that he trembled like a leaf at every motion, his heart beating the while in his bosom like a flail.

After a time, however, the lad, finding he was left by himself, began to lay aside his fears, and to talk, as boys are wont to do, about the hardships he endured.

"He was sure he did every thing he possibly could," he would mutter to himself, as he whimpered between the words, "and he thought it very cruel of them to force him to keep to that filthy, nasty candle-making, when they knew he couldn't bear it, and, what was more, he never should like it, not even if he was to make ever so much money at it, and be able to keep a pony of his own into the bargain. Why wouldn't they let him go to sea, he wondered? He called it very unkind, he did." And the boy would doubtlessly have continued in the same strain, had not the little pet Guinea-pig, that he kept in an old bird-cage in one corner of his room, here given a squeak so shrill that it sounded more like the piping of a bird than the cry of a beast.

In a moment Benjamin had forgotten all his sorrows, and with the tear-drops still lingering in the corner of his eyes-like goutes of rain in flower-cups after a summer shower-he leaped from the bed, saying, "Ah! Master Toby Anderson, you want your supper, do you?" and the next minute his hand was inside the cage, dragging the plump little piebald thing from out its nest of hay.

Then, cuddling the pet creature close up in his neck, while he leaned his head on one side só as to keep its back warm with his cheek, he began prattling away to the animal almost as a mother does to her babe.

"Ah! Master Tiggy, that's what you like, don't you?" said Benjamin, as he stroked his hand along the sleek sides of the tame little thing till it made a noise like a cry of joy, somewhat between the

chirruping of a cricket and the pur of a cat. "You like me to rub your back, you do, you fond little rascal! But I've got bad news for Toby-there's no supper for him to-night; no nice bread and milk for him to put his little pink tooties in while he eats it; for he's got all the manners of the pig, that he has. Ah! he'll have to go to bed, like his poor young master, on an empty stomach; for what do you think, Tiggy dear?-why, they've been very unkind to poor Benjamin, that they have;" and the chord once touched, the boy confided all his sorrows to the pet animal, as if it had been one of his cronies at school.

"I wouldn't treat you so, would I, Toby ?” he went on, hugging the little thing as he spoke; "for who gives the beauty nice apple-parings? and who's a regular little piggy-wiggy for them? -who but Master Toby Anderson here. Ay, but to-night my little gentleman will have to eat his bed, though it won't be the first time he has done that; for he dearly loves a bit of sweet new hay, don't you, Tobe ?"

Presently the boy cried, as the animal wriggled itself up the sleeve of his coat, "Come down here, sir! come down directly, I say!" and then standing up, he proceeded to shake his arm violently over the bed till the little black and white ball was dislodged from the new nestling-place he had chosen.

"Come here, you little rascal! Come and let me look at you! There, now, sit up and wash yourself with your little paws, like a kitten, for you're going to bed shortly, I can tell you. Oh, he's a beauty, that he is, with his black patch over one eye like a little bull-dog, and a little brown spot at his side, the very color of a pear that's gone bad. Then he's got eyes of his own like large black beads, and little tiddy ears that are as