have sailed the schooner around the globe in safety, or filled the pulpit
with a degree of power that would have caused consternation to reign in
the heart of every other preacher in town; but Fate saved him that he
might take the Ship of State, when she threatened to strand on the rocks
of adversity, and pilot her into peaceful waters, and to preach such
sermons to America that their eloquence still moves us to better things.

Parents think that what they say about their children goes, and once in an
awfully long time it does, but the men who become great and learned
usually do so in spite of their parents--which remark was first made by
Martin Luther, but need not be discredited on that account.

Ben's oldest brother was James. Now, James was nearly forty; he was tall
and slender, stooped a little, and had sandy whiskers, and a nervous
cough, and positive ideas on many subjects--one of which was that he was a
printer. His apprentice, or "devil," had left him, because the devil did
not like to be cuffed whenever the compositor shuffled his fonts. James
needed another apprentice, and proposed to take his younger brother and
make a man of him if the old folks were willing. The old folks were
willing and Ben was duly bound by law to his brother, agreeing to serve
him faithfully, as Jacob served Laban, for seven years and two years more.

Science has explained many things, but it has not yet told why it
sometimes happens that when seventeen eggs are hatched, the brood will
consist of sixteen barnyard fowls and one eagle.

James Franklin was a man of small capacity, whimsical, jealous and
arbitrary. But if he cuffed his apprentice Benjamin when the compositor
blundered, and when he didn't, it was his legal right; and the master who
did not occasionally kick his apprentices was considered derelict to duty.