from him three loaves of bread when he wanted only one.

The runaway Ben had a downy beard all over his face, and as he took his
three loaves and walked up Market Street, with a loaf under each arm,
munching on the third, he was smiled upon in merry mirth by the buxom
Deborah Read, as she stood in the doorway of her father's house. Yet
Franklin got even with her, for some months after, he went back that way
and courted her, grew to love him, and they "exchanged promises," he says.
After some months of work and love-making, Franklin sailed away to England
on a wild-goose chase. He promised to return soon and make Deborah his
wife. But he wrote only one solitary letter to the broken-hearted girl and
did not come back for nearly two years.

* * * * *

Time is the great avenger as well as educator; only the education is
usually deferred until it no longer avails in this incarnation, and is
valuable only for advice--and nobody wants advice. Deathbed repentances
may be legal-tender for salvation in another world, but for this they are
below par, and regeneration that is postponed until the man has no further
capacity to sin is little better. For sin is only perverted power, and the
man without capacity to sin neither has ability to do good--isn't that so?
His soul is a Dead Sea that supports neither ameba nor fish, neither
noxious bacilli nor useful life. Happy is the man who conserves his
God-given power until wisdom and not passion shall direct it. So, the
younger in life a man makes the resolve to turn and live, the better for
that man and the better for the world.

Once upon a time Carlyle took Milburn, the blind preacher, out on to
Chelsea embankment and showed the sightless man where Franklin plunged