elders. However, Ben Franklin was looked upon as a very promising lad,
who would talk and act wisely by and by.

"Neighbor Franklin," his father's friends would sometanes say, "you
ought to send this boy to college and make a minister of him."

"I have often thought of it," his father would reply; "and my brother
Benjamin promises to give him a great many volumes of manuscript
sermons, in case he should he educated for the church. But I have a
large family to support, and cannot afford the expense."

In fact, Mr. Franklin found it so difficult to provide bread for his
family, that, when the boy was ten years old, it became necessary to
take him from school. Ben was then employed in cutting candle-wicks
into equal lengths and filling the moulds with tallow; and many families
in Boston spent their evenings by the light of the candles which he had
helped to make. Thus, you see, in his early days, as well as in his
manhood, his labors contributed to throw light upon dark matters.

Busy as his life now was, Ben still found time to keep company with his
former schoolfellows. He and the other boys were very fond of fishing,
and spent many of their leisure hours on the margin of the mill-pond,
catching flounders, perch, eels, and tomcod, which came up thither with
the tide. The place where they fished is now, probably, covered with
stone pavements and brick buildings, and thronged with people and with
vehicles of all kinds. But at that period it was a marshy spot on the
outskirts of the town, where gulls flitted and screamed overhead and
salt-meadow grass grew under foot.

On the edge of the water there was a deep bed of clay, in which the boys