"We built a wharf."

"What had you to build it with?"
"We built it of stones."

"And where did you get your stones?"
"There was a pile of them close by."
"Did they belong to you?"

“I suppose not.”

"Did you not know that they belonged to the man who is building the house?"

"Yes sir."

"Then you deliberately resolved to steal them, did you?"

“It is n't stealing to take stones."

"Why, then, did you take them in the evening, after the workmen had gone home? Why did you not go after them when the workmen were all there?"

Benjamin saw that he was fairly caught, and that, bright as he was, he could not get out of so bad a scrape unblamed. So he hung his head, and did not answer his father's last question.

"I see plainly how it is," continued his father; "it is the consequence of going out in the evening with the boys, which I must hereafter forbid. I have been willing that you should go out some, because I have thought it might be better for you than so much reading. But you have now betrayed my confidence, and I am satisfied more than ever that boys should be at home in the evening,

trying to improve their minds. You have been guilty of an act that is quite flagrant, although it may have been done thoughtlessly. You should have known better, after having received so much good instruction as you have had at home."

"I did know better," frankly confessed Benjamin.

"And that makes your guilt so much the greater," added his father. "Do you think you will. learn a lesson from this, and never do the like again?"

"I will promise that I never will."

Thus frankly did Benjamin confess his wrong, and ever after look upon that act with regret. In mature age he referred to it, and called it one of the first evil acts of his life. It was the second time he paid too dear for his whistle.

It seems that the workmen missed their stones, when they first reached the spot in the morning, and they soon discovered them nicely laid into a wharf. The proprietor was indignant, and exerted himself to learn who were the authors of the deed, and in the course of the day he gained the information, and went directly, and very properly, to their parents, to enter complaint. Thus all the boys were exposed, and received just rebuke for their misdemeanor. Benjamin was convinced, as he said of it many years afterward, "that that which is not honest, could not be truly useful."

We have referred to Benjamin's habit of reading. It had been his custom to spend his evenings, and other leisure moments, in reading. He was much pleased with voyages, and such writings as John Bunyan's. The first books he possessed were the works of Bunyan, in separate little volumes. After becoming familiar with them, he sold them in order to obtain the means to buy "Burton's Historical Collections," which were small, cheap books, forty volumes in all. His father, also, possessed quite a good number of books for those times, when books were rare, and these he read through, although most of them were really beyond his years, being controversial writings upon theology. His love of reading was so great, that he even read works of this character with a degree of interest. In the library, however, were three or four books of somewhat different character. There was "Plutarch's Lives," in which he was deeply interested; also Defoe's "Essay on Projects." But to no one book was he more indebted than to Dr. Mather's "Essay to do Good." From this he derived hints and sentiments which had a beneficial influence upon his after life. He said, forty or fifty years afterward, "It gave me a turn of thinking that had an influence on some of the principal future events of my life." And he wrote to a son of Cotton Mather, "I have always set a greater value on the character of a doer of good, than on any other kind of reputation; and if I have