of bread is three times as much as a man can eat. If other things can
be had in the same proportion, the last dollar I have left will go a
great way."

"I thank you a thousand times; you are very kind indeed," responded
the woman, with a heart overflowing with gratitude, which was as good
pay for the bread as Benjamin wanted. "May you never want for bread."

"No one would want for bread if they who have it will divide with
those who have none, as they should."

In the last reply was incorporated a leading virtue of Benjamin's
character--a trait that manifested itself, as we shall see, all
through his life. His generosity was equal to his wisdom. An American
statesman said of him, in a eulogy delivered in Boston:

"No form of personal suffering or social evil escaped his attention,
or appealed in vain for such relief or remedy as his prudence could
suggest, or his purse supply. From that day of his early youth, when,
a wanderer from his home and friends in a strange place, he was seen
sharing the rolls with a poor woman and child, to the last act of his
public life, when he signed that well-known memorial to Congress, a
spirit of earnest and practical benevolence runs like a golden thread
along his whole career."

"I must be after finding a boarding place," said Benjamin to the owner
of the boat, as he was about leaving. "I do not know where to go any
more than the man in the moon. Are you acquainted here?"

"Scarcely at all; could not be of any service to you any way on that