He had tried to profit by the old man's lesson in answer to his own question, "Have I a chance?"
He had not only struggled to make strong his conscious weaknesses of character, but those of his mental power as well.
His old pedagogue, Mr. Brownell, had been unable to teach him mathematics. In this branch of elementary studies he had proved a failure and a dunce. But he had struggled against this defect of Nature, as against all others, with success.
He was going to London as the agent of the colonies. He would carry back to England those principles that the old man had taught him, and would live them there. His Uncle Benjamin had written those principles in his "pamphlets," and again in his own life. Would he ever see these documents which had in fact been his schoolbooks, but which had come to him without the letter, because the old man had been too poor to keep the books?
CHAPTER XXX.
A STRANGE DISCOVERY.
Franklin went to London.
Franklin loved old bookstores. There were many in London, moldy and musty, in obscure corners, some of them in cellars and in narrow passageways, just off thronging streets.