"No, sir; I didn't know that they belonged to any one. I thought that they belonged to everybody."
"You did, you little rascal! Then why did you wait to have the workmen go away before you put them into the water?"
"The workmen would have hindered us, sir. They don't think that improvements can be made by little shavers like us. I wanted to surprise them, sir—to show them what we could do, sir."
"Benjamin Franklin," said Josiah, "come here, and I will show you what I can do.—Stranger, the boy's godfather has come to live with us and to take charge of him, and he does need a godfather, if ever a stripling did."
Josiah Franklin laid his hand on the boy, and the workman went away. The father removed the boy's jacket, and showed him what he could do, the memory of which was not a short one.
"I did not mean any harm, father," young Benjamin said over and over. "It was a mistake."
"My boy," said the tallow chandler, softening, "never make a second mistake. There are some people who learn wisdom from their first mistakes by never making second mistakes. May you be one of them."
"I shall never do anything that I don't think is honest, father. I thought stones and rocks belonged to the people."
"But there are many things that belong to the people in this world that you have no right to use, my son. When you want to make any more public improvements, first come and talk with me about them, or go to your Uncle Ben, into whose charge I am going to put you—and no small job he will have of it, in my thinking!"
Benjamin Franklin said, when he was growing old and was writing his own life, that his father convinced him at the time of this event that "that which is not honest could not be useful."