"Is something forgotten?" soon stammered I;
And they, without a word in reply,
Caught me in their arms, a great baby of twenty,
And smothered me with kisses not too plenty.
Some joys I had known before that day,
And many since have thronged my way;
But in all my seeking through forty years,
In which rainbow hopes have dried all tears,
I have nothing found in the paths of knowledge,
Surpassing those kisses I carried to college.
* * * * *
XII.
SIR JOHN FRANKLIN.
(BORN 1786--DIED 1847.)
HEROISM ON THE GREAT DEEP--A MARTYR OF THE POLAR SEA.
The life of this great navigator is an epic of the ocean, which will
stir the brave heart for many ages to come.
One day, toward the close of the last century, a young English lad,
named John Franklin, spent a holiday with a companion in a walk of
twelve miles from their school at Louth, to look at the sea from the
level shores of his native country. It was the first time that the boy
had ever gazed on the wonderful expanse, and his heart was strangely
stirred. The youngest of four sons, he had been intended for the
ministry of the Church of England, but that day's walk fixed His
purposes in another direction; and though he knew it not, he was to
serve God and man even more nobly by heroic deeds than he could have
done by the wisest and most persuasive words.
Mr. Franklin was a wise man, and when he found his son bent on a
sailor's life, determined to give him a taste-of it, in the hope that
this would be enough.
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