town, as a mark to designate where some place left off, and another place began; or perhaps to denote the very centre of the settlement. But “the shadows, clouds and darkness” that rested upon all my conjectures, were very prosaically dispelled just before my departure from Boston, by a most unexciting account obtained through the medium of a grandson of “the oldest inhabitant” of that neighborhood. The real solution of the mystery was so very natural, that none but very commonplace people would believe it. It simply implied that a certain apothecary of the olden time being in want of a very large mortar, and unable to obtain one ready made, procured this block of stone and set his boys to hollowing it out for the purpose. They made a beginning, but soon found that the stone was too hard and the labor too great; and having taken a spite at the obdurate block, they shoved it out of doors and left it on the pavement in front of the shop. From hence no one took the trouble to remove it, and finding that the neighbors began to date from its vicinity, the apothecary’s boys made it more _distingué_ by inscribing it with the title of the Boston Stone—How a plain tale will put us down. Shortly after quitting the Boston Stone, we came to a house at the corner of Union and Hanover streets, which was shown to me as the one in which Dr. Franklin was born. It is of two stories, and built partly of brick and partly of wood. The lower part was now occupied by a little shop, with a blue bell as a sign. Adjoining it in Hanover street was a dark low grocery store into which you descended by a step. It looked exactly as if it had been the soap and candle shop of Josiah Franklin. It was easy to imagine poor Ben. serving customers behind the old counter; cutting candle-wicks into lengths; and snatching, at intervals, a few minutes to read a little in hidden books when nobody saw him. An aged and excellent woman, who had passed her life in this part of the town, told me at a subsequent period, that she well remembered, when a little girl, seeing the old corner house (the dwelling part of the establishment,) pulled down, and the present one erected in its stead. The original corner house had always been regarded as one of the habitations of the Franklin family, and the adjoining old one-story shop (now the grocery) as theirs. It seems to me highly probable that the elder Franklin _did_ live in Milk street (as is generally believed) at the time his son Benjamin was born, and that the infant _was_ wrapped in a blanket and carried over the way to the old South Church to be christened. His baptism is noted in the register of the church, and the date is the same as that of his birth. This speedy performance of the rite of baptism was in accordance with the custom of the times. The Milk street house was a small two-story frame building, and was accidentally burnt in 1810. On the spot has since been erected a three-story furniture warehouse.