This was to be sure a very shallow arrangement. It was however carried into immediate execution, and the paper continued in consequence to make its appearance for some months in Ben's name. At length a new difference arising between the brothers, and Ben knowing that James would not dare to talk of his new _contract_, boldly asserted his freedom! His numerous admirers will here blush for poor Ben, and hide their reddening cheeks. But let them redden as they may, they will hardly ever equal that honest crimson which glows in the following lines from his _own pen_: "It was, no doubt, very dishonourable to avail myself of this advantage, and I reckon this as the _first_ error of my life. But, I was little capable of seeing it in its true light, embittered as my mind had been by the blows I had received. Exclusively of his passionate _treatment_ of me, my brother was by no means an ill tempered man. And even here, perhaps, my _manners_ had too much of impertinence not to afford it a very natural pretext." Go thy way, honest Ben. Such a confession of error will plead thy excuse with all who know their own infirmities, and remember what the greatest saints have done. Yes, when we remember what young Jacob did to his brother Esau, and how he came over him with his mess of pottage, robbing him of his birthright; and also what David did to Uriah, whom he robbed not only of his wife, but of his life also, we surely shall pity not only Ben, but every man his brother for their follies, and heartily rejoice that there is mercy with Christ to forgive _all_, on their repentance and amendment. CHAPTER XIII. Finding that to live with James in the pleasant relations of a brother and a freeman was a lost hope, Ben made up his mind to quit him and go on journey-work with some of the Boston printers. But James suspecting Ben's intentions, went around town to the printers, and made such a report of him, that not a man of them all would have any thing to say to him. The door of employment thus shut against him, and all New England furnishing no other printing office, Ben determined, in quest of one, to push off to New-York. He was farther confirmed in this resolution by a consciousness that his newspaper squibs in behalf of his brother, had made the governing party his mortal enemies. And he was also afraid that his bold and indiscreet argumentation against the gloomy puritans, had led those crabbed people to look on him as no better than a young atheist, whom it would be doing God service to worry as they would a wild cat. He felt indeed that it was high time to be off.