Little Ben lived to the ripe age of six years, without doing any thing that was worthy to be told in history.  But, one summer afternoon, in his seventh year, his mother put a fan into his hand, and bade him keep the flies away from the face of a little babe, who lay fast asleep in the cradle.  She then left the room.

The boy waved the fan to-and-fro, and drove away the buzzing flies whenever they had the impertinence to come near the baby’s face.  When they had all flown out of the window, or into distant parts of the room, he bent over the cradle, and delighted himself with gazing at the sleeping infant.  It was, indeed, a very pretty sight.  The little personage in the cradle slumbered peacefully, with its waxen hands under its chin, looking as full of blissful quiet as if angels were singing lullabies in its ear.  Indeed, it must have been dreaming about Heaven; for, while Ben stooped over the cradle, the little baby smiled.

“How beautiful she looks!” said Ben to himself.  “What a pity it is, that such a pretty smile should not last forever!”

Now Ben, at this period of his life, had never heard of that wonderful art, by which a look, that appears and vanishes in a moment, may be made to last for hundreds of years.  But, though nobody had told him of such an art, he may be said to have invented it for himself.  On a table, near at hand, there were pens and paper, and ink of two colors, black and red.  The boy seized a pen and sheet of paper, and kneeling down beside the cradle, began to draw a likeness of the infant.  While he was busied in this manner, he heard his mother’s step approaching, and hastily tried to conceal the paper.

“Benjamin, my son, what hast thou been doing?” inquired his mother, observing marks of confusion in his face.

At first, Ben was unwilling to tell; for he felt as if there might be something wrong in stealing the baby’s face, and putting it upon a sheet of paper.  However, as his mother insisted, he finally put the sketch into her hand, and then hung his head, expecting to be well scolded.  But when the good lady saw what was on the paper, in lines of red and black ink, she uttered a scream of surprise and joy.

“Bless me!” cried she.  “It is a picture of little Sally!”

And then she threw her arms round our friend Benjamin, and kissed him so tenderly, that he never afterwards was afraid to show his performances to his mother.

As Ben grew older, he was observed to take vast delight in looking at the hues and forms of nature.  For instance, he was greatly pleased with the blue violets of spring, the wild roses of summer, and the scarlet cardinal-flowers of early autumn.  In the decline of the year, when the woods were variegated with all the colors of the rainbow, Ben seemed to desire nothing better than to gaze at them from morn till night.  The purple and golden clouds of sunset were a joy to him.  And he was continually endeavoring to draw the figures of trees, men, mountains, houses, cattle, geese, ducks, and turkeys, with a piece of chalk, on barn-doors, or on the floor.