Poor Richard's Almanac. — (See Parton's Life and Times of Benjamin Eranklin, 1., 227-240.) Franklin did more for literature as an influence than as an actual producer. He was only incidentally a man of letters. He was greater as a statesnian, a diplomatist, a scientist, than as a writer, and yet his literary productions are of great value. Perhaps the best known of all his writings are the series of essays and proverbs which appeared originally in Poor Richard's Almanac, an annual publication which was first issued in 1833, bearing the pseudonym "Richard Saunders, Philomath," and which was continued with great success for nearly quarter of a century.
"I endeavored to make it both entertaining and useful; and it accordingly came to be in such demand that I reaped considerable profit from it, vending annually near ten thousand. And observing that it was generally read, scarce any neighborhood being without it, I considered it as a proper vehicle for conveying instruction among the common people, who bought scarcely any other books; I therefore filled all the little spaces that occurred between the remarkable days in the calendar with proverbial sentences, chiefly such as inculcated industry and frugality as the means of procuring wealth, and thereby securing virtue; it being inore difficult for a man in want to act always honestly, as, to use here one of those proverbs, 'it is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.' These proverbs, which contain the wisdom of many ages and nations, I assembled and formed into a connected discourse, profixed to the almanac of 1757, as the harangue of a wise old man to the people attending an auction. The bringing all these scattered counsels thus into a focus enabled them to make greater impression. The piece, being universally approved, was copied in all the newspapers of the continent; reprinted in Britain on a broadside to be stuck up in houses; two translations were made of it in French, and great numbers bought by the clergy and gentry to distribute gratis among their poor parishioners and tenants." — The Autobiography.
