atured, and the design of all he wrote, was to
promote integrity and kindly feeling. He would write an article, as if
from a correspondent, which would give him an opportunity to return an
amusing article in the next number. A complete file of the paper is
preserved in the Philadelphia Library.

In 1732, Franklin issued the first number of the Almanac, called Poor
Richard, which subsequently attained such wide renown. The popularity
of the work was astonishing; for twenty-five years it averaged ten
thousand copies a year. This was a wonderful sale in those times.
Everybody was quoting the pithy sayings of Poor Richard.[16]

[Footnote 16: "And now after the lapse of one hundred and thirty
years, we find persons willing to give twenty-five dollars for a
single number, and several hundred dollars for a complete set. Nay,
the reading matter of several of the numbers, has been republished
within these few years, and that republication already begins to
command the price of a rarity."--_Parton's Life of Franklin_, Vol. i,
p. 231.]

Franklin was an extensive reader. He had a memory almost miraculous;
and his mind was so constituted, that it eagerly grasped and retained
any sharp or witty sayings. Thus, though many of the maxims of Poor
Richard originated with him, others were gleaned from the witticisms
of past ages, upon which Franklin placed the imprint of his own
peculiar genius. I give a few of those renowned maxims which soon
became as household words, in every shop and dwelling of our land.

"There is no little enemy." "Three may keep a secret if two
of them are dead." "He is no clown who drives the plough, but
he that does clownish things." "Wealth is not his that has
it, but his that enjoys it." "The noblest question in the
world is, 'what good may I do in it.'" "Keep your eye wide
open before marriage; half shut afterward."

Franklin was not a poet. He could scheme easily, but even his rhymes
were poor. His sense of delicacy was quite obtuse, but perhaps not
more so, than we ought to expect from the unrefined times in which he
lived.[17]

[Footnote 17: "Poor Richard, at this day, would be reckoned an
indecent production. All great humorists were all indecent, before
Charles Dickens. They used certain words which are now never
pronounced by polite persons, and are never printed by respectable
printers; and they referred freely to certain subjects which are
familiar to every living