narch has made and "sought out" so many
proverbs and given them to the world.

The maxims of Poor Richard, which were at first given to the world
through an almanac, spread everywhere. They were current in most Boston
homes; they came back to the ears of Jamie the Scotchman--back, we say,
for some of them were the echoes of Silence Dogood's life in the Puritan
province.

Poor Richard's Almanac was a lively and curious miscellany, and its
coming was an event in America. Franklin put the wisdom that he gained
by experience into it. In the following resolution was the purpose of
his life at this time: "I wished to live," he says, "without committing
any fault at any time, and to conquer all that either natural
inclination, custom, or company might lead me into."

"But--but," he says, "I was surprised to find myself so much fuller of
faults than I had imagined; but I had the satisfaction of seeing them
diminish." In the spirit of this effort to correct life and to learn
wisdom from experience, he gave Poor Richard's Almanac annually to the
world. Like some of the proverbs of Solomon, it taught the people life
as he himself learned it. For years Franklin lived in Poor Richard, and
it was his pulse beat, his open heart, that gave the annual its power.
All the sayings of Poor Richard were not original with Franklin. When a
critical proverb, or a line from one of the poets, would express his
idea or conviction better than he could himself, he used it. For
example, he borrowed some beautiful lines from Pope, who in turn had
received the leading thought from a satire of Horace.

While Franklin was learning wisdom from life, and expressing it through
Poor Richard, he was studying French, Italian, and Spanish, and making
himself the master of philosophy. "He who would thrive must rise at
five," he makes Poor Richard say. He himself rose at five in the
morning, and began the day with a bath and a prayer. Intelligence to
intelligence!

Such was his life when Poor Richard was evolved.

Who was Poor Richard, whose influence came to lead the thought of the
time?

Poor Richard was a comic almanac, or a character assumed by Benjamin
Franklin, for the purpose of expressing his views of life. Having
established a paper, Franklin saw the need of an annual and of an
almanac, and he chose to combine the two, and to make the pamphlet a
medium of hard sense in a rough, keen, droll way.

He introduces himself in this curious annual as "