s! a small leak will sink a great
ship_; and again, _Who dainties love; shall beggars prove!_ and moreover,
_Fools make feasts, and wise men eat them_.

Here are you all got together at this Vendue of Fineries and knicknacks!
You call them Goods: but if you do not take care, they will prove Evils
to some of you! You expect they will be sold cheap, and perhaps they may,
for less than they cost; but if you have no occasion for them, they must
be _dear_ to you! Remember what _Poor RICHARD_ says! _Buy what thou hast
no need of, and, ere long, thou shalt sell thy necessaries!_ And again,
_At a great pennyworth, pause a while!_ He means, that perhaps the
cheapness is apparent only, and not real; or the bargain by straitening
thee in thy business, may do thee more harm than good. For in another
place, he says, _Many have been ruined by buying good pennyworths_.

Again, _Poor RICHARD_ says, _'Tis foolish, to lay out money in a purchase
of Repentance_: and yet this folly is practised every day at Vendues, for
want of minding the _Almanac_.

_Wise men_, as _Poor DICK_ says, _learn by others' harms; Fools, scarcely
by their own_: but _Felix quem faciunt aliena pericula cautum_. Many a
one, for the sake of finery on the back, has gone with a hungry belly,
and half starved their families. _Silks and satins, scarlet and velvets_,
as _Poor RICHARD_ says, _put out the kitchen fire!_ These are not the
necessaries of life; they can scarcely be called the conveniences: and
yet only because they look pretty, how many _want_ to have them! The
artificial wants of mankind thus become more numerous than the natural;
and as _Poor DICK_ says, _For one poor person, there are a hundred_
indigent.

By these, and other extravagances, the genteel are reduced to poverty,
and forced to borrow of those whom they formerly despised; but who,
through Industry and Frugality, have maintained their standing. In which
case, it appears plainly that _A ploughman on his legs is higher than a
gentleman on his knees_, as _Poor RICHARD_ says. Perhaps they have had a
small estate left them, which they knew not the getting of. They think
_'tis day! and will never be night!_; that _a little to be spent out of
so much I is not worth minding_ (_A Child and a Fool_, as _Poor RICHARD_
says, _imagine Twenty Shillings and Twenty Years can never be spent_):
but _always taking out of the meal tub, and never putting in, soon comes
to the bottom_. Then, as _Poor DICK says_, _