chard's Almanack_. I endeavoured 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
neighbourhood in the province 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 more difficult
for a man in want to act always honestly, as, to use here one of these
proverbs, "it is hard for an empty sack to stand upright." These
proverbs, which contained the wisdom of many ages and nations, I
assembled and formed into a connected discourse prefixed to the
_Almanack_ 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 a greater impression. The piece being
universally approved, was copied in all the newspapers of the American
Continent, reprinted in Britain on a large sheet of paper to be stuck up
in houses; two translations were made of it in France, and great numbers
bought by the clergy to distribute gratis among their poor parishioners
and tenants. In Pennsylvania, as it discouraged useless expense in
foreign superfluities, some thought it had its share of influence in
producing that growing plenty of money which was observable for several
years after its publication.'--_Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin_, Part II,
Works Edit. 1833, vol. ii. pp. 146-148.

Reprinted innumerable times while Franklin was alive, this paper has,
since his death, passed through seventy editions in English, fifty-six In
French, eleven in German, and nine in Italian. It has been translated into
nearly every language in Europe: into French, German, and Italian, as we
have seen; into Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Polish, Bohemian, Dutch, Welsh,
and modern Greek; it has also been translated into Chinese.[6] In the
edition of _Franklin's Works_, printed in London in 1806, it appears
under the title of _The Way to Wealth, as clearly shown in the Preface to
an old Pennsylvanian Almanack, entitled Poor Richard Improved_, and under
this title it was usually printed when de