Poor Richard's Almanack

“ Herrick's name has been so persistently connected with Poor Robert's Almanack that a few words must be said on the subject. There is, we are told, a Devonshire tradition ascribing the Almanack to him, and this is accepted by Nichols in his Leicestershire, and "accredited" by Dr. Grosart. ”

“ The middle of the eighteenth century was the heyday of almanac-making, and the best proof of the durable stuff, of which Poor Richard's Almanac was woven, is the utter oblivion that has overtaken all his competitors except those who are preserved in his pages like flies in amber. ”

“ Poor Richard's Almanac, including the "Way to Wealth," or Father Abraham's Speech is Franklin's other [Pg 504] master-work. One would hardly look to almanac-making for a classic contribution to letters, but it is not extravagant to say that Poor Richard is one of the most lifelike figures in the literature of the world. Nestor, Falstaff, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Sir Roger de Coverley, Captain Dugald Dalgetty and Colonel Newcome are not more distinctly delineated, or rather we should say are not more manifest to the eye and palpable to the touch. ”

“ The joke set all London on a grin. Wherever Partridge went he was met with smiles and jeers, and astrology became only a jest to a vast number of people who had formerly believed in it seriously.
When Benjamin Franklin started his "Poor Richard's Almanac," twenty-five years later, in the first issue he prophesied the death of one Dart who set the pace at that time as almanac-maker in America. The man was to expire on the afternoon of October Seventeenth, Seventeen Hundred Thirty-eight, at three twenty-nine o'clock. ”

“ But dost thou love Life, then do not squander Time, for that’s the Stuff Life is made of, as poor Richard says.—How [Pg 151] much more than is necessary do we spend in Sleep! forgetting that The Sleeping Fox catches no Poultry, and that there will be sleeping enough in the Grave, as Poor Richard says. If Time be of all Things the most precious, wasting of Time must be, as Poor Richard says, the greatest Prodigality, since, as he elsewhere tells us, Lost Time is never found again; and what we call Time-enough, always proves little enough. ”

“ Calendars are notoriously inaccurate; they simply cannot be depended upon. No calendar has ever been entirely veracious, nor ever will be. Like elastic, they are sometimes too long and sometimes too short--imperfectly constructed."
He paused and looked at them. "Yes," they said breathlessly, aware dimly that accustomed foundations were already sliding from beneath their feet.
"Half the calendars of the world are simply wrong," he continued, more boldly still, "and the people who live by them are in a muddle consequently--a muddle about Time. England is no exception to the rest. ”

“ For besides the astronomical calculations and other things usually contained in Almanacks, which have their daily use indeed while the year continues, but then become of no value, I have constantly interspersed moral sentences, prudent maxims, and wise sayings, many of them containing much good sense in very few words, and therefore apt to leave strong and lasting impressions on the memory of young persons, whereby they may receive benefit as long as they live, when the Almanack and Almanack maker have been long thrown by and forgotten. ”

“ Although still in vogue amongst the ignorant, their popularity is greatly on the wane.
In England, so far was any restraint from being put upon the publication of prophetic almanacs, or “prognostications,” as they were usually called, that royal letters patent gave a monopoly of the trade to the two universities and the Stationers' Company, under whose patronage, and with the imprimatur of the Archbishop of Canterbury, such productions as Moore's Almanac and Poor Robin's Almanac flourished vigorously ”

“ What every one learns from the almanac, over and above Easter and its consequences for the current year, is that what happens this year is no index at all to what will happen next year. And even those who preserve their almanacs, and compare them in long series, never have been able, so far as I know, to lay hands upon any law connecting the Easters of different years, without having had recourse to the very complicated law on which the whole calendar is constructed. ”

“ November is still young when we are dragged upon the threshold of another year. The leisurely dismissal of the old year is no longer possible; we may indulge in no lingering good-bye, but the old fellow hustles out in haste, with apologetic, shrinking step and we slam the door upon him. It is off with the old love and on with the new, whether we will or no. I solemnly protest against the invasion of the calendar. In an age that boasts of freedom, I rebel against a tyrant who comes merely to warn us of the fugitive character of Time ”

“ Then as their Observations or Predictions, they are such as will suit any
Age or country in the world.
This month, a certain great Person will be threatened with death or sickness. This the News Paper will tell them. For there we find at the end of the year, that no month passeth without the death of some Person of Note: and it would be hard if it should be otherwise, where there are at least two thousand Persons of Note in this kingdom, many of them old; and the Almanack maker has the liberty of choosing the sickliest season of the year, where he may fix his prediction. ”

“ Work while it is called to-day; for you know not how much you may be hindered tomorrow ; which makes poor Richard say, “One to-day is worth two to-morrows;" and further, “Have you somewhat to do to-morrow, do it to-day." If you were a servant, would you not be ashamed that a good master should catch you idle ? Are you then your own master? be ashamed to catch yourself idle, as poor Dick says." ”

“ Some of the almanacs that are regularly published every year are extremely useful, and are indeed almost indispensable to men engaged in official, mercantile, literary, or professional business. Such in Great Britain are Thom's Official Directory of the United Kingdom, The British Almanac, Oliver and Boyd's New Edinburgh Almanac, and Whitaker's Almanac, started in 1868. In the United States is published The American Almanac, a useful compilation. ”

“ But the relation to a solitary historical event, by which rather more highly civilised peoples denote the years, can hardly, or only in isolated instances, be applied to the month: for the life of primitive peoples is very monotonous, and is not so rich in events which make an impression upon the mind that one of these will occur in every month, and even supposing that such events could be found, the months in a human life are too numerous for it to be possible to keep a series of this nature in mind. ”

“ As all other civilised states had already adopted the Gregorian calendar, the alteration of the New Year, and the change from the old to the new calendar, was accomplished without opposition on the part of the people in England. It was only in Buckinghamshire that a rebel rising threatened, and the cause of this was an old belief which was threatened by the new calendar. ”

“ Almanacs containing astrological and other predictions are still published in Great Britain; but their influence is extremely limited, even among the most ignorant portion of the community, and their contents are fitted to excite amusement rather than any stronger emotion. In America, the publication of almanacs for popular use is confined very largely to the vendors of proprietary or patent nostrums and medicines. These persons distribute the almanacs gratuitously, judging rightly that they constitute a most excellent advertisement of their wares. ”

“ The whole trouble with life so far is that too much of it falls into assignments. We're not even content to let our holidays just happen. Instead we mark them down on a calendar, and there they stay as fixed and set as an execution day. There are times, for instance, when we feel like turning over a new leaf and leading a better life and giving up cigarettes, but when we look at the calendar it isn't New Year's at all, but Fourth of July, and so nothing can be done about it. ”

“ The mother counts by weeks—very good—the squire by the proper calendar. One makes the child three months and two weeks, and she is right; the other deducts eleven days to fit the calendar, and he, too, is right.”
“Out with it,” cried Caleb; “out with such a calendar! Why, the whole realm will be in confusion. None of us will ever know how old we are, or when the church-days are due; but I doubt if, in spite of it all, the Pope’s new calendar doesn’t keep the squire’s rent-day straight. They’ll look out for that.” ”

“ Well, sometimes a nation finds out its mistake and alters its calendar. Russia has done this; the Russian New Year and Easter are not the same as ours. Pope Gregory, the thirteenth, ordered that the day after October 4, 1582, should be called October 15. He called it the Gregorian Calendar; but there are lots of other calendars besides--there's the Jewish and Mohammedan, and a variety of calendars in the East. All of them can't be right. The result is that none of them are right, and the world is in confusion. Some calendars mark off too many days, others mark off too few. ”

“ The Stationers' Company, however, still maintained their ground by buying up all rival almanacs; and it was not until the publication, in 1828, of the British Almanac, by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, that the eyes of the English public became opened to the irrational and deleterious nature of the commodity which their own indifference or folly, as much as the selfishness of their purveyors, had hitherto maintained in existence. In Scotland the earliest almanacs seem to have been produced about the beginning of the sixteenth century. ”

“ Such also is our shifting seven-day week, which, chiefly through the agency of Mohammedanism, has also been widely extended among peoples of a lower stage of development. These artificial periods, arising often from a natural period which for purposes of the calendar has been detached from its natural basis, belong to a highly developed stage of time-reckoning. Only among certain comparatively far-advanced, semi-primitive peoples does an artificial period of the simplest kind first appear, and then only one, the market-week, the origin of which it is very easy to understand. ”

“ I am interested in trivial matters,--in the weather, in my spring hat, in what you are going to do next, and the like. One must occupy one's self with something. But you, Richard, nowadays you seem interested in nothing, and have nothing whatever to say."
Poor Richard! He had a great deal to say, but he did not know how, nor if it were wise to breathe it. Just three little words, murmured or whispered, and the whole conditions would be changed. With those fateful words uttered, what would be Margaret's probable attitude, and what Mr. Slocum's? ”

“ For upwards of thirty years, Poor Richard, with a distinctness and consistency of character as perfect as those of Santa Claus, made his annual bow to the People of Pennsylvania, and served up to their delighted palates his highly seasoned ollapodrida of mock astrology, homely wisdom and coarse jollity in prose and verse. Sometimes the humor is mere horse laughter. But always the shrewd, worldly-wise, merry-tempered old philomath and stargazer [Pg 505] hits the fancy of his readers with unerring accuracy between wind and water. ”

“ Only once in history have the measures of the ancient calendar been set aside. That was in France at the time of the Revolution, when the French people, in their passionate hatred of all the traditional things that reminded them of their past sufferings, invented a new calendar, in which they changed the names of months and days, and counted the years from 1792, the first of their liberty. ”

“ Time is money—they know that in the States; for why, they are all men of business there. Always slow in a country where a parcel of lazy idle lords, and dukes, and baronets, seem to think 'time is pleasure.'"
Towards evening the chaise approached the confines of a very large town, and Richard began to grow fidgety. His easy cavalier air was abandoned. He withdrew his legs from the window, out of which they had been luxuriously dangling; pulled down his waistcoat; buckled more tightly his stock: it was clear that he was resuming the decorous dignity that belongs to state. ”

“ But the newspapers I had were dated about two weeks ahead. Now if a sane person on February 1st receives a newspaper dated February 14th, be will be fully justified in thinking something wrong, either with the publication or with himself. But the shifted calendar which had planted itself in my mind meant as much to me as the true calendar does to any sane business man. During the seven hundred and ninety-eight days of depression I drew countless incorrect deductions. ”

“ Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event. Their compilers display a degraded passion for chronicling small beer, and rake out the dust-heap of history in an ardent search after rubbish. Mr. Walter Scott, however, has made a new departure and has published a calendar in which every day of the year is made beautiful for us by means of an elegant extract from the poems of Mr. Alfred Austin. ”

“ You’ll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts. That’s my small experience, so far as the Massachusetts calendar, and Bowditch’s navigator, and Daboll’s arithmetic go. Signs and wonders, eh? Pity if there is nothing wonderful in signs, and significant in wonders! There’s a clue somewhere; wait a bit; hist—hark! By Jove, I have it! Look you, Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one round chapter; and now I’ll read it off, straight out of the book. Come, Almanack! To begin: there’s Aries, or the Ram—lecherous dog, he begets us ”