prosperity: "If Falsehood and Ingenuity be so rewarded, what may he expect if he be in a capacity to publish what is either just or according to Art."

Thus dismissed, Leeds disappears from the almanacs for five years, and the prefaces are taken up with other matters. One is given to insisting that "Poor Richard" does exist, for the public have begun to suspect that he is none other than Franklin. Another is a defense of almanac-makers. That some of their predictions failed was not amazing. Without any defect in the art itself, it was easy to see that a small error, a single wrong figure overseen in a long calculation, might cause great mistakes. But, however almanac-makers might miss it in other things, it must be allowed they always hit the day of the month, and that after all was one of the most useful things in an almanac. As to the weather, he never followed the method of his brother John Jerman. Jerman would say, "Snow here or in New England," "Rain here or in South Carolina," "Cold to the Northward," "Warm to the Southward." This enabled him to hide his errors. For if it did not rain here, who could say it did not rain in New England. Poor Richard always put down just what the weather will be where the reader is, only asking for an allowance of a day or two before and a day or two after. If the prediction failed then, why like enough the printer had transferred or misplaced it to make room for his holidays. As the public would give Mr. Printer credit for making the almanacs, let him also take some of the blame.

A third explains how astrologers determine what the weather will be, and is just witty enough and coarse enough to have been thought good reading.

A fourth was from the hand of Bridget Saunders. Her good man had set out for the Potomac to meet an old Stargazer. Before going he left a copy of his almanac sealed up and bade her send it to the printer. Suspecting something was wrong, she opened it to see if he had not been flinging some of his old skits at her. So it was. Peascods! could she not have a little fault but the world must be told of it? They had already been told that she was proud; that she was poor; that she had a new petticoat, and abundance more of the like stuff. Now they must know she had taken a fancy to drink a little tea. She had cut this nonsense out. Looking over the months, she found a great quantity of foul weather. She had cut this out also, and put in fine weather for housewives to dry their clothes in. Yet another preface is written by the ghost of his old friend Titan Leeds.

Leeds by this time was really dead, and that the world might know the letter to be the work of his ghost, the ghost made three predictions for the coming year. A certain well-known character would remain sober for nine consecutive hours, to the great astonishment of his friends; William and Andrew Bradford would put out another "Leeds' Almanac" just as if Leeds were still alive; and that John Jerman on the 17th of September would become reconciled to the Church of Rome. On the fulfilment of these predictions rested the truth of the ghost.

Jerman for twenty years past had been the author of a Quaker almanac, and had for about the same time been engaged in a fierce almanac warfare with Jacob Taylor, a philomath and a printer of Friends' books. Jerman seems to have been as thick-headed as Leeds, took the same course as Leeds, repelled the charge, and the next year boasted that he had not gone over to Rome, and denounced Poor Richard as one of the false prophets of Baal. He could have done nothing more to Poor Richard's mind; and in the preface to "Poor Richard " for 1742 the whole town read with delight the evidence of Jerman's conversion, which, despite his declaring and protesting, " is, I fear," said Mr. Saunders, "too true." Two things in the elegiac verses confirmed this suspicion. The 1st of November was called All-Hallows Day. Did not this smell of Popery? Did it in the least savor of the plain language of Friends? But the plainest evidence of all was the adoration of saints which Jerman confessed to be his practice in the lines

"When any trouble did me befall

To my dear Mary then I would call."

"Did he think the whole world was so stupid as not to notice this? So ignorant as not to know that all Catholics paid the highest regard to the Virgin Mary? Ah, friend John, we must allow you to be a poet, but you certainly are no Protestant. I could heartily wish your religion were as good as your verses."

With this the humorous prefaces cease, and their place is taken by short. pieces, which, as Poor Richard said, were likely to do more good than three hundred and seventy-five prefaces written by himself. These pieces were commonly borrowed from standard works, and contain hints for growing timber, for fencing, and accounts of how people live on the shores of Hudson Bay and under the Tropic of Cancer.

The humor of the almanacs is by no means confined to the prefaces. The books abound in wit and in wit noticeable for its modern character. Now it appears in some doggerel verses at the heads of the pages ; now in the turn given to a maxim, as, "Never take a wife till you have a house (and a fire) to put her in; " now in some pretended prognostication, as that for August, 1739, "Ships sailing down the Delaware Bay this month shall hear at ten leagues' distance a confused rattling noise like a swarm of hail on a cake of ice. Don't be frightened, good passengers, the sailors can inform you that 't is nothing but Lower County teeth in the ague. In a southerly wind you may hear it at Philadelphia.”

In 1748 the size of the almanac was much enlarged, and the name changed to "Poor Richard Improved." After 1748 it is quite likely "Poor Richard" was no longer written by Franklin. While still in his hands, Franklin contributed to its pages some of the brief pieces by which he is best known. Scattered among profitable observations, eclipses, and monthly calendars are to be found his "Hints for those that would be Rich," his "Rules of Health," his "Plan for saving one hundred thousand pounds to New Jersey," and his masterpiece, "Father Abraham's Address."

In the first number of "Poor Richard," Franklin adopted the custom, long common