In this happy home, and as his business prospered, Franklin found more and more time for study and self-improvement. In 1733 he began the acquisition of languages, teaching himself to read French fluently, and then passing on to Italian and Spanish. Chess was always a favorite amusement with him; and we can imagine the grave philosopher playing a cautious and invulnerable game, with now and then, when least expected, a brilliant sally. But his conscience seems always to have protested against the waste of time involved, and he now made use of the game to forward his studies. With his favorite antagonist he agreed that the victor in each game should impose some task in Italian, which the other on his honor was to complete before the next meeting. As his opponent was a pretty even match for him they both made steady progress in the language. In Latin he had had a year's instruction at school, and later in life he dabbled a little in that language; but his knowledge of the classics was always superficial, and he seems to have entertained something like a spite against them. In 1732 Franklin began the publication of an almanac under the name of Richard Saunders, which he continued for twenty-five years, and which gained immense popularity as Poor Richard's Almanac. It was the flourishing time of such publications. Since the year 1639, when Stephen Daye printed his first almanac at Cambridge, these annual messages had increased in number until after theology they became perhaps the most genuine feature of colonial literature. And from the first they displayed the sort of shrewdness and humor which have always been characteristic of the American mind. So, too, the bulk of Poor Richard's production was humor, sometimes blunt and coarse, and sometimes instinct with the finest irony. Perhaps the best of Poor Richard's jokes is that played at the expense of Titan Leeds, his rival in Philadelphia. In the first issue Mr. Saunders announces the imminent death of his friend Titan Leeds: "He dies, by my calculation, made at his request, on October 17, 1733, 3 ho., 29 m., P.M., at the very instant of the [symbol for conjunction] of [symbol for sun] and [symbol for Mercury].[1] By his own calculation, he will survive till the 26th of the same month. This small difference between us we have disputed whenever we have met these nine years past; but at length he is inclined to agree with my judgment. Which of us is most exact a little time will now determine. As, therefore, these Provinces may not longer expect to see any of his performances after this year, I think myself free to take up the task." Naturally Mr. Titan Leeds objected with strenuous voice to this summary manner of being shuffled out of the world; and Franklin's yearly protest that Leeds is really dead, and his appeal to the degenerating wit of Leeds's almanac to prove his assertion, is one of the most successful and malicious jokes ever perpetrated.