said by old sportsmen that the fox enjoys the sport as much as anybody, but there comes a time with baited rats and cats and most other creatures when they tire of that sort of thing, and have a very definite way of indicating the fact to all whom it may concern. The proverbial utterances of "poor Richard" were once in great vogue. They were written by Benjamin Franklin under the _nom de plume_ of Richard Saunders. "Poor Richard's Almanack" was issued for twenty-six years, from 1733 to 1758, and with constantly increased acceptance. These calendars excellently combined entertainment with useful knowledge and terse concentrated wisdom. All available spaces that occurred between notable days in the months were filled in with wisdom-chips, some of them of true proverbial rank, and others the offspring of the brains of Dr Franklin. Franklin was born on January 6th, 1706, at Boston, and there is no doubt that his sterling common-sense and quaint philosophy must have had a considerable influence in moulding the character of the early inhabitants of the United States. These almanacks were largely reprinted in Great Britain and France, and very freely quoted from, so that the area of their influence was very extensive. In the preface to the first of this long series he quaintly gives the reasons that influenced him, poor Richard, to issue it. "I might, in this place," he writes, "attempt to gain thy favour by declaring that I write Almanacks with no other view than that of the publick good, but in this I should not be sincere; and men are now-a-days too wise to be deceived by pretences. The plain truth of the matter is, I am extremely poor, and my wife, good woman is, I tell her, excessive proud; she cannot bear, she says, to sit spinning in her shift of tow while I do nothing but gaze at the stars, and has threatened more than once to burn all my books if I do not make some profitable use of them for the good of my family." Next year he writes, "Your kind and charitable assistance last year in purchasing so large an impression of my almanack has made my circumstances much more easy in the world, and requires my most grateful acknowledgment. My wife has been enabled to get a pot of her own, and is no longer obliged to borrow one from a neighbour; nor have we ever since been without something to put in it. She has also got a pair of shoes and a nice new petticoat, and for my part I have bought a second-hand coat, that I am not now ashamed to go to town or be seen there. These things have rendered her temper so much more pacifick than it used to be, that I may say I have slept more and more quietly within this last year than in the three foregoing years put together."