_Courteous Reader_,—This is the fifteenth time I have {656} entertained thee with my annual productions; I hope to thy profit as well as mine. 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. If I now and then insert a joke or two that seem to have little in them, my apology is, that such may have their use, since perhaps for their sake light airy minds peruse the rest and so are struck by somewhat of more weight and moment. The verses on the heads of the months are also generally designed to have the same tendency. I need not tell thee, that not many of them are of my own making. If thou hast any judgment in poetry, thou wilt easily discern the workman from the bungler. I know as well as thou, I am no _poet born_, and indeed it is a trade I never learnt nor indeed could learn. If I make verses, 'tis in spite of nature and my stars I write. Why then should I give my readers _bad lines_ of my own, when good ones of other people are so plenty? 'Tis, methinks, a poor excuse for the bad entertainment of guests, that the food we set before them, though coarse and ordinary, is _of one's own raising, off one's own plantation, etc._ when there is plenty of what is ten times better to be had in the market. On the contrary, I assure ye, my friends, that I have procured the best I could for ye, and much good may't do ye. I cannot omit this opportunity of making honorable mention of the late deceased ornament and head of our profession, MR. JACOB TAYLOR, who, for upwards of forty years, (with some few intermissions only) supplied the good people of this and the neighboring colonies with the most complete Ephemeris and most accurate calculations that have hitherto appeared in America. He was an ingenious mathematician, as well as an expert and skilful astronomer, and moreover no mean philosopher, but what is more than all, he was a PIOUS and HONEST man. _Requiescat in pace._ I am thy poor friend to serve thee, R. SAUNDERS. The _science_ of astrology is very happily ridiculed in an ironical commendation of it in the Almanack for 1751.