“Let thy maid servant be faithful, strong and homely.” “Here I sit naked, like some fairy elf; My seat a pumpkin; I grudge no man’s pelf, Though I’ve no bread nor cheese upon my shelf, I’ll tell thee gratis, when it safe is To purge, to bleed, or cut thy cattle or--thyself.” “Necessity never made a good bargain.” “A little house well filled, a little field well till’d and a little wife well will’d are great riches.” “_Of the Diseases this year._ “This Year the Stone-blind shall see but very little; the Deaf shall hear but poorly; and the Dumb shan’t speak very plain. And it’s much, if my Dame Bridget talks at all this Year. Whole Flocks, Herds and Droves of Sheep, Swine and Oxen, Cocks and Hens, Ducks and Drakes, Geese and Ganders shall go to Pot; but the Mortality will not be altogether so great among Cats, Dogs and Horses....” “_Of the Fruits of the Earth._ “I find that this will be a plentiful Year of all manner of good Things, to those who have enough; but the Orange Trees in Greenland will go near to fare the worse for the Cold. As for Oats, they’ll be a great Help to Horses....” “Lend money to an enemy, and thou’lt gain him; to a friend, and thou’lt lose him.” “Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.” “It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.” For twenty years and more “Poor Richard” kept up this continuous stream of fun, breaking forth afresh every autumn,--sound, wholesome, dealing with the real things and the elemental joys of life, and expressed in that inimitable language of which Franklin was master. In this way was built up the greater part of his wonderful reputation, which in some of its manifestations surprises us so much. Such a reputation is usually of long growth; one or two conspicuous acts will not achieve it. But the man who every year for nearly a generation delighted every human being in the country, from the ploughman and hunter to the royal governors, was laying in store for himself a sure foundation of influence. The success of “Poor Richard” was immediate. The first number of it went through several editions, and after that the annual sales amounted to about ten thousand copies. For the last number which Franklin prepared for the year 1758, before he turned over the enterprise to his partner, he wrote a most happy preface. It was always his habit, when a controversy or service he was engaged in was finished, to summarize the whole affair in a way that strengthened his own position and left an indelible impression which all the efforts of his enemies could not efface. Accordingly, for this last preface he invented a homely, catching tale that enabled him to summarize all the best sayings of “Poor Richard” for the last twenty-five years.