Bed, and early to rise, makes a Man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
* * * * *
“‘So much for Industry, my Friends, and Attention to one’s own
Business; but to these we must add Frugality, if we would make
our Industry more certainly successful. A man may, if he knows
not how to save as he gets, Keep his nose all his life to the
Grindstone, and die not worth a Groat at last.
* * * * *
“‘And now to conclude, Experience keeps a dear School, but Fools
will learn in no other, and scarce in that; for it is true, we
may give Advice, but we cannot give Conduct, as Poor Richard
says: However, remember this, They that won’t be counselled,
can’t be helped, as Poor Richard says: and farther, That if you
will not hear Reason, she’ll surely wrap your Knuckles.’
“Thus the old Gentleman ended his Harangue. The People heard it,
and approved the Doctrine, and immediately practised the
contrary, just as if it had been a common Sermon; for the Vendue
opened and they began to buy extravagantly, notwithstanding all
his Cautions and their own Fear of Taxes.”
* * * * *
This speech of the wise old man at the auction, while perhaps not so
interesting to us now as are some other parts of “Poor Richard,” was a
great hit in its day; in fact, the greatest Franklin ever made. Before
it appeared “Poor Richard’s” reputation was confined principally to
America, and without this final speech might have continued within
those limits. But the “clean old Man, with white locks” spread the fame
of “Poor Dick” over the whole civilized world. His speech was reprinted
on broadsides in England to be fastened to the sides of houses,
translated into French, and bought by the clergy and gentry for
distribution to parishioners and tenants. Mr. Paul Leicester Ford, in
his excellent little volume, “The Sayings of Poor Richard,” has
summarized its success. Seventy editions of it have been printed in
English, fifty-six in French, eleven in German, and nine in Italian. It
has also been translated into Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Welsh, Polish,
Gaelic, Russian, Bohemian, Dutch, Catalan, Chinese, and Modern Greek,
reprinted at least four hundred times, and still lives.
It was quite common a hundred years ago to charge Franklin with being an
arrant plagiarist. It is true that the sayings of “Poor Richard” and a
great deal that went to make up the almanac were taken from Rabelais,
Bacon, Rochefoucauld, Ray Palmer, and any other sources where they could
be found or suggested. But “Poor Richard” changed and rewrote them to
suit his purpose, and gave most of them a far wider circulation than
they had before.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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