IV.  Besides, it must not be forgotten that he had all along been foremost in many a work for the public good.  The Franklin Library, of Philadelphia, owes to him its origin.  The University of Pennsylvania grew out of an educational project in which he was a prime mover.  And his ideas as to the relative importance of ancient and modern classics were more than a hundred years in advance of his times.

Such is a glimpse of Franklin at fifty-two, as preliminary to a single episode which will occupy the rest of this chapter.  But the episode itself requires a special word.

V. For a quarter of a century Franklin had published an almanac under the pseudonym of Richard Saunders, into the pages of which he crowded year by year choice scraps of wit and wisdom, which made the little hand-book a welcome visitor in almost every home of the New World.  Now in the midst of those philosophical studies which so much delighted him, when about to cross the Atlantic as a commissioner to the Home Government, he found time to gather up the maxims and quaint sayings of twenty-five years and set them in a wonderful mosaic, as the preface of Poor Richard’s world-famous almanac—­as unique a piece of writing as any language affords.  Here it is: 

POOR RICHARD’S ADDRESS.

Courteous Reader:  I have heard that nothing gives an author so great pleasure as to find his works respectfully quoted by others.  Judge, then, how much I must have been gratified by an incident I am going to relate to you.  I stopped my horse lately where a great company of people were collected at an auction of merchants’ goods.  The hour of the sale not being come, they were conversing on the badness of the times; and one of the company called to a plain, clean old man, with white locks, “Pray, Father Abraham, what think you of the times?  Will not those heavy taxes quite ruin the country?  How shall we ever be able to pay them?  What would you advise us to do?” Father Abraham stood up and replied, “If you would have my advice, I will give it you in short; ’for a word to the wise is enough,’ as Poor Richard says.”  They joined in desiring him to speak his mind, and gathering around him, he proceeded as follows:—­

“Friends,” says he, “the taxes are indeed very heavy; and if those laid on by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us.  We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly; and from these taxes the commissioners can not ease or deliver us by allowing an abatement.  However, let us hearken to good advice, and something may be done for us; ‘God helps them that help themselves,’ as Poor Richard says.