The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Volume 2. Бенджамин Франклин
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Название: The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Volume 2
Автор: Бенджамин Франклин
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Афоризмы и цитаты
isbn: 9783849653996
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‘To bear other people’s afflictions, every one has courage enough and to spare.’
‘There are lazy minds as well as lazy bodies.’
‘Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools that have not wit enough to be honest.’
‘Let no pleasure tempt thee, no profit allure thee, no ambition corrupt thee, no example sway thee, no persuasion move thee to do any thing which thou knowest to be evil; so shalt thou always live jollily, for a good conscience is a continual Christmas.’
A large part of the contents of Poor Richard is rhyme, and rhyme too generally of an indifferent quality. The following specimens are much above the average:
Altho’ thy teacher act not as he preaches,
Yet ne’ertheless, if good, do what he teaches;
Good counsel, failing men may give, for why?
He that ’s aground knows where the shoal doth lie.
My old friend Berryman oft, when alive,
Taught others thrift, himself could never thrive.
Thus like the whetstone, many men are wont
To sharpen others while themselves are blunt.
Syl. dreamt that bury’d in his fellow clay,
Close by a common beggar’s side he lay;
And, as so mean a neighbour shock’d his pride,
Thus, like a corpse of consequence, he cry’d:
Scoundrel, begone; and henceforth touch me not;
More manners learn; and, at a distance, rot.
How! scoundrel! in a haughtier tone cry’d he:
Proud lump of dirt, I scorn thy words and thee;
Here all are equal; now thy case is mine;
This is my rotting place, and that is thine.
When Robin now three days had married been,
And all his friends and neighbours gave him joy,
This question of his wife he asked then,
Why till her marriage day she proved so coy?
Indeed, said he, ’t was well thou didst not yield,
For doubtless then my purpose was to leave thee:
O, sir, I once before was so beguil’d,
And was resolved the next should not deceive me.
POETRY FOR DECEMBER, 1733
She that will eat her breakfast in her bed,
And spend the morn in dressing of her head,
And sit at dinner like a maiden bride,
And talk of nothing all day but of pride;
God in his mercy may do much to save her,
But what a case is he in that shall have her.
POETRY FOR DECEMBER, 1734
By Mrs. Bridget Saunders, my Duchess, in answer to the December verses of last year
He that for the sake of drink neglects his trade,
And spends each night in taverns till ’t is late,
And rises when the sun is four hours high,
And ne’er regards his starving family;
God in his mercy may do much to save him,
But woe to the poor wife whose lot it is to have him.
The astronomical notices of Poor Richard have in them a strong spice of the comic, and he has many paragraphs in ridicule of the predictions which the almanac-makers of that day were accustomed to insert.
‘During the first visible eclipse Saturn is retrograde: For which reason the crabs will go sidelong, and the ropemakers backward. Mercury will have his share in these affairs, and so confound the speech of the people, that when a Pennsylvanian would say panther he shall say painter. When a New Yorker thinks to say this he shall say diss, and the people of New England and Cape May will not be able to say cow for their lives, but will be forced to say keow by a certain involuntary twist in the root of their tongues. No Connecticut man nor Marylander will be able to open his mouth this year but sir shall be the first or last syllable he pronounces, and sometimes both.—Brutes shall speak in many places, and there will be about seven and twenty irregular verbs made this year, if Grammar don’t interpose.—Who can help these misfortunes? This year the stone-blind shall see but very little; the deaf shall hear but poorly; and the dumb sha’n’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. As to old age, ’t will be incurable this year, because of the years past. And towards the fall some people will be seized with an unaccountable inclination to roast and eat their own ears: Should this be called madness, Doctors? I think not. But the worst disease of all will be a certain most horrid, dreadful, malignant, catching, perverse, and odious malady, almost epidemical, insomuch that many shall run mad upon it; I quake for very fear when I think on ’t: for I assure you very few will escape this disease, which is called by the learned Albromazar Lacko’mony.’ ”
Richard Saunders
RIVALSHIP IN ALMANAC-MAKING
Courteous Reader:
This is the ninth year of my endeavours to serve thee in the capacity of a calendar-writer. The encouragement I have met with must be ascribed, in a great measure, to your charity, excited by the open, honest declaration I made of my poverty at my first appearance. This my brother Philomaths could, without being conjurers, discover; and Poor Richard’s success has produced ye a Poor Will, and a Poor Robin; and no doubt Poor John, &c., will follow, and we shall all be, in name, what some folks say we are already in fact, a parcel of poor almanac-makers. During the course of these nine years, what buffetings have I not sustained! The fraternity have been all in arms. Honest Titan, deceased, was raised and made to abuse his old friend. Both authors and printers were angry. Hard names, and many, were bestowed on me. They denied me to be the author of my own works; declared there never was any such person; asserted that I was dead sixty years ago; prognosticated my death to happen within a twelvemonth; with many other malicious inconsistencies, СКАЧАТЬ