The Way To Wealth

The essay begins as Poor Richard addresses his audience, “Courteous Reader,” and admits that few “other learned authors” have quoted him, despite his being “an eminent author of almanacs annually now a full quarter of a century” (1). Poor Richard does take solace in the fact that “[his] writings produce [him] some solid pudding” (1) thanks to the people who buy his work, whom he describes as “the best judges of [his] merit” (2). Because Poor Richard has “frequently heard one or other of [his] adages repeated” as he walks around, even in places “where [he is] not personally known” (2), he feels a sense of accomplishment. Not only are his recommendations followed, but “some respect for [his] authority” (2) exists. At this point in the essay, Poor Richard makes a confession: “I have sometimes quoted myself with great gravity” (2).

Upon observing a crowd waiting for “a vendue of merchant goods” to open for business, Poor Richard overhears the people “conversing on the badness of the times” (3). One person in the crowd calls out to another, “a plain clean old man, with white locks” asks him of his opinion of the times and of the “heavy taxes [that may] quite ruin the country” (3).