OLD ALMANACS. 3! 



pleased ; but if he who could write an almanac 

 ventured to predict, who were they to dispute it ? 

 So they thought, and if snow had been fore- 

 told for the Fourth of July, they would have 

 explained the reason why it did not come, and 

 pity, not scorn, the prophet. 



I do not know when the first almanac was 

 hung in the chimney corner, but the custom, 

 once started, continued to the end, and when 

 the kitchen was dismantled, a great pile of 

 " Poor Richards " were brought to light from a 

 dark hole in the cavernous corner cupboard. 

 The wisdom crowded upon those torn and tat- 

 tered pages seems to have been lost, and the 

 later generations were content, if I do not mis- 

 understand them, with the commonplaces and 

 predictions to which reference has been made. 

 But with all their unquestioning reliance upon 

 the almanac, the men who were daily out of doors 

 were prophets unto themselves, and proud of the 

 petty discoveries they claimed to have made. 

 This it was that spiced their conversation and 

 made the meeting of two or three in a cozy kitchen 

 an attractive occurence to young ears. I do 

 not wonder that books were ignored, when every 

 laboring man laid claim to peculiar knowledge, 

 and, of course, formulated weather proverbs, the 

 like of which have never got into print. For while 

 the neighborhood had, like all others, its com- 



