Wisdom

No banks--and few schools--closed last week to honor the 240th birthday ol Benjamin Franklin. Yet Ben Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack stood (with the Bible) as virtually the only textbook in liberal education that many an early American ever had. Wrote Ben Franklin, perhaps the best taught of all self-taught Americans:

P: "Take this remark from Richard, poor and lame,

Whate'er's begun in anger, ends in shame."

P: "Ne'er take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in."

P: "God helps them that help themselves."

P: "Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it."

P: "Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead."

P: "0, that moral science were in a fair way of improvement, that men would cease to be wolves to one another, and that human beings would at length learn what they now improperly call humanity."

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