Blair Collection > Mackintosh's collection of Gaelic proverbs, and familar phrases

THE WAT TO WEALTH, &c.
Courteous Reader,
F 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 number of
people were collected at an auction of merchant goods.
The hour of 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, ischat think you of the times ? Will not
these heavy taxes quite ruiu the coimtry f Hoxi) shall we
ever be able to pay them F Wliat would you advise us to
doP*
2. Father Abraham stood up, and replied. If you
* Dr Franklin, wishing to collect, into one piece, all the say-
ings upon the following subjects, which he had dropped in the
course of publishing the Almanacks called Voor Richard^ intro-
duces Father Abraham for this purpose. Hence it is that Poor
Richard is so often quoted, and that, in the present title, he is
said to be im^jroved. — Notwithstanding the stroke of humour in
the concluding paragraph of this address, Poor Richard [Saun-
ders] and Father Abraham have proved, in America, that they
are no common preachers. [And shall we, my countrymen, re-
fuse good sense, and saving knowledge, because it comes from the
other side of the water ?]
T2.