The next year he is still making sport of Titan, the deceased Titan, and the ghost of Titan, "who pretends to be still living, and to write Almanacks in spight of me;" and he proves again by means of the funniest arguments that he must be dead. Another year he devotes several pages of nonsense to disproving the charge that "Poor Richard" is not a real person. He ridicules astrology and weather forecasting by pretending to be very serious over it. At any rate, he says, "we always hit the day of the month, and that I suppose is esteemed one of the most useful things in an Almanack." He and his good old wife are getting on now better than ever; and the almanac for 1738 is prepared by Mistress Saunders herself, who rails at her husband and makes queer work with eclipses and forecasting. Then in the number for 1740 Titan writes a letter to "Poor Richard" from the other world.
Besides the formal essays or prefaces which appeared in each number, there were numerous verses, paragraphs of admirable satire on the events of the day or the weaknesses of human nature, and those prudential maxims which in the end became the most famous of all. As we look through a collection of these almanacs for an hour or so we seem to have lived among the colonists, who were not then Americans, but merry Englishmen, heavy eaters and drinkers, full of broad jokes, whimsical, humorous ways, and forever gossiping with hearty good nature over the ludicrous accidents of life, the love-affairs, the married infelicities, and the cuckolds. It is the freshness, the sap, and the rollicking happiness of old English life.
"Old Batchelor would have a wife that's wise, Fair, rich and young a maiden for his bed; Not proud, nor churlish, but of faultless size, A country housewife in the city bred. He's a nice fool and long in vain hath staid; He should bespeak her, there's none ready made."
"Never spare the parson's wine, nor the baker's pudding."
"Ne'er take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in."
"My love and I for kisses play'd, She would keep stakes, I was content, But when I won, she would be paid, This made me ask her what she meant: Quoth she, since you are in the wrangling vein Here take your kisses, give me mine again."