“On the 4th instant, toward midnight, as I sat in my little study writing this Preface, I fell fast asleep; and continued in that condition for some time, without dreaming any thing, to my knowledge. On awaking I found lying before me the following, viz.:
“‘Dear Friend Saunders: My respect for you continues even in this separate state; and I am griev’d to see the aspersions thrown on you by the malevolence of avaricious publishers of Almanacks, who envy your success. They say your prediction of my death in 1733 was false, and they pretend that I remained alive many years after. But I do hereby certify that I did actually die at that time, precisely at the hour you mention’d, with a variation only of 5 min. 53 sec, which must be allow’d to be no great matter in such cases. And I do further declare that I furnish’d them with no calculations of the planets’ motions, etc., seven years after my death, as they are pleased to give out: so that the stuff they publish as an Almanack in my name is no more mine than ’tis yours.
“‘You will wonder, perhaps, how this paper comes written on your table. You must know that no separate spirits are under any confinement till after the final settlement of all accounts. In the meantime we wander where we please, visit our old friends, observe their actions, enter sometimes into their imaginations, and give them hints waking or sleeping that may be of advantage to them. Finding you asleep, I enter’d your left nostril, ascended into your brain, found out where the ends of those nerves were fastened that move your right hand and fingers, by the help of which I am now writing unknown to you; but when you open your eyes you will see that the hand written is mine, tho’ wrote with yours.
“‘The people of this infidel age, perhaps, will hardly believe this story. But you may give them these three signs by which they shall be convinced of the truth of it.—About the middle of June next, J. J——n,[7] Philomat, shall be openly reconciled to the Church of Rome, and give all his goods and chattels to the chappel, being perverted by a certain country schoolmaster. On the 7th of September following my old Friend W. B——t shall be sober 9 hours, to the astonishment of all his neighbours:—And about the same time W. B. and A. B. will publish another Almanack in my name, in spight of truth and common sense.
“‘As I can see much clearer into futurity, since I got free from the dark prison of flesh, in which I was continually molested and almost blinded with fogs arising from tiff, and the smoke of burnt drams; I shall in kindness to you, frequently give you information of things to come, for the improvement of your Almanack: being, Dear Dick, Your Affectionate Friend,
“‘T. Leeds.’
“For my own part, I am convinced that the above letter is genuine. If the reader doubts of it, let him carefully observe the three signs; and if they do not actually come to pass, believe as he pleases. I am his humble Friend,
“R. Saunders.”
In this wise ended Poor Richard’s jest. Franklin’s style throughout is so simple and direct that one is at first inclined to scout the suggestion that the joke is not entirely original. It is impossible, however, to suppose that Franklin, with his broad reading, did not know Squire Bickerstaff’s. The development of the humor is wholly imitated. But Franklin made the method his own so thoroughly that his wit has those keener, subtler, more agile qualities which have distinguished American from the slower and sedater humor of the English. In the Bickerstaff jocularity evidences of the death of Partridge are enumerated in material surroundings of a not too prosperous London quack. Franklin, on the other hand, ironically and graphically reasons upon supposititious traits and qualities of character and breeding.
In England, Swift’s squib having given the death-blow to astrology, “Merlinus Liberatus, by John Partridge,” was published years after, but shorn of its specious and misleading pretences. Franklin’s jesting was more self-seeking.
Not one of Franklin’s biographers or editors has referred to the Bickerstaff joke. Upon the contrary, in an “Introduction to Fac-simile of Poor Richard’s Almanack for 1733,” published by The Duodecimos in 1894, it is asserted that Franklin “in a strain of delightful satire upon the already venerable pretensions of almanac-makers to foretell the future, ... disposes of this difficulty by a method so novel, so ingenious, and withal of an illuminating power so far-reaching as to set the whole colony talking about it.”
It need hardly be added that none of Swift’s biographers—all being English—have hinted at Franklin’s pleasantry.