Although rather early in its development, the American colonial almanac began to fulfill, tolerably after its fashion, the neoclassical precept for literature—to instruct and to delight, the first generation of almanac-makers leaned much more toward instruction than delectation. Seriously utilitarian and scientific, the Harvard Philomaths (1639-1692) produced almanacs whose information was primarily astronomical, navigational, and calendrical. Not until the almanac had become a customary form in colonial New England do we encounter the first example of its humor. This humor, playing on the almanac’s form, relied on New England colonial prejudice.

John Richardson in his 1670 almanac describes the heavenly bodies and prognosticates in "The Country-mans Apocrapha":

If Stars do Rule the World, then never fancy
What’s told from them is wrought by Nigromancy,
Th’ admiring Rusticks faith will shrink perhaps,
Hearing the Tidings of such After claps.
Who marvels not? The Sun shall once stand still,
Whilst that the Earth shall round him dance his fill.
Signes in the Sky shall now be seen; for there,
A fiery Dog will chase a skittish Hare;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Hunger will so prevail for many years,
Rather than famish, some will Roast their Ears,
And Eat. . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Moon is habitable, some averre;
And that some Creatures have their Dwelling there;
Judge what you please; but yet ’tis very true,
This year the Moon a Pair of Horns will shew.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Conjunctions lastly all which you will finde,
Of Male and Female Planets (if you minde) . . .¹

A second humorous verse, also involving a play on words, hints at a history of a calendar. The title: "A Perpetuall Calendar, fitted for the Meridian of BABYLON, where the POPE is Elevated 42 Degr."

With the increasing public awareness of the almanac’s utility, its commercial profitability invited competition; and it seems certain that the effort to capture a greater share of the market led to the entry of almanac-makers who sensed the practical advantage of tempering instruction with delight. Typically, their essays and humor playfully used the almanac’s established format.

In 1676, John Foster (who had prepared the Harvard almanac for 1675) began his own press in Boston. He increased the calendar pages from twelve to twenty-four; added illustrations that he probably made himself; included some meteorological advice for the farmer; and introduced, in 1678, a popular feature of European almanacs—the Man of Signs. Foster’s Man was accompanied by a humorous verse:

The Head and Face the Ram doth crave,
The Neck and Throat, the Bull will have,
The loving Twins do rule the Hands
The Brest and Sides in Cancer bands,
The Heart and Back the Lyon claims
Bowels and Belly Virgo gains;
The Reyns and Loyns are Libra’s part,
The Secrets Scorpio’s are by Art;
Thighs to the Archer do pertain.
And Capricorn the Knees doth gain,
Aquarius hath the Legs alone,
And Pisces must have Feet, or none.

John Tulley prepared a series of almanacs from 1687 through 1702. Not a Harvard graduate and heedless of the "philomath" tradition, he blatantly poked fun at almanac-makers with humorous predictions and short essays. What John Richardson had only briefly hinted at in 1670 became explicit in Tulley’s almanacs. The first bawdy almanac was born in 1688, with his May prediction: "Many Weddings this Month: but the people coupled very unequally, a sneaking Woodcock joyned to a wanton Wag-tail, a Henpeckt Buzzard to a chattering Magpie." In June, "The Sun is entred now into the Crab, / And days are hot, therefore beware a Drab; / With French diseases, they’ll thy body fill, / Being such as bring Grist to the Surgeon’s Mill." July’s verse was written in the same spirit: "Now wanton Lads and Lasses do make Hay, / Which unto lewd temptation makes great way, / With tumbling on the cocks, which acted duly, / Doth cause much mischief in this month of July."

By the time Daniel Leeds began his almanac, the format had become essentially fixed: a title page, a page of eclipses, general calendar information, calendar pages with appropriate verse, and a formal essay on science, religion, or history. Leeds added more variety. His standard almanacs also included addresses to the reader; news of religious groups, fairs, and courts; narratives, accounts, and anecdotes; interspersed sayings on calendar pages; and verse scattered from the first through the last page.

Leeds completed the conversion of the rather technical document

that the Harvard Philomaths established to what became, and has remained, the still living farmers’ almanac—however senescent its present state. The humor that obviously delighted the colonial farmer continued the tradition of English country humor that had surfaced in the mother country. This humor was homely, earthy, and rather coarse. It reflected, at its highest, the level of comic perception we associate with the British squirearchy rather than with the nobility. The level in the American colonies was certainly no higher. A peasant shrewdness surfaces in what wit there was. Indeed, the native propensity for wit was fed often by the almanackers’ inveterate habit of literary borrowing and paraphrase (without acknowledgement) from the productions of their English colleagues.

Gradually an American profile emerges, but it is not fully delineated until the advent of the Ames and the Franklin families of almanac-makers. Between them, they defined a popular American humor. This growth paralleled the rapid emergence of other aspects of American culture: furniture, domestic arts and architecture, political thought, pragmatic philosophy, and religion. The typical colonial was more American than colonial by the War of Independence; and this fact can be verified by a review of early almanac humor, which anticipated the humor of rural America after its independence.

The most prominent strands in the fabric of this humor outlined the contours of colonial life—the separate yet interdependent roles of man and woman, the mystique of the law and lawyers, the physician and his cures, the farmer and his animals, the lad and his lassie, parsons and prostitutes, poetry and truth. Although the poetry is often doggerel and the truth is at best proverbial, it is instructive (and sometimes delightful) to examine the qualities of humorous verse and prose in the almanacs. The almanacs exhibit an occasional subtlety, but their persistent earthiness, which is their most winning embodiment, illustrates the essence of American humor.

From early in its life, the colonial almanac conveyed a large share of its humor (and its wisdom) in verse of sorts, typically copied or paraphrased from British sources, including almanacs. The development of this humor may be easily traced: first, the humorists parodied the traditional almanac format; then they added sections about special occupational concerns; finally they treated life in its universal aspects.

Calendar verse was traditionally pastoral in theme. Changes in the seasons were celebrated throughout the eighteenth century in stately diction and meter, as in Stearns’s 1790 Universal Almanack:

"When blustering March winds cease aloud to blow, / And lessening drifts began to catch the plains: / . . . / And cheer the prospects of the hardy swains."

Concomitantly with the stately measures, bawdy jingles erupt with regularity, some of them interspersed under such column headings as "Remarkable Days." Samuel Clough’s Kalendarium Nov-Anglicanum for 1706 had presented this simplistic argument for February: "This Month of all the Twelve the shortest is, / For all the other longer are than this." But, in 1714 for August, Daniel Leeds alluded to more basic (though probably just as unarguable) seasonal effects on the human condition:

The Weather’s hot, days burning eye
Doth make the earth in favour frye,
Dick on the Hay doth tumble Nell,
Whereby her Belly comes to swell.
The Dog star now we hot do find,
And some have Dog tricks in their mind.

Nathaniel Ames II frequently used the technical devices of a real poet. The results in 1729, for February, are "Boreas’s chilly breath attacks our Nature / And turns the Presbyterian to a Quaker." In May, "MAY, like a Virgin quickly yields her Charms / To the Embrace of Winter’s Icy Arms." Another metaphor in June, "SOL’s scorching Ray puts Blood in Fermentation / And is stark naught to Acts of Procreation." In November, "Now what remains to Comfort up our Lives / Is cordial Liquor and kind loving Wives."

In the spaces opposite December 24–27, Titan Leeds in 1730 interspersed "Take my advice, & go to Bed, / And be content with whom thou’rt wed." In 1733, for July 1–4 (which seems to be the month most likely to elicit bawdy verse), Titan Leeds wrote, "A pretty Fellow in her Closet; / She consents poor Girl and does it."

Ames in 1745 returns to a favorite January theme: "Now Virgins will own / ‘Tis hard lying alone, / Such Weather as this." In 1750 Ames again alludes to conjugal warmth in the cold month of February: "Now freezing cold which makes old Maids to fret and scold."

James Franklin, Sr., Benjamin’s brother, began his Rhode-Island Almanack by ‘Poor Robin" in 1728, six years before the appearance of Poor Richard. All the Franklin almanac-makers (James Sr., Ann, James Jr., and Benjamin) parodied with a playfulness and subtlety unique in almanac literature. Poor Robin resembled his British namesake in spontaneity and good humor, and the satire, lighthearted and genial, was seldom coarse. Poor Robin spoke in

the manner of Ben Franklin’s Silence Dogood, Polly Baker, and Poor Richard. For example, in 1728 Robin cautioned his readers:

[Jan.] The best Physick in this Month, is warm Cloaths, good Fires, and a merry housewife. But beware of Counterfeits.

[Mar.] Now advise with a learned, honest and able Astrological or Hydrogegihipnotitharneupismanecedichial Physician; But in Cases of Necessity, you may make use of a Seventh Son.

Poor Robin’s Rhode-Island Almanack for 1729 was filled with James Franklin’s spoofs on prognostications. In January, "the Planets are very much addicted to Thieving," but Poor Robin has a cure:

. . . if a Man take the Gaul of a young Cow, and hide it severely in the East side of his own House, (if it has no East Side let him put it in the West Side,) and carefully watch it while the Temptation is upon him, it will prevent the ill fate that may attend him by the Advice of the vitious and light finger’d Planets.

February is "propitious to Lovers." Poor Robin has an infallible method for obtaining the heart’s desire:

In the Evening of Valentine’s Day, do you take two White Oak Leaves, and lay them across your Pillow, when you go to bed, putting on a clean Shift or Shirt, and turning it the wrong Side outwards, lay down and say these Words out aloud,

Good Valentine be kind to me, In Dreams let me my true Love see.

So carefully drawing your right Leg behind you, put it over your left Shoulder. In like manner put your left Leg behind you, laying it across your right Shoulder; and be sure take Care that the Soles of your Feet meet under your Chin. Then go to Sleep as soon as you can: And if you dream you see two Moons touching each other, you will certainly be marry’d very speedily. whether you be a young Man, Maid or Widow.

In August the planets promote "tattling." The remedy for this vice is

for the Tattler to go to a Brook which is govern’d by Luna, which is vulgarly called the Moon, or in Cases of Necessity to any other Brook, under no Government at all; and there let him or her take a Mouthful of Water . . . and hold it in his or her Mouth until the End of the Month. This is an approved Remedy, and never failed of Success.

Poor Robin for 1730 belittles astrology with "A Fable of the Anatomy of Man’s Body," running from the first page through the last. In November,

One tells you Aries rules my Head,

With the same Truth, he might have said
(Which Whimsy would as soon prevail,)
That Aries rules as well my Tail;
(Since Paper stain’d with such a Whim,
May serve [not Head, but] Tail to Clean;)
That Taurus rules my Neck; I hope,
He does not mean because, like Rope,
Or Noose, it seems, both Ends aslope;
That Bowels are cajol’d by Virgo,
That Libra weighs the Reins, a tergo;
And Leo boldly plays his Part,
And seeks for Prey upon my Heart;
That Sagitarius holds my Thighs,
While Scorpio at my Secrets plies;
That Capricorn makes Knees to meet,
And Pisces rules by turns my Feet,
My Arms by Gemini, Breast by Cancer,
Are rul’d.— All Lies, As I’m a Man, Sir.

The preface, which may be the most entertaining part of the almanacs, was Poor Robin’s forte. In 1728 he announced: "Tho I have not given you my proper Name, yet I assure you I have had one the greatest part of half an hundred Years; and I know of no Necessity for parting with it at this Time." And in 1723 Poor Robin explains that he can only make an almanac when he is distracted, never when in his "right Mind." He further ridicules almanac-makers with

The greatest Objection against my Almanack is, that I do not make use of the SIGNS. But the Reader may observe, that if he has a mind to cut himself or his Cattle, he has all the Parts of the Body. . . . And pray, Is not a Man’s own Head and Shoulders better than the Sign of his Head and Shoulders. . . . And as for the Weather, I have wrote it according to the Rules of Art, just as the Stars agreed upon it among themselves. Who then, when he is Wet to the Skin, will look for a Sign of Rain? or half froze, enquire for a Sign of cold weather?

Humor in the almanac’s addresses to the reader actually began with feuds between rival almanac-makers. These feuds began in 1703 with Samuel Clough and Nathaniel Whittenmore and ended in the 1790s with Isaiah Thomas and Robert B. Thomas (unrelated). The most famous of the feuds, of course, is the one between Benjamin Franklin and Titan Leeds, based on Jonathan Swift’s prediction of the death of John Partridge, an almanac-maker.

Franklin, as "Poor Richard," entered the almanac market because his good friend Titan Leeds was to die at 3:22 o’clock on October 17, 1733, when Sol and Mercury were in conjunction. Leeds insisted he was alive, but Poor Richard retorted that Leeds’s own words proved

Leeds was dead, since Titan could not possibly have written such a poor almanac. For example, no living astrologer could have written such bad verse.

In 1739 the Rhode-Island Almanack by "Poor Robin Revived," printed by the Widow Ann Franklin, is much like its predecessors. Poor Robin reminds the "Friendly Reader" that he never would have made an almanac "had not some malignant Planet or other compell’d" him to do so. After several years, he "receiv’d a Quietus from the Stars" and made no almanac for four years. Now the "Quietus" has been revoked by the stars, and he must return to his task. Like his British namesake, Poor Robin frankly admits

it is not my Intent to suggest that my present Performance proceeds from the Principles of a publick Spirit, far be it from me to lay hold of any vulgar Pretence, that hath already been made a common Prostitute to Ten Thousand ill Designs, when it is so well known that all the Pursuits of Mankind spring from a Principle of Self-Love.

If what the "Stars have imposed" is useful, "you shall be most heartily welcome, if you pay honestly for it."

American almanackers parodied weather forecasts and predictions in general. Titan Leeds in 1738 predicted for December 3 and 4, "A bad time for somebody." Ann Franklin in the 1741 "Poor Robin" inserted for October 20–23: "Tis Cold, ‘tis Cloudy, Rain or Hail, One of the four I hope won’t fail." Ames prophesied for May 1743: "There will be a vast Quantity of Bread and Wine rain’d down not many Days hence." And in 1744 for March, "Very dirty wet miry bad travelling except for the Geese overhead." In November 1780, Rittenhouse’s Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania Almanack stated with assurance: "A cow shall be heard to speak Latin."

Almanac-makers not only laughed at their own profession, but they also repeatedly scoffed at lawyers. Occasionally, satiric barbs were directed at clergymen and physicians. Most consistent, however, were the attacks on the legal profession.

America has a long history of vilifying lawyers. Since many colonials believed that the Holy Scriptures contained all the answers to man’s problems, lawyers were an unnecessary evil. From this ingrained antipathy to the legal profession there developed a custom among almanac-makers of satirizing lawyers. In 1684 the Boston Ephemeris had introduced a new feature to the almanac format by moving the times and places of court meetings from the calendar pages to a special section called OF COURTS. This section, usually placed immediately after the calendar pages, was frequently headed

with a satirical verse, especially in the American Almanack (from 1687 through 1737) by the Leeds family. In 1706 (and again in 1708) Daniel Leeds printed,

Lo, here’s a Trade surpasseth all the rest;
No change annoys the Lawyers’ Interest:
His Tongue buys Land, builds Houses without Toil,
The Pen’s his Plough, the Parchment is his Soil.

Daniel Leeds was using maxims in his almanac forty years before Franklin’s Poor Richard. For example, in 1710, "We think lawyers to be Wise, but they know us to be Fools." In 1712 a Leeds jingle informs us that poor "Will Woodcock" is spending all his money on lawsuits. He lost one case:

Another which he hoped to have try’d,
Is by Demurrer at present laid aside:
Nothing effected, only all his Money,
Is by the Lawyers swallowed down like Honey.

And Poor Will can muse, "as now he fells his Hay, Next Court will take his Cattle, too, away."

Titan Leeds, who at the age of sixteen took over his father’s almanac business, continued Daniel’s practice of verse in the OF COURTS section. In 1715 he reminds the reader that "The Lawyer takes the Case in hand, / When Goose sues at Law for Gander’s Land." In the same issue, Titan describes "an honest Lawyer" as "The glory of his Profession" and "The Scourge of Oppression" as long as he lives: "And when death calls him to the Bar of Heaven by a habeas Corpus," the honest lawyer simply exchanges his well-worn "silk" for his much-deserved "robes of glory."

In 1726 Titan playfully accuses the lawyers of fomenting fights in the best bear-baiting tradition. "Lest Bear Defendant and Plaintiff Dog should make an end on’t," the lawyers

Do strive and toil with Writs of Error,
Reverse of Judgment and Demurrer;
To let ’em breathe a while and then,
Cry Whoop! and set ’em on again.
Until with Subtil Cobweb Cheats,
They’re catch’d in knoted Law like nets,
In which when once they are imbrangled,
The more they flip, the more they’re Tangled;
And while their Purses can Dispute,
There’s no end of th’ immortal Suit.

Ben Franklin in Poor Richard for 1734 says, "Lawyers, preachers, and tomtit’s eggs, there are more of them hatched than come to perfection." Called "The Benefit of going to Law," a poem about an

argument over an oyster appeared in the 1735 Poor Richard. The judgment in the case,

Blind Plaintif, lame Defendant, share
The Friendly Laws impartial Care,
A Shell for Him, a Shell for thee,
The Middle is the Lawyer’s Fee.

Franklin’s "Epitaph on Another Clergyman" in Poor Richard Improved for 1755 is certainly one of the best examples of almanac wit:

Here lies, who need not here be nam’d,
For Theologic Knowledge fam’d;
Who all the Bible had by rote,
With all the Comments Calvin wrote;
Parsons and Jesuits could confute,
Talk Infidels and Quakers mute,
To every Heretick a Foe;
Was he an honest Man? . . . So so.

Next to lawyers, women and marriage were probably the most popular subjects for satire. In his 1729 almanac (printed by Keimer), Titan Leeds wryly comments on the "Marriage State":

In Marriage are two happy Days allow’d
A Wife in Wedding-Sheets and in a Shroud,
How can the Marriage State then be accurs’d,
Since the last Day’s as happy as the First?

(The first couplet is also found in Gleason’s Bickerstaffs Boston Almanack for 1777.)

The Genuine Leeds Almanack for 1734 contained a humorous prose piece that was neither essay nor anecdote. In the form of a list, the author enumerates "The properties of a good Horse necessary to be know’d and observed by the Buyer." In separate paragraphs are named the properties the horse has of a man, lion, hare, fox, ass, and a woman. The author seems fairly serious until he reaches the last comparison:

The 10 Properties a Horse hath of a Woman are 1. to be merry at Meat, 2. well paced, 3. broad Forehead, 4. broad Buttocks. 5. hard of Ward, 6. easy to be leapt upon, 7. good at a long Journey, 8. ever busy with the Tongue, 9. to be chewing the Bridle, and 10. to be active and stirring under a Man.

Nathaniel Ames II of Dedham, Massachusetts, was one of the finest American essayists of the eighteenth century. (He died in 1764, and his son Nathaniel, also a physician, continued the almanacs.) Because Ames’s works were published in almanacs, they have been largely ignored by anthologists and literary historians. Ames’s essays were sometimes philosophical, sometimes exhortatory,

sometimes simply factual, and sometimes scientific. His tone was occasionally humorous.

In an essay "On the Generation of Living Things" in 1736, Dr. Ames teaches biology. His Latin may not be impeccable, but his reasoning is sound. All animals, even "the most Contemptible Insect," are generated by parents, "Male and Female of the same kind." He traces the development of the botfly (which causes "botts" in horses) from worm to fly and back to worm again, when its egg is swallowed by the horse as he eats and drinks. Even in the production of these worms,

There must be an Ova from the Female, impregnated with an Animalcula from the Male. . . . "There is nothing in the Animal Machine, (as Dr. C. Mather observes) but an inconceivable Number of branching and winding Canals, filled with Liquors of different Natures, going a perpetual round, and no more capable of producing the wonderful Fabrick of another Animal, than a Thing is of making itself."

Some superstitious nurses, Ames adds, will not use "Worm-Seed" as a medicine for children unless every seed is pounded and "bruised in the Mortar," so that live worms will not grow "in the Bowels of the Child." The medicine, however, is quite safe; if these nurses

will prove that it will breed Worms in Children, I can as easily prove that it can breed Children in Women; and so those unhappy Persons who have had the ill luck to have Children without Fathers, need not lie under the imputation of Scandal, if they can produce sufficient Evidence that they have taken Worm-Seed.

For December 1743, Ames succinctly sums up cuckoldry: "Horns will sprout in a less Time than Mushrooms." Hutchins, in his 1753 almanac, also treats this popular theme:

On a Market Day, comes an Archer by the Crowd, and necking an Arrow, as if he intended to shoot, said with a loud Voice. Now, have at a Cuckold; a Woman (thinking he levelled that Way. and her Husband being by her) cries out. Stand away Husband, stand away Husband; why, you silly Jade. quoth he. I am no Cuckold, am I? No, no. quoth she: but you don’t know how a plaguy Arrow may glance.

The Maryland Almanack for 1764 has a story in verse that strikes at priests and at the foibles of women. "The MAD-DOG" describes "A PRUDE, at Morn and Evening Prayer." EVERY WEEK AT CONFESSION SHE COUNTS HER BEADS,

And sobbing. Blubbers forth her Sins.
Who could that tempting Man resist?

43

My Virtue languish’d, as he kiss’d;
I strove—till I could strive no longer.
How can the Weak subdue the Stronger?
    The Father ask’d her where and when?
How many? and what Sort of Men?
By what Degrees her Blood was heated?
How oft the Frailty was repeated?

The priest expresses his concern:

Madam, I grant there’s something in it.
That Virtue has the unguarded Minute;
But pray now tell me what are whores,
But Women of unguarded Hours?
Then you must sure have lost all Shame,
What ev’ry Day and still the same,
And no Fault else! ’tis strange to find
A Woman to one Sin confin’d!

He recommends doctors who send the patient "to the Ocean’s Shore, and plunge the Patient o’er and o’er." But the offender has already tried that cure. Naked, in daylight, and with fishermen all about, "What Virgin had not done as I did?" A "modest Hand" covered "The Seat where Female Honour lies, / And though thrice Dipt from Top to Toe, / I still secur’d the Post below." The author remarks that "all are mad—save you and me." First "bit," then "dipt," each kept some part dry: the thieves, their hands; the courtiers, their ears; etc. As for women,

They shut their Lips to hold their Breath,
And though you Duck them ne’er so long,
Not one salt Drop e’er wets their Tongue;
’Tis hence they Scandal have at Will,
And that this Member n’er lies still.

Social criticism found expression in verse and anecdotes. Poor Robin’s 1730 almanac verse suggests the concern of a cynic with social and political injustices:

As he that to Preferment gets,
May piss-a-Bed, and say he Sweats,
So if a rich Man plays with Whore,
A little Mammon clears the Score.
But if offend, should little Sinner,
He’d have good Whipping for his Dinner.

In 1734 Poor Robin philosophized in verse for November 14–16, 18:

"Some tell us Money is a Curse: So ’tis; but Want of Money’s Worse." Poor Job for 1755 by James Franklin, Jr., satirizes people in general: "Jews, Turks, and Christians, several Tenets hold, Yet all one God acknowledge; that is, Gold." Rivington’s New Almanack

and Ephemeris for 1775 by "Copernicus," in a context whose humor implies social criticism, shows the country bumpkin outsmarting the city slicker:

A Countryman sowing his Ground, two smart Fellows riding that Way, one of them called to him with an insolent Air: "Well, Honest Fellow," said he "’tis your Business to sow, but we reap the Fruits of your Labour." To which the Countryman replied, "’Tis very likely you may, truly; for I am sowing Hemp."

Scatological humor, too, appealed to colonial readers. Three and a half pages in the Virginia Almanack for 1775 were filled with "A WAGE whimsically won." Since the setting is British, the story was probably reprinted from a British publication. A comedian named Jemmy Spiller bets a friend that he can get accommodations at Epsom, an overcrowded vacation resort. Pretending to be deaf, Jemmy manages to occupy someone else’s room, thereby winning his bet. Mounted on his horse the following morning, he thanked his hostess for her hospitality.

During this short space, the lady having occasion to break wind, and not dreaming that he should be informed of the report, she stood not upon ceremony, but let fly with the voice of a cannon. At this salute Spiller cries out, "Well said, madam, by Heaven it was a rouzer; I hope you are better, madam; I think I never heard such a banging f--t in my life."

Another story, in Ellicott’s Maryland and Virginia Almanack for 1790 is called simply "Laughable Anecdote." Because a certain "Doctor Dover" had publicly

recommended the use of quick-silver . . . it became the medicine of high and low, till a lady of distinction, dancing at a public assembly, the quicksilver she had taken that morning dropt plentifully from her, and all bespangled the floor, which, by the glaring light of many candles, the gentlemen took them to brilliants, and stooped down to take them up accordingly; but finding it was only quick-silver, and judging from whence it came, they cried out, that somebody had scattered her diamonds, which occasioned a horse laugh among the gentlemen, and put all the ladies to the blush. This whimsical accident discredited the prescription.

The almanacs, in the later stages of their development, contained much humor of the sort found today in Joe Miller joke books. Thornton’s almanac for 1792 doubtless picked up this anecdote from a British source:

An Oxford scholar having been very extravagant, and having writ to his father to supply him with money, and used all means,

but nothing would do, he very ingeniously wrote to his Father that he was dead, and desired to send him up Money to pay for his burial.

The "Anecdote for little Men" in Banneker’s almanac for 1795 (printed by S. & J. Adams) was probably native American humor. A squelch puts the "rich man" in his place: "A VERY rich man of Colonial figure, being offended with a very little, and very poor man, desired he would be silent, or he would put him in his pocket—‘You had better,’ replied the Lilliputian, ‘put me in your head; there is more room’"

Our last example of anecdotal humor decidedly contrasts in complexity and subtlety with the childlike punning of a story in Poor Roger’s (Roger More) American Country Almanack for 1768. A physician told a lady "that her husband must get him an Appetite, she thinking he said an Ape tied, got an Ape, and tied it to his Bed." In anecdotes, taste had changed for the better by the end of the eighteenth century. Perhaps, if the Ameses and the Franklins had chosen the anecdote as a vehicle for expressing humor, we would have seen earlier examples of such anecdotal humor as the following from Briggs’ almanac for 1798:

A SCHOLAR, a bald man, and a barber, were traveling together, agreed each to watch four hours at night, in turn, for the sake of security; the barber’s lot came first, who shaved the scholar’s head when asleep, then waked him when his turn came. The scholar scratching his head, and feeling it bald, exclaimed, you "wretch of a barber, you have waked the bald man instead of me!"

This little story is a good example of the anti-intellectual theme in later American wit and humor.

In an article of limited compass, one can merely suggest rather than demonstrate the full riches of the early American almanac’s humor. This humor did not supplant the almanac’s originally utilitarian thrust, but rather served to augment the almanac’s popular appeal and hence its profitability.

The quality and subtlety of almanac humor do not generally advance to higher and higher levels on a chronological basis. A line graph would show peaks and valleys, reflecting differences in the talents of the almanac-makers. An earthy, bawdy strain of almanac humor persisted, however, throughout the colonial period, from its first written evidences. The more sophisticated humor of the Ames and the Franklin families, while drawing substantially from this bawdy strain, manifests superior deftness and, often, the keen edge

of wit. But this is simply to say that sheer talent takes these more literary almanac-makers to peaks beyond the capabilities of their more pedestrian competitors and successors.

    ¹Facsimiles of original almanacs quoted in this paper are found on microprint in Early American Imprints (American Antiquarian society), which is keyed by bibliographical entry number to Charles Evans, American Bibliography, 14 vols., vols. I–XIII ed. Clifford K. Shipton, vol. XIV ed. Roger Pattrell Bristol (publishers and dates vary, 1941–1959). Indexed chronologically by title and author in Evans under "almanacs," all sources can be easily located on microprint. Quotations are exactly reproduced from the microprint, except for paragraphing and typography (e.g., conventional s substituted for long s). Dates of almanacs refer to the year for which they were printed. When varying editions appeared with the same title for the same year, I have added the name of the printer. No selections are included of Revolutionary Period humor, since the types of humor are the same as those given.