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Again, poor Richard says, "It is foolish to lay out money in a purchase of repentance;" and yet this folly is practised every day at auctions, for want of minding the almanack. “Wise men (as poor Dick says) learn by others harms, fools scarcely by their own.” Many a one, for the sake of finery on the back, have gone with a hungry belly and half starved their families.
"Silks and satins, scarlet and velvets, (as poor Richard says) put out the kitchen fire.” These are not the necessaries of life, they can
scarcely be called the conveniences; and yet, only because they look pretty, how many want to have them? The artificial wants of mankind thus become more numerous than the natural and, as poor Dick says,
“For one poor person, there are a hundred indigent."
By these and other extravagancies, the genteel are reduced to poverty, and forced to borrow of those whom they formerly despised, but who,
through industry and frugality, have maintained their standing; in which case it appears plainly, that "a ploughman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees," as poor Richard says, Perhaps they have had a small estate left them, which they knew not the getting of; they think, "it is day, and will never be night;" that a little to be spent out of so much is not worth minding: A child and a fool (as poor Richard says) imagine twenty shillings and twenty years can never be spent; but always taking out of the meal-tub, and never putting in, soon comes to the bottom;"
