Titan Leeds and the Great Almanac Hoax – Blog #4A

17 thoughts on “Titan Leeds and the Great Almanac Hoax – Blog #4A”

1. Your Almanck contained so many pearls of wit-dom over the years that it may be impossible for you to pick your very favorite, but can you mention one or two pearls that you know belong in your own “top ten”?

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   • Citizen Eberhart I do thank you for that undeserved, but always welcome praise. I did say that “many people argue about religion who have never practiced it,” and I enjoyed my own wit (probably more than others enjoyed it), when I said that “a learned blockhead is a greater fool than an ignorant blockhead.” I will not tell you which of my peers I was thinking of when I coined that particular aphorism….

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2. I do agree with both of these and find the first particularly apt in the current political climate.

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3. Since you only gave the poor Mr. Leeds at year to live, it seems you were hoping to create a monopoly in the almanac business! And since you demonstrate altruistic motives in so many of your professional activities, often surrendering the opportunity to profit from them, what is your attitude about the value of competition in the market?

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   • Madam Haas, I thank you for your question about competition. I never opposed gain, even personal gain. I only thought, and said that “He who thinks money can do all things can well be accused of doing all things for money.” I was a vigorous and engaged competitor for what you would call in your times “market share,” and in that competition, strived to do things in an ethical manner. I am all in favor of competition…particularly when I win!

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     • Haha! Sounds as if Mr. Leeds had no idea that he had just provided you with the best free advertising!

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       • It is human nature, madam, to want to know more about those who are publicly decried as scoundrels and guilty of bad taste. One wants to know what that bad taste was! So yes, Mr. Leeds stimulated exactly the kind of interest in my “Poor Richard’s Almanac” that I was seeking!

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         • You are clever!

4. No Madam, merely nudging the public in the direction it wants to fall.

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5. There seem to be so many contradictions in your nature. Cannot help but wonder how you reconcile the Dashwood years with the subsequent impression of you as an example of moral probity. After all, didn’t you have a wife taking care of your domestic matters at home, during this time?

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6. After your long and sucessful life is there, in retrospect, any major thing or things that you would wish to un-do or to have done differently?

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   • My good Sir,
     Inasmuch as you are the author of these two questions, I shall answer them both forthwith. Regarding the contradictions in my nature: one might take these various facets as “contradictions” or, were one to be more charitable, the different facets of a diamond. And the Dashwood “years” as you call them were hardly such. My good friend, Sir Francis Dashwood, did invite me on one or two occasions to visit his club, which, in the spirit of conviviality I did willingly. As is the case with all such clubs, whose affairs are kept secret from the general public, the imagination soars to all sorts of tales most conducive to shock and outrage. “Reputation,” as Shakespeare reminds us, “is oft got without merit and lost without deserving.” And yes, my Debbie did elect, despite my entreaties, to remain in Philadelphia during the many years of my service in London. I never set myself up as an “example of moral probity,” as you put it, but rather sought virtue in all its forms. Being human, I never achieved perfection.

     As to your second question, one cannot live 84 years without many regrets and I will be sharing some in these musings at another date. One of my most terrible and haunting regrets has to do with the controversy surrounding the new idea of vaccination against the dreaded smallpox. And this became very much a family matter.

     Thanking you for your queries, dear Sir, I remain,
     yr faithful and obedient servant.

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     • Bien dit, Ben

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7. ok…help me dis-spell or confirm a belief on Ben. His later political view was called “pendulum politics”. Where we swing back and forth in America on a party/direction and then back. As time moves forward the party/issue transforms and maybe hence, progress. Hence, his view was that we will always go back and forth from party to party as each fails or becomes unpopular…Documented? dream? bar talk? help me Ben ke nobi, you are my only hope.

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   • Citizen Piotter,
     Your phrasing indicates that you addressed your query to my often undependable business manager, Mr. Lowell, but I shall answer myself.

     I know not who misinformed you to the extent that you describe, but I suspect it was a dastardly Tory. If by “pendulum politics” you mean that after 15 years of labored negotiations with the British, and after being throughout this time a loyal Briton only to have my loyalty repaid by treachery, and only after this treachery did I become a revolutionary, then yes, I am guilty of “pendulum” politics. I had no view on political parties good Sir, for we had none in my time. I became a revolutionary in a definitive way after my unjustified excoriation in the House of Lords by Mr. Wedderburn (I shall discuss this one day in a separate journal entry in these pages). Once I declared, by signing the Declaration of Independence, my stance, I wavered not and remained committed to the union of our separate States for the remainder of my life.

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     • ahhh…ok- to clarify- I wasnt refering to you personally good sir. I was refering to your, lets say, “vision” of what these here United States will be and, as well, SOME historical references, but not to you. I find it interesting that in the past several years we seem to have become a body of pendulum swayers to our challenges.

       with respect…I do give pause to this 18th century term of…what was it???? “wimps” you called us. my my must have donned the quill after a few spirits!!!
       thank you good sir and I need not say i am impressed as always with your wit and creativity.

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8. Dear Citizen Piotter,
   Although I thank you for the compliment paid regarding my wit and creativity, you may wish to retract it, as I am at a loss to understand the gist of your question. If, in your time, your vision of what the United States should be has become muddied or seems to swing, pendulum-style, I’m not at all certain that this is necessarily a bad thing. Muddy waters become clarified when men and women of good will mean them to be so. Questioning and rethinking one’s purpose is never ill-advised. We deliberately built into the Constitution provision for change, for amendment, for addressing the issues of times that we would never know. I trust that such a process is now at work in your society.
   With my best regards, Sir, I am…
   Yr faithful and obedient servant

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