Journal of Sarah Eve, April 4, 1773

I think for the future I will not be so particular about the weather, and will only notice what is rather uncommon. At this season there is such a sameness in the weather it only makes so much tautology to notice it, and I am quite out of patience, for there is nothing like "sweet variety." I have many times thought what a mercy it was, that I did not take it in my head to set down in this Tally, the exact time of the rising and setting of the sun every day, the southing of the moon, and how often the wind changed ; and yet upon second thought, I don't know but it would have been best, for I need only to have collected a few recipes, old sayings & scraps of poetry, and in a year or two I might have published as good an almanack as Father Abraham's, Poor Richard's, or even Mr. Taylor's. "But now," says mama, "we have no such almanacks as his was I"¹

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¹ The first issues of Poor Bichard's Almanac were, as is well known, published by Franklin. It was continued by Franklin and Hall, and by Hall and Sellers. Father Abraham's was to some extent fashioned after it, and was printed by Dunlap, the editor being Abraham Weatherwise. Taylor's Almanac was earlier even than Franklin's. It was calculated by Jacob Taylor, and in 1702, James Logan spoke of him as "a young man who had wrote a pretty Almanac for this year." In these days of cheap printing, when encyclopaedia and digests are at the command of every one, it is hard to realize the important part the almanac bore in the every-day life of our ancestors. To them it was cook-book and family physician; prophet, poet, and historian. Many a lesson of morality has been conned with its warning precepts, and more than one Lycurgus has begun his studies with it. Strung on a cord, and hung by the side of the chimney-place for easy reference, the number increased by the issue of each succeeding year, they formed a "Handy Series," which defied for a time the enterprise of publishers. Stained with dirt and smoke, dog-eared and imperfect, they have come down to us, puzzles to bibliographers, delights of antiquarians, and horrors of librarians. But, unsightly as they are, the future writer of American Folk Lore cannot pass them by in silence.

SOURCE: “Extracts from the Journal of Miss Sarah Eve,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1881), p. 29