Here you are all got together at this sale of fineries and nick-nacks. You call them GOODS; but, if you do not take care, they will prove EVILS to some of you. You expect they will be sold cheap, and perhaps they may, for less than they cost; but, if you have no occasion for them, they must be dear to you. Remember what poor Richard says, “Buy what thou hast no need of, and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessaries.” And again, “At a great penny-worth pause a while.” He means, that perhaps the cheapness is apparent only, but not real; or the bargain, by straitening thee in thy business, may do thee more harm than good. For in another place he says,
“Many have been ruined by buying good pennyworths.”
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 have starved their families.
“Silks and satins, scarlets 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 Richard says, “For one poor person there are a hundred indigent.”
By these and other extravagancies, tho genteel are reduced to poverty, and forced to borrow of`
