Year after year the sayings of Richard Saunders, the alleged publisher, and Bridget, his wife, creations of Franklin's fancy, were printed in the almanac.

Years later the most striking of these sayings were collected and published.

This work has been translated into as many as twenty languages and is still in circulation today.
Franklin kept a shop in connection with his printing office, where he sold a strange variety of goods: legal blanks, ink, pens, paper, books, maps, pictures, chocolate, coffee, cheese, codfish, soap, linseed oil, broadcloth, Godfrey's cordial, tea, spectacles, rattlesnake root, lottery tickets, and stoves--to mention only a few of the many articles he advertised.

Deborah Read, who became his wife in 1730, looked after his house, tended shop, folded and stitched pamphlets, bought rags, and helped him to live economically.

"We kept no idle servants," says Franklin, "our table was plain and simple, our furniture of the cheapest.