Author: George Lyman Kittredge

Publisher:

Published: 2015-07-04

Total Pages: 468

ISBN-13: 9781330686614

Excerpt from The Old Farmer and His Almanack Nothing is more strictly contemporary than an almanac, except, perhaps, a newspaper. It is issued for the time being, and it becomes obsolete, by a natural and inevitable process, when its successor appears. But this very quality of contemporaneousness which relegates last year's almanac to the dust heap, makes the almanac of a hundred years ago an historical document of some importance. An author who has his eye on posterity may distort his own environment in order to stand well with his future readers; but an almanac-maker is subjected to no such temptation. He appeals to the immediate present, and his records have all the value of incidental testimony. When Mr. Robert B. Thomas published the first number of his Farmer's Almanack, in 1792, he had no thought of providing material for the student of New England life and manners in the twentieth century. He wished to earn his living and to furnish his fellow-citizens with something better for their sixpence than they were in the habit of receiving from other purveyors of similar intellectual wares. If he had foreseen that his little annual would continue to be issued for more than a century, he would doubtless have been overwhelmed by the responsibilities of his undertaking. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.