In the tenth Silence Dogood essay appearing in the 6-13 August 1722 issue of The New-England Courant, Dogood proposes a public program to raise money through subscriptions for a society to provide relief for poor widows. The mock-serious tone sometimes makes it difficult to know what is being said in jest, but here again (as in the fifth Silence Dogood essay), Franklin quotes at length from Daniel Defoe's An Essay upon Projects, only adding the he would leave the scheme for "the Consideration of all who are concern'd for their own or their Neighbour's Temporal Happiness; and I am humbly of Opinion, that the Country is ripe for many such Friendly Societies, whereby every Man might help another, without any Disservice to himself." In keeping with the general tone of the essay, Dogood closes with a mixture of sincerity and humor:

For my own Part, I have nothing left to live on, but Contentment and a few Cows; and tho' I cannot expect to be reliev'd by this Project, yet it would be no small Satisfaction to me to see it put in Practice for the Benefit of others.

To examine the entire newspaper, please see the online display of The New-England Courant, Number 54, 6-13 August 1722.

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