Franklin’s own celebration was to go shopping. With Mrs. Stevenson to guide him, he bought more presents for his wife and Sally—fourteen yards of Pompadour satin for a new gown, a silk negligee, a petticoat of “brocaded lutestring,” a Turkish carpet, crimson mohair for curtains, three damask tablecloths, and a box of “three fine cheeses.” “Perhaps a bit of them may be left when I come home,” he wrote hopefully to Debby. He had asked the Pennsylvania Assembly to let him come home but instead they appointed him agent for another year. 10 FRIENDSHIPS IN ENGLAND Some time early in 1766, a young man named Joseph Priestley, a dissenting minister and a teacher of classical languages in Warrington, Lancashire, came to see Franklin to ask his help for a history of electricity he was writing. Franklin gladly gave him assistance and told him of his kite experiment in more detail than he had done to anyone before. Impressed with Priestley’s scientific talents, he recommended him to membership in the Royal Society. Priestley more than fulfilled his expectations. A few years later he would discover oxygen—calling it by the cumbersome name of “dephlogistated air.” He also became a lifelong friend of the American colonies. Inevitably, the most brilliant scientists in England and the continent sought Franklin out and, except for a few jealous ones, were added to the circle of his friendships. Among the most intimate of these was John Pringle, whom he had met on his last English trip and who was now Sir John, personal Physician to England’s Queen. Samuel Johnson’s biographer, Boswell, once called on Pringle and found him and Franklin playing chess. Boswell wrote: “Sir John, though a most worthy man, has a peculiar sour manner. Franklin again is all jollity and pleasantry. I said to myself: Here is a prime contrast: acid and alkali.” With Pringle, Franklin took a trip to the continent in June 1766. They stayed first in Pyrmont, in what is now West Germany, a fashionable mineral springs resort. From there they visited Göttingen, where the Royal Society of Sciences elected both to membership. They met Rudolf Erich Raspe, narrator of the famous tall tales of the adventures of Baron Münchausen. In their turn, Pringle and Franklin entertained their new friends with stories about the giant Patagonians of South America, which neither of them had of course ever seen. When Franklin later read the newspaper accounts of their voyage, he noted with amusement that the Patagonians had grown even taller in the hands of the press.