His scientific and cultural interests were as varied as life itself. He was in turn occupied with the nature of mastodon tusks and teeth which a friend sent to London, with the transit of Venus, the causes of lead poisoning, population increase, geology, salt mines, Scottish tunes, whirlwinds and water-spouts, and the science of phonetics—the need of reforms to reduce the “disorderly confusion in English spelling”—and the curious fact that flies apparently drowned in a bottle of Madeira wine might sometimes be brought back to life. His observations on all these matters were published in _Letters on Philosophical Subjects_, and added to the fourth edition of “Experiments and Observations on Electricity.” Barbeu Dubourg, a Parisian printer, issued a French translation in two handsome volumes, which included “The Way to Wealth,” under the French title, “_Le Moyen de s’Enricher_.” Philadelphia, wrote Dubourg in his preface, was founded in the midst of the savages of America by William Penn, a man wiser than the Spartan hero Lycurgus. In less than a century the city had gone far beyond the ancient world in the practice of the purest virtues and the most useful arts. Benjamin Franklin, scientist, statesman, and sage, had now brought this heroic age to troubled Europe. The legend of Benjamin Franklin, which would mount to greater heights in France than anywhere else in the world, was already in the making. 11 THE TERRIBLE HUTCHINSON LETTERS At sixty-seven, Franklin had an expression at once benign, kindly, and humorous. His years in England had subtly altered his appearance and his manner. He dressed with elegance in a smooth wig and fashionable ruffles, and he was equally at ease with eleven-year-old Kitty Shipley or the King’s ministers. During the London season, he set out each afternoon in his coach, often with Temple, his lively grandson, to leave his card or pay calls on members of Parliament or other influential persons whom he wished to win over to the American cause. In the year 1773, he was most concerned with the threat of the British troops still stationed in Boston three years after the “Boston Massacre.” Wherever he thought it might help, he argued the folly of treating Bostonians like troublesome children. “I am in perpetual anxiety lest the mad measure of mixing soldiers among a people whose minds are in such a state of irritation, may be attended with some sudden mischief,” he wrote his Boston correspondent, Thomas Cushing. One day, during a conversation on this subject, a British “gentleman of character and distinction” told him that he was wrong to blame the English for the troops in Boston. They had been requested by some of his most respectable fellow countrymen.