One of the many scholars Franklin met at her salon was a talented young doctor named Philippe Pinel. Franklin advised him to come to America where doctors were badly needed. Pinel was tempted but refused—and became famous for his courage and wisdom in removing chains from the insane at the Paris hospitals of Bicêtre and Saltpêtrière. While John Adams and his wife Abigail were at Passy, Franklin invited Madame Helvétius to dinner. The worthy Abigail was horrified when Madame Helvétius kissed Franklin’s cheeks and forehead in greeting. Even more shocking in her eyes, the guest held Franklin’s hand at dinner and now and then let her arm rest on the back of John Adams’ chair. “I should have been greatly astonished at this conduct,” Abigail wrote afterwards, “if the good Doctor had not told me that in this lady I should see a genuine Frenchwoman, wholly free from affectation or stiffness of behaviour, and one of the best women in the world. For this I must take the Doctor’s word; but I should have set her down for a very bad one.” Whatever Abigail Adams thought, there is no doubt of Franklin’s devotion. Sometime—no one knows just when—he proposed marriage to Madame Helvétius. She refused him. Perhaps she was too accustomed to her own way of life to want to make a change. Perhaps she felt that his proposal was only a form of gallantry. Neither the proposal nor her refusal interfered with their friendship, which lasted as long as he stayed in France and by correspondence afterward. Since 1777 he had his own private press at Passy and a foundry to cast his own type. His excuse was that the press was useful with so many official forms to be prepared, but it was also true that printing was still in his blood and always would be. One of the pamphlets that came off the Passy printing press was “Information to Those who would Remove to America.” He thought too many of the wrong people wanted to emigrate to America for the wrong reasons, and he wanted to correct their misapprehensions. He discouraged artists and scholars who expected they would receive free transportation, land, slaves, tools and livestock from a rich but ignorant America. In America, a man who did not bring his fortune “must work and be industrious to live.” The chief resource of America was cheap land, he pointed out. Farm laborers were needed. Skilled artisans could make a good living and “provide for children and old age.” But “those Europeans who have these or greater advantages at home would do well to stay where they are.” To answer those who besieged him with questions about the Indians, he wrote “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America,” perhaps the first fair appraisal of America’s original inhabitants to be printed: