His mind seems to have had no torpid moments, except, perhaps, when some Congressional orator was speaking. When, in early life, he had nothing else better to do, he would address himself to making magic squares and circles as intricate as Rosamond's walk. "He took it into his head," James Logan wrote to Collinson, "to think of _magical squares_, in which he outdid Frenicle himself, who published above eighty pages in folio on that subject alone." Not willing to be outdone even by Stifelius, Franklin drew a square of such extraordinary numerical properties that not only did the numbers on all the rows and diagonals on its face total 2056, but the sum of the numbers on every group of 16 smaller squares on its face, when revealed through a hole in a piece of paper, moved backwards and forwards over its face, equalled precisely 2056 too. He likewise drew a magick circle, consisting of 8 concentric circles, and 8 radial rows, filled with a series of numbers, from 12 to 75, inclusive, so disposed as that the numbers of each circle or each radial row, being added to the central number 12, they made exactly 360, the number of degrees in a circle; and this circle had, moreover, all the properties of the square of 8. Both of these conceits were duly forwarded to Collinson and, with regard to the square of 16, Franklin wrote to him playfully that he made no question but that he would readily allow that it was the most magically magical of any magic square ever made by any magician. From the terms of this letter, it is plain that the practical intellect of Franklin was a little ashamed of these feats as but _difficiles nugæ_, but his misgivings were somewhat soothed by the suggestion of Logan that they might not be altogether useless if they produced by practice an habitual readiness and exactness in mathematical disquisitions.