His behavior toward those who lived in the vicinity of his country place endeared him to all the peasantry. He was not only liberal in giving alms, but made it a point to visit frequently the houses of the poor and help them as much as possible by counsel and suggestion. His scientific knowledge was at command for their benefit, and he was often able to tell them how to avoid many dangers. He gave them definite ideas with regard to the importance of cleanliness and the necessity of cooking their food very carefully so as to prevent diseases occasioned by badly cooked material. He also taught them to distinguish between the wholesome and the spurred rye, from which their polenta was prepared, in order to escape the dreaded pellagra, the disease so common in Italy, which comes from the use of diseased grain. He endeared himself so much to the people of the countryside that they invented a special name for him, which proclaimed the tenderness of their liking for the man. They knew how much he was honored for his wonderful discoveries in electricity, and many of them had even seen some of the (to them at least) inexplicable phenomena that he could produce at will by means of various electrical contrivances. At first they called him a "magician"; but as this word has, particularly for the Italian peasantry, a suspicion of evil in it, they added the adjective "beneficent," and he was generally known as _Il mago benefico_. His interest in these gentle, kindly people may be appreciated from the fact that he knew practically all of his country neighbors by name, and, as a rule, he was familiar also with the conditions of their families and their household affairs. Not infrequently he would stop and talk to them about such things, and this favor was always considered as a precious mark of his neighborly courtesy by the peasantry.