In common with most of the clever men of his day, Paine, as we have said, cultivated a taste for mechanics and natural science. There was an awakening of the mind, in physics as well as in politics, at that period; and it must be confessed that the natural philosophers have succeeded better than the constitution-makers. Paine's mechanical hobby was an iron bridge. A single arch, of four hundred feet span, and twenty feet in height from the chord-line, was to be thrown over the Schuylkill, near Philadelphia. The idea was suggested to him by a spider's web, a section of which the bridge resembled; and the principle he worked upon was, that the small segment of a large circle was preferable to the great segment of a small circle. Paine made a complete model of his bridge, in wrought iron and wood, at Bordentown; but, finding that the insufficiency of capital and of skill in the working of iron in America would prevent him from carrying out his plan, he sailed for France to lay his model before the Académie des Sciences. Franklin, who always liked him, gave him letters to the celebrated Malesherbes, Le Roy, the Abbé Morellet, the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, introducing him "as an ingenious, honest man, author of 'Common Sense,' a famous piece, published here with great effect on the minds of people at the beginning of the Revolution." He had also a satisfactory credential from Congress, in the shape of the following resolution, adopted by that body in August, 1785:-- "_Resolved_, That the early, unsolicited, and continued labours of Mr. Thomas Paine, in explaining and enforcing the principles of the late Revolution, by ingenious and timely publications upon the nature of Liberty and Civil Government, have been well received by the citizens of these States, and merit the approbation of Congress." TRIAL TRIP OF THE "FLYING CLOUD." "Through in four days to San Francisco," repeated I. "Marvellous age!" I hastily computed the distance by an air-line, and placed the speed of the craft at some thirty miles an hour. That seemed reasonable enough. Indeed, the whole statement cohered marvellously well; all the parts harmonized with each other and looked plausible, even reasonable, as I have said, except the grand fact itself, which was too momentous for belief. But why should it not be true? What new achievement of the human mind ought to startle one in this nineteenth century, after having witnessed the wonders of steam and electro-magnetism? I determined to sift the matter, but immediately remembered that all the knowledge I had of it had been imparted to me in the strictest confidence. The ingenious inventors, as was clearly their right, had reserved it to themselves to choose the time and way of making their invention public, when it was to break on the world, some fine morning, like the discovery of a second moon performing its orbit round the earth. I sunk into a brown study.