As one of
the lions of the country, he was much looked at, especially by
foreigners. We find a sketch of an interview with him in the Travels of
the Chevalier de Chastellux. De Lafayette and himself requested
permission to call "on that author so celebrated in America and in
Europe by his excellent work entitled 'Common Sense.'" Colonel Laurens
introduced them. "His physiognomy," the Chevalier thinks, "did not
belie the spirit that reigns throughout his works. Our conversation was
agreeable and animated, and such as to form a connection between us;
for he has written to me since my departure, and seems desirous of
maintaining a constant correspondence."
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.
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