This philosophical levity of tranquillity, so to speak, is shown in his easy variety of pursuits.
Printer, postmaster, almanac maker, essayist, chemist, orator, tinker, statesman, humorist, philosopher, parlor man, political economist, professor of housewifery, ambassador, projector, maxim-monger, herb-doctor, wit:--Jack of all trades, master of each and mastered by none--the type and genius of his land.

Franklin was everything but a poet.

But since a soul with many qualities, forming of itself a sort of handy index and pocket congress of all humanity, needs the contact of just as many different men, or subjects, in order to the exhibition of its totality; hence very little indeed of the sage's multifariousness will be portrayed in a simple narrative like the present.

This casual private intercourse with Israel, but served to manifest him in his far lesser lights; thrifty, domestic, dietarian, and, it may be, didactically waggish.

There was much benevolent irony, innocent mischievousness, in the wise man.