LIFE OF COUNT RUMFORD. 



CHAPTER I. 



Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Thompson. Ancestry and 

 Family of Thompson. His Birth. Death of his Father. 



His early Education. His own Account of his early 

 Tears. His Friends and 'Guardians. His School Days. 



Apprenticeship at Salem. Accident. Return to Wo- 

 burn. Memoranda. Apprenticeship in Boston. Medi- 

 cal Student. School-Teacher : Marriage. Military 

 Commission. Farmer. 



MASSACHUSETTS, during the second period of 

 its history, when, as a Province, it received its 

 chief magistrate and the authority for its administration 

 of government from the mother country, gave birth to 

 two men the most distinguished for philosophical genius 

 of all that have been produced on the soil of this con- 

 tinent. They were Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin 

 Thompson. They came into life in humble homes, 

 within twelve miles of each other, under like straits and 

 circumstances of frugality and substantial thrift. They 

 both sprang from English lineage, of an ancestry and 

 parentage yeomen on the soil on either continent, to be 

 cast, as their progenitors had been, upon their own 

 exertions, without dependence upon inherited means, or 

 patronage, or even good fortune. Born as subjects of 



