8 Life of Count Rumford. 



" 4 Ah ! ' he replied, c shortly after the death of my father my 

 mother contracted a second marriage, which proved for her a 

 source of misfortunes. A tyrannical husband took me away 

 from my grandfather's house with her. I was then a child ; my 

 grandfather, who survived my father only a few months, left 

 me but a very slender subsistence. I was then launched at the 

 right time upon a world which was almost strange to me, and I 

 was obliged to form the habit of thinking and acting for myself, 

 and of depending on myself for a livelihood. My ideas were 

 not yet fixed; one project succeeded another, and perhaps I 

 should have acquired a habit of indecision and inconstancy, per- 

 haps I should have been poor and unhappy all my life, if a 

 woman had not loved me, if she had not given me a subsis- 

 tence, a home, an independent fortune.' 



" 1 1 married, or, rather, I was married, at the age of nine- 

 teen. I espoused the widow of a Colonel Rolfe, daughter of the 

 Rev. Mr. Walker, a highly respectable minister, and one of the 

 first settlers of Rumford. He was already connected with my 

 family. He had made three voyages to England on matters of 

 public interest. He was a very cultivated man, and of a most 

 generous character. He heartily approved of the choice of his 

 daughter, and he himself united our destinies. This excellent 

 man became sincerely attached to me ; he directed my studies, 

 he formed my taste, and my position was in every respect the 

 most agreeable that could possibly be imagined.' . 



" Here a pang of feeling checked him. I dropped the subject 

 till the next day. Such are my notes. 



u Unexpected circumstances drew him from this peaceful 

 retreat, and snatched him from those favorite studies which 

 would probably have formed the principal occupation of his 

 life, in order that he might play a part on the great stage of 

 the world, for which he would not seem to have been pre- 

 pared." * 



* Marc Auguste Pictet was born in 1752, in Geneva, where he died in 1825. He 

 was highly distinguished as a philosopher in Natural Science, and as a statesman and 

 man of letters, founder of the Society of Physics at Geneva, and member of the 

 French Institute and the Royal Society. In 1796, with his brother Charles, and 



