Life of Count Rumford. 15 



opportunities provided by law in Massachusetts, there 

 was afforded a better training, and to better results, than 

 are realized now from .all our elaborate provisions for 

 public education.* 



Thompson, like other youths, was entitled only to a 

 "grammar-school education," that is, to be taught to 

 read, to spell, to write, to construct sentences gram- 

 matically, and to understand the rules of arithmetic. 

 The range was a narrow one compared with that which 

 is professedly covered now.- But the lessons that were 

 taught, and the way of teaching them, were such as to 

 quicken the faculties, and to excite, if it was latent in 

 the pupil, a desire for more, while affording him help 

 to attain it. There was also an able and faithful min- 

 ister in young Thompson's parish, the Rev. Josiah 

 Sherman, a part of whose official duty it was to exercise 

 a supervision over the village school and over fatherless 

 children. There were no manuals for English grammar 

 in those days, and as a substitute was found in a Latin 

 text-book, a bright pupil incidentally acquired "an 

 entrance" into that tongue. 



Thompson indicated from .his early years an incon- 

 stancy and indifference to the homely routine tasks 

 and the rural employments which were required of him, 

 while, at the same time, he exhibited an intense mental 

 activity, a spirit of ingenuity and inventiveness, and was 

 found seeking for amusement in things which afterwards 

 proved to lead him to the profitable and beneficent 

 occupations of his mature life. He showed a particular 

 ardor for arithmetic and mathematics, and it was remem- 

 bered of him, afterwards, that his playtime, and some of 



* Lecture in Historical Course before the Lowell Institute, on "Education in Mas- 

 sachusetts: Early Legislation and History," February 16, 1860. 



