1 6 Life of Count Rumford. 



his proper worktime, had been given to ingenious me- 

 chanical contrivances, soon leading to a curious interest 

 in the principles of mechanics and natural philosophy. 

 His guardians, of course, undertook, as their respon- 

 sibility, to engage him in the practical drudgery of 

 country life, that he might be fitted for work which 

 would promise direct results. So far as they found they 

 were likely to fail in this purpose, they would regard 

 him as indolent, flighty, and unpromising. 



He was also, for a while, a pupil in a school at Byfield, 

 under the charge of a family connection. In 1764, when 

 he was eleven years old, he was for a time put under the 

 tuition of Mr. Hill, an able teacher in Medford, a town 

 adjoining Woburn. Thus it would seem that the youth, 

 for one born in his sphere of life, was not neglected. 

 There is abundant evidence, likewise, that many kind 

 friends were interested in him before he began to draw 

 others to serve his aims. Young Baldwin alone was 

 invaluable to him. 



It being plain to his guardians that he was either 

 too good or too unpromising material out of which to 

 make a thriving farmer, the alternative was to train him 

 for a merchant or trader. To this end, on October 14, 

 1766, he was apprenticed to Mr. John Appleton of 

 Salem, an importer of British goods, and a dealer in all 

 the miscellaneous articles which formed the stock of a 

 warehouse in so flourishing and rich a place as that 

 town then was. Mr. Appleton was a man of great 

 respectability, and did a large business. I have before 

 me a bill for goods bought from the store, receipted by 

 Thompson when he was fourteen years old, which, for 

 grace of penmanship, mercantile style, and business-like 

 signature, might be regarded as proving that the youth 



