36 Life of Count Rumford. 



volunteers. It was in summer weather, and the walk, 

 if a long one, was agreeable, by shady roads and green 

 fields, and easy hills and pleasant ponds. When the 

 friends returned home, they were in the habit of repeat- 

 ing the experiments which they had witnessed, and of 

 trying others, with rude apparatus of their own con- 

 trivance. It was as a grateful return for the favors 

 he had thus enjoyed at the College that Count Rum- 

 ford gave to it the endowment which founded the Pro- 

 fessorship that bears his name, to be fitly mentioned in 

 its proper place. 



Pictet must have again misapprehended his friend as 

 mentioning " Dr. Williams " as preceding Professor 

 Winthrop at Cambridge. Thompson could not have 

 heard the former as a lecturer, in the College. The 

 Rev. Samuel Williams, to whom probably the reference 

 is made, succeeded Winthrop in the Professorship in 

 1780, when Thompson was not in the country. He 

 was called to that position from the pastorship of the 

 Church in Bradford. As Thompson had taught school 

 in that town, he may have there received instruction 

 from the scientific minister. 



The following letter must interpret itself to the 

 reader. I can throw no light upon the occasion 

 of it. 



" WOBURN, May 4, 1770. 



" SIR, I just received your letter dated this day, the sequel 

 of which signifies your uneasiness with my conduct together 

 with a number of other persons concerned with me in rehears- 

 ing part of a play. I am not sensible we have transgressed the 

 laws of this Province. I have heard an argument relared for 

 and against the thing by persons well acquainted with Law : the 

 person for it (as I was informed) brought his antagonist to 

 acknowledge that there was such a hole in that law, that any 



