292 Life of Count Rumford. 



which I have been able to obtain. The Count shows 

 his willingness to renounce, even on his daughter's be- 

 half, all claims which she or he might have upon the 

 estate of his deceased wife, and he assumes the whole 

 responsibility of her maintenance henceforward, and of 

 provision for her survival ; covenanting, however, as a 

 condition, that no charges for the past should be set up 

 against him or her. This requisition he enforces with 

 a threat concerning last wills and testaments to be 

 insured by a foreign sanction. Miss Sarah's Grand- 

 father Walker had left her a legacy of .140 when she 

 should be married, or be eighteen years of age. On 

 this the Count had computed interest from the com- 

 pletion of her eighteenth year up to the time of his 

 writing. This he required for her, with a generous 

 stipulation that it should revert at her decease to the 

 Walker family. He. tenderly demands for her also 

 some keepsake of affection, if it be but " a string of 

 beads," of the lonely mother whom she had loved. 



I am inclined to think that the parties concerned 

 made no serious effort in reference to the Count's in- 

 validated rights to the shares in some wild land in 

 Maine. 



A lively account will be found further on, from the 

 daughter's pen, of the celebration of her father's birth- 

 day which suggested to him the proposition submitted 

 to the selectmen of Concord. The Count did not ex- 

 ercise his usual discretion, and seems to have become 

 wellnigh oblivious of the characteristics of his native 

 land, when he suggested the introduction here of one 

 of the most odious customs of the Old World, in associ- 

 ating a grotesque pauper uniform with a beneficiary 

 institution. Children so disfigured in their array would 



