24 Sketch of the Early History of Count Rumford. 
some time despaired of. Having at length partially recovered, he 
was removed to his step-father’s in Woburn; but before he was able 
to return again to Salem, the non-importation agreement entered 
into by the Americans had destroyed Mr. Appleton’s business, and 
he was thus thrown out of employment. About this time, that is, 
when he was about fourteen years of age, he astonished his friends 
by producing a small piece of engraving which he had executed 
upon the brass cover of a pocket compass, with no other instrument 
than one of his own construction. The engraving, it is said, would 
not do discredit to a professed engraver at the present day, and is 
now in the possession of his relative in Maine. 
The next winter,—the winter of 1768-69,—we find young Thomp- 
son teaching school in Wilmington, Mass., it being, I think, his first 
attempt of the kind; and the following summer he spent in Woburn, 
attending to the study of anatomy and physiology. In the winter of 
1769, he was employed as a clerk in Boston, in the store of Mr. 
Hopestill Capen, who kept in Union street; but the business not 
suiting his inclination, he remained there but a few months. Mr. 
Capen once told his mother, that ‘‘ he oftener found her son wnder 
the counter, with gimblets, knife, and saw, constructing some little 
machine, or looking over some book of science, than behind it, ar- 
ranging the cloths or waiting upon customers.” Here he was on 
the 5th of March, 1770, rendered memorable by the British massa- 
cre, as it has been called, and subsequently by the stirring eloquence 
of Dr. Warren in commemoration of the event. With other young 
men, whose feelings were powerfully excited by the atrocities of the 
British soldiery, he was with difficulty restrained from attacking them 
on the spot. 
I may remark here, that Thompson’s conduct on this occasion 
would not seem to favor the assertions of Cuvier and others, who 
affirm that, in the difficulties that led to the American Revolution, he 
was from the first, in principle and feeling, attached to the govern- 
ment party. But I shall have occasion to refer to this again. 
In the spring of 1770, he returned again to Woburn, and during 
the summer, in company with his early and constant friend, the late 
Col. L. Baldwin, of Maine, he walked daily to Cambridge, a dis- 
tance of nine miles, and back at night, to attend as a charity scholar 
the regular course of philosophical lectures in Harvard University. 
Speaking of these lectures at a late period of his life, he said he 
looked upon the few weeks he attended them, as the most delightful 
