The man who thus became the founder of this remarkable institution was in many ways a most extraordinary person. He was an American by birth, and if not the most remarkable of Americans, he surely was destined to a more picturesque career than ever fell to the lot of any of his countrymen of like eminence. Born on a Massachusetts farm, he was a typical "down-east Yankee," with genius added to the usual shrewd, inquiring mind and native resourcefulness. He was self-educated and self-made in the fullest sense in which those terms can be applied. At fourteen he was an unschooled grocer-lad--Benjamin Thompson by name--in a little New England village; at forty he was a world-famous savant, as facile with French, Italian, Spanish, and German as with his native tongue; he had become vice-president and medallist of the Royal Society, member of the Berlin National Academy of Science, of the French Institute, of the American Academy of Science, and I know not what other learned bodies; he had been knighted in Great Britain after serving there as under-secretary of state and as an officer; and he had risen in Bavaria to be more than half a king in power, with the titles, among others, of privy councillor of state, and head of the war department, lieutenant-general of the Bavarian armies, holder of the Polish order of St. Stanislas and the Bavarian order of the White Eagle, ambassador to England and to France, and, finally, count of the Holy Roman Empire. Once, in a time of crisis, Rumford was actually left at the head of a council of regency, in full charge of Bavarian affairs, the elector having fled. The Yankee grocer-boy had become more than half a king. Never, perhaps, did a man of equal scientific attainments enjoy a corresponding political power. Never was political power wielded more justly by any man. For in the midst of all his political and military triumphs, Rumford remained at heart to the very end the scientist and humanitarian. He wielded power for the good of mankind; he was not merely a ruler but a public educator. He taught the people of Bavaria economy and Yankee thrift. He established kitchens for feeding the poor on a plan that was adopted all over Europe; but, better yet, he created also workshops for their employment and pleasure-gardens for their recreation. He actually banished beggary from the principality.