Count Rumford was born in Woburn, Mass., in 1753. He was apprenticed to
a storekeeper in Salem in 1766. He became an object of distrust among
the friends of the cause of American freedom: and, on the evacuation of
Boston by the Royal troops in 1776, he was selected by Governor
Wentworth of New Hampshire to carry dispatches to England. He left
England in 1802, and resided in France from 1804 until his death in
1814. In 1772, he had married, or rather, as he put it, he was married
by, a wealthy widow, the daughter of a highly respectable minister and
one of the first settlers at Rumford, now called Concord, New Hampshire.
It was from this town that he took his title of Rumford when he was
created a Count of the Holy Roman Empire in 1791. His first wife having
died, he married in Paris, the wealthy widow of the celebrated chemist,
Lavoisier; and with her he lived an extremely uncomfortable life until
they agreed to separate.

In his essay on coffee and coffee making, Count Rumford gives us a good
pen picture of the preparation of the beverage in England at the
beginning of the nineteenth century. He says:

Coffee is first roasted in an iron pan, or in a hollow cylinder,
made of sheet iron, over a brisk fire; and when, from the colour of
the grain, and the peculiar fragrance which it acquires in this
process, it is judged to be sufficiently roasted, it is taken from
the fire, and suffered to cool. When cold it is pounded in a
mortar; or ground in a hand-mill to a coarse powder, and preserved
for use.

Formerly, the ground Coffee being put into a coffee-pot, with a
sufficient quantity of water, the coffee-pot was put over the fire,
and after the water had been made to boil a certain time, the
coffee-pot was removed from the fire, and the grounds having had
time to settle, or having been fined down with isinglass, the clear
liquor was poured off, and immediately served up in cups.

Count Rumford thought it a mistake to agitate the coffee powder in the
brewing process, and in this he agreed with De Belloy. His improvement
on the latter's pot is described in chapter XXXIV. He was a coffee
connoisseur; and as such was one of the first to advocate the use of
cream as well as sugar for making an ideal cup of the beverage. He
refers, though not by name, to De Belloy's percolation method and says,
"Its usefulness is now universally acknowledged."

_A Few Definit