Fryday night I Spent with the Philosophical society. The Meeting was thin: but I was not able to perceive any great superiority to our Academy, except in the President. There are able Men however, and I was agreably entertained. Mr Jefferson was polite enough to accompany me: so you see We are...

good husbandry with us consists in abandoning Indian corn, & tobacco, tending small grain, some red clover, fallowing, & endeavoring to have, while the lands are at rest, a spontaneous cover of white clover. I do not present this as a culture judicious in itself, but as good in comparison...

I become daily more & more convinced that all the West India islands will remain in the hands of the people of colour, & a total expulsion of the whites sooner or later take place. it is high time we should foresee the bloody scenes which our children certainly, & possibly ourselves ...

to satisfy myself by enquiry from the best farmers of all the circumstances which may decide on the best rotation of crops; for I take that to be the most important of all the questions a farmer has to decide.

Hamilton is ill of the fever as is said. he had two physicians out at his house the night before last. his family think him in danger, & he puts himself so by his excessive alarm. he had been miserable several days before from a firm persuasion he should catch it. a man as timid as he is on...

I am then to be liberated from the hated occupations of politics, & to sink into the bosom of my family, my farm & my books. I have my house to build, my feilds to farm, and to watch for the happiness of those who labor for mine.

I am sorry La Motte has put me to the expence of 140lt for a French translation of an English poem, as I make it a rule never to read translations where I can read the original.

I have imagined and executed a mould-board which may be mathematically demonstrated to be perfect, as far as perfection depends on mathematical principles ... it is on the principle of two wedges combined at right angles, the first in the direct line of the furrow to raise the turf gradually, the...

I am become more firmly fixt to the glebe. if you visit me as a farmer, it must be as a condisciple: for I am but a learner; an eager one indeed but yet desperate, being too old now to learn a new art. however I am as much delighted & occupied with it as if I was the greatest adept.

I now employ a dozen little boys from 10. to 16. years of age, overlooking all the details of their business myself and drawing from it a profit on which I can get along till I can put my farms into a course of yeilding profit. my new trade of nail-making is to me in this country what an...

but I think I have observed that your countrymen who have been obliged to work out their own fortunes here, have succeeded best with a small farm. labour indeed is dear here, but rents are low, and on the whole a reasonable profit & comfortable subsistance results. it is at the same time the...

I, like other people, am so much the dupe of the fondness for the natale solum as to believe seriously there is no quarter of the globe so desireable as America, no state in america so desireable as Virginia, no county in Virginia equal to Albemarle & no spot in Albemarle to compare to...