Mr. Jefferson entered; and if I was astonished to find Mr. Madison short and somewhat awkward, I was doubly astonished to find Mr. Jefferson, whom I had always supposed to be a small man, more than six feet high, with dignity in his appearance, and ease and graciousness in his manners ... ... To...
The evening passed away pleasantly in general conversation, of which Mr. Jefferson was necessarily the leader ... He has the same discursive manner and love of paradox, with the same appearance of sobriety and cool reason. He seems equally fond of American antiquities, and especially the...
Perhaps the most curious single specimen—or, at least, the most characteristic of the man and expressive of his hatred of royalty—was a collection which he had bound up in six volumes, and lettered “The Book of Kings,” consisting of the “Memoires de la Princesse de Bareith,” two volumes; “Les...
The evening passed away pleasantly in general conversation, of which Mr. Jefferson was necessarily the leader. I shall probably surprise you by saying that, in conversation, he reminded me of Dr. Freeman. He has the same discursive manner and love of paradox, with the same appearance of sobriety...
We left Charlottesville on Saturday morning, the 4th of February, for Mr. Jefferson’s. He lives, you know, on a mountain, which he has named Monticello ... The ascent of this steep, savage hill, was as pensive and slow as Satan’s ascent to Paradise. We were obliged to wind two thirds round its...
nothing is more incumbent on the
old than to know when they should get out of the way, and relinquish to younger successors the honors they can no
longer
earn, and the duties they can no longer perform.
I have no idea of selling the land. I view it in some degree as a public trust, and would on no consideration permit the bridge to be injured, defaced or masked from the public view
As to what is to be said of myself, I of course am not the judge. but my sincere wish is that the faithful historian, like the able Surgeon, would consider me in his hands, while living, as a dead subject: that the same judgment may now be expressed which will be rendered hereafter, so far as my...
I am lately become a brewer for family use, having had the benefit of instruction to one of my people but by an English brewer of the first order. I had noted the advertisement of your book in which the process of malting corn was promised & had engaged a bookseller to send it to me as soon...
I find more amusement in studies to which I
was always more
attached, and from which I was dragged by the events of the times in which I have
happened to
live.
not in our day; but at no distant one, we may shake a rod over the heads of all, which may make the stoutest of them tremble. but I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be.
I trouble you now with a piece of business. on the destruction of the library of Congress, I thought it a duty to offer them mine. I had been 50. years collecting it, with good opportunities, and it’s selection, more than it’s number of volumes had peculiarly adapted it to their uses. I must now...
I make in my family 2000. yds of cloth a year, which I formerly bought from England, and it only employs a few women, children & invalids who could do little in the farm.
On the subject of the history of the American revolution, you ask who shall write it? who can write it? and who ever will be able to write it? nobody; except merely it’s external facts. all it’s councils, designs and discussions, having been conducted by Congress with closed doors, and no member,...
I presume, like the rest of us in the country, you are in the habit of houshold manufacture, and that you will not, like too many, abandon it on the return of peace, to enrich our late enemy, and to nourish foreign agents in our bosom, whose baneful influence & intrigues cost us so much...