Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Volney

I hope I shall see you in Georgetown, and certainly shall if the movements of the stage will permit it: for I [. . .] prefer that conveyance to travelling with my own horses, because it gives me, what I have long been without, an opportunity of plunging into the mixed characters of my country, the most useful school we can enter into, and one which nothing else can supply the want of. I once intimately knew all the specimens of character which compose the aggregate mass of my fellow-citizens. but age, office, & literature have too long insulated me from them. I find that either their features or my optics have considerably changed in twenty years.

PoC (DLC). Published in PTJ, 29:352–53.