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...

a nailery which I have established with my own negro boys now provides completely for the maintenance of my family, as we make from 8. to 10,000 nails a day

I am become the most industrious & ardent farmer of the canton and have so much to do to recover my farms from the desolated state in which I found them after a ten years absence, that I have no fear of ennui.

I am entirely a farmer, soul and body, never scarcely admitting a sentiment on any other subject

our citizens are divided into two political sects. one which fears the people most, the other the government. you will readily judge in which of these the people themselves are. for my part I have no fear of a people, well-informed, easy in their circumstances, dispersed over their farms, &...

By the breaking of my carriage the first half mile of the journey I am baulked in my intention of being at Dover today. Counting with great certainty upon being there I have not given any orders to D. Nowling about hiring negroes for my Brother John. I wish little Joe and Abraham to be hired for...

I lodge him & find provisions; but give no liquor. this is an absolute article, as I never saw work go on well if the workman had liquor. it is therefore a point which I never give up.

political conversation I really dislike, & therefore avoid where I can without affectation. but when urged by others, I have never concieved that having been in public life requires me to bely my sentiments, nor even to conceal them. when I am led by conversation to express them, I do it with...

In private life Mr. Jefferson displays a mild, easy and obliging temper, though he is somewhat cold and reserved. His conversation is of the most agreeable kind, and he possesses a stock of information not inferior to that of any other man.

I examined with great satisfaction your barometrical estimate of the heights of our mountains, and with the more as they corroborated conjectures on this subject which I had made before. my estimates had made them a little higher than yours (I speak of the blue ridge.) measuring with a very nice...