I take advantage of the first mail since the receipt of your letter dated the 5th of May, to answer it My Dear Nicholas, and assure you that you were right in supposing that the charge of little Mary would be as much my happiness as my duty. I already feel warmly interested in the poor little...

The clouds and mist which have envelloped us continually, have I fear imparted some of their dullness to my brain, for in several attempts that I have made to write to you, My Dearest Nicholas, I have found it too barren to furnish one page of sense. I wish the sun would deign to show his blessed...

You will not think, I know, my beloved Virginia, from my tardiness in answering your two last letters, that my heart has been backward in acknowledging the tenderness that breathes throughout them.— They show me that I am loved as I wish to be;—as I, myself, Love: do not therefore be too...

I wish, my dearest Love, I had another letter from you, to answer today, for they are certainly by far my greatest source of pleasure. next comes that of writing to you, and the consciousness that I am preparing pleasure to “her whom I love best on earth”; which you see I indulge in tolerably...

I hope the fever which you have had is not the prelude of a more serious attack, My Dear Nicholas, but as this is the most sickly part of the year I would recommend great care of your health, to preserve which, strict attention to the diet, regular exercise before the heat of the day, and an...

No apology is due to me Dearest Nicholas for any delay in answering my letters, who have now before me two of yours unanswered. It is really a singular circumstance that loving you, and thinking of you as much as I do, I should still be so much under the influence of a habit contracted in early...

Your last, written more than six weeks ago, informed me of the existing indisposition of several of the family. A “mere circumstance,” how ever, I suppose; since I am indebted, for any alleviation of my uneasiness on the subject, to an “all’s well” in a letter Browse lately got from Francis.—I am...

Though I am labouring under a tolerably bad head ache, the effect of having got so much interested last night, in Stewart’s Philosophy of the human Mind, which I have bega begun to study, as to sit up two or three hours after my usual bed time (11 o’clock); I will not let a mail pass without...

I am surprised that you do not Receive my letters in due time, for those your Brother and self write me, are seldom more than 21 days before they reach me and a free communication with your self and Brother is the greatest happiness that I at present enjoy, I am sorry to hear that you have been...

Since I wrote you about the negroes of my brother Lewis encumbered to the Bank, I ascertained that the chancellor had awarded an Injunction, but that I had not been apprized of it owing to the failure of the counsel I employed to write to me, which caused me a great deal of trouble. I find that...

It is just a year to day, my dear Nicholas since we left Monticello together, you, anticipating a long fatiguing journey, I, a short and pleasant one (in your society in spite of bad weather and roads) and a winter of gaiety & amusement—Time as he bears us along with him frequently appears to...

I received your welcome favor of the 21st October last Evening I had been expecting Brother a letter from your Brother not having had that pleasure for some time but he seems not to have that feeling towards me that wou’d excite much sensibility or he wou’d delight in giving pleasure to his poor...