Jefferson Quotes & Family Letters

It was with the greatest pleasure I received the letter which you were so good as to write me on the 22nd May. but which by the post appears not to have been forwarded untill Sometime in June—and a few days since I had the additional pleasure in of receiving a letter which your Grand-Mother did me the honor of addressing me on the 25th ult:—I cannot express the grateful sensations I felt at such unmerited favors—I hardly looked for any thing more than a dry, short and formal letter announcing a respite of the unfavorable opinion which you had a right to form against me—judge then how happy, how delighted I must have felt at receiving not only your kind letter but one from your Grand-Mother—Be so good as to thank her in my name and tell her I will beg leave to trouble her with a letter by the next post—I delayed for some days answering your letter, being unwilling to write untill I could inform you as to the book you desired me to send—There was an Edition published¹ in New Orleans but I preferred waiting for some days in order to procure the one printed in Paris—which I send you by this Post—with the same address as is on this letter—You may depend that any thing which I can do for Mr Gilmer in any part of this country will be attempted by me with pleasure and punctuality—I am going to attend the Court at Donaldsonville in about ten days hence and as I am also going to attend the Supreme Court which sits as you know during the summer months in the Western part of the State, I do not expect to return to the City untill sometime in October next—I will then perhaps return by Placquemine and would make it my business should I return that way I way to call on Mr Baldwin and settle Mr Gilmer’s business if I could in the interim receive intelligence from him or you relative to it—at all events it will always be in my power to have any thing he may have to do executed and hope you will do me the favor to permit me on this as on all other occasions to shew that I am ever mindful of all I owe to you and your family for your kindness, attentions and notice of me—You cannot conceive the obligations I owe your father, your mother & your Grand mother Mrs Brown—if I am able now to address you—it is from their excessive attentions to me while unwell—If I did not write to you, it was not be assured from any common neglect, but one which included in it, my beloved, my by me deserted parents—I had come to the resolution of not putting pen to paper untill almost perfectly recovered and of pursuing sans relachement my pleasures and my amusements to the neglect of every other object but my [. . .] health—even overlooking my studies and sometimes the duties of my profession—from all this which was in consequence of Dr Lambert’s particular advice. I have derived the advantage and benefit of now being in the enjoyment of my health—it has not been so good for these many Years—Your father I find wrote to you relative to my amours—I am in truth very much in love & I find from your letter as well as from what your father informed me of when lately at Lafourche that you are much in the same way—I have not however so far lost all sense of reason as to imagine my belle a paragon of perfection or a perfect Goddess, neither do I presume to put her in competition with [. . .] I presume to be yours though you have been so [. . .] as not to mention her name—It would hardly be possible to find united elsewhere all those motives of attractions & admiration which M— so eminently possesses—I hope you have long since received the Spanish Arm chairs which your father ordered for you and which I sent sometime since to Mr Bolton Jackson in Baltimore to be by him forwarded to Mr Moses Myers Norfolk, Virginia and by him to Mr Bernard Peyton Richmond and thence to Charlottesville—by the last post I had a letter from Mr Jackson dated the 20th June he tells me that he had already forwarded the chairs to Mr Myers in Norfolk with directions to forward them to Mr Peyton—I must now say a few words of Browse—how is he?—Does he recollect me?—He is I know a little more rigid in character than you—I am therefore still in trepidation as to what sentence he may pronounce on me for my negligence—Be so good to remember me to him—tell him I will soon write to him—your friend Davis was well when I last saw him, but looked I thought rather like a convalescent—he is occasionally unwell—Present my best respects to your Grand-Mother and believe me with sincerity & esteem your faithful and attached friend and servant