these reveries ... leave me always impressed with the desire of being at home once more, and of exchanging labour, envy, and malice, for ease, domestic occupation, & domestic love & society, where I may once more be happy with you, with mr. Randolph, & dear little Anne, with whom even...

There was a time when I should have ballanced between Mr. Jefferson & Mr. Adams; but I now view the former as a man of sublimated & paradoxical imagination—cherishing notions incompatible with regular and firm government.

Fryday night I Spent with the Philosophical society. The Meeting was thin: but I was not able to perceive any great superiority to our Academy, except in the President. There are able Men however, and I was agreably entertained. Mr Jefferson was polite enough to accompany me: so you see We are...

I hope you are getting well, towards which great care of yourself is necessary: for however adviseable it is for those in health to expose themselves freely, it is not so for the sick. you will be out in time to begin your garden, & that will tempt you to be out a great deal, than which...

Mr. Madison & myself are so far on the tour we had projected ... we were more pleased however with the botanical objects which continually presented themselves. those either unknown or rare in Virginia were the Sugar maple in vast abundance, the Thuya, silver fir, White pine, Pitch pine,...

I inclose you some seeds of the Acacia Farnesiana, the most delicious flowering shrub in the world.

The interests of a nation, when well understood, will be found to coincide with their moral duties. among these it is an important one to cultivate habits of peace & friendship with our neighbors. to do this we should make provision for rendering the justice we must sometimes require from...

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend. during the whole of the last war, which was trying enough, I never deserted a friend because he had taken an opposite side; and those of my own state who joined the British...

during the ensuing summer came on the war-fever. those who caught it seemed to consider every man as their personal enemy who would not catch their disorder, and many suffered themselves to think it was a sufficient cause for breaking off society with them.

I have one of the Scotch threshing machines nearly finished. it is copied exactly from a model mr Pinckney sent me, only that I have put the whole works (except the horse wheel) into a single frame moveable from one field to another on the two axles of a waggon.