Your two last letters are those which have given me the greatest pleasure of any I ever recieved from you. The one announced that you were become a notable housewife, the other a mother. this last is undoubtedly the key-stone of the arch of matrimonial happiness, as the first is it’s daily aliment.

you were never more mistaken than in supposing you were too long on the prattle &c. of little Anne. I read it with quite as much pleasure as you write it.

when I shall be again be permitted to withdraw to that scene of quiet of retirement abstracted from which I know no happiness in this world.

no society is so precious as that of one’s own family.

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...

Mr Jeffersons. he looks much afflicted. the last letters, brought him news of the death of one of his daughters: he has a great deal of Sensibility.

A death-bed Adieu. Th:J. to MR....

My grandfather taught me to play chess, liked to play with me, and after our dinner, in summer time, he would have the chess board under the trees before the door, and we would have our game together. He had made, by his own carpenter and cabinet maker, John Hemmings, and painted by his own...

Our grandfather seemed to read our hearts, to see our invisible wishes, to be our good genius, to wave the fairy wand, to brighten our young lives by his goodness and his gifts.

I remember the planting of the first hyacinths and tulips, and their subsequent growth. The roots arrived, labelled each one with a fancy name. There was Marcus Aurelius and the King of the Gold Mine, the Roman Empress, and the Queen of the Amazons ... Then, when spring returned, how eagerly we...