I am happy to hear of his good health. I think he will outlive us all, I mean the Declaration-men, altho’ our senior since the death of Colo Floyd. it is a race in which I have no ambition to win. man, like the fruit he eats, has his period of ripeness. like that too, if he continues longer...

you propose a more Quixotic task in the reformation of what may be deemed defective in our constitution. no, my dear friend; nothing could allure me again into the furnace of politics. while engaged in the various functions of the government, duty required me to go straight forward, regardless of...

You express a wish and a hope that I may have been writing memoirs of myself. while in public life, my whole time has been absorbed by the duties that laid me under; and now, when the world imagines I have nothing to do, I am in a state of as heavy drudgery as any office of my life ever subjected...

You say I must go to writing history. while in public life, I had not time: and now that I am retired, I am past the time. to write history requires a whole life of observation, of enquiry, of labor and correction. it’s materials are not to be found among the ruins of a decayed memory. at this...

I have had a long attack of rheumatism, without fever, & without pain while I kept myself still. a total prostration of the muscles of the back, hips, & thighs deprived me of the power of walking, and leaves it still in a very impaired state. a pain, when I walk, seems to have fixed...

I give more time to exercise of the body than of the mind, believing it wholesome to both.

each of the three departments has equally the right to decide for itself what is it’s duty under the constitution, without any regard to what the others may have decided for themselves under a similar question.But you intimate a wish that my opinion should be known on this subject. no, dear Sir....

Another of our friends of 76. is gone, my dear Sir, another of the Co-signers of the independance of our country. and a better man, than Rush, could not have left us, more benevolent, more learned, of finer genius, or more honest. we too must go; and that ere long.

He enjoys his dinner well, taking with meat a large proportion of vegetables. He has a strong preference for the wines of the Continent, of which he has many sorts of excellent quality, having been more than commonly succesful in his mode of importing, & preserving them ... Dinner is served...

I live so much like other people, that I might refer to ordinary life as the history of my own. like my friend the Doctor, I have lived temperately, eating little animal food, & that, not as an aliment so much as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principal diet. I double...