… The house at Poplar Forest was very pretty and pleasant. It was of brick, one story in front, and, owing to the falling of the ground, two in the rear. It was an exact octagon, with a centre-hall twenty feet square, lighted from above. This was a beautiful room, and served as a dining-room....

No. 4.Life at Poplar Forest. Randall’s Life of Jefferson. vol. 3d P. 342. “Mr Jefferson had once owned I believe something like ten thousand acres of fertile land, (to which the name of Poplar Forest was given,) in the county of Bedford near Lynchburg in Campbell Co. I do not know when he began...

You are surprised to learn that I have not a high opinion of Mr. Jefferson and I am a little surprised at your surprise ... I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty, or civilisation, or both ... Thinking thus, of course, I cannot reckon...

Then he had lived abroad and he had introduced into his own household many of what were called foreign ways. He ate with a silver fork when other people used steel. He would have his plate changed several times during dinner, a habit not observed, in those days, by country gentlemen generally ......

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...

Some of his innovations, his theoretical novelties, so absurd in practice were mere anticipations of other men’s ideas. He built a light open carriage after a plan of his own with leather tops which closed at will, and he used it for all purposes of driving & travelling. This carriage was...

What you say in one of your letters of my grandfather’s being considered by a great many persons as a theorist, a man of projects, an innovator, set me to thinking how far there might be truth in these views of his character. He certainly had a good deal of ingenuity in contrivance—a good deal of...

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...

Books were at all times his chosen companions.