Page:Republican Court by Rufus Griswold.djvu/259

Thomas Mann Randolph, of Tuckahoe, whom he describes as "a young gentleman of genius, science, and honorable mind, who afterward filled a dignified station in the general government, and the most dignified in his own state." On the first of March, he left home for the seat of government, to assume his duties as Secretary of State. In Philadelphia, he writes to Madame la Comtesse d'Houdetot, "I found our friend Dr. Franklin in his bed — cheerful, and free from pain, but still, in his bed. He took a lively interest in the details I gave him of your revolution. I observed his face often flushed in the course of it. He is much emaciated." It was in this interview that Franklin confided to him the manuscript, now lost, of one of the most important portions of his personal memoirs.

The fine weather of December and January had been succeeded in the later winter by rains and blustery snows, and Mr. Jefferson had an extremely tedious and disagreeable passage to New York, which he described the week after its conclusion in a letter to his son-in-law. "I arrived here," he says, "on the twenty-first instant, after as laborious a journey, of a fortnight, from Richmond, as I ever went through — resting only one day at Alexandria, and another at Baltimore. I found my carriage and horses at Alexandria; but a snow of eighteen inches deep falling the same night, I saw the impossibility of getting on in my own carriage: so left it there, to be sent to me by water, and had my horses led on to this place,

Eppes, your Aunt Skipwith, your Aunt Carr, or the little lady from whom I now enclose a letter, and always put the letter you so write under cover to me. Take care that you never spell a word wrong. Always, before you write a word, consider how it is spelt, and, if you do not remember it, turn to a dictionary. It produces great praise to a lady to spell well. I have placed my happiness on seeing you good and accomplished; and no distress which this world can now bring on me would equal that of your disappointing my hopes. If you love me then, strive to be good under every situation, and to all living creatures, and to acquire those accomplishments which I have put in your power, and which will go far towards ensuring you the warmest love of your affectionate father.

Th. Jefferson.

"P.S. Keep my letters and read them at times, that you may always have present in your mind those things which will endear you to me."