Still the estates were so extensive that under ordinary circumstances they might have, been brought into order. But the war of 1812 was ruinous to the Southern planter. He himself describes the state of affairs during the war: home" by people who really thought they were rendering him a compliment by "paying their respects." As early as 1815 he had found it necessary to raise money apart from his usual receipts. He offered his valuable library for sale to ConFor this he received $23,950. This gress. sum proved only a temporary relief. In 1816 he placed the management of his affairs in the hands of his young grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph. The young man did all that man could do, and in the effort to relieve his grandfather sunk the whole of his own large patrimony. In 1825 his affairs had come to a crisis. Money must be had to meet his debts. No Mr. Benton thus characterizes the state of his still unproductive landed property; but still one could be found who could or would buy the country soon after the war: "By the total annihilation in value of the produce which was to give me subsistence and independence, I shall be, like Tantalus, up to the shoulders in water, yet dying with thirst. We can make, indeed, enough to eat, drink, and clothe ourselves; but nothing for our salt, iron, groceries, and taxes, which must be paid in money. For what can we raise for the market? Wheat? we can only give it to our horses, as we have been doing ever since harvest. Tobacco? it is not worth the pipe it is smoked in. Some say whisky; but all mankind must become drunkards to consume it." "No price for property or produce; no sales but those of the sheriff and the marshal; no purchasers at the execution sales but the creditor or some hoarder of money; no employment for industry; no demand for labor; no sale for the product of the farm; no sound of the hammer but that of the auctioneer knocking down property. Stop laws, property laws, replevin laws, stay laws, loan-office laws, the intervention of the legislator between the creditor and the debtor-this was the business of legislation in threefourths of the States of the Union-of all south and west of New England.” During all this time the necessary-or what seemed necessary-expenses of Jefferson's household were enormous, owing to the constant influx of visitors. There were few eminent men who did not consider it a sort of duty to "pay their respects" to Jefferson. They came of all nations, at all times, and for all lengths of time. One New England judge, for example, brought a mere letter of introduction, and tarried three weeks. One of Jefferson's granddaughters writes: "We had persons from abroad, from all the States of the Union, from every part of the State-men, women, and children. In short, almost every day, for at least eight months of the year, brought its contingent of guests. People of wealth, fashion, men in office, professional men-military and civil-lawyers, doctors, Protestant clergymen, Catholic priests, members of Congress, foreign ministers, missionaries, Indian agents, tourists, travelers, artists, strangers, friends. Some came from affection and respect, some from curiosity, some to give or receive advice or instruction, some from idleness, some because others set the example." there were, doubtless, many who would risk a small sum for the chance of gaining a large estate. Jefferson proposed to dispose of his lands by lottery. To enable him to do this required a special act of the Virginia Legislature. He asked for this legal permission. "To me," he wrote, "it is almost a question of life and death......If it is permitted, my lands, mills, etc., will pay every thing, and will leave me Monticello and a farm free. If refused, I must sell every thing here, perhaps considerably in Bedford, move thither with my family, where I have not even a log-hut to put my head into, and where ground for burial will depend on the depredations which, under the form of sales, shall have been committed on my property." The Legislature doubted and haggled, but finally passed the bill. Meanwhile private persons, learning of his distress, sent him something. From New York came $8500; from Philadelphia $5000; from Baltimore $3000. But this was all swallowed up in part payment of debts. From his own State of Virginia came an abundance of fair words, but nothing more. Before the lottery scheme could be carried into execution Jefferson had passed from earth, his death having been preceded by a few weeks by that of Anne Bankhead, his eldest granddaughter. Six months after his death his furniture was sold at auction to pay his debts; Monticello was advertised for sale at the street corners; and Martha Randolph, who, in a letter written almost with his dying hand, is called Monticello, moreover, was some miles distant "my dear and beloved daughter, the cherished -and by very rough roads-from any tavern. companion of my early life, and the nurse of Visitors, even the most casual, could only arrive my age," went forth apparently penniless into late in the day. According to the old Virgin- the world. One gleam of light shines through ian views of hospitality, it could hardly be omit- this gloom. On learning the destitute condition ted that they should be asked to dinner; and, in which Mrs. Randolph was left, the Legislaas all rode or drove over, their horses and driv- tures of South Carolina and Louisiana each ers must also be cared for. Many, indeed, granted her a donation of $10,000—" acts," so came so late that it seemed unavoidable that writes one of those descendants, "which will they should be invited to stay overnight. Mrs. ever be gratefully remembered by the descendRandolph said that she had once been unex-ants of Martha Jefferson." pectedly called upon to provide accommoda- Two episodes which marked the later years tions for the night for fifty persons. It was like keeping a large hotel where no bills were to be paid. Jefferson was, in the most literal sense of the phrase, "eaten out of house and of Jefferson's life must be noted before we record its closing scenes. During the fierce political struggles of 1805 and the following years an estrangement had sprung up between Adams and Jefferson. Both | the year before last. I found the number to be old friends longed for a reconciliation. This, one thousand two hundred and sixty-seven, by the intervention of Benjamin Rush, took many of them requiring answers of elaborate place in 1812, Adams making the first direct research, and all to be answered with due atadvance, to which Jefferson warmly responded. tention and consideration. Is this life? At "My dear old friend," he writes, "a letter best it is the life of a mill-horse, who sees no from you calls up recollections very dear to my end to his circle but in death." In 1823, in a heart. It carries me back to the times when, letter to Adams, is found the estimate of the beset with difficulties and dangers, we were fel- character of Napoleon already quoted. In the low-laborers in the same cause, struggling for same year: "Crippled wrists and fingers make what is most valuable to man-his right to writing slow and laborious. But while writing self-government......No circumstances have sus- to you I lose the sense of these things in the pended for one moment my sincere esteem for recollection of ancient times when youth and you, and I now salute you with unchanged af- health made happiness out of every thing. I fection and respect." forget for a while the hoary winter of age, when There are few of Jefferson's many letters more we can think of nothing but how to keep ourcharacteristic than those written after this date selves warm, and how to get rid of our heavy to Adams. In 1816 he writes: "You ask if I hours until the friendly hand of death shall rid would agree to live my seventy, or rather sev- us of all at once." He then goes on to speak of enty-three, years over again. To which I say, a "hobby on which he was fortunately mountyea. I think, with you, that it is a good world, ed;" this being “the establishment of a union the whole; that it has been framed on a prin-versity on a scale more comprehensive, and in ciple of benevolence, and more pleasure than a country more healthy and central, than our pain dealt out to us......I steer my bark with Hope in the head, leaving Fear far astern. My hopes, indeed, sometimes fail, but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy." Again, in 1818, upon learning of the death of Mrs. Adams: "Tried myself in the school of affliction by the loss of every form of connection which can rive the human heart, I know well and feel well what you have suffered, are suffering, and have yet to endure. It is some comfort to us both that the term is not very distant at which we are to deposit in the same cerement our sorrows and suffering bodies, and to ascend in essence to an ecstatic meeting with the friends we have loved and lost, and whom we shall still love and never lose again. God bless you, and support you under your heavy affliction!" These are the words of one who has been held up as an atheist. Again, in 1822: "It is very long, my dear Sir, since I have written to you. My dislocated wrist is now become so stiff that I write slowly and with pain, and therefore write as little as I can. Yet it is due to mutual friendship to ask once in a while how we do. The papers tell us that General Stark is off at the age of ninety-three. Charles Thompson still lives at about the same age-cheerful, slender as a grasshopper, and so much without memory that he scarcely recognizes the members of his household......I have ever dreaded a doting old age; and my health has been generally so good, and is now so good, that I dread it still. The rapid decline of my strength during the last winter has made me hope sometimes that I see land. During summer I enjoy its temperature; but I shudder at the approach of winter, and wish I could sleep through it with the dormouse, and only wake with him in spring, if ever." In the same year he writes to Adams complaining of the burden of his correspondence. “I happened," he says, "to turn to my letterlist some time ago, and a curiosity was excited to count those received in a single year. It was old William and Mary." The University of Virginia was indeed the work of Jefferson's last years, and in the epitaph which he wrote for himself it is one of the three things recorded. He describes himself as "Author of the Declaration of Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia;" directing that, save name and date of birth and death, there should be "not a word more" placed on his monument. Jefferson's last letter to Adams was written March 26, 1826, three months and five days before that Fourth of July when both passed from earth. It reads: "DEAR SIR,-My grandson, Thomas J. Randolph, the bearer of this letter, being on a visit to Boston, would think he had seen nothing were he to leave without seeing you. Although I truly sympathize with you in the trouble these interruptions give, yet I must ask for him permission to pay to you his personal respects. Like other young people he wishes to be able, in the winter nights of old age, to recount to those around him what he has heard and learned of the heroic age preceding his birth, and which of the Argonauts individually he has seen. "It was the lot of our early years to witness nothing but the dull monotony of a colonial subservience, and of our riper years to breast the perils of working out of it. Theirs are the halcyon calms succeeding the storms which our argosy had so stoutly weathered. Gratify his ambition, then, by receiving his best bow, and my solicitude for your health by enabling him to bring me a favorable account of it. Mine is but in different, but not so my friendship and respect for you." In 1824 Lafayette visited America, after an absence of more than forty years. At Jefferson's urgent request he visited him at Monticello. Their meeting is thus described by an eye-witness: "The lawn on the eastern side of the house at Monticello contains not quite an acre. On this spot was the meeting of Jefferson and Lafayette on the latter's visit to the United States. The barouche containing Lafayette stopped at the edge of this lawn. His escort-one hundred and twenty mounted men-formed on one side in a semicircle extending from the carriage to the house. A crowd of about two hundred men, who were drawn together by curiosity to witness the meeting of these two venerable men, formed themselves in a semicircle on the opposite side. As Lafayette descended from the carriage Jefferson descended the steps of the portico. The scene which followed was touching. Jefferson was feeble and tottering with age-Lafayette permanently lamed and broken in health by his long confinement in the dungeon of Olmütz. As they approached each other their uncertain gait quickened itself into a shuffling run, and exclaiming, ‘Ah, Jefferson!' 'Ah, Lafayette!' they burst into tears as they fell into each other's arms. Among the four hundred men witnessing the scene there was not a dry eye-no sound save an occasional suppressed sob. The two old men entered the house as the crowd dispersed in profound silence." Early in the spring of 1826 the health of Jefferson began to fail. He told his grandson that he thought he might last till midsummer. From that time the decline went on, slowly but surely, until the 24th of June. On that day he wrote to his physician, Dr. Dunglison, asking him to visit him, as he "was not so well." On the same day he wrote a letter to General Weightman in reply to an invitation to attend, at Washington, a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. He declined the invitation on the score of ill health. This letter, the last which he ever wrote, evinced that, however feeble in body, his mental vigor was unimpaired. For a week more he sunk more rapidly. He, as well as all others, knew that the end was at hand. Once his grandson told him that he thought there was some improvement in the symptoms. "Do not imagine for a moment," was the reply, "that I feel the smallest solicitude about the result. I am like an old watch, with a pinion worn out here, and a wheel there, until it can go no longer.' Once, on being suddenly aroused from sleep, he thought he heard the name of the clergyman at whose church he attended. "I have no objection to see him," said Jefferson, "as a kind friend and good neighbor." The grandson, to whom this was said, understood from this that, his religious opinions having been formed upon mature study and reflection, he did not desire the attendance of a clergyman in his official capacity. His parting interview with his family, on the 2d of July, was calm and composed. He told his daughter that in an old pocket-book in a certain drawer she would find something intended for her. This proved to be these few lines of verse, composed by himself: A DEATH-BED ADIEU FROM TH. J. TO M. R. Life's visions are vanished, its dreams are no more; Dear friends of my bosom, why bathed in tears? I go to my fathers; I welcome the shore Which crowns all my hopes, or which buries my cares. Then farewell, my dear, my loved daughter, adieu! The last pang of life is in parting from you. Two seraphs await me long shrouded in death; I will bear them your love on my last parting breath. To his grandchildren he spoke many words of calm and serene wisdom, impressing upon them admonitions, the cardinal points of which were "to pursue virtue, be true and truthful." One of the children, a lad of eight years, seemed somewhat bewildered. "George," said the old patriarch, with a smile, "does not understand what all this means." Then, when all had been said, Jefferson murmured, lowly but audibly, those words which have murmured through men's hearts for eighteen centuries: "Lord, now lettest Thou thy servant depart in peace." On the next day, Monday, July 3, his slumbers were evidently those of approaching dissolution. He slept until evening, and then awoke, seeming to think it was morning, saying, “Is this the Fourth of July ?" "It soon will be," was the reply. Then he sank again to slumber. At nine in the evening he was aroused to take his medicine. "No, doctor, nothing more," he answered, in a clear, distinct voice, and fell into a disturbed slumber. In his sleep he sat up in his bed, went through the forms of writing, spoke of the Committee of Safety, and said it ought to be warned. As midnight approached, the friends stood watch in hand, hoping for yet a few minutes of life, so that his death might be hallowed by taking place on the glorious Fourth. Their pious wish was granted. He still lived. At four o'clock in the morning he spoke in a clear voice, perfectly conscious of his wants. These were his last audible words; but still he lived as the slow hours wore on. At ten he made some sign, which his faithful old servant understood to indicate a desire that his head should be raised. At eleven he opened his eyes and moved his lips. A wet sponge was placed to his mouth; this he sucked with apparent relish. This was the last evidence of consciousness which he gave. At fifty minutes past noon he had ceased to breathe. All through these hours a similar scene had been enacted hundreds of miles away. On that same day, a few hours earlier, died John Adams, the senior of Jefferson by eight years. Just half a century before, the Declaration of Independence, that immortal document whereof one of these two dying men was the author, and the other the most eloquent advocate, had been formally put forth to all future ages as the cornerstone upon which was to be built the structure of the United States of America. MIDSUMMER. Ir is midsummer, the sweet midsummer- It is midsummer, my life's midsummer- UNCLE NATHAN'S CHARITY. BLAC LACK Dinah, the factotum of Wellsford, had been all day cleaning paint and windows for Mrs. Prescott, and now, with a deep sigh of satisfaction, she had settled down, with square-elbowed comfort, to take her nooning in a strengthening cup of tea off the end of the kitchen table. Old Dinah had lived long enough in Wellsford to establish a reputation. She had her rights and privileges secured; and nobody thought of checking the free flow of her conversational powers. "Lor' bress you, honey," said she, her face aglow under the wisp of cotton handkerchief twisted about her head; "I'm as chirk as de robin on de lim'; for if I can't do chorin', I kin do nussin', and nussin' is pretty ginral; but if nussin' runs short, dar's washin', dats mighty stiddy; and it's all along of Mass' Prescott. Pomp and me we 'lows dat; for he am de frend of poor folks; and if dey be cullud, makes no diffrence whatsomedever." for husband; but I kept whist about it, for I thought he'd think it looked shaller after all I'd said. It did me good, though, to see the poor soul eat. I don't believe he'd had a full meal of victuals for a month; and when he began to drink milk I got scart fairly to see him take such a pull; it did seem as though he was holler clear through." Dars "Specs he was, honey," returned Dinah, wagging her head profoundly, "ef he b'long to de lean kine. 'Pears like dey neber can get enuf; but Mass' Prescott feeds 'em all alike, as de sun shine on de ebil and de good. some folks, honey, dat tink deys a leetle better dan de Lord, but Mass' Prescott ain't one o' dem kine. Poor brack folks, ef dey is ignorance, knows when de Lord is smilin'; and if I goes fuss to de kingdom, and de door is shut, and Gabrel won't open it nohow for ole Dinah, I jess wait till Mass' Prescott comes along, and den I ketch a holt of his coat tail; for he neber would be happy in Abraham's bosom ef he knew dar was some poor creeter a-moanin', and a-beatin' at de gate." Old Dinah took up her scrubbing pail and went off to purify the front chamber with soap and water; but Mrs. Prescott sank down in her favorite rocking-chair in a long stream of spring sunshine, with the contents of the buttery standing about her on the kitchen floor. Pots and pans, pickle jars and preserve crocks, had been remorselessly turned out of their dwelling "I guess he's a clever man," responded Mrs. Prescott, with a strong Yankee accent, as, mounted on a chair, she set away the medicine bottles on the top shelf of the cupboard, which had just been scrubbed sweet and clean; "for I've summered and wintered with him over thirty-five years. He lets me fume and fret, and don't check up hard, for he knows I'm tender-bitted. Mother took things hard, and I'm like her. But I don't say he ain't try-place in the misery of house-cleaning. The ing sometimes. I tell him charity begins to home, and his notion is that every poor, miserable tramp and vagabones comes along is his kin. He brings 'em in, tracking the floor, and smoking their dirty old pipes in my windowcurtains, till I haven't a mite of patience left." "Bress your heart, chile," responded Dinah, like a great black peace-and-plenty, at the same time lifting a capacious blue saucer to her lips, "Mass' Prescott mines what de Lord Jesus says 'bout sittin' down wid publicums and sinners. I don't specs dey was de same publicums we has nowadays what 'lected Mass' Linkum. I reckon, honey, dey was only poor white trash." "Well," said Mrs. Prescott, in answer to Dinah's profound philosophical remark, as she got down off the chair, "I hope to goodness there won't any poor, miserable creeter come along to-day that 'll have to be took in and fed. There ain't a mossle cooked in the house, and every thing is in the suds. The stair-carpet is up, and all the chambers are turned out of the windows. I had to put off house-cleaning a week on account of that coleporter that was staying here. Husband ain't a professing Christian, but I guess he feeds more ministers than any man in Wellsford. Coleporter must mean peddler in plain English, for he had a package of books to sell. I took a squint into his sack, and there wasn't but one extra shirt, and that was ragged; and his socks were all in holes. I tucked in a couple of pairs I'd been knitting good woman's hair was tousled. She had dropped her collar off somewhere, and her work-apron was twisted half round her body, over the worst calico dress she possessed. There was a glimpse of a clean white stocking and a tidy shoe underneath, but the tired flush on her face made her regardless of outside appearances. She put her head back wearily against the cushion of her old rocking-chair, that seemed at that moment the best friend she had in the world, and thought to herself that she would like to creep away from all the dirt and confusion into some hole and sleep a week. Young leaves were fluttering upon the dooryard trees; the pink lips of the orchard buds were gently expanding; the lilac-bushes by the window were tasseled all over with purple blossoms; the greensward was resplendent with splintering sunbeams and golden dandelions. There poor tired Mrs. Prescott was nodding in her chair, with a great blue-bottle fly buzzing about her head, and tortured by a dream of the house turned topsy-turvy, with Deacon Minturn, his wife, and thirteen children just arrived to spend the night. "Oh, it's you, is it, Welcome?" "Yes, marm. I made a pretty considerable of a row round these diggings, but I couldn't start any body, so I thought I'd come and peek in at the window. I've got a yoke of pesky cattle round by the gate. They ain't more than half broke, and will run like all possessed if they take a notion to; so I can't stop; but here's a letter I got for your folks out of the post-office." He threw a buff envelope in at the window, and then clattered back along the plank walk that ran round the house. "Why, it's from Ray," said Mrs. Prescott to herself, as she adjusted her specs over the bridge of her nose, and proceeded to slit the end of the cover. "He says he's coming home a month earlier than he allowed-will be here next week. Dear me, how glad we shall be to see the boy! such a great lummux as he has grown-always playing his pranks." Ray was the youngest son. The other children had married and settled at a distance from home. He had been through college, and was teaching in an academy; and yet his parents hoped he would eventually come and live on the old place. "I am getting up an appetite for your breadand-butter, doughnuts, and baked beans," the letter ran. "Boarding-house hash don't agree with my constitution, but it don't seem to 'stunt' my growth, for I have quite stretched out of the sleeves of my best coat." "Growing!" exclaimed Mrs. Prescott, aloud, "and he is six feet in his socks this blessed minute." She sighed to herself as she thought of the way the big fellow had of stalking into the house, and throwing open doors and windows, admitting flies, light, and dust, her three abominations; how he would stretch himself on the best sofa, and crumple the tidies up under his back, and preach about not having any thing in a house too good to use. Besides, Ray had sworn off against sleeping on feathers, and against fried pork. He was always exhorting her to observe the laws of health, and, like many other matrons of her class, the excellent woman did not love the laws of health, therefore she sighed as she looked at the confusion around her, and thought she almost wished her great boy, with his new-fangled notions, had put off coming home until house-cleaning was over. lessly. "I haven't the faintest idea where it's to be found." "Neber mine. Pomp kin make up de words out ob his own head, an' if de folks don't know what dey mean, dey'll tink he's powerful smart preacher." Dinah took up the little tin bucket filled with buttermilk which Mrs. Prescott had given her, and trotted out of the yard gate and off down the road, where the sun was shining low and level, making the grass blades sparkle with hundreds of diamonds. A gentle breeze ran along the tops of the fruit-trees, where the blossoms were ripest, and shook down showers of white petals. Sweet perfumes came up along the stone walls, where blue violets had opened their eyes, and buttercups were beginning to nod. Far ahead Dinah could see the brown roadway, and the shady bridge, and the turn-out through the creek, where peppermint was growing. Beyond that point something was kicking up a great dust against the sun, with rattling wheels and the beat of horses' hoofs. There were two teams running a race, and presently a white horse and greenbodied democrat wagon hove in sight. "Bress my ole eyes, if dar ain't Mass' Prescott drivin' like split!" thought Dinah. “And he's got somebody in wid him; an' ef it's company he's takin' home, I 'lows he'll ketch it." In a moment more the democrat wagon was alongside; and Uncle Nathan, as he was called, spoke cheerily to old Dinah, who stood courtesying and beaming upon him from the path. There was a young girl on the seat beside him, wrapped in a large blanket-shawl. Her face was pale, lit by a pair of loving brown eyes, with the patient look that comes from illness. "I hope you didn't get scart," said Uncle Nathan to his companion, as he turned the butt end of his long new whip in the hollow of his hand, and let old White breathe after the stretcher he had given him. "I know it looks kind of weak to see an old fellow like me racing horses; but I do like to take the conceit out of them boys. Mike Higgins yonder thinks his black mare can say good-by to any thing on the road." “Oh, I wasn't frightened a bit,” replied the young girl, glancing up into his face with a flush of healthy excitement, which made her almost beautiful. "I liked it, for it's more than a year since I've had a real country Dinah had mopped up the sloppy floor, and set things in train for supper; and now she un-ride." tucked the skirt of her dress, and rolled down "That's too bad," said Uncle Nathan, switchher sleeves, and pinned a bright plaid shawling away at the grass and weeds by the roadover her shoulders, with a comfortable sense that she was going back to Pompey and the little home cabin. 66 side. "No wonder you look so peaked. You've been cooped up in a close room while you were getting your growth, like a potato that's sprouted in the cellar. But there's lots of air up here in Wellsford. It don't cost nothing; and you must take the breath of the cowsthey say it's good for weakly folks-and drink all the new milk you want. I sha'n't let you touch a needle till you begin to plump up; but I guess it won't hurt you any to do a little "Dictionary," repeated Mrs. Prescott, help-light chorin' round." "I's be right smart 'bout comin' roun' 'n de mornin'," said she, so don't bodder. Pompey tole me to ax you for de loan ob an ole booktionary, Missy Prescott, to pick out de big words for his preachment up at de Corners. De brack folks like a big soun' mighty well, an' I specs dey ain't de only ones." |