"Franklin a great orator? Why, no, he never spoke in Congress more than five minutes at a time, and then he related some anecdote which applied to the subject before the House. I have heard all the celebrated orators of the National Assembly of France, but there was not one equal to Patrick Henry."
And then, confidentially, sometimes he told a tale of the Declaration of Independence. "I shall never cease to be grateful to John Adams, the colossus of that debate. While the discussion was going on, fatherly old Ben Franklin, seventy years old, leaning on his cane, sat by my side, and comforted me with his jokes whenever the criticisms were unusually bitter. The Congress held its meetings near a livery stable. The members wore short breeches and thin silk stockings, and with handkerchief in hand they were diligently employed in lashing the flies from their legs. So very vexatious was the annoyance, and to so great impatience did it arouse the sufferers, that they were only too glad to sign the Declaration and fly from the scene."
Two visits every year Jefferson made to his little principality of two hundred inhabitants at Monticello, a short one early in the Spring and a longer one in the latter part of Summer, when he always took his daughter Martha and family from Edge Hill with him, for it would not seem home without Martha to superintend.
Here Jefferson had organised his slaves into a great industrial school, had his own carpenters, cabinet-makers, shoe-makers, tailors, weavers, had a nail forge and made nails for his own and neighbouring estates,—his black mechanics were the best in Virginia. Even the family coach was made at Monticello, and the painting and the masonry of the mansion were all executed by slaves on the place.
On the Rivanna Jefferson had a mill, where his wheat was manufactured into flour and sent down to Richmond on bateaux to be sold for a good price, and cotton brought home to be made into cloth on the plantation. No wonder, when the master was gone, so extensive an industrial plant ceased to be remunerative.
Jefferson was always sending home shrubbery and trees from Washington,—he knew every green thing on every spot of his farm; and Bacon, the manager, seldom failed to send the cart back laden with fruit from Monticello for the White House.
While the President at Monticello was giving orders to Goliah, the gardener, to Jupiter, the hostler, to Bacon and all the head men of the shops, Lewis would gallop home to visit his mother at Locust Hill just out of Charlottesville.
Before the Revolution, Meriwether's father, William Lewis, had received from George III. a patent for three thousand acres of choice Ivy Creek land in Albemarle, commanding an uninterrupted view of the Blue Ridge for one hundred and fifty miles. Here Meriwether was born, and Reuben and Jane.
"If Captain John Marks courts you I advise you to marry him," said Colonel William Lewis to his wife, on his death-bed after the surrender of Cornwallis. In a few years she did marry Captain Marks, and in Georgia were born Meriwether's half brother and sister, John and Mary Marks.
Another spot almost as dear to Meriwether Lewis was the plantation of his uncle Nicholas Lewis, "The Farm," adjoining Monticello. It was here he saw Hamilton borne by, a prisoner of war, on the way to Williamsburg, and here it was that Tarleton made his raid and stole the ducks from Aunt Molly's chicken yard.