“It’s a kind of grasshopper,” disputed the other aide. “A little grasshopper that fiddles tunes with its hind legs, Mr. President, sir.”
“Mr. Ex-President, Carver. An ex being something that has been crossed out, obliterated, ignored. I’m obliterated but I can still go on being a grig. Even though I can’t fiddle any more since I broke this wrist in France. I miss my music, too.—Well, good-by again, Madam Randolph. Be sure you take along a warm robe and a shawl. That coach can be mighty damp and dreary.”
“And you do the same, Papa, and don’t you climb down halfway home and start out on horseback in this foul weather. Nothing ever created by Heaven is so treacherous and mean as this month of March. If they would leave it off all the calendars, it would please me well.”
“Keep plenty of elmbark stewing on the hob till I get home,” he ordered. “It will cure any phthisic ever contracted.”
“He’s so stubborn,” he heard his daughter say to the aide as she went out. “I shan’t be surprised at all to see him come riding home on that horse. If he wants to do it, he’ll do it if it kills him.”
“It won’t kill him, ma’am,” the man murmured. “Mister Jefferson is still a mighty stout fellow.”
2
Monticello: Spring, 1809
Why, why had he saved so many things? Yet they were all important, all precious. One small box full of rocks, little packets of earth, dried leaves, and the desiccated bodies of insects. These George Clark and Meriwether Lewis had brought back to him from the long exploring journey they had made, crossing the country to the Pacific Ocean. Jefferson held out one small, rattling mummy of a creature in his palm.
“Ever see a bug like this, Burwell?” he asked.