In a letter to Mr. Madison written in the spring of this year (1795), Mr. Jefferson writes thus of himself:
To James Madison.
If these general considerations were sufficient to ground a firm resolution never to permit myself to think of the office, or be thought of for it, the special ones which have supervened on my retirement still more insuperably bar the door to it. My health is entirely broken down within the last eight months; my age requires that I should place my affairs in a clear state; these are sound if taken care of, but capable of considerable dangers if longer neglected; and above all things, the delights I feel in the society of my family, and in the agricultural pursuits in which I am so eagerly engaged. The little spice of ambition which I had in my younger days has long since evaporated, and I set still less store by a posthumous than present name.... I long to see you.... May we hope for a visit from you? If we may, let it be after the middle of May, by which time I hope to be returned from Bedford.
In writing on the same day to his friend, Mr. Giles, he says:
I shall be rendered very happy by the visit you promise me. The only thing wanting to make me completely so is the more frequent society of my friends. It is the more wanting, as I am become more firmly fixed to the glebe. If you visit me as a farmer, it must be as a con-disciple; for I am but a learner—an eager one indeed, but yet desperate, being too old now to learn a new art. However, I am as much delighted and occupied with it as if I were the greatest adept. I shall talk with you about it from morning till night, and put you on very short allowance as to political aliment. Now and then a pious ejaculation for the French and Dutch republicans, returning with due dispatch to clover, potatoes, wheat, etc.
To Edward Rutledge he wrote, on November 30th, 1795:
I received your favor of October the 12th by your son, who has been kind enough to visit me here, and from whose visit I have received all that pleasure which I do from whatever comes from you, and especially from a subject so deservedly dear to you. He found me in a retirement I doat on, living like an antediluvian patriarch among my children and grandchildren, and tilling my soil. As he had lately come from Philadelphia, Boston, etc., he was able to give me a great deal of information of what is passing in the world; and I pestered him with questions, pretty much as our friends Lynch, Nelson, etc., will us when we step across the Styx, for they will wish to know what has been passing above ground since they left us. You hope I have not abandoned entirely the service of our country. After five-and-twenty years' continual employment in it, I trust it will be thought I have fulfilled my tour, like a punctual soldier, and may claim my discharge. But I am glad of the sentiment from you, my friend, because it gives a hope you will practice what you preach, and come forward in aid of the public vessel. I will not admit your old excuse, that you are in public service, though at home. The campaigns which are fought in a man's own house are not to be counted. The present situation of the President, unable to get the offices filled, really calls with uncommon obligation on those whom nature has fitted for them.
Early in the spring of 1796, in a letter to his friend Giles, he gives us the following glimpse of his domestic operations:
We have had a fine winter. Wheat looks well. Corn is scarce and dear: twenty-two shillings here, thirty shillings in Amherst. Our blossoms are but just opening. I have begun the demolition of my house, and hope to get through its re-edification in the course of the summer. We shall have the eye of a brick-kiln to poke you into, or an octagon to air you in.