[THOMAS JEFFERSON.]
In writing of a man like Jefferson, whose name has been a household word since the birth of the Nation, it is well-nigh impossible to avoid being commonplace; so that in the beginning, I ask you indulgence, if in reviewing his life, I should recount facts that are as familiar to you as the Decalogue.
Yet, in studying that life, I find such a richness of achievement, such an abundance of attainment, such a world of interest, that I am at a loss how to prepare a paper that will not require an extra session for its reading.
Thomas Jefferson was the eldest child of a seemingly strange union; the father, an uneducated pioneer, surveyor, and Indian fighter, living in the mountains of Virginia—the mother, Jane Randolph, coming from the best blood of that blue blooded commonwealth. I think we need dig no further around Jefferson's family tree in order to understand how a gentleman of education, culture, and aristocratic instincts could affect a dress so different from men of his class, and could so deeply and sincerely love the masses as to spend his life in their behalf. And this he certainly did. He worked, thought, planned, and accomplished for them—yet, throughout his life, his associations were always with the upper classes.
He began life in 1743, in the small village of Shadwell, Va., where he spent his childhood and youth among the freedom of the hills. Afterwards, whenever he escaped from public duty, it was to retire to this same neighborhood, for it was on one of his ancestral hills that Monticello was built.
Thanks to his mother, he was carefully educated at William and Mary College, from which he graduated at the age of eighteen. The Brittanica draws the following picture of him as a young man:
"He was an expert musician, a good dancer, a dashing rider, proficient in all manly exercises; a hard student; tall, straight, slim, with hazel eyes, sandy hair, delicate skin, ruddy complexion; frank, earnest, sympathetic, cordial, full of confidence in men, and sanguine in his views of life." Is not that a pleasing portrait?
Being the eldest son, his father's death, while he was at college, left him heir to his estate of nineteen hundred acres, so that he could live very comfortably. Jefferson lived in a day when a man's wealth was measured in great part by the land he owned. It is indicative of his thrift and energy that his nineteen hundred acres soon grew to five thousand—"all paid for," we are told. Indeed, he was strictly honest in paying his debts.