It is true that Federalism yet sought to wound him, but its refuge was the New England town, its power was gone forever.

The question had once been whether the two Chief Magistrates were kings or consuls; they were now known to be the chief servants of their masters, the people. No longer a "great beast" whose self-constituted lords could bar them out from their own government, the masses were in power, and no elector dared to vote contrary to the expressed will.

The prerogative of the President had once been stretched to give him arbitrary control of the life and liberty of the citizen. No such law could be repeated.

The tongue and the pen of the citizen had once been shackled and prisons filled with victims of tyrannical persecution.

Arrogant Federalism could not do that again.

Peaceably, patiently, a revolution had been brought about in the National Government, just as the same reformer had revolutionized Virginia. Not more surely had Jefferson found his own State verging toward feudalism and aristocracy than he found the nation heading toward monarchical methods and principles.

His triumph for democracy in Virginia had not been greater than that which he won for true republicanism in the broader field of the Union.

CHAPTER XLVII

DEBTS AND GUESTS AT MONTICELLO

"NOBODY in this world can make me so happy Retirement from public

or so miserable as you. life will ere long become necessary for me. To your sister and yourself I look to render the evening of my life serene and contented. Its morning has been crowded with loss after loss till I have nothing left but you."

To

In this strain Mr. Jefferson wrote to his daughter Martha while he was minister to France. his two girls he was both father and mother. He shared their griefs and joys; he selected their books and directed their studies; he watched over the development of their minds and their bodies; he instilled into them the wisest precepts and the purest principles. Down to the shoe-strings he gave his personal attention to their every want. Public demands upon his time were never so exacting as to shut out his daughters. When they were absent his long, affectionate, instructive letters flowed to them in almost unbroken lines. What were they doing? what books were they reading? were they keeping up their music lessons? did

they practise dancing two hours per day? did they always keep busy at some useful work? did they wear their bonnets when they went out in the sun and wind? were the flowers yet in bloom? had the mocking-bird arrived? what were relatives, friends, and neighbors doing and saying? when did the bluebirds appear? when were the first chickens hatched? is the garden flourishing? Gossip and family matters mingle with facts concerning the gravest matters of state; and questions concerning certain hogsheads of tobacco are fol lowed by the announcement "Maribeau is dead." In 1801 he tells Maria of a visit to Mount Vernon and of the kind inquiries which Mrs. Washington made after her-a letter which would seem to disprove the existence of any coolness between the two families. General Washington was dead; but Jefferson would hardly have been visiting the widow at her home in the familiar manner of friendly intercourse if he and Washington had been estranged. "Continue always to love me, and be assured that there is no object on earth so dear to my heart as your health and happiness. My tenderest affections always hang on you. Adieu, my ever dear Maria."

Running through all this tender correspondence the refrain is "Be good, be good; be useful; never be idle, always be at some work, love nature, exercise in the open air, be faithful to friends, wish no

evil to enemies, do not beg for anything, do not be angry; above all things, be good and useful if you would be happy."

"The morning of life has been crowded with loss after loss till I have nothing left but you; to your sister and yourself I look to render the evening of life serene and happy."

The evening had now come, and the aged statesman was turning his feet homeward; but only one of the daughters was left to make him serene and contented. Maria, the "vision of beauty," too frail to bear up under the burdens of motherhood, had died in 1804-died in the spring-time, when such a loss seems doubly cruel.

It will be remembered that one of Jefferson's earliest friends, a boyhood favorite, the confidant of his first little love-affairs, was John Page of college days. After all the shifting scenes of life, Mr. Page was now Governor of the Old Dominion, while Jefferson was President. In the time of his grief for the loss of his daughter, Mr. Jefferson was consoled by the sympathy of his old friend and schoolmate, Page, and Mr. Jefferson's letter of reply reminds one of Edmund Burke bewailing his only son.

"When you and I look back over the country over which we have passed what a field of slaughter does it exhibit! Where are all the friends who entered it with us, under all the inspiring energies of health and hope? But we have the traveler's

consolation, every step shortens the distance we have to go; the end of the journey is in sight, the bed wherein we are to rest, and to rise in the midst of the friends we have lost.

"My loss is great indeed. Others may lose of their abundance, but I, of my want, have lost even the half of all I had.

"My evening prospects now hang on the slender thread of a single life. The hope with which I looked forward to the moment when I was to retire to that domestic comfort from which the last great step is to be taken is fearfully blighted."

So it came to Mr. Jefferson as it comes to us all -the discrepancy between the hope and the reality, between the plan and the result, between what we ask-innocently and passionately ask—and what we receive.

For more than thirty years Mr. Jefferson had held office, and with the exception of his four years' term as Vice-President, he had always spent more than his salary. During his presidency he had not seemed to be extravagant, but he rolled up a twenty-thousand-dollar debt, and from the bur dens which came upon him with that deficit he never escaped. The truth is that he had some expensive habits which he could not shake off. He loved to have friends around him, and this meant