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Thomas Jefferson: Virginia

At the age of twenty-four, Jefferson began to practice law. His voice was not strong, and he was never a good speaker. His manner was hesitating and embarrassed, and his ideas did not find easy expression in spoken words. But he was a great writer and thinker, and, in a few years, he was known as the best lawyer in Virginia.

Jefferson was also a farmer. He loved to look over his broad fields and to attend to his growing crops. He once said, "No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of a garden." He delighted in experimenting with new things, and imported a large number of trees and shrubs to beautify the grounds of his home which he named "Monticello." He was as proud of being a successful farmer as he was of being a great lawyer.

Jefferson wrote the rules which he considered essential for a practical person to follow: 1. Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day. 2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself. 3. Never spend your money before you have it. 4. Never buy what you do not want because it is cheap. 5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, or cold. 6. We never repent of having eaten too little. 7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly. 8. How much pain we have suffered from the evils that never happened. 9. Take things always by their smooth handle. 10. When angry count ten before you speak: if very angry count a hundred.

His manners were plain and simple. When he was President of the United States, he did not stand aloof from the people, as other great men of the day did, but he encouraged everybody to be on familiar terms with him. He did not have the splendid parties and balls at the White House that other Presidents had, but lived quietly and without much display. Jefferson's great fame lies in the fact that he wrote the Declaration of Independence. He was then thirty-three years of age, and one of the youngest members of the Continental Congress. It is among the greatest of our national documents.

He secured legislation in Virginia, exempting taxation for the support of any church, and was the founder of the University of Virginia.

At "Monticello," he entertained with lavish hospitality, sometimes having as many as fifty guests in his house at one time. Some of these visitors stayed for months, imposing on his hospitality, with the result that in his old age he was much reduced in his circumstances.