· CHAPTER XXXVIII. RETURNING TO THE UNITED STATES. PLACED in the midst of all this stir and effervescence, while as yet every thing wore a hopeful aspect, the Bastille in ruins, the people easily triumphant everywhere, and the aristocrats acquiescent, submissive, or in flight, we cannot wonder that Jefferson found his situation, as he said, too interesting to abandon. He had no thought of abandoning it. Nevertheless, an event had occurred in his household which made it necessary for him to visit Virginia for a short time; and while the Bastille was tumbling, he was impatiently waiting for the arrival of a six-months' leave of absence for which he had applied. And there was a member of his family who was waiting for it, perhaps, more impatiently than himself. - When he left Virginia, in 1784, he had three children, — Martha, twelve years of age; Mary, six; and Lucy, two. The eldest he took with him to Paris, where he placed her at a convent school; and the two others he left in Virginia under the care of their aunt, Mrs. Eppes. A few weeks after his arrival in Paris, the intelligence reached him that his youngest daughter, Lucy, a strangely interesting child, had died of whooping-cough, after a week of acute suffering. After this cutting stroke he began to long for the coming of her sister, whom he wished to have educated in Paris. But she was one of the most clingingly affectionate of all children; resembling those vines which we sometimes find in the woods, which cast adhesive tendrils round every object they touch, and can scarcely be disengaged without breaking. She could not hear of leaving her Virginia home without such distress as made her aunt shudder at the thought of sending her away. Her father tried to accustom her mind to the idea of leaving; telling her that he and her sister Martha could not live without her, and that he would soon bring her back to her uncle, aunt, and cousins, whom she was so sorry to leave. "You shall be taught here," he wrote, "to play on the harpsichord, to draw, to dance, to read and talk French, and such other things as will make you more worthy of the love of your friends." To this he added a temptation more alluring: "You shall have as many dolls and playthings as you want for yourself, or to send to your cousins." He concludes with all the good advice that tender and thoughtful fathers give, with some items less usual: "Never beg for any thing," and, "remember, too, as a constant charge, not to go out without your bonnet, because it will make you very ugly, and then we shall not love you so much." The little girl could not be tempted. She scrawled a brief reply, in which she said that she longed to see her father and her sister, but, "I am sorry you have sent for me. I don't want to go to France: I had rather stay with Aunt Eppes." In two postscripts she strove to impress the same lesson upon her father's mind: "I want to see you and Sister Patsy; but you must come to Uncle Eppes's house." The father, however, insisted, because, as he said, his reason told him that the dangers were not great, and the advantages to the child would be considerable. But she must not sail till just the right vessel offered, a good ship, not too new and not too old, - nor until the right person was found to take charge of her. "A careful negro woman, as Isabel for instance, if she has had the small-pox, would suffice under the patronage of a gentleman.” When he had mentioned every precaution that the most anxious fondness could suggest, he was still tormented with visions of new dangers. His long and fruitless negotiations with the Algerines called up the most horrible of all his apprehensions. Suppose she were taken into captivity by those pirates, who had already driven the American flag from the Mediterranean, and menaced American commerce in every part of the ocean! The thought preyed upon his mind to such a degree, that he wrote one letter to Mr. Eppes for no other purpose than to beg him once more not to confide the child to an American ship, but "to a French or English vessel having a Mediterranean pass." The possible peril of his daughter was a stimulant to his diplomatic exertions; and he told Mr. Eppes, that, if a peace were concluded with the Algerines, he should be among the first to hear it. "I pray you," he added, "to believe it from nobody else." These precautions were not needless; for while the child was upon the ocean, in the spring of 1787, a Virginia ship going to Spain was attacked by a corsair. After an action of an hour and a quarter, the Virginians boarded and took her, bound the pirates with the shackles themselves would have worn if the battle had gone the other way, and so carried them to Virginia. Well might the father say, when he knew that she had sailed, "I shall try not to think of Polly till I hear that she has landed." He did think of her, however, constantly; and he endeavored to prepare his elder daughter for the duties which the coming of so young a sister would devolve upon her. "She will become," he wrote to her, "a precious charge upon your hands. The difference of your age, and your common loss of a mother, will put that office upon you. Teach her, above all things, to be good, because without that we can neither be valued by others, nor set any value on ourselves." In his advice to his children and nephews, this truth is often repeated: "If ever you find yourself in any difficulty, and doubt how to extricate yourself, do what is right, and you will find it the easiest way of getting out of the difficulty." And, again, to his nephew, Peter Carr: "Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself, and all it contains, rather than do an immoral act. And never suppose, that, in any possible situation or any circumstances, it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing." She was really coming at length, though to the last moment she clung with all her little heart to her home. No promises, no stratagems, availed to reconcile her to going away. The ship lay at anchor in the river. Her cousins all went on board with her, and remained a day or two, playing about the deck and cabins, and making the ship seem like another home. Then using the device by which Pocahontas had been taken prisoner in the same waters a hundred and seventy years before, they all left the ship one day while she was asleep; and she awoke to find the sails spread, the familiar shore vanished, her cousins gone, and only her negro maid left of the circle of her home. Her affections then gathered about the captain of the vessel, to whom she became so attached, that parting with him, too, was agony. Mrs. Adams received her in London, where she remained two weeks, and won the heart of that estimable lady. "A finer child of her age I never saw," wrote Mrs. Adams. "So mature an understanding, so womanly a behavior, and so much sensibility united, are rarely to be met with. I grew so fond of her, and she was so much attached to me, that, when Mr. Jefferson sent for her, they were obliged to force the little creature away." It was a strange meeting in Paris between father and child, and between sister and sister. Martha, then a tall and elegant girl of fifteen, had a week's holiday from the convent to meet her sister. The little girl did not know either of them, nor would they have known her. But they were both enchanted with her. Besides being a girl of singular and bewitching beauty both of form and face, she was one of the most artless, unselfish, and loving creatures that ever blessed and charmed a home. Her father was abundantly satisfied with "her reading, her writing, and her manners in general;" and he poured forth eloquent gratitude to Mrs. Eppes for the patient goodness which had borne such fruit in the character and mind of his child. During the week's holiday, Martha took her sister occasionally to the convent, showed her its pleasant gardens and inviting apartments, familiarized her with the place, which, as they all thought, was to be her abode for some years. At the end of the week the new-comer went to the convent to reside, where as "Mademoiselle Polie" she soon became a universal favorite. Both sisters learned to speak French almost immediately, and soon spoke it as easily as they did English; while the three adult members of the family, Humphries, Short, and Jefferson, when they had been two years in Paris, got on in speaking French not much better than when they landed. So, at least, Jefferson says in one of his letters. It does require about two years to begin to be at home in a foreign language; but, when you have reached a certain point, familiarity seems to come all at once. The parent who keeps a daughter at a good specimen of a convent school for more than two years may count upon her having a fit of desire to become a nun; unless, indeed, the girl has much more or much less understanding than the average. These daughters of Mr. Jefferson were conscientious, affectionate, and sympathetic, lovers of tranquillity, of strong local attachments; but they were not exceptionally endowed with intellect. One day in the spring of 1789, he received a letter from Martha, in which she informed him of her wish to pass her days in the convent in the service of religion. At any time this would have been a startling announcement to such a father; but particular circumstances greatly increased its effect upon him. son. Among the young Americans who had been studying in European universities during Jefferson's residence in Paris, was a cousin of his own, Thomas Mann Randolph, known to the public in later years as member of Congress and governor of Virginia. In 1788 he left the University of Edinburgh, and, before returning to Virginia, made the usual tour of Europe, lingering several weeks at the legation in Paris, where he renewed his acquaintance with Martha JefferThe little playmate of his boyhood had grown to be a beautiful girl of sixteen; and she, on her part, saw the black-haired boy of her early recollections transformed into a tall, alert young man, fluent in conversation, and of distinguished bearing. From slight indications in Jefferson's letters of this year, I infer that the youth proposed to the father for the hand of the daughter; and that Jefferson, while approving the match and consenting to it, had not disturbed the school-girl's mind by making the offer known to her. Young Randolph sailed for Virginia in the fall of 1788; and the plenipotentiary, a few weeks after, applied for leave of absence, for the purpose of taking his daughters home. But at home the old government was going out, and a new government was coming in; and this was the reason why the leave asked for in November, 1788, did not reach Paris till late in the summer of 1789. During this interval it was that Mr. Jefferson received the letter from his daughter which notified him of her desire to espouse the Church. He managed this difficult case with prompt and successful tact. He allowed a day or two to pass without noticing the letter. He drove to the convent on the third morning, and, after explaining and arranging the matter with the abbess, asked for his daughters. He received them with somewhat more warmth and tenderness than usual. Without uttering a word of explanation, he simply told them that he had come to take them away from school. As soon as they were ready, they entered the carriage, and were driven home, where they continued their education under masters; and neither then nor ever did a word pass between father and daughter on the subject of her letter. The dream of romantic and picturesque selfannihilation was soon dissipated in the healthy air and honest light of her father's house. She accepted her destiny with the joyous blindness of youth; and instead of the self-abnegation of the con |