in David Crocket's rifle, when he and the bear were eying one another across the brook.

Such a man was Thomas Jefferson on his departure from France. He had his limits, of course; he had his foibles; he had his faults. But the sum of his worth as a human being was very great; and he had more in him of that which makes the glory and hope of America than any other living creature known to us. American principles he more than believed in: he loved them, and he deemed their prevalence essential to the welfare of man.

What a plague it was to get across the sea eighty years ago! With trunks packed (and their trunks, as Jefferson intimates, were of American number and magnitude), the little family sat at home waiting a whole month for a ship; and, after all, they could do no better than charter one in London to take them in at the Isle of Wight. It was a month of alarm in Paris. The harvest had not relieved the scarcity of food; long queues of hungry people streamed still from every baker's shop; and the government itself, perishing of inanition, was obliged to spare a million a week to keep down the price of bread in Paris. Even in that dire extremity, the Protective System shut the ports of France against the food for want of which Frenchmen were dying; and Jefferson spent his last days, and even his last hours, in Paris, in trying to persuade the Ministry to permit the importation of salted provisions from the United States! Salt beef, objected the Count de Montmorin, will give people the scurvy. No, replied Jefferson: we eat it in America, and don't have the scurvy. The salt-tax will fall off, said the minister. Jefferson could not deny that it might a little; but, on the other hand, it would relieve the government from the necessity of keeping the price of bread below its value. But, resumed the Count, the people of France will not buy salt meat. Then, replied Jefferson, the merchants won't import it, and no harm will be done. And you cannot make a good soup of it, urged the Count. True, said Jefferson, but it gives a delightful flavor to vegetables. Besides, it will cost only half the price of fresh meat. He convinced the Count de Montmorin, who requested him to propose the measure to M. Necker. But, as he was summoned to join the ship, he could only argue it briefly in a letter to M. Necker, which he left for Mr. Short to deliver and enforce. August 26th, the day on which this letter was written, he and his daughters left Paris for Havre.

He might as well have waited a while longer. They were detained at Havre ten days, during which he was so fortunate as to effect another practicable breach in the Protective System. American ships bringing cargoes to Havre, found nothing to take from Havre, sometimes, except salt; but salt could only be bought "at a mercantile price," at places on the Loire and Garonne, away round on the Biscay side of France, involving six or eight hundred miles of difficult and perilous coasting. He now obtained from the farmers-general a concession, by which American ships could load with salt at Honfleur, opposite Havre, paying only mercantile rates. It made a nice finish to his diplomatic career, this valuable service to the merchants and mariners of his country.

Ten days further detention at Cowes gave the young ladies an opportunity to ride about the Isle of Wight, to peep into the deep well at Carisbrooke Castle, and stare at the window in the ruins out of which Charles I. looked when he was a prisoner there, perhaps with comments on the character of the decapitated from their father. Mr. Pitt, it appears, had the politeness to send an order to Cowes, exempting the baggage of the voyagers from search, an attention which Miss Jefferson remembered with gratitude, sho being the member of the party who was most obliged.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

HIS WELCOME HOME.

TWENTY-THREE days of swift sailing and perfect autumn weather brought the ship into a dense fog off the coast of Virginia. For three days the thick November mist clung to the shore, preventing the captain from getting a glimpse of either cape. At length, trusting only to his calculations, in which, doubtless, a mathematical plenipotentiary had taken part, he stood in boldly, and escaped into Chesapeake Bay, with only a graze and a scare, just in time to avoid a storm that kept some companion vessels a month longer at sea. This, however, was but the beginning of mishaps. In beating up to Norfolk against the rising gale, they were run into by a vessel rushing seaward before the wind, and lost part of their rigging. At Norfolk, two hours after the passengers had landed, and before any of their effects had been taken ashore, the ship caught fire. The flames gained such headway, that the captain was on the point of scuttling the vessel. But at last, through the exertions of every sailor in port, the fire was got under, without damage to the papers of the minister or the daintier effects of his daughters. Nothing saved them but the thickness of the trunks; for the heat was so great in the state-rooms, that the powder in a musket standing in one of them was silently consumed.

Norfolk, which had been burned to the last house during the war, was little more than a village of shanties when Jefferson and his daughters landed there, November 18, 1789. They would have been puzzled to find shelter, as the only inn in the town was full, but for the generosity of its inmates, who insisted on giving up their rooms to them. On the very day of his landing, Jefferson read in a newspaper that President Washington had appointed him secretary of state. "I made light of it," he wrote soon after to a lady in

Paris, "supposing I had only to say No, and there would be an end

of it."

In all Virginia there was scarcely such a thing, at that time, as a public conveyance. Friends, however, lent the party horses; and they journeyed homeward in the delightfully slow, easy, social manner of the time, stopping at every friend's house on and near their road. They were ten days or more in getting as far as Richmond. The legislature was in session, many of Jefferson's old colleagues being present. They could not let him pass through the capital of his native State without some mark of their regard. On the 7th of December, 1789, the House of Delegates appointed a committee of thirteen members, - sacred number! - with Patrick Henry for chairman, to congratulate him on his return, and to assure him of their esteem for "his character and public services." The committee waited upon him, and communicated the resolution of the House. His reply was in the taste of the period:

"I receive with humble gratitude, gentlemen, the congratulations of the Honorable the House of Delegates on my return; and I beg leave, through you, to present them my thanks and dutiful respects. Could any circumstance heighten my affection to my native country, it would be the indulgence with which they view my feeble efforts to serve it, and the esteem with which they are pleased to honor me. I shall hope to merit a continuance of their goodness, by obeying the impulse of a zeal of which public good is the first object, and public esteem the highest reward. Permit me, gentlemen, for a moment, to separate from my general thanks the special ones I owe to you, the organs of so flattering a communica

tion."

Resuming their journey, they arrived, early in December, at the mansion of Uncle Eppes in Chesterfield County, the happy home of Mary Jefferson's childhood. Here they halted for many days. It was at this place that Jefferson received the official announcement of his appointment as secretary of state. A gentleman from New York overtook him at Eppington, bearing his commission signed by the president: also a letter from the president, cordially inviting him to accept the place, yet giving him his choice to return to Paris if he preferred to do so. It was evident that General

Washington expected him to accept. Mr. Jefferson's reply was such as became the citizen of a republic. He told the president that he preferred to remain in the office he then held, the duties of which he knew and felt equal to, rather than undertake a place, the duties of which were more difficult and much more extensive. "But," he added, "it is not for an individual to choose his post. You are to marshal us as may be best for the public good." Therefore, if the president, after learning his decided preference to return to France, still thought it best to transfer him to New York, "my inclination must be no obstacle."

They were six weeks in reaching home. Two days before Christmas, a joyful time of year everywhere, but nowhere, perhaps, quite so hilarious as in the Virginia of that generation,- all was expectation at Monticello. The house had been made ready. The negroes, to whom a holiday had been given, all came in from the various farms of the estate, dressed in their cleanest attire, and the women wearing their brightest turbans, and gathered, early in the day, about the house. Their first thought was to meet the returning family at the foot of the mountain; and thither they moved in a body, — men, women, and children, -long before there was any reason to expect them. As the tedious hours passed, the more eager of the crowd walked on; and these being followed by the rest, there was a straggling line of them a mile or two in length. Late in the afternoon, the most advanced descried a carriage at Shadwell, drawn by four horses, with postilions, in the fashion of the time. The exulting shout was raised. All ran forward; and soon the whole crowd huddled round the vehicle, pulling, pushing, crying, cheering, until it reached the steep ascent of the mountain, where the slackened pace gave them the opportunity they desired. In spite of the master's entreaties and commands, they took off the horses, and drew the carriage at a run up the mountain, and round the lawn to the door of the house.

It was no easy matter to alight. Mr. Jefferson swam in a tumultuous sea of black arms and faces, from the carriage to the steps of the portico. Some kissed his hands, others his feet; some cried, others laughed; all tried at least to touch him. Not a word could be heard above the din. But when the young ladies appeared; when Martha, whom they had last seen a child of eleven, stepped forth a woman grown, in all the glorious lustre of youth, beauty, and joy;