Being now
_hors de combat_ myself, I resign to others these cares. A long attack
of rheumatism has greatly enfeebled me, and warns me, that they will not
very long be within my ken. But you may have to meet the trial, and in
the focus of its fury. God send you a safe deliverance, a happy issue
out of all afflictions, personal and public, with long life, long
health, and friends as sincerely attached, as yours affectionately,
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER XCVIII.--TO DOCTOR BENJAMIN RUSH
TO DOCTOR BENJAMIN RUSH.
Poplar Forest, December 5, 1811.
Dear Sir,
While at Monticello I am so much engrossed by business or society, that
I can only write on matters of strong urgency. Here I have leisure, as
I have every where the disposition, to think of my friends. I recur,
therefore, to the subject of your kind letters relating to Mr. Adams
and myself, which a late occurrence has again presented to me. I
communicated to you the correspondence which had parted Mrs. Adams and
myself, in proof that I could not give friendship in exchange for such
sentiments as she had recently taken up towards myself, and avowed and
maintained in her letters to me. Nothing but a total renunciation of
these could admit a reconciliation, and that could be cordial only in
proportion as the return to ancient opinions was believed sincere. In
these jaundiced sentiments of hers I had associated Mr. Adams, knowing
the weight which her opinions had with him, and notwithstanding she
declared in her letters that they were not communicated to him.
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