No circumstances have lessened the interest I feel in
these particulars respecting yourself; none have suspended for one
moment my sincere esteem for you, and I now salute you with unchanged
affection and respect.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER C.--TO JOHN ADAMS, April 20, 1812
TO JOHN ADAMS.
Monticello, April 20, 1812.
Dear Sir,
I have it now in my power to send you a piece of homespun in return for
that I received from you. Not of the fine texture, or delicate character
of yours, or, to drop our metaphor, not filled as that was with that
display of imagination which constitutes excellence in Belles Lettres,
but a mere sober, dry, and formal piece of logic. _Ornari res ipsa
negat_. Yet you may have enough left of your old taste for law reading,
to cast an eye over some of the questions it discusses. At any rate,
accept it as the offering of esteem and friendship.
You wish to know something of the Richmond and Wabash prophets. Of
Nimrod Hews I never before heard. Christopher Macpherson I have known
for twenty years. He is a man of color, brought up as a book-keeper by a
merchant, his master, and afterwards enfranchised. He had understanding
enough to post up his leger from his journal, but not enough to bear
up against hypochrondriac affections, and the gloomy forebodings they
inspire. He became crazy, foggy, his head always in the clouds, and
rhapsodizing what neither himself nor any one else could understand.
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