n unusual
amount of money with excellent results for his political influence,
for no president ever understood better than Jefferson the art of
entertaining; yet his table cost him no excessive sums. For the best
champagne he paid less than a dollar a bottle; for the best Bordeaux
he paid a dollar; and the Madeira which was drunk in pipes at the
White House cost between fifty and sixty cents a bottle. His French
cook and cook's assistant were paid about four hundred dollars a year.
On such a scale his salary of twenty-five thousand dollars was
equivalent to fully sixty thousand dollars of modern money; and his
accounts showed that for the first and probably the most expensive
year of his presidency he spent only $16,800 which could properly be
charged to his public and official character. A mode of life so simple
and so easily controlled should in a village like Washington have left
no opening for arrears of debt; but when Jefferson, about to quit the
White House forever, attempted to settle his accounts, he discovered
that he had exceeded his income. Not his expenses as President, but
his expenses as planter dragged him down. At first he thought that his
debts would reach seven or eight thousand dollars, which must be
discharged from a private estate hardly exceeding two hundred thousand
dollars in value at the best of times, and rendered almost worthless
by neglect and by the embargo. The sudden demand for this sum of
money, coming at the moment of his political mortifications, wrung
from him cries of genuine distress such as no public disaster had
called out....

On horseback, over roads impassable to wheels, through snow and storm,
he hurried back to Monticello to recover in the quiet of home the
peace of mind he had lost in the disappointments of his statesmanship.
He arrived at Monticello March 15, and never again passed beyond the
bounds of a few adjacent counties.

BRET HARTE

Born in 1839, died in 1902; removed to California in 1854,
where in 1868 he founded _The Overland Monthly_; professor
in the University of California in 1870; removed to New York
in 1871; consul at Crefeld, Germany, in 1878-80, and at
Glasgow in 1880-85; published "The Luck of Roaring Camp" in
1868, "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" in 1869, "Poems" in 1871,
"Stories of the Sierras" in 1872, "Tales of the Argonauts"
in 1875, "Gabriel Conroy" in 1876, "Two Men of Sandy Bar" (a
play) in 1877