t his old age as Washington, Jefferson, Jay, Madison, and
John Adams spent theirs, but with far greater success than them all, in
attending mainly to his private affairs, and in those offices which a
splendid reputation draws in its train. He was exact in all things. If
you inquired what any one of his estates cost him, he would take down a
bound foolscap volume, turn at once to the farm in question, read off
the price, the amount of its outfit, the number of hands engaged in
working it, and, if you pleased to listen, the cost of every improvement
he put upon it, the division of its fields, and their products for every
year since he owned it, and the money value of those products in market.
He knew what fields on his various estates were in cultivation; and in
the spring--for all his crops were annual--he made an estimate of the
probable product of each field, and entered it in the book; and in the
fall, the actual result, which sometimes fell a little short, sometimes
slightly exceeded, and sometimes was identical with the estimate of the
spring. This process was something more than a pastime; it kept him
intimately acquainted with his different estates, and was a severe check
on the management of the overseers. He loved the game of chess, was
always ready to engage in it, and often played alone. He read chess
periodicals, kept an account of his own moves, and, deducting the
employment which it gave him when his eyes were dimmed with reading,
devoted to that fascinating but frivolous game more time and attention
than it deserved.

To form a just opinion of Mr. Tazewell in private life, he must have
been seen again and again. In matters of business he was scrupulously
exact himself, and would be satisfied with nothing less from others. In
this way he may have given offence, and subjected himself to the charge
of closeness; but it was partly the result of his legal habits, and
partly of the rigid system which pervaded his financial schemes. That
the love of accumulation was no element in the case was shown, apart
from the great lesson which his life will read to all, by his large
deposits in the vaults of the banks, by which, in the course of thirty
years, he must have lost thousands; and by the proverbial moderation of
his fees.[13] Such was his care and judgment that I do not think he
ever made a bad investment, or lost a sum of money.

Withal I am inclined to wish that he had devoted the first ten years of
his retire