y had not been "sent" to college. He came of his own accord from
his home at Shadwell, five days' horseback journey through the woods. His
father was dead, and his mother, a rare gentle soul, was an invalid.

Death is not a calamity "per se," nor is physical weakness necessarily a
curse, for out of these seeming unkind conditions Nature often distils her
finest products. The dying injunction of a father may impress itself upon
a son as no example of right living ever can, and the physical disability
of a mother may be the means that work for excellence and strength. The
last-expressed wish of Peter Jefferson was that his son should be well
educated, and attain to a degree of useful manliness that the father had
never reached. And into the keeping of this fourteen-year-old youth the
dying man, with the last flicker of his intellect, gave the mother,
sisters and baby brother.

We often hear of persons who became aged in a single night, their hair
turning from dark to white; but I have seen death thrust responsibility
upon a lad and make of him a man between the rising of the sun and its
setting. When we talk of "right environment" and the "proper conditions"
that should surround growing youth, we fan the air with words--there is no
such thing as a universal right environment.

An appreciative chapter might here be inserted concerning those beings who
move about only in rolling chairs, who never see the winter landscape but
through windows, and who exert their gentle sway from an invalid's couch,
to which the entire household or neighborhood come to confession or to
counsel. And yet I have small sympathy for the people who professionally
enjoy poor health, and no man more than I reverences the Greek passion for
physical perfection. But a close study of Jefferson's early life reveals
the truth that the death of his father and the physical weakness of his
mother and sisters were factors that developed in him a gentle sense of
chivalry, a silken strength of will, and a habit of independent thought
and action that served him in good stead throughout a long life.

Williamsburg was then the capital of Virginia. It contained only about a
thousand inhabitants, but when the Legislature was in session it was very
gay.

At one end of a wide avenue was the Capitol, and at the other the
Governor's "palace"; and when the city of Washington was laid out,
Williamsburg served as a model. On Saturdays, there were horse-races on
the "Ave