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While the holiness of friendship is thus preserved from vile profanation , the citizens of the United States * will rejoice at the triumph of virtue , and learn how to appreciate those lofty sentiments and that exalted friendship which neither time , political dissensions , nor private enemies can obliterate . " Monticello , Oct . 12 , 1823 .. *< Dear Sir , —I do not write with the case which your letter of Sept . 18 , supposes . Crippled wrists and fingers make writing slow and laborious ; but , while writing to you , I lose the sense of these things , in the recollection of ancient times , when youth and health made happiness out of every thing . I forget for a while the hoary winter of age , when we can think of nothing but how to ' keep ourselves warm , how to get rid of our heavy hours until the friendly hand of death shall rid us of all at once . Against this tedium vitce ,
however , I am fortunately mounted on a hobby , which , indeed , 1 should have better managed some 30 or 40 years ago , but whose easy amble is still sufficient to give exercise and amusement to an Octogenary rider . This is the establishment of an
University , on a scale more comprehensive , and in a country more healthy and central , than our old William and Mary , which these obstacles have long kept in a state of languor and inefficiency . But the tardiness with which such works proceed , may render it doubtful , whether I shall live to see it
go into action . " Putting aside these things , however , for the present , I write this letter , a 3 due to a friendship , co-eval with our government , and now attempted to be poisoned , when too late in life to be replaced by new affections . I had for some time observed , iu the public papers , dark hints and mysterious inuendos of a correspondence of yours with a friend , to whom you had opened your bosom without reserve , and which was to be made public by that friend or his representative ; and now it is said to be actually published . It has not yet reached us , but extracts have been
given , and such as seemed most likely to draw a curtain of separation between you and myself . Were there no other motive than that of indignation against the author of this outrage on private vol
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confidence , whose shaft seems to have been aimed at ypurself . more * particularly ; this would make it the duty of every honourable mind to . ' . disappoint that aim , by opposing to its impression a seven-fold shield of apathy and insensibility . With me , however , no such armour is needed . The
circumstances of the times in which we have happened to live , and the partiality of our friends , at a particular period , placed us in a state of apparent opposition , which some might suppose to be personal also : and there might not be wanting those who wished to
make it so , by filling our ears with malignant falsehoods ; by dressing up hideous phantoms of their own creation , presenting them to you under my name , to me under yours , and endeavouring to instil into our minds things concerning each other , the most destitute of truth . And if there had
been at any time a moment When we were off our guard , and in a temper to let the whispers of these people make us forget what we had known of each other for so many years—and
years of so muck trial ; yet all men who have attended to the workings of the human mind , who have seen the false colours under which passion sometimes dresses the actions and
motives of others , have seen also these passions subsiding with time and reflection , dissipating like mists before the rising sun , and restoring to us the sight of all things in their true shape
and colours . It would be strange , indeed , if at our years , we were to go an age back , to hunt up imaginary or forgotten facts , to disturb the repose of affections , so sweetening to the evening of our lives !
" Be assured , my dear Sir , that I am incapable of receiving the slightest impression from the effort now made to plant thorns on the pillow of age , worth and wisdom , and to sow tares between friends who have been such
for near half a century . Beseeching you , then , not to suffer your mind to be disquieted by this wicked attempt to poison its peace , and praying you to throw it by among the things which have never happened , I add sincere assurances of my unabated and constant attachment , friendship and respect . TH . JEFFERSON . ¦ ¦ " John Adams , former President of the United States . "
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Letter from Ex ~ President Jefferson to Ew-President Adams , 329
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. xix . 2 u
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1824, page 329, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2525/page/9/
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