To "my dear Patsy."
Docketed.
Watermark: M. Johannot & Fils around a central cockle shell.
Part of a large collection of letters from Thomas Jefferson to his daughter Martha. Letters in the collection are described in individual records; see main record for MA 1029 for details.
Discussing his trip to Aix en Provence, which was "undertaken with the hope that the mineral waters of this place might restore strength to [his] wrist"; warning her against indolence: "if at any moment ... you catch yourself in idleness, start from it as you would from the precipice of a gulph"; admonishing her to apply herself more diligently to reading her Livy, and noting that "we are always equal to what we undertake with resolution"; remarking that "it is a part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate; to surmount every difficulty by resolution and contrivance"; encouraging needlework as a remedy to idleness; telling her that he looks to her and to her sister "to render the evening of [his] life serene and contented."