tion has been raised on this point. He certainly was building a
house at that time, and it is not likely that he ever employed himself
in that way more than once. Scattered among discussions of Alien and
Sedition Laws, the war in Europe, free goods in neutral ships, and other
public topics, are brief allusions to lathing nails which he depended
upon Mr. Jefferson to supply; that gentleman having recently set up a
machine for their manufacture, which, however, like a good many other of
his contrivances, seems to have had a hitch in it. So also he asks the
Vice-President to see to it that, when the window-glass and the pulleys
are forwarded, the "chord" for the latter shall not be forgotten; and
orders for other articles, only to be found in Philadelphia, are sent to
his obliging friend. Mr. Jefferson, it is easy to believe, found them
rather the most interesting part of the political letters to which they
were appended; and he was quite willing, no doubt, to relieve the tedium
of presiding over the Senate by searching through the Market Street
shops for the latest improvements in builders' hardware. To Mr. Monroe,
Madison wrote that, as he is sending off a wagon to fetch nails for his
carpenters, "it will receive the few articles which you have been so
good as to offer from the superfluities of your stock, and which
circumstances will permit me now to lay in." Evidently he was getting
ready to go to housekeeping with his young wife. Monroe's stock of
household goods had been replenished, perhaps by importations from
France on his recent return, and he was disposing of his old supplies,
by gift or sale, among his neighbors. Madison, at any rate, sends this
modest list of what he would like to have: "To wit, two table-cloths for
a dining-room of about eighteen feet; two, three, or four, as may be
convenient, for a more limited scale; four dozen napkins, which will not
in the least be objectionable for having been used; and two mattresses."
It was not an extravagant outfit, even though it had not been meant
for one of those lordly Virginia homes of which some modern historians
give us such charming pictures. "We are so little acquainted,"--Mr.
Madison continues in that stately way which nothing ever surprised him
into forgetting,--"we are so little acquainted with the culinary
utensils in detail that it is difficult to refer to such by name or
description as would be within our wants."

But pots and kettles,--though that may