presided, so far as her age
permitted, over her father's household. Not a word upon the subject of her
request ever passed between them; and long afterward, in telling the story
to her own children, she praised Mr. Jefferson's tact in dealing with what
she described as a transient impulse.

After this incident, Jefferson, thinking that it was time to take his
daughters home, obtained leave of absence for six months; and the little
family landed at Norfolk, November 18, 1789. They journeyed slowly
homeward, stopping at one friend's house after another, and, two days
before Christmas, arrived at Monticello, where they were rapturously
greeted by the slaves, who took the four horses from the carriage and drew
it up the steep incline themselves; and when he alighted, Mr. Jefferson,
in spite of himself, was carried into the house on the arms of his black
servants and friends.

VIII

SECRETARY OF STATE

Mr. Jefferson had a strong desire to resume his post as minister to
France, but he yielded to Washington's earnest request that he should
become Secretary of State in the new government. He lingered long enough
at Monticello to witness the marriage of his daughter Martha to Thomas
Mann Randolph, and then set out upon a cold, wet journey of twenty-one
days, reaching New York, which was then the seat of government, late in
March, 1790. He hired a small house at No. 57 Maiden Lane, and immediately
attacked the arrears of work which had been accumulating for six months.
The unusual confinement, aggravated, perhaps, by a homesickness, clearly
revealed in his letters, for his daughters and for Monticello, brought on
what seems to have been a neuralgic headache which lasted for three weeks.
It may have been caused in part by the climate of New York, as to which
Mr. Jefferson observed: "Spring and fall they never have, so far as I can
learn. They have ten months of winter, two of summer, with some winter
days interspersed." But there were other causes beside homesickness and
headache which made Jefferson unhappy in his new position. Long afterward
he described them as follows:--

"I had left France in the first year of her Revolution, in the fervor of
natural rights and zeal for reformation. My conscientious devotion to
those rights could not be heightened, but it had been aroused and excited
by daily exercise. The President received me cordially, and my c