ometimes thirty or forty. I may
end these egotisms, therefore, as I began, by saying that my life has
been so much like that of other people, that I might say with Horace,
to every one, '_Nomine mutato, narratur fabula de te_.' I must not end,
however, without due thanks for the kind sentiments of regard you are
so good as to express towards myself; and with my acknowledgments for
these, be pleased to accept the assurances of my respect and esteem.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CXLVIII.--TO JOHN ADAMS, July 9, 1819

TO JOHN ADAMS.

Monticello, July 9, 1819.

Dear Sir,

I am in debt to you for your letters of May the 21st, 27th, and June
the 22nd. The first, delivered me by Mr. Greenwood, gave me the
gratification of his acquaintance; and a gratification it always is, to
be made acquainted with gentlemen of candor, worth, and information, as
I found Mr. Greenwood to be. That, on the subject of Mr. Samuel Adams
Wells, shall not be forgotten in time and place, when it can be used to
his advantage.

But what has attracted my peculiar notice, is the paper from Mecklenburg
county, of North Carolina, published in the Essex Register, which you
were so kind as to enclose in your last, of June the 22nd. And you
seem to think it genuine. I believe it spurious. I deem it to be a very
unjustifiable quiz, like that of the volcano, so minutely related to us
as having broken out in North Carolina, some half dozen years ago,
in that part of the country, and perhaps in that very county of
Mecklenburg, for I do not remember its precise locality. If this paper
be really taken from the Raleigh Register, as quoted, I wonder it should
have escaped Ritchie, who culls what is good from every paper, as the
bee from every flower; and the National Intelligencer, too, which is
edited by a North-Carolinian: and that the fire should blaze out all at
once in Essex, one thousand miles from where the spark is said to
have fallen. But if really taken from the Raleigh Register, who is the
narrator, and is the name subscribed real, or is it as fictitious as the
paper itself? It appeals, too, to an original book, which is burnt, to
Mr. Alexander, who is dead, to a joint letter from Caswell, Hughes, and
Hooper, all dead, to a copy sent to the dead Caswell, and another sent
to Doctor Williamson, now probably dead, whose memory did not recollect,
in the history he has written of North Carolina, this gigantic step
of its county of Mecklenburg. Horry,