Early in the spring of 1796, in a letter to his friend Giles, he gives us the following glimpse of his domestic operations:
We have had a fine winter. Wheat looks well. Corn is scarce and dear: twenty-two shillings here, thirty shillings in Amherst. Our blossoms are but just opening. I have begun the demolition of my house, and hope to get through its re-edification in the course of the summer. We shall have the eye of a brick-kiln to poke you into, or an octagon to air you in.
To another friend he wrote, a few weeks later:
I begin to feel the effects of age. My health has suddenly broken down, with symptoms which give me to believe I shall not have much to encounter of the _tedium vitæ_.
The reader will read with interest the following kind and affectionate letter to young Lafayette--son of the Marquis de Lafayette:
Dear Sir--The inquiries of Congress were the first intimation which reached my retirement of your being in this country; and from M. Volney, now with me, I first learned where you are. I avail myself of the earliest moments of this information to express to you the satisfaction with which I learn that you are in a land of safety, where you will meet in every person the friend of your worthy father and family. Among these, I beg leave to mingle my own assurances of sincere attachment to him, and my desire to prove it by every service I can render you. I know, indeed, that you are already under too good a patronage to need any other, and that my distance and retirement render my affections unavailing to you. They exist, nevertheless, in all their warmth and purity towards your father and every one embraced by his love; and no one has wished with more anxiety to see him once more in the bosom of a nation who, knowing his works and his worth, desire to make him and his family forever their own. You were, perhaps, too young to remember me personally when in Paris. But I pray you to remember that, should any occasion offer wherein I can be useful to you, there is no one on whose friendship and zeal you may more confidently count. You will some day, perhaps, take a tour through these States. Should any thing in this part of them attract your curiosity, it would be a circumstance of great gratification to me to receive you here, and to assure you in person of those sentiments of esteem and attachment, with which I am, dear Sir, your friend and humble servant,