We possess no precise information upon the amount spent by Jefferson nor any account book for that year, but we may surmise that Colonel Walker would not have been so lenient if the total sum had been spent in reprehensible dissipations. Williamsburg boasted of a large bookstore, and in 1775 Dixon and Hunter published a list of more than three hundred titles in their stock. Book lovers are born and not made. Jefferson had never been able to satisfy fully his passion for books, and as the college library offered him only very meager resources, he must have plunged with delight in the bookshop of Williamsburg and bought extravagantly, an expense the estate "could well afford to pay." But the fact remained that what he had learned he had learned by himself, and that college life had not furnished him the guidance and direction he was looking for.
It was at this juncture that Doctor Small, professor of mathematics, was appointed _ad interim_ professor of philosophy and soon developed an interest in the young Virginian. Jefferson himself paid a grateful tribute to the man who just in time rescued him from his frivolous companions and brought back to his mind the serious purpose he had entertained when he entered William and Mary.
It was my good fortune and that probably fixed the destinies of my life, that Doctor William Small of Scotland was then Professor of Mathematics, a man profound in most of the useful branches of science, with a happy talent of communication, correct and gentlemanly manners, and an enlarged and liberal mind. He, most happily for me, became soon attached to me, and made me his daily companion when not engaged in the school; and from his conversation I got my first views of the expansion of science, and of the system of things in which we are placed. Fortunately, the philosophical chair became vacant soon after my arrival at college, and he was appointed to fill it _per interim_: and he was the first who ever gave, in that college, regular lectures in Ethics, Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres.[6]
For Jefferson Doctor Small was the prime awakener and inspirer. Through him the young man was introduced to George Wythe who soon accepted him as a student of law, and through him again he was received by Governor Fauquier.