In the midst of this loving company, the great man led a busy life, carrying on an immense correspondence, by means of which he exerted a commanding influence on the questions of the day as well as on all social matters. To a child named for him, he wrote a letter which the boy might read after the statesman's death. In it are these helpful words: "Adore God. Reverence and cherish your parents. Love your neighbor as yourself. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at the ways of Providence." To his daughter Mary he wrote these lines, which well might be hung up in every household:-- "Harmony in the married state is the very first object to be aimed at. Nothing can preserve affections uninterrupted but a firm resolution never to differ in will, and a determination in each to consider the love of the other as of more value than any object whatever on which a wish had been fixed. How light, in fact, is the sacrifice of any other wish when weighed against the affections of one with whom we are to pass our whole life. And though opposition in a single instance will hardly of itself produce alienation, yet every one has his pouch into which all these little oppositions are put. While that is filling, the alienation is insensibly going on, and when filled it is complete. It would puzzle either to say why, because no one difference of opinion has been marked enough to produce a serious effect by itself. But he finds his affections wearied out by a constant stream of little checks and obstacles. "Other sources of discontent, very common indeed, are the little cross-purposes of husband and wife, in common conversation; a disposition in either to criticise and question whatever the other says; a desire always to demonstrate and make him feel himself in the wrong, and especially in company. Nothing is so goading. Much better, therefore, if our companion views a thing in a light different from what we do, to leave him in quiet possession of his view. What is the use of rectifying him, if the thing be unimportant, and, if important, let it pass for the present, and wait a softer moment and more conciliatory occasion of revising the subject together. It is wonderful how many persons are rendered unhappy by inattention to these little rules of prudence." Jefferson rose early; the sun, he said, had not for fifty years caught him in bed. But he bore great heart-sorrow in these declining years, and bore it bravely. His estate had diminished in value, and he had lost heavily by indorsements for others. His household expenses were necessarily great. Finally, debts pressed so heavily that he sold to Congress the dearly prized library, which he had been gathering for fifty years. He received nearly twenty-four thousand dollars for it, about half its original value. But this amount brought only temporary relief.