_Evening, in majestic shadows, fell upon the fortress’ walls; Sweetly were the last bells ringing on the James and on the Charles. ’Mid the choruses of Freedom, two departed victors lay, One beside the blue Rivanna, one by Massachusetts Bay._ HEZEKIAH BUTTERWORTH (_Condensed_) THOMAS JEFFERSON was born in Virginia, April 13, 1743 Framed the Declaration of Independence, 1776 Was elected Governor of Virginia, 1779 Appointed Secretary of State in Washington’s Cabinet, 1789 Elected third President of the United States, 1800 He died on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Fourth of July, 1826 He was called the Sage of Monticello. Monticello was the name of his fine country estate. THE BOY OWNER OF SHADWELL FARM Thomas Jefferson was a boy of seventeen, tall, raw-boned, freckled, and sandy-haired. He came to Williamsburg from the far west of Virginia, to enter the College of William and Mary. With his large feet and hands, his thick wrists, and prominent cheek bones and chin, he could not have been accounted handsome or graceful. He is described, however, as a fresh, bright, healthy-looking youth, as straight as a gun-barrel, sinewy and strong, with that alertness of movement which comes of early familiarity with saddle, gun, canoe, and minuet. His teeth, too, were perfect. His eyes, which were of hazel-gray, were beaming and expressive. His home, Shadwell Farm, was a hundred and fifty miles to the north-west of Williamsburg among the mountains of central Virginia. It was a plain, spacious farmhouse, a story and a half high, with four large rooms and a wide entry on the ground floor, and many garret chambers above. The farm was nineteen hundred acres of land, part of it densely wooded, and some of it so steep and rocky as to be unfit for cultivation. The farm was tilled by thirty slaves. And Thomas Jefferson, this student of seventeen, through the death of his father, was already the head of the family, and under a guardian, the owner of Shadwell Farm, the best portion of his father’s estate. His father, Peter Jefferson, had been a wonder of physical force and stature. He had the strength of three strong men. Two hogsheads of tobacco, each weighing a thousand pounds, he could raise at once from their sides, and stand them upright. When surveying in the Wilderness, he could tire out his assistants, and tire out his mules; then eat his mules, and still press on, sleeping alone by night in a hollow tree to the howling of the wolves, till his task was done. From this natural chief of men, Thomas Jefferson derived his stature, his erectness, and his bodily strength. _James Parton_ (_Arranged_) A CHRISTMAS GUEST