The time came when walks had to be taken on the veranda; health was failing rapidly. He was not able to oversee the farm as he had long been accustomed to do, but depended on others. In 1835 Mrs. Madison wrote to her daughter: "My days are devoted to nursing and comforting my sick patient, who walks only from the bed in which he breakfasts to another." Still later she wrote: "I never leave my husband more than a few minutes at a time, and have not left the enclosure around our house for the last eight months." When the owner of Montpelier died, on June 28, 1836, he was buried in the cemetery on the estate. Mrs. Madison spent a few lonely years in the old home, but the property was finally sold to satisfy the debts of her wayward son, Payne Todd. She was sometimes in actual want before she died, but Congress provided for her relief by buying for twenty-five thousand dollars the Madison letters and other papers. She lived until July 12, 1849, and her body was finally laid by the side of that of her husband. William Dupont, the present owner of Montpelier, has enlarged the house by the addition of a second story to the wings. So the house that was built in 1760 by James Madison, Sr., and was enlarged by James Madison, Jr., has entered on a new era of hospitality. LXVIII OAK HILL, LOUDOUN COUNTY, VIRGINIA THE HOME OF JAMES MONROE'S OLD AGE James Monroe, at twenty-eight, wrote from New York to Thomas Jefferson, with whom he had studied law: "I shall leave this about the 1st of October for Virginia--Fredericksburg. Believe me, I have not relinquished the prospect of being your neighbor. The house for which I have requested a plan may possibly be erected near Monticello; to fix there, and to have yourself in particular, with what friends we may collect around, for society is my chief object; or rather, the only one which promises to me, with the connection I have formed, real and substantial pleasure; if, indeed, by the name of pleasure it may be called." The "connection" of which the future President wrote was his marriage to Miss Eliza Kortwright of New York. Of this he had spoken in an earlier letter to Jefferson: "You will be surprised to hear that I have formed the most interesting connection in human life with a young lady in this town, as you know my plan was to visit you before I settled myself, but having formed an attachment to this young lady ... I have found that I must relinquish all other objects not connected with her."