"I cannot rest till I obtain your forgiveness in all its fulness for the trouble I gave you during my stay in your house. ... Perhaps I was the cause of depriving you of amusements more suited to your liking and pleasure, than busying yourself with me. You never went out to pay visits. You were kind enough to ask me daily what I liked, what I did not like: all my desires were carried out; all my wishes were anticipated, to gratify me and to make my stay agreeable. Let me receive an answer from you, forgiving me, I beg Eliza [her daughter] to intercede for me. I owe you too great a debt to be able to express it in words adequate to my obligation and my gratitude. Let this suffice, that I shall never forget it, and that its memory will never be extinguished for even one moment in my heart."[1] [Footnote 1: T. Korzon, _Kościuszko_.] He gave these ladies some of the splendid presents he had received from the Russian Tsar: magnificent furs, a necklace of Siberian corals, and to White himself the Duchess of Devonshire's ring. His memory went down through the family, and Mrs. White's grandson often heard his grandmother tell of her Polish guest, and how she held no other man his equal--with the patriotic exception of Washington! White was a valuable auxiliary to Kościuszko in a somewhat intricate piece of business. To live on the gift of money which Paul I had given him was an odious position that Kościuszko would not tolerate. It was his intention to return it, and to claim from Congress the arrears of the stipend owing to him from 1788, and that through some mischance had never reached him. With White's assistance a portion of the American sum was handed over to him; but the return of the Tsar's present was not so easy. Niemcewicz pointed out that such a proceeding would infallibly rouse the revenge of the Tsar upon the Poles in his dominions. This decision was against Kościuszko's personal feeling on the matter. He bided his time, and, as we shall see, at a more propitious moment took his own counsel. A bevy of visitors and admirers again surrounded Kościuszko in Philadelphia. Among them were the future Louis Philippe, with the Princes de Montpensier and Beaujolais. They called themselves citizens of France, and sported the tricolour. They often spent the evening with Kościuszko, and on their farewell visit Kościuszko gave the younger prince a pair of fur boots. But the man with whom Kościuszko was on the closest and warmest terms of intimacy was Thomas Jefferson. The pastel portrait that Kościuszko painted of this dear friend is preserved among Poland's national relics. "He," wrote Jefferson to Gates, "is the purest son of liberty among you all that I have ever known, the kind of liberty which extends to all, not only to the rich."[1] To Jefferson Kościuszko confided the testament of his American property, which he had been granted from Congress on the close of the War of Independence, and which