On the subject of the Postscript of yours of August the 16th and of Mrs. Adams’s letter, I am silent. I know the depth of the affliction it has caused, and can sympathize with it the more sensibly, inasmuch as there is no degree of affliction, produced by the loss of those dear to us, which experience has not taught me to estimate. I have ever found time and silence the only medicine, and these but assuage, they never can suppress, the deep-drawn sigh which recollection for ever brings up, until recollection and life are extinguished together. Ever affectionately yours. Th: Jefferson. LETTER CXV.--TO JOHN ADAMS, October 28, 1813 TO JOHN ADAMS. Monticello, October 28, 1813. Dear Sir, According to the reservation between us, of taking up one of the subjects of our correspondence at a time, I turn to your letters of August the 16th and September the 2nd. The passage you quote from Theognis, I think has an ethical rather than a political object. The whole piece is a moral exhortation, [Illustration: page226] and this passage particularly seems to be a reproof to man, who, while with his domestic animals he is curious to improve the race, by employing always the finest male, pays no attention to the improvement of his own race, but intermarries with the vicious, the ugly, or the old, for considerations of wealth or ambition. It is in conformity with the principle adopted afterwards by the Pythagoreans, and expressed by Ocellus in another form; [Illustration: page226a