My dear Poll--This week I write to you, and if you answer my letter as soon as you receive it, and send it to Colonel Bell at Charlottesville, I shall receive it the day before I write to you again--that will be three weeks hence, and this I shall expect you to do always, so that by the correspondence of Mr. Randolph, your sister, and yourself, I may hear from home once a week. Mr. Randolph's letter from Richmond came to me about five days ago. How do you all do? Tell me that in your letter; also what is going forward with you, how you employ yourself, what weather you have had. We have already had two or three snows here. The workmen are so slow in finishing the house I have rented here, that I know not when I shall have it ready, except one room, which they promise me this week, and which will be my bed-room, study, dining-room, and parlor. I am not able to give any later news about peace or war than of October 16th, which I mentioned in my last to your sister. Wheat has fallen a few pence, and will, I think, continue to fall, slowly at first, and rapidly after a while. Adieu, my dear Maria; kiss your sister for me, and assure Mr. Randolph of my affection. I will not tell you how much I love you, lest, by rendering you vain, it might render you less worthy of my love. Encore adieu. TH. J. _To Martha Jefferson Randolph._ Philadelphia, Dec. 23d, 1790. My dear Daughter--This is a scolding letter for you all. I have not received a scrip of a pen from home since I left it. I think it so easy for you to write me one letter every week, which will be but once in the three weeks for each of you, when I write one every week, who have not one moment's repose from business, from the first to the last moment of the week. Perhaps you think you have nothing to say to me. It is a great deal to say you are all well; or that one has a cold, another a fever, etc.: besides that, there is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me; nor any thing that moves, from yourself down to Bergère or Grizzle. Write, then, my dear daughter, punctually on your day, and Mr. Randolph and Polly on theirs. I suspect you may have news to tell me of yourself of the most tender interest to me. Why silent, then? _To Mary Jefferson._ Philadelphia, Jan. 5th, 1791.