Great as were the charms and delights of the society into which Jefferson was thrown in Williamsburg, they had not the power to draw him off from his studies. On the contrary, he seemed to find from his intercourse with such men as Wythe and Small, fresh incentives to diligence in his literary pursuits; and these, together with his natural taste for study, made his application to it so intense, that had he possessed a less vigorous and robust constitution, his health must have given way. He studied fifteen hours a day. During the most closely occupied days of his college life it was his habit to study until two o'clock at night, and rise at dawn; the day he spent in close application--the only recreation being a run at twilight to a certain stone which stood at a point a mile beyond the limits of the town. His habits of study were kept up during his vacations, which were spent at Shadwell; and though he did not cut himself off from the pleasures of social intercourse with his friends and family, yet he still devoted nearly three-fourths of his time to his books. He rose in the morning as soon as the hands of a clock placed on the mantle-piece in his chamber could be distinguished in the gray light of early dawn. After sunset he crossed the Rivanna in a little canoe, which was kept exclusively for his own use, and walked up to the summit of his loved Monticello, where he was having the apex of the mountain levelled down, preparatory to building. The following extracts from letters written to his friends while he was a college-boy, give a fair picture of the sprightliness of his nature and his enjoyment of society. To John Page--a friend to whom he was devotedly attached all through life--he writes, Dec. 25, 1762: