Jefferson began public life early. Shortly after his graduation from William and Mary's College, the oldest educational institution in Virginia, he took up the study of law, and within a very few years he had gathered about him a profitable clientage. In this, the foremost of the learned professions, his genius as a tactician was early displayed. On account of his comparative youthfulness and the limited time that he had been at the bar, he could not, in the nature of things, have been an erudite lawyer, and yet the registry of the courts before which he practised showed that in the fourth year, after he became a barrister, he was employed in four hundred and thirty important cases. No one but a tactful man, however great his learning, in so short a period of time, could make a record of that exalted grade. He was, therefore, at the beginning of his career as a public man, frank, earnest, cordial, sympathetic in his manner, full of confidence in men, and sanguine in his views of life, which gave him a grip upon those about him, as a leader equipped by nature for achievements of the highest and most important possibilities. As a delegate to the Second Continental Congress Mr. Jefferson had a leading share in its deliberations, although that body embraced many of the most distinguished men of that period. The most important act of that assembly was the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, which, as I have already stated, he himself drafted. It is said, however, that he was most valuable in committee work, because of the aptness of his sensible and methodical mind, and the ingenuity he possessed in putting his ideas upon paper, and doing it in such a way as to create but little, if any, antagonisms. In all of the official stations in which he was placed by his fellow citizens, by means of his talents for constructive statesmanship, and his persuasive and conciliatory spirit, he invariably displayed a remarkable talent for tact in parliamentary leadership. Military chieftains often win immortal renown as the result of a single important battle, and often flash like rush-light stars across the sky of history. But this is not true of men like Jefferson and others of his class. They _grow_ into great characters, and they build monuments to their memories which the tooth of time cannot destroy. There is nothing ephemeral or evanescent in the makeup of their records. They build not for a day nor a year, but for the centuries. Indeed, it may be said that they build for eternity, and thus many of them have builded wiser than they knew. The following is a summary of Jefferson's achievements: 1. Jefferson, although eight years at the bar, became a lawyer of renown, and an acknowledged leader in the profession. 2. For many years he was a member of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, and possessed therein an influence almost supreme.