In 1766, he made a journey to Philadelphia, in order to be inoculated for smallpox, traveling in a light gig drawn by a high-spirited horse, and narrowly escaping death by drowning in one of the numerous rivers which had to be forded between Charlottesville and Philadelphia. In the following year, about the time of his twenty-fourth birthday, he was admitted to the bar, and entered almost immediately upon a large and lucrative practice. He remained at the bar only seven years, but during most of this time his professional income averaged more than £2500 a year; and he increased his paternal estate from 1900 acres to 5000 acres. He argued with force and fluency, but his voice was not suitable for public speaking, and soon became husky. Moreover, Jefferson had an intense repugnance to the arena. He shrank with a kind of nervous horror from a personal contest, and hated to be drawn into a discussion. The turmoil and confusion of a public body were hideous to him;—it was as a writer, not as a speaker, that he won fame, first in the Virginia Assembly, and afterward in the Continental Congress. In October, 1768, Jefferson was chosen to represent Albemarle County in the House of Burgesses of Virginia; and thus began his long political career of forty years. A resolution which he formed at the outset is stated in the following letter written in 1792 to a friend who had offered him a share in an undertaking which promised to be profitable:— “When I first entered on the stage of public life (now twenty-four years ago) I came to a resolution never to engage, while in public office, in any kind of enterprise for the improvement of my fortune, nor to wear any other character than that of a farmer. I have never departed from it in a single instance; and I have in multiplied instances found myself happy in being able to decide and to act as a public servant, clear of all interest, in the multiform questions that have arisen, wherein I have seen others embarrassed and biased by having got themselves in a more interested situation.” During the next few years there was a lull in political affairs,—a sullen calm before the storm of the Revolution; but they were important years in Mr. Jefferson’s life. In February, 1770, the house at Shadwell, where he lived with his mother and sisters, was burned to the ground, while the family were away. “Were none of my books saved?” Jefferson asked of the negro who came to him, breathless, with news of the disaster. “No, master,” was the reply, “but we saved the fiddle.” In giving his friend Page an account of the fire, Jefferson wrote: “On a reasonable estimate, I calculate the cost of the books burned to have been £200. Would to God it had been the money,—then had it never cost me a sigh!” Beside the books, Jefferson lost most of his notes and papers; but no mishap, not caused by his own fault, ever troubled his peace of mind.