Mr. Jefferson’s two daughters had been placed at a convent school near Paris, and he was surprised one day to receive a note from Martha, the elder, asking his permission to remain in the convent for the rest of her life as a nun. For a day or two she received no answer. Then her father called in his carriage, and after a short interview with the abbess took his daughters away; and thenceforth Martha presided, so far as her age permitted, over her father’s household. Not a word upon the subject of her request ever passed between them; and long afterward, in telling the story to her own children, she praised Mr. Jefferson’s tact in dealing with what she described as a transient impulse. After this incident, Jefferson, thinking that it was time to take his daughters home, obtained leave of absence for six months; and the little family landed at Norfolk, November 18, 1789. They journeyed slowly homeward, stopping at one friend’s house after another, and, two days before Christmas, arrived at Monticello, where they were rapturously greeted by the slaves, who took the four horses from the carriage and drew it up the steep incline themselves; and when he alighted, Mr. Jefferson, in spite of himself, was carried into the house on the arms of his black servants and friends. VIII SECRETARY OF STATE Mr. Jefferson had a strong desire to resume his post as minister to France, but he yielded to Washington’s earnest request that he should become Secretary of State in the new government. He lingered long enough at Monticello to witness the marriage of his daughter Martha to Thomas Mann Randolph, and then set out upon a cold, wet journey of twenty-one days, reaching New York, which was then the seat of government, late in March, 1790. He hired a small house at No. 57 Maiden Lane, and immediately attacked the arrears of work which had been accumulating for six months. The unusual confinement, aggravated, perhaps, by a homesickness, clearly revealed in his letters, for his daughters and for Monticello, brought on what seems to have been a neuralgic headache which lasted for three weeks. It may have been caused in part by the climate of New York, as to which Mr. Jefferson observed: “Spring and fall they never have, so far as I can learn. They have ten months of winter, two of summer, with some winter days interspersed.” But there were other causes beside homesickness and headache which made Jefferson unhappy in his new position. Long afterward he described them as follows:—