Williamsburg was also well laid out, and it has the honor of having served as a model for the city of Washington. It consisted chiefly of a single street, one hundred feet broad and three quarters of a mile long, with the capitol at one end, the college at the other, and a ten-acre square with public buildings in the middle. Here in his palace lived the colonial governor. The town also contained “ten or twelve gentlemen’s families, besides merchants and tradesmen.” These were the permanent inhabitants; and during the “season”—the midwinter months—the planters’ families came to town in their coaches, the gentlemen on horseback, and the little capital was then a scene of gayety and dissipation. Such was Williamsburg in 1760 when Thomas Jefferson, the frontier planter’s son, rode slowly into town at the close of an early spring day, surveying with the outward indifference, but keen inward curiosity of a countryman, the place which was to be his residence for seven years,—in one sense the most important, because the most formative, period of his life. He was a tall stripling, rather slightly built,—after the model of the Randolphs,—but extremely well-knit, muscular, and agile. His face was freckled, and his features were somewhat pointed. His hair is variously described as red, reddish, and sandy, and the color of his eyes as blue, gray, and also hazel. The expression of his face was frank, cheerful, and engaging. He was not handsome in youth, but “a very good-looking man in middle age, and quite a handsome old man.” At maturity he stood six feet two and a half inches. “Mr. Jefferson,” said Mr. Bacon, at one time the superintendent of his estate, “was well proportioned and straight as a gun-barrel. He was like a fine horse, he had no surplus flesh. He had an iron constitution, and was very strong.” Jefferson was always the most cheerful and optimistic of men. He once said, after remarking that something must depend “on the chapter of events:” “I am in the habit of turning over the next leaf with hope, and, though it often fails me, there is still another and another behind.” No doubt this sanguine trait was due in part at least to his almost perfect health. He was, to use his own language, “blessed with organs of digestion which accepted and concocted, without ever murmuring, whatever the palate chose to consign to them.” His habits through life were good. He never smoked, he drank wine in moderation, he went to bed early, he was regular in taking exercise, either by walking or, more commonly, by riding on horseback.