“Papa, please! Don’t begin right away tearing down something and building it over. The house is fine as it is and we all love it—and you are so tired.” “My dear, I should be even more tired with no occupation,” he argued. “Of course it will take me some little time to arrange and dispose of all my books and papers. Did they build those shelves I wrote you about in November?” “Yes, Papa, come and see. I gave them the drawing you made and I’m quite sure they followed it exactly.” She walked ahead of him through the great hall and the narrow passage that led to the southern wing of the house which contained the library, Jefferson’s study, and his bedroom, with the bed alcove between and the steep winding stairs to the mezzanine-like second story. There in the familiar rooms were all the homely things he had missed—his shabby old revolving chair, the painted wooden bench with its leather cushion that just fitted his lean, weary legs, the round revolving table he had had built with the legs set right so that the bench would slide under them and make of table, chair, and bench a comfortable kind of chaise longue with a high back to shut out the drafts. There was his file table with octagonal sides, each side holding a filing drawer labeled with a group of letters, and his high drawing table with drawers and shelves that could be adjusted at any angle. Beside the library fireplace stood a high-backed leather chair, a pompous and official looking piece of furniture. Jefferson glared at it. “And how came that thing here?” he demanded. “Why, Papa, don’t you recognize it? It’s the chair you sat in all the time you were vice-president. Mr. Madison had it sent up by the barge. He thought you would like to have it,” explained Martha. He snorted. “I have spent more eternal hours of boredom in that miserable chair than in any seat whereon a man has ever rested his breeches!” he grumbled. “Stick it in a dark corner somewhere. Send it down to the servants’ quarters. The office of vice-president is about as tedious an insult to a man’s intelligence as could be conceived. To have to suffer it for four years is bad enough, but to be reminded of it the rest of his life is pure persecution. However, I shall take pains to thank Jemmy Madison properly. He meant this as a handsome gift. I’ll receive it in the same spirit, but I don’t want it around where I have to look at it and be reminded of Senator Bingham and of John Adams’s being urged to slay a thousand Republicans with the jawbone of Thomas Jefferson.” “Oh, Papa, don’t let past times rankle. Look back on the happy ones,” begged Martha. “We did have fun in Paris, didn’t we?”