The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
HEALTH
I retain good health, am rather feeble to walk much, but ride with
ease, passing two or three hours a day on horseback, and every three
or four months taking in a carriage a journey of ninety miles to a
distant possession, where I pass a good deal of my time. My eyes need
the aid of glasses by night, and with Small print in the day also; my
hearing is not quite so sensible as it used to be; no tooth shaking
yet, but shivering and shrinking in body from the cold we now
experience, my thermometer having been as low as 12 [degrees] this
morning. My greatest oppression is a correspondence afflictingly
laborious, the extent of which I have been long endeavoring to
curtail. This keeps me at the drudgery of the writing-table all the
prime hours of the day, leaving for the gratification of my appetite
for reading, only what I can steal from the hours of sleep. Could I
reduce this epistolary corvee within the limits of my friends and
affairs, and give the time redeemed from it to reading and reflection,
to history, ethics, mathematics, my life would be as happy as the
infirmities of age would admit, and I should look on its consummation
with the composure of one "
qui summum nec metuit diem nec optat.
to Charles Thomson, 9 January 1816
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