The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
HEALTH
It is very long, my dear sir, since I have written to you. My
dislocated wrist is now become so stiff that I write slow and with
pain, and therefore write as little as I can. Yet it is due to mutual
friendship to ask once in a while how we do. The papers tell us that
General Stark * is off at the age of ninety-three. Charles Thomson
still lives at about the same age, cheerful, slender as a grasshopper,
and so much without memory that he scarcely recognizes the members of
his house-hold. An intimate friend of his called on him not long
since; it was difficult to make him recollect who he was, and, sitting
one hour, he told him the same story four times over. Is this life?
It is at most but the life of a cabbage; surely not worth a wish.
When all our faculties have left, or are leaving us, one by one --
sight, hearing, memory -- every avenue of pleasing sensation is
closed, and athumy, debility, and malaise left in their places -- when
friends of our youth are all gone, and a generation is risen around us
whom we know not, is death an evil?
I really think so. I have ever dreaded a doting old age; and my
health has been generally so good, and is now so good, that I dread it
still. The rapid decline of my strength during the last winter has
made me hope sometimes that I see land. During summer I enjoy its
temperature, but I shudder at the approach of winter, and wish I could
sleep through it with the dormouse, and only wake with him in spring,
if ever. They say that Stark could walk about his room. I am told you
walk well and firmly. I can only reach my garden, and that with
sensible fatigue. I ride, however, daily. But reading is my delight. I
should wish never to put pen to paper; and the more because of the
treacherous practice some people have of publishing one's letters
without leave.
to John Adams, 1 June 1822
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