The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
PERSONAL HABITS
Your letter of February the 18th came to hand on the 1st instant; and
the request of the history of my physical habits would have puzzled me
not a little, had it not been for the model with which you accompanied
it, of Doctor Rush's answer to a similar inquiry. I live so much like
other people, that I might refer to ordinary life as the history of my
own. Like my friend the Doctor, I have lived temperately, eating
little animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment
for the vegetables, which constitute my principal diet. I double
however, the Doctor's glass and a half of wine, and even treble it
with a friend; but halve its effects by drinking the weak wines only.
The ardent wines I cannot drink, nor do I use ardent spirits in any
form. Malt liquors and cider are my table drinks, and my breakfast,
like that also of my friend, is of tea and coffee. I have been blest
with organs of digestion which accept and concoct, without ever
murmuring, whatever the palate chooses to consign to them, and I have
not yet lost a tooth by age. I was a hard student until I entered on
the business of life, the duties of which leave no idle time to those
disposed to fulfil them; and now, retired, and at the age of
seventy-six, I am again a hard student. Indeed, my fondness for
reading and study revolts me from the drudgery of letter-writing. And
a stiff wrist, the consequence of an early dislocation, makes writing
both slow and painful. I am not so regular in my sleep as the Doctor
says he was, devoting to it from five to eight hours, according as my
company or the book I am reading interests me; and I never go to bed
without an hour, or half hour's previous reading of something moral,
whereon to ruminate in the intervals of sleep. But whether I retire to
bed early or late, I rise with the sun. I use spectacles at night, but
not necessarily in the day, unless in reading small print. My hearing
is distinct in particular conversation, but confused when several
voices cross each other.
I enjoy good health; too feeble,
indeed, to walk much, but riding without fatigue six or eight miles a
day, and sometimes thirty or forty. I may end these egotisms,
therefore, as I began, by saying that my life has been so much like
that of other people, that I might say with Horace, to every one "
nomine mutato, narratur fabula de te.
to Vine Utley (Doctor), 21 March 1819
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