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"I will thank you, if you will put on your boots and spurs and ride over to Monticello and inform me how my thorns live," wrote Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, and Third President of the United States, from Washington to his little granddaughter, Ellen Randolph, at Edge Hill, in Albemarle County, Va. "This part of the country is beautifying with them so fast that every ride I take makes me anxious for those at Monticello."

"We had not peas nor strawberries here till the 8th of this month. On the same day I heard the first whip-poor-will," he wrote his little daughter, "when white swallows and martins appeared here on the 29th of April." "Tell me when you shall have peas up," he later wrote. "When everything comes to the table, when you shall have the first chickens hatched, when every kind of tree blossoms and puts forth leaves, when each kind of flower blooms. . . ."

Thus wrote the lonely father and city-bound farmer, trying to keep in touch with what went on in far-away Virginia, that land of his heart's desire.

The little maid replied, "We had peas here the 10th of May and strawberries the 17th of the month. As for the