Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. I.djvu/147

Rh large feet and hands, thick wrists, and prominent cheek-bones and chin. His comrades described him as far from handsome, a fresh, healthy-looking youth, very erect, agile, and strong, with something of rusticity in his air and demeanor. The college was not then efficient nor well equipped, but there was one true educator connected with it, Dr. William Small, of Scotland, professor of mathematics. Jefferson gratefully remembered him as an ardent student of science, who possessed a happy talent for communicating knowledge, a man of agreeable manners and enlightened mind. He goes so far as to say in his autobiography that his coming under the influence of Dr. Small “probably fixed the destinies of my life.” The learned and genial professor became attached to his receptive pupil, made him the daily companion of his walks, and gave him those views of the connection of the sciences and of the system of things of which man is a part which then prevailed in the advanced scientific circles of Europe. Prof. Small was a friend of the poet Erasmus Darwin, progenitor of an illustrious line of learned men. Jefferson was a hard student in college, and at times forgot his father's dying injunction as to exercise. He kept horses at Williamsburg, but as his love of knowledge increased his rides became shorter and less frequent, and even his beloved violin was neglected. There was a time, as he remembered, when he