The true scientist has no passion for killing things.  He says with Thoreau, “To shoot a bird is to lose it.”  Professor Small had the gentle instinct that respects life, and he refused to take that which he could not give.  To his youthful companion he imparted, in a degree, the secret of enjoying things without the passion for possession and the lust of ownership.

There is a myth abroad that college towns are intellectual centers; but the number of people in a college town (or any other) who really think, is very few.

Williamsburg was gay, and, this much said, it is needless to add it was not intellectual.  But Professor Small was a thinker, and so was Governor Fauquier; and these two were firm friends, although very unlike in many ways.  And to “the palace” of the courtly Fauquier, Small took his young friend Jefferson.  Fauquier was often a master of the revels, but after his seasons of dissipation he turned to Small for absolution and comfort.  At these times he seemed to Jefferson a paragon of excellence.  To the grace of the French he added the earnestness of the English.  He quoted Pope, and talked of Swift, Addison and Thomson.  Fauquier and Jefferson became friends, although more than a score of years and a world of experience separated them.  Jefferson caught a little of Fauquier’s grace, love of books and delight in architecture.  But Fauquier helped him most by gambling away all his ready money and getting drunk and smoking strong pipes with his feet on the table.  And Jefferson then vowed he would never handle a card, nor use tobacco, nor drink intoxicating liquors.  And in conversation with Small, he anticipated Buckle by saying, “To gain leisure, wealth must first be secured; but once leisure is gained, more people use it in the pursuit of pleasure than employ it in acquiring knowledge.”

* * * * *

Had Jefferson lived in a great city he would have been an architect.  His practical nature, his mastery of mathematics, his love of proportion, and his passion for music are the basic elements that make a Christopher Wren.  But Virginia, in Seventeen Hundred Sixty-five, offered no temptation to ambitions along that line; log houses with a goodly “crack” were quite good enough, and if the domicile proved too small the plan of the first was simply duplicated.  Yet a career of some kind young Jefferson knew awaited him.

About this time the rollicking Patrick Henry came along.  Patrick played the violin, and so did Thomas.  These two young men had first met on a musical basis.  Some otherwise sensible people hold that musicians are shallow and impractical; and I know one man who declares that truth and honesty and uprightness never dwelt in a professional musician’s heart; and further, that the tribe is totally incapable of comprehending the difference between “meum” and “tuum.”  But then this same man claims that actors are rascals who have lost their own characters in the business of playing they are somebody else.  And yet I’ll explain for the benefit of the captious that, although Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry both fiddled, they never did and never would fiddle while Rome burned.  Music was with them a pastime, not a profession.