that it is with pleasure I hear he enjoys good health, and is a fine,
promising boy." He remained in France till 1792, when his mother's
anxiety for his safety overcame her desire for the completion of his
studies, and she wrote to Gouverneur Morris, who was then in France, to
send him home. "Mr. Jefferson," reads the autograph before me, "presents
his most respectful compliments to Mrs. Greene, and will with great
pleasure write to Mr. Morris on the subject of her son's return,
forwarding her letter at the same time. He thinks Mrs. Greene concluded
that he should return by the way of London. If he is mistaken, she will
be so good as to correct him, as his letter to Mr. Morris will otherwise
be on that supposition." He returned a large, vigorous, athletic man,
full of the scenes he had witnessed, and ready to engage in active life
with the ardor of his age and the high hopes which his name authorized;
for it was in the days of Washington and Hamilton and Knox, men who
extended to the son the love they had borne to the father. But his first
winter was to be given to his home, to his mother and sisters; and
there, while pursuing too eagerly his favorite sport of duck-shooting
from a canoe on the Savannah, his boat was overset, and, though his
companion escaped by clinging to the canoe, he was borne down by the
weight of his accoutrements and drowned. The next day the body was
recovered, and the vault which but six years before had prematurely
opened its doors to receive the remains of the father was opened again
for the son. Not long after, his family removed to Cumberland Island and
ceased to look upon Savannah as their burial-place; and when, for the
first time, after the lapse of more than thirty years, and at the
approach of Lafayette on his last memorable visit to the United States,
a people awoke from their lethargy and asked where the bones of the hero
of the South had been laid, there was no one to point out their
resting-place. Happy, if what the poet tells us be true, and "still in our
ashes live their wonted fires," that they have long since mingled