He only warns people so they will expect to hear the train, and not be frightened when it goes through." * * * * * Thomas Jefferson is most widely remembered, I suppose, as the author of the Declaration of Independence, the third President, the purchaser of Louisiana, and the unfortunate individual upon whom the Democratic party casts the blame for its existence, precisely as the Republican party blames itself on Washington and Lincoln--although the lamentable state into which both parties have fallen is actually the fault of living men.
It is significant, however, that of this trio of Jeffersonian items, Jefferson himself selected but one to be included in the inscription which he wrote for his tombstone--a modest obelisk on the grounds at Monticello.

The inscription mentions but three of his achievements: the authorship of the Declaration, that of the Virginia statute for religious freedom, and the fact that he was "Father of the University of Virginia." Regardless of other accomplishments, the man who built the university and the house at Monticello was great.

It is more true of these buildings than of any others I have seen that they are the autobiography, in brick and stone, of their architect.

To see them, to see some of the exquisitely margined manuscript in Jefferson's clean handwriting, preserved in the university library, and to read the Declaration, is to gain a grasp of certain sides of Jefferson's nature which can be achieved in no other way.
Monticello stands on a lofty hilltop, with vistas, between trees, of neighboring valleys, hills, and mountains.

It is a supremely lovely house, unlike any other, and, while it is too much to say that one would recognize it as the house of the writer of the Declaration, it is not too much to say that, once one does know it, one can trace a clear affinity resulting from a common origin--an affinity much more apparent, by the way, than may be traced between the work of Michelangelo on St.
Peter's at Rome, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and in his "David." The introductory paragraph to the Declaration ascends into the body of the document as gracefully and as certainly as the wide flights of easy steps ascend to the doors of Monticello; the long and beautifully balanced paragraph which follows, building word upon word and sentence upon sentence into a central statement, has a form as definite and graceful as that of the finely proportioned house; the numbered paragraphs which follow, setting forth separate details, are like rooms within the house, and--I have just come upon the coincidence with a pleasant start such as might be felt by the discoverer of some complex and important cipher--as there are twenty-seven of the numbered paragraphs in the Declaration, so there are twenty-seven rooms in Monticello.