of some passenger friend, or some known and trusted ship commander, whom we do not find named. They were received by Mrs. Adams, and awaited an expected opportunity of crossing the Channel with a party of French friends of Mr. Jefferson. These continued to defer their return, and Mr. Jefferson became too impatient to await their movements. Accordingly, his steward, the favorite and trusty Petit, was sent to London after Marie, and she reached her father's hotel in Paris, on the 29th of July, just three days before her ninth birthday.
Mrs. Adams thus describes her little guest, immediately after her departure, in a letter to her sister, Mrs. Cranch, of Massachusetts:
"I have had with me for a fortnight a little daughter of Mr. Jefferson's, who arrived here with a young negro girl, her servant, from Virginia. Mr. Jefferson wrote me some months ago that he expected them, and desired me to receive them. I did so, and was amply rewarded for my trouble. A finer child of her age I never saw. So mature an understanding, so womanly a behavior, and so much sensibility, united, are rarely to be met with. I grew so fond of her, and she was so attached to me, that when Mr. Jefferson sent for her, they were obliged to force the little creature away. She is but eight years old. She would sit, sometimes, and describe to me the parting with her aunt, who brought her up[1], the obligations she was under to her, and the love she had for her
- ↑ Mrs. Francis Eppes, of Eppington, Va.
