Note 77 — Chapter XXII

Without meaning the least irreverence in the world to the memory of these two great and good men, I can not refrain here from giving the reader the benefit of a good story, which has the advantage over most good stories of being strictly true:

There was living in Albemarle, at the time of Jefferson's death, an enthusiastic democrat, who, admiring him beyond all men, thought that, by dying on the 4th of July, he had raised himself and his party one step higher in the temple of fame. Then came the news that John Adams had died on the same great day. Indignant at the bare suggestion of such a thing, he at first refused to believe it, and, when he could no longer discredit the news, exclaimed, in a passion, that "it was a damned Yankee trick."