Thomas Jefferson to Vine Utley, 27 June 1819
To Vine Utley
Monticello June 27. 19.
Sir
Your favor of the 10th is recieved. I hope your predictions as to my longevity are not to prove true. in youth & health with all the avenues to the enjoiments of life open, it’s pleasures over-weigh it’s pains: but weak and decaying, our faculties leaving us one by one, the cares of life hanging on us, and it’s comforts gone, the balance shifts into the other scale. to me an increasing debility points out the vale into which I am descending, and I follow it’s index with chearfulness. according to your request I inclose two engravings taken of me by different hands and I salute you with esteem & respect.
Th: Jefferson
PoC (CSmH: JF-BA); on verso of reused address cover of Wilson Cary Nicholas to TJ, 27 Mar. 1819; at foot of text: “Doctr Vine Utley”; endorsed by TJ. Enclosures not found.