Time wastes too fast: every letter
I trace tells me with what rapidity
life follows my pen. The days and hours
of it are flying over our heads like
clouds of windy day never to return—
more every thing presses on—and every
time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, every absence which
follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation
which we are shortly to make!
PRIMARY DOCUMENT
Lines Copied from Tristram Shandy by Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson and Thomas Jefferson (Before September 6, 1782)
ORIGINAL IMAGES
CONTEXT
This document features lines from the novel Tristram Shandy copied by Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson and Thomas Jefferson, likely written weeks before her death on September 6, 1782. This document is the only known writing exchanged between the Jeffersons that survives. Everything preceding “presses on” is written by Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson and the lines that follow were copied by Thomas Jefferson.
FULL TEXT
