Williamsburg was then the capital of Virginia.  It contained only about a thousand inhabitants, but when the Legislature was in session it was very gay.

At one end of a wide avenue was the Capitol, and at the other the Governor’s “palace”; and when the city of Washington was laid out, Williamsburg served as a model.  On Saturdays, there were horse-races on the “Avenue”; everybody gambled; cockfights and dogfights were regarded as manly diversions; there was much carousing at taverns; and often at private houses there were all-night dances where the rising sun found everybody but the servants plain drunk.

At the college, both teachers and scholars were obliged to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles and to recite the Catechism.  The atmosphere was charged with theology.

Young Jefferson had never before seen a village of even a dozen houses, and he looked upon this as a type of all cities.  He thought about it, talked about it, wrote about it, and we now know that at this time his ideas concerning city versus country crystallized.

Fifty years after, when he had come to know London and Paris, and had seen the chief cities of Christendom, he repeated the words he had written in youth, “The hope of a nation lies in its tillers of the soil!”

On his mother’s side he was related to the “first families,” but aristocracy and caste had no fascination for him, and he then began forming those ideas of utility, simplicity and equality that time only strengthened.

His tutors and professors served chiefly as “horrible examples,” with the shining exception of Doctor Small.  The friendship that ripened between this man and young Jefferson is an ideal example of what can be done through the personal touch.  Men are great only as they excel in sympathy; and the difference between sympathy and imagination has not yet been shown us.

Doctor Small encouraged the young farmer from the hills to think and to express himself.  He did not endeavor to set him straight or explain everything for him, or correct all his vagaries, or demand that he should memorize rules.  He gave his affectionate sympathy to the boy who, with a sort of feminine tenderness, clung to the only person who understood him.

To Doctor Small, pedigree and history unknown, let us give the credit of being first in the list of friends that gave bent to the mind of Jefferson.  John Burke, in his “History of Virginia,” refers to Professor Small thus:  “He was not any too orthodox in his opinions.”  And here we catch a glimpse of a formative influence in the life of Jefferson that caused him to turn from the letter of the law and cleave to the spirit that maketh alive.  After school-hours the tutor and the student walked and talked, and on Saturdays and Sundays went on excursions through the woods; and to the youth there was given an impulse for a scientific knowledge of birds and flowers and the host of life that thronged the forest.  And when the pair had strayed so far beyond the town that darkness gathered and the stars came out, they conversed of the wonders of the sky.