Several years before the death of John Sefton, Jefferson paid him a visit at his home in Paradise Valley, during one of his summer rambles.  Upon reaching Sefton’s farm, he found the owner “with his breeches and coat sleeves both rolled up, and standing in the middle of a clear and shallow stream, where one could scarcely step without spoiling the sports of the brook trout, which sparkled through the crystal waters.  Sefton stood in a crouching attitude, watching, with mingled disappointment and good humor, a little pig which the stream was carrying down its current, and which, pig-like, had slipped from the hands of its owner in its natural aversion to being washed.  Jefferson, with the true instinct of an artist, dropped his fishing tackle and took his sketch-book to transfer the ludicrous scene to paper.  Sefton appreciated the humor of the situation, and only objected when Jefferson began to fill in the background with a dilapidated old barn, at which the old gentleman demurred on account of its wretched appearance.  The artist insisted that it was picturesque, however, and proceeded to put it down.  Sefton had to submit; but he had his revenge, by writing back to New York that ’Jefferson is here, drawing the worst “houses” I ever saw.’”

In private life, Mr. Jefferson is a cultivated gentleman, and is possessed of numbers of warm and devoted friends.  He has been married twice.  The first Mrs. Jefferson was a Miss Lockyer, of New York, and by her he had two children, a son and a daughter.  The former is about eighteen years of age, and is destined to his father’s profession, in which he has already shown unusual promise.  The present Mrs. Jefferson was a Miss Warren, and is a niece of the veteran actor, William Warren, of Boston.  She was married to her husband early in 1868, and has never been an actress.

Mr. Jefferson is the possessor of a large fortune, acquired in the exercise of his profession, and being thus comfortably situated, is enabled to enjoy more rest from his labors than falls to the lot of most American actors.  He resides in Orange County, New Jersey, about an hour’s ride from New York, where he has a handsome country seat, which he has adorned with all the attractions that wealth and taste can command.

XI.

PHYSICIANS.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

BENJAMIN RUSH.

It is not often that a man, however gifted, is capable of rising to eminence in two distinct branches of public life, especially in two so widely separated from each other as medicine and politics.  The subject of this sketch was one of the few who have achieved such distinction.