improvement in lightning rods,—gilding the points to prevent their rusting,—that was immediately, and afterwards universally adopted.
Among my father’s familiar visiters were Robert Patterson, long Professor of Mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, and afterwards President of the Mint; Charles Wilson Peale, who painted the men of the revolution, and founded the noble museum called by his name; John Vaughan, and Matthew Carey.
When I was about five years old, my father went to England with the intention of engaging in the exportation of clocks and watches to Philadelphia, having recently taken into partnership Isaac Price, of this city. We arrived in London in June, 1793, after an old-fashioned voyage of six weeks. We lived in England about six years and a half, when the death of my father’s partner in Philadelphia, obliged us to return home. An extraordinary circumstance compelled our ship to go into Lisbon, and detained us there from November till March; and we did not finish our voyage and arrive in Philadelphia till May. The winter we spent in our Lisbon lodgings was very uncomfortable, but very amusing.
After we came home, my father’s health, which had long been precarious, declined rapidly; but he lived till 1803. My mother and her five children (of whom I was the eldest) were left in circumstances which rendered it necessary that she and myself should make immediate exertions for the support of those who were yet too young to assist themselves, as they did afterwards. Our difficulties we kept uncomplainingly to ourselves. We asked no assistance of our friends, we incurred no debts, and we lived on cheerfully, and with such moderate enjoyments as our means afforded; believing in the proverb, that “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.”
My two brothers were then, and still are, sources of happiness to the family. But they both left home at the age of sixteen. Charles, with an extraordinary genius for painting, went to London to cultivate it. He rapidly rose to the front rank of his profession, and maintains a high place among the great artists of Europe. He married in England, and still lives there.
My youngest brother, Thomas Jefferson Leslie, having passed
