One of Mr. Jefferson's company that season was his son, Mr. Thomas
Jefferson. When I spoke of his remarkable resemblance to the
portraits of President Jefferson, I was told:
"If physiognomy counts for anything, all the Jeffersons have sprung
from one stock; we look alike wherever you find us. The next time you
are in Richmond, Virginia, I wish you to notice the statue of Thomas
Jefferson, one of the group surrounding George Washington beside the
Capitol. That statue might serve as a likeness of my father. When
his father was once playing in Washington, President Jefferson, who
warmly admired his talents, sent for him and received him most
hospitably. When they compared genealogies they could come no nearer
than that both families had come from the same county in England."
Montreal has several highly meritorious art collections: these, of
Course, were open to Mr. Jefferson. He was particularly pleased with
the canvases of Corot in the mansion of Sir George Drummond. That
afternoon another collector showed him his gallery and pointed to a
portrait of his son, for the three years past a student of art in
Paris. Mr. Jefferson asked: "How can you bear to be parted from him
so long?"
He could be witty as well as kind in his remarks. A kinswoman in his
company grumbled that the Montreal _Herald_ had called her nose a
poem.
"No, my dear," was his comment, "it's not a poem, but a stanza,
something shorter."
On Dominion Square I showed him the site occupied by the Ice Palace
during the recent Winter Carnival; on the right stood a Methodist
Church, on the left the Roman Catholic Cathedral. He remarked simply:
"So there's a coolness between them!"