Highlights from "Our Sacred Honor"

I'm halfway through the book and want to share a couple of gems.
 
From Ben Franklin -- his self-composed epitaph:
 
The body of
B. Franklin, Printer
(Like the Cover of an Old book
Its Contents torn Out
And Stript of its Lettering and Gilding)
Lies Here, Food for Worms.
But the Work shall not be Lost;
For it will (as he Believ'd) Appear Once More
In a New and More Elegant Edition
Revised and Corrected
By the Author.
 
I've not had many warm and fuzzies about Jefferson despite our visits to Montcello -- largely because my view of him was shaped by Adams' and Washington's biographers.  I pegged him as our first "politician":  two-faced, double-crosser, etc.  However, there was a sweetness in the letter he wrote back to Adams after Benjamin Rush's efforts had provoked a short letter from Adams.  McCullough excerpted snippets in his biography, but I didn't get the full effect.  A longer excerpt below:
 
    But whither is senile garrulity leading me?  Into politics, of which I have taken final leave.  I think little of them, and say less.  I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid; and I find myself much the happier.  Sometimes indeed I look back to former occurrences, in remembrance of our old friends and fellow laborers, who have fallen before us.  Of the signers of the Declaration of Independance I see now living not more than half a dozen on your side of the Potomak, and, on this side, myself alone.  You and I have been wonderfully spared, and myself with remarkable health, and considerable activity of body and mind.  I am on horseback 3. or 4. hours of every day; ...  I walk little however; a single mile being too much for me; and I live in the midst of my grandchildren, one of whom has lately promoted me to be a great grandfather.  I have heard with pleasure that you also retain good health, and a greater power of exercise in walking than I do.  But I would rather have heard this from yourself, and that, writing a letter, like mine, full of egotisms, and of details of your health, your habits, occupations and enjoyments, I should have the pleasure of knowing that, in the race of life, you do not keep, in it's physical decline, the same distance ahead of me which you have done in political honors and atchievements.  No circumstances have lessened the interest I feel in these particulars respecting yourself; none have suspended for one moment my sincere esteem for you; and I now salute you with unchanged affections and respect.
 
 Perhaps I'll have to give him another chance. 
 
 Rush rejoiced in the reunion of the two old friends and wrote to Adams:
 
  I consider you and him as the North and South Poles of the American Revolution.  Some talked, some wrote, and some fought to promote and establish it, but you and Mr. Jefferson thought for us all.