"Because of financial constraints and Jefferson's endless tinkering, Monticello never looked its best or even close to it. In 1802, when a Mrs. Anna Maria Thornton came to visit, she was shocked to find she still had to enter across wobbly planks. By this time Jefferson had been working on the house for over thirty years. 'Tho' I had been prepared to see an unfinished house, still I could not help being struck with...the general gloom,' Mrs. Thornton marveled in her diary. Jefferson himself never much minded the inconvenience. 'We are now living in a brick kiln,' he wrote happily at one point..." (296-297,
At Home.)
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