Fill out the blanks while you are listening.

A Great Friendship

—Thomas Jefferson and James Madison

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison met in 1776. Could it have been any other year? They worked together starting then to _____ the American Revolution and later to shape the new scheme of government. From that work _____ a friendship perhaps incomparable in intimacy and the trustfulness of collaboration and induration. It lasted _____ years. It included pleasure and utility but over and above them, there were _____ purpose, a common end and an enduring goodness on both sides.

Four and a half months before he died, when he was ailing, debt-ridden, and worried about his _______ family, Jefferson wrote to his longtime friend. His words and Madison's reply _______ us that friends are friends until death. They also remind us that sometimes a friendship has a _______ on things larger than the friendship itself, for has there ever been a friendship of greater public __________ than this one?

"The friendship which has _______ between us now half a century, the harmony of our political principles and pursuits have been sources of _______ happiness to me through that long period. It's also been a great solace to me to believe that you're engaged in vindicating to posterity the course that we've pursued for _______ to them, in all their purity, their _______ of self-government, which we had assisted in acquiring for them.

"If ever the earth has beheld a system of _______ conducted with a single and steadfast eye to the general interest and happiness of those _________ to it, one which, protected by truth, can never know reproach, it is that to which our lives have been _______. To myself, you have been a pillar of support throughout life. Take care of me when dead and be assured that I shall leave you with my last _______."

A week later Madison replied—

"You cannot look back to the long period of our _______ friendship and political harmony with more affecting recollections than I do. If they are a source of pleasure to you, what are they not to be to me? We cannot be _______ of the happy consciousness of the pure devotion to the public good with which we discharge the trust committed to us and I _______ a confidence that sufficient evidence will find its way to another generation to ensure, after we are gone, whatever of _______ may be withheld whilst we are here."