While serving as America's vice president, Thomas Jefferson, dressed in soiled working clothes, entered Baltimore's finest hotel one evening and asked for a room. The proprietor, a certain Mr. Boyden, turned him away.

Soon thereafter Boyden, apprised of the identity of his distinguished visitor, promptly dispatched several servants to find him and offer as many rooms as his heart desired.

Jefferson, having found a room in another hotel, sent Boyden's representative away with the following message: "Tell Boyden that I value his good intentions highly, but if he has no room for a dirty farmer, he shall have none for the vice president."

[Despite a ban on its export, in 1784 Jefferson smuggled two sacks of an improved strain of rice out of Italy in a bid to replace rice crops destroyed by the British (chiefly in Georgia and Carolina) during the Revolutionary war.]