his
liking for other women; and Yeates repeats that "Mr. Washington once told
me, on a charge which I once made against the President at his own Table,
that the admiration he warmly professed for Mrs. Hartley, was a Proof of
his Homage to the worthy Part of the Sex, and highly respectful to his
Wife." Every now and then there is an allusion in his letters which shows
his appreciation of beauty, as when he wrote to General Schuyler, "Your
fair daughter, for whose visit Mrs. Washington and myself are greatly
obliged," and again, to one of his aides, "The fair hand, to whom your
letter ... was committed presented it safe."

His diary, in the notes of the balls and assemblies which he attended,
usually had a word for the sex, as exampled in: "at which there were
between 60 & 70 well dressed ladies;" "at which there was about 100 well
dressed and handsome ladies;" "at which were 256 elegantly dressed
ladies;" "where there was a select Company of ladies;" "where (it is said)
there were upwards of 100 ladies; their appearance was elegant, and many
of them very handsome;" "at wch. there were about 400 ladies the number
and appearance of wch. exceeded anything of the kind I have ever seen;"
"where there were about 75 well dressed, and many of them very handsome
ladies--among whom (as was also the case at the Salem and Boston
assemblies) were a greater proportion with much blacker hair than are
usually seen in the Southern States."

At his wife's receptions, as already said, Washington did not view himself
as host, and "conversed without restraint, generally with women, who
rarely had other opportunity of seeing him," which perhaps accounts for
the statement of another eye-witness that Washington "looked very much
more at ease than at his own official levees." Sullivan adds that "the
young ladies used to throng around him, and engaged him in conversation.
There were some of the well-remembered belles of the day who imagined
themselves to be favorites with him. As these were the only opportunities
which they had of conversing with him, they were disposed to use them." In
his Southern trip of 1791 Washington noted, with evident pleasure, that he
"was visited about 2 o'clock, by a great number of the most respectable
ladies of Charleston--the first honor of the kind I had ever experienced
and it was flattering as it was singular." And that this attention was not
merely the respect due to a great man is shown in the letter of a
Vir