onesome Evening at Colo
Champe's, not any Body favoring us with their Company but himself."

The plantation system which prevented town life and put long distances
between neighbors developed two forms of society. One of these was house
parties, and probably nowhere else in the world was that form of
hospitality so unstinted as in this colony. Any one of a certain social
standing was privileged, even welcomed, to ride up to the seat of a
planter, dismount, and thus become a guest, ceasing to be such only when
he himself chose. Sometimes one family would go _en masse_ many miles
to stay a week with friends, and when they set out to return their hosts
would journey with them and in turn become guests for a week. The
second form of social life was called clubs. At all the cross-roads and
court-houses there sprang up taverns or ordinaries, and in these the men
of a neighborhood would gather, and over a bowl of punch or a bottle of
wine, the expense of which they "clubbed" to share, would spend their
evenings.

Into this life Washington entered eagerly. As a mere lad his ledger
records expenditures: "By a club in Arrack at Mr. Gordon's 2/6;" "Club of
a bottle of Rhenish at Mitchells 1/3;" "To part of the club at Port Royal
1/;" "To Cash in part for a Bowl of fruit punch 1/7-1/2." So, too, he was
a visitor at this time at some of the great Virginian houses, as elsewhere
noted. When he came into possession of Mount Vernon he offered the same
unstinted welcome that he had met with, and even as a bachelor he writes
of his "having much company," and again of being occupied with "a good
deal of Company." In two months of 1768 Washington had company to dinner,
or to spend the night, on twenty-nine days, and dined or visited away from
home on seven; and this is typical.

Whenever, too, trips were made to Williamsburg, Annapolis, Philadelphia,
or elsewhere, it was a rare occurrence when the various stages of the
journey were not spent with friends, and in those cities he was dined and
wined to a surfeit.

During the Revolution all of Washington's aides and his secretary lived
with him at head-quarters, and constituted what he always called "my
family." In addition, many others sat down at table,--those who came
on business from a distance, as well as bidden guests,---which frequently
included ladies from the neighborhood, who must have been belles among
the sixteen to twenty men who customarily sat down to dinner.
"If ... conveni