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d between three and four hundred gentlemen. We danced all night--an elegant room, the illuminating, fireworks, &c., were more than pretty." And at Newport, when Rochambeau gave a ball, by request it was opened by Washington. The dance selected by his partner was "A Successful Campaign," then in high favor, and the French officers took the instruments from the musicians and played while he danced the first figure. [Illustration: AGREEMENT FOR DANCING ASSEMBLY] While in winter quarters he subscribed four hundred dollars (paper money, equal to eleven dollars in gold) to get up a series of balls, of which Greene wrote, "We have opened an assembly in Camp. From this apparent ease, I suppose it is thought we must be in happy circumstances. I wish it was so, but, alas, it is not. Our provisions are in a manner, gone. We have not a ton of hay at command, nor magazine to draw from. Money is extremely scarce and worth little when we get it. We have been so poor in camp for a fortnight, that we could not forward the public dispatches, for want of cash to support the expresses." At the farewell ball given at Annapolis, when the commander-in-chief resigned his command, Tilton relates that "the General danced in every set, that all the ladies might have the pleasure of dancing with him; or as it has since been handsomely expressed, 'get a touch of him.'" He still danced in 1796, when sixty-four years of age, but when invited to the Alexandria Assembly in 1799, he wrote to the managers, "Mrs. Washington and myself have been honored with your polite invitation to the assemblies of Alexandria this winter, and thank you for this mark of your attention. But, alas! our dancing days are no more. We wish, however all those who have a relish for so agreeable and innocent an amusement all the pleasure the season will afford them; and I am, gentlemen, "Your most obedient and obliged humble servant, "GEO. WASHINGTON." VIII TASTES AND AMUSEMENTS A market trait of Washington's character was his particularity about his clothes; there can be little question that he was early in life a good deal of a dandy, and that this liking for fine feathers never quite left him. When he was about sixteen years old he wrote in his journal, "Memorandum to have my Coat made by the following Directions to be made a Frock with a Lapel Breast the Lapel to Contain on each side six Button Holes and to be about 5 or 6 Inches wide all the way eq
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