ston and Jay, three professors of Columbia College,
Messrs. McVickar, Moore, and Renwick, the Rev. Drs. Wainwright and
Mathews, the former of the Episcopal Church, the latter of the
Presbyterian Church, two merchants, Messrs. Brevoort and Goodhue,
and I have the honor to represent the medical faculty. Our twelfth
associate was Mr. Morse, of the National Academy of Design, of
which he was president, and his departure for Europe has caused a
vacancy. For agreeableness of conversation there is nothing in New
York at all comparable to our institution. We meet once a week; no
officers, no formalities; invitations, when in case of intelligent
and distinguished strangers, and after a plain and light repast,
retire about eleven o'clock."

At this club Mr. Gallatin, with his wonderful conversational powers,
became at once the centre of interest. The club met at the houses of
members in the winter evenings. There was always a supper, but the rule
was absolute that there should be only one hot dish served, a regulation
which the ladies endeavored to evade when the turn of their husbands
arrived to supply the feast. Among the later members were Professor
Anderson, John A. Stevens, Mr. Gallatin's countryman De Rham, John
Wells, Samuel Ward, Gulian C. Verplanck, and Charles King. No literary
symposium in America was ever more delightful, more instructive, than
these meetings. On these occasions Mr. Gallatin led the conversation,
which usually covered a wide field. His memory was marvelous, and his
personal acquaintance with the great men who were developed by the
French Revolution, emperors and princes, heroes, statesmen, and men of
science, gave to the easy flow of his speech the zest of anecdote and
the spice of epigram. Once heard he was never forgotten. And this rare
faculty he preserved undiminished to the close of his life. Washington
Irving, himself the most genial of men, and the most graceful of
talkers, wrote of him, after meeting him at dinner, in 1841: "Mr.
Gallatin was in fine spirits and full of conversation. He is upwards of
eighty, yet has all the activity and clearness of mind and gayety of
spirits of a young man. How delightful it is to see such intellectual
and joyous old age: to see life running out clear and sparkling to the
last drop! With such a blessed temperament one would be content to
linger and spin out the last thread of existence."

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