ceremonies, the etiquette, in
fact, to be observed on public occasions. Some of the forms proposed
by them, he adds, were adopted. Others were so highly strained that
Washington absolutely rejected them.

On the 17th of May, Mrs. Washington, accompanied by her grandchildren,
Eleanor Custis and George Washington Parke Custis set out from Mount
Vernon in her travelling carriage with a small escort of horse, to
join her husband at the seat of government: as she had been accustomed
to join him at head-quarters, in the intervals of his revolutionary
campaigns. Throughout the journey she was greeted with public
testimonials of respect and affection.

On the following day [after her arrival in New York] Washington gave a
demi-official dinner, of which Mr. Wingate, a senator from New
Hampshire, who was present, writes as follows: "The guests consisted
of the Vice-President, the foreign ministers, the heads of
departments, the Speaker of the house of Representatives, and the
Senators from New Hampshire and Georgia, the then most Northern and
Southern States. It was the least showy dinner that I ever saw at the
President's table, and the company was not large."

On the evening of the following day, (Friday, May 29th,) Mrs.
Washington had a general reception, which was attended by all that
were distinguished in official and fashionable society. Henceforward
there were similar receptions every Friday evening, from eight to ten
o'clock, to which the families of all persons of respectability,
native or foreign, had access, without special invitation; and at
which the President was always present. These assemblages were as free
from ostentation and restraint as the ordinary receptions of polite
society; yet the reader will find they were soon subject to invidious
misrepresentation; and cavilled at as "court-like levees" and "queenly
drawing-rooms."

In regard to the deportment of Washington at this juncture, we have
been informed by one who had opportunities of seeing him, that he
still retained a military air of command which had become habitual to
him. At levees and drawing-rooms he sometimes appeared cold and
distant, but this was attributed by those who best knew him to the
novelty of his position and his innate diffidence, which seemed to
increase with the light which his renown shed about him. Though
reserved at times, his reserve had nothing repulsive in it, and in
social intercourse, where he was no longer under the eye