the last
survivors of those officers of the Revolutionary Army who had
entered into civil service. He was a tall, gaunt man, with a small
head and bright black eyes. He used to wear an unbrushed long-
skirted black coat, a badly fitting waistcoat, and knee-breeches,
a voluminous white cambric cravat, generally soiled, and black
worsted stockings, with low shoes and silver buckles. When upward
of seventy years of age he still relished the pleasures of the
quoit club or the whist table, and to the last his right hand never
forgot its cunning with the billiard cue.

Nor did the Chief Justice ever lose his relish for a joke, even at
his own expense. In the Law Library one day he fell from a step-
ladder, bruising himself severely and scattering an armful of books
in all directions. An attendant, full of alarm, ran to assist him,
but his Honor drily remarked, "That time I was completely floored."

Bushrod Washington, who had been appointed to the Supreme Court by
President John Adams, was by inheritance the owner of Mount Vernon,
where his remains now lie, near those of his illustrious uncle,
George Washington. He was a small, insignificant-looking man,
deprived of the sight of one eye by excessive study, negligent of
dress, and an immoderate snuff-taker. He was a rigid disciplinarian
and a great stickler for etiquette, and on one occasion he sat for
sixteen hours without leaving the bench. He was also a man of rare
humor.

Christmas was the popular holiday season at Washington sixty years
ago, the descendants of the Maryland Catholics joining the descendants
of the Virginia Episcopalians in celebrating the advent of their
Lord. The colored people enjoyed the festive season, and there
was scarcely a house in Washington in which there was not a well-
filled punch bowl. In some antique silver bowls was "Daniel Webster
punch," made of Medford rum, brandy, champagne, arrack, menschino,
strong green tea, lemon juice, and sugar; in other less expensive
bowls was found a cheaper concoction. But punch abounded everywhere,
and the bibulous found Washington a rosy place, where jocund mirth
and joyful recklessness went arm in arm to flout vile melancholy,
and kick, with ardent fervor, dull care out of the window. Christmas
carols were sung in the streets by the young colored people, and
yule logs were burned in the old houses where the fireplaces had
not been bricked up.

[Facsimile]
With great respect
I am yrs.