semblage of "the most
brilliant, beautiful, well-dressed, and well educated women that had
ever been seen in America."

The season opened gayly. "I should spend a very dissipated winter,"
wrote the vice-president's wife to a friend, "if I were to accept one
half the invitations I receive, particularly to the routs, or
tea-and-cards." The city, for a few weeks after the assembling of
Congress, appeared to be intoxicated. But Washington and his wife were
proof against the song of the syren. They could not be seduced from
their temperate habits in eating, drinking, and sleeping, by the scenes
of immoderate pleasure around them. They held their respective _levees_
on Tuesdays and Fridays, as in New York, without the least ostentation;
and Congressional and official dinners were served in a plain way,
without any extravagant displays of plate, ornament, or variety of
dishes. Mrs. Washington's _levees_ always closed at nine o'clock. When
the great clock in the hall struck that hour, she would say to those
present, with a complacent smile, "The general always retires at nine,
and I usually precede him." In a few minutes the drawing-room would be
closed, the lights extinguished, and the presidential mansion would be
as dark and quiet before ten o'clock as the house of any private
citizen.

Washington entered upon his public duties with great energy on his
arrival in Philadelphia. His health was almost perfectly restored, and
subjects of profound interest demanded the attention of Congress. That
body assembled on the sixth of December, and on the eighth, in the
presence of both houses sitting in the senate-chamber, the president
delivered, in person, his second annual message. He opened by
congratulating Congress on the financial prosperity of the country, the
import duties having produced, in a little more than thirteen months,
the sum of one million, nine hundred thousand dollars. He had without
difficulty obtained a loan in Holland for the partial liquidation of the
foreign debt; and, in consequence of the increasing confidence in the
government, certificates of the domestic debt had greatly increased in
value. He informed them that Kentucky was about to ask for admission
into the Union as a sovereign state. He called their attention to the
Indian war commenced in the northwestern territory; and after some
allusion to the disturbed state of Europe, growing out of recent events
in France, he suggested measures for the protec