which I found it indispensably
necessary to adopt upon my first coming to this city, might have
undergone severe strictures, and have had motives very foreign from
those that governed me, assigned as causes thereof.--I mean first,
returning _no_ visits: second, appointing certain days to receive them
generally (not to the exclusion however of visits on any other days
under particular circumstances;) and third, at first entertaining no
company, and afterwards (until I was unable to entertain any at all)
confining it to official characters. A few days evinced the necessity
of the two first in so clear a point of view, that had I not adopted
it, I should have been unable to have attended to any sort of
business, unless I had applied the hours allotted to rest and
refreshment to this purpose; for by the time I had done breakfast, and
thence until dinner--and afterwards until bed-time, I could not get
relieved from the ceremony of one visit before I had to attend to
another. In a word, I had no leisure to read or to answer the
despatches that were pouring in upon me from all quarters."

In a subsequent letter written to the same gentleman, after his levees
had been openly-censured by the enemies of his administration, he thus
expressed himself:

"Before the custom was established, which now accommodates foreign
characters, strangers, and others who from motives of curiosity,
respect to the chief magistrate, or any other cause, are induced to
call upon me, I was unable to attend to any business whatsoever. For
gentlemen, consulting their own convenience rather than mine, were
calling from the time I rose from breakfast--often before--until I sat
down to dinner. This, as I resolved not to neglect my public duties,
reduced me to the choice of one of these alternatives; either to
refuse them _altogether_, or to appropriate a time for the reception
of them. The first would, I well knew, be disgusting to many;--the
latter I expected, would undergo animadversion from those who would
find fault with or without cause. To please every body was impossible.
I therefore adopted that line of conduct which combined public
advantage with private convenience, and which, in my judgment, was
unexceptionable in itself.

"These visits are optional. They are made without invitation. Between
the hours of three and four every Tuesday, I am prepared to receive
them. Gentlemen, often in great numbers, come and go;--chat with each
other;--and act