of his own incontinence without apparent shame,—­and a mutual friend of the accused and accuser, Joseph Reed, whose service on Washington’s staff enabled him to speak wittingly, advised that Lee “forbear any Reflections upon the Commander in Chief, of whom for the first time I have heard Slander on his private Character, viz., great cruelty to his Slaves in Virginia & Immorality of Life, tho’ they acknowledge so very secret that it is difficult to detect.  To me who have had so good opportunities to know the Purity of the latter & equally believing the Falsehood of the former from the known excellence of his disposition, it appears so nearly bordering upon frenzy, that I can pity the wretches rather than despise them.”

Washington was too much of a man, however, to have his marriage lessen his liking for other women; and Yeates repeats that “Mr. Washington once told me, on a charge which I once made against the President at his own Table, that the admiration he warmly professed for Mrs. Hartley, was a Proof of his Homage to the worthy Part of the Sex, and highly respectful to his Wife.”  Every now and then there is an allusion in his letters which shows his appreciation of beauty, as when he wrote to General Schuyler, “Your fair daughter, for whose visit Mrs. Washington and myself are greatly obliged,” and again, to one of his aides, “The fair hand, to whom your letter ... was committed presented it safe.”

His diary, in the notes of the balls and assemblies which he attended, usually had a word for the sex, as exampled in:  “at which there were between 60 & 70 well dressed ladies;” “at which there was about 100 well dressed and handsome ladies;” “at which were 256 elegantly dressed ladies;” “where there was a select Company of ladies;” “where (it is said) there were upwards of 100 ladies; their appearance was elegant, and many of them very handsome;” “at wch. there were about 400 ladies the number and appearance of wch. exceeded anything of the kind I have ever seen;” “where there were about 75 well dressed, and many of them very handsome ladies—­among whom (as was also the case at the Salem and Boston assemblies) were a greater proportion with much blacker hair than are usually seen in the Southern States.”

At his wife’s receptions, as already said, Washington did not view himself as host, and “conversed without restraint, generally with women, who rarely had other opportunity of seeing him,” which perhaps accounts for the statement of another eye-witness that Washington “looked very much more at ease than at his own official levees.”  Sullivan adds that “the young ladies used to throng around him, and engaged him in conversation.  There were some of the well-remembered belles of the day who imagined themselves to be favorites with him.  As these were the only opportunities which they had of conversing with him, they were disposed to use them.”  In his Southern trip of 1791 Washington noted, with evident pleasure, that he “was visited about