own clock in the hall, just within the outward door, and always exactly regulated.  When lagging members of Congress came in, as they often did, after the guests had sat down to dinner, the president’s only apology was, ’Gentlemen (or sir) we are too punctual for you.  I have a cook who never asks whether the company has come, but whether the hour has come.’  The company usually assembled in the drawing-room, about fifteen or twenty minutes before dinner, and the president spoke to every guest personally on entering the room.”

Maclay attended several of the dinners, and has left descriptions of them.  “Dined this day with the President,” he writes.  “It was a great dinner—­ all in the tastes of high life.  I considered it as a part of my duty as a Senator to submit to it, and am glad it is over.  The President is a cold, formal man; but I must declare that he treated me with great attention.  I was the first person with whom he drank a glass of wine.  I was often spoken to by him.”  Again he says,—­

“At dinner, after my second plate had been taken away, the President offered to help me to part of a dish which stood before him.  Was ever anything so unlucky?  I had just before declined being helped to anything more, with some expression that denoted my having made up my dinner.  Had, of course, for the sake of consistency, to thank him negatively, but when the dessert came, and he was distributing a pudding, he gave me a look of interrogation, and I returned the thanks positive.  He soon after asked me to drink a glass of wine with him.”  On another occasion he “went to the President’s to dinner....  The President and Mrs. Washington sat opposite each other in the middle of the table; the two secretaries, one at each end.  It was a great dinner, and the best of the kind I ever was at.  The room, however, was disagreeably warm.  First the soup; fish roasted and boiled; meats, sammon, fowls, etc....  The middle of the table was garnished in the usual tasty way, with small images, flowers, (artificial), etc.  The dessert was, apple pies, pudding, etc.; then iced creams, jellies, etc.; then water-melons, musk-melons, apples, peaches, nuts.  It was the most solemn dinner I ever was at.  Not a health drank; scarce a word was said until the cloth was taken away.  Then the President filling a glass of wine, with great formality drank to the health of every individual by name round the table.  Everybody imitated him, charged glasses, and such a buzz of ‘health, sir,’ and ‘health, madam,’ and ’thank you, sir,’ and ‘thank you, madam,’ never had I heard before....  The ladies sat a good while, and the bottles passed about; but there was a dead silence almost.  Mrs. Washington at last withdrew with the ladies.  I expected the men would now begin, but the same stillness remained.  The President told of a New England clergyman who had lost a hat and wig in passing a river called the Brunks.  He smiled, and everybody else laughed.  He now and then said a sentence or two on some common subject, and what he said was not amiss....  The President ... played with the fork, striking on the edge of the table with it.  We did not sit long after the ladies retired.  The President rose, went up-stairs to drink coffee; the company followed.”