This break on the evening hours was quite unusual, Washington himself saying in one place that nine o’clock was his bedtime, and he wrote of his hours after dinner, “the usual time of setting at table, a walk, and tea, brings me within the dawn of candlelight; previous to which, if not prevented by company I resolve, that as soon as the glimmering taper supplies the place of the great luminary, I will retire to my writing table and acknowledge the letters I have received; but when the lights were brought, I feel tired and disinclined to engage in this work, conceiving that the next night will do as well.  The next comes, and with it the same causes for postponement, and effect, and so on.”

The foregoing allusion to Washington’s conversation is undoubtedly just.  All who met him formally spoke of him as taciturn, but this was not a natural quality.  Jefferson states that “in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved with safety, he took a free share in conversation,” and Madison told Sparks that, though “Washington was not fluent nor ready in conversation, and was inclined to be taciturn in general society,” yet “in the company of two or three intimate friends, he was talkative, and when a little excited was sometimes fluent and even eloquent” “The story so often repeated of his never laughing,” Madison said, was “wholly untrue; no man seemed more to enjoy gay conversation, though he took little part in it himself.  He was particularly pleased with the jokes, good humor, and hilarity of his companions.”

Washington certainly did enjoy a joke.  Nelly Custis said, “I have sometimes made him laugh most heartily from sympathy with my joyous and extravagant spirits,” and many other instances of his laughing are recorded.  He himself wrote in 1775 concerning the running away of some British soldiers, “we laugh at his idea of chasing the Royal Fusileers with the stores.  Does he consider them as inanimate, or as treasure?” When the British in Boston sent out a bundle of the king’s speech, “farcical enough, we gave great joy to them, (the red coats I mean), without knowing or intending it; for on that day, the day which gave being to the new army, (but before the proclamation came to hand,) we had hoisted the union flag in compliment to the United Colonies.  But, behold, it was received in Boston as a token of the deep impression the speech had made upon us, and as a signal of submission.”

At times Washington would joke himself, though it was always somewhat labored, as in the case of the Jack already cited.  “Without a coinage,” he wrote, “or unless a stop can be put to the cutting and clipping of money, our dollars, pistareens, &c., will be converted, as Teague says, into five quarters.”  When the Democrats were charging the Federalists with having stolen from the treasury, he wrote to a Cabinet official, “and pray, my good sir, what part of the $800.000 have come to your share?  As you are high in Office, I hope you did not disgrace yourself in the acceptance of a paltry bribe—­a $100.000 perhaps.”  He once even attempted a pun, by writing, “our enterprise will be ruined, and we shall be stopped at the Laurel Hill this winter; but not to gather laurels, (except of the kind that covers the mountains).”