During the Revolution, too, he killed many a weary hour of winter quarters by dancing.  When the camp spent a day rejoicing over the French alliance, “the celebration,” according to Thacher, “was concluded by a splendid ball opened by his Excellency General Washington, having for his partner the lady of General Knox.”  Greene describes how “we had a little dance at my quarters a few evenings past.  His Excellency and Mrs. Greene danced upwards of three hours without once sitting down.”  Knox, too, tells of “a most genteel entertainment given by self and officers” at which Washington danced.  “Everybody allows it to be the first of the kind ever exhibited in this State at least.  We had above seventy ladies, all of the first ton in the State, and between three and four hundred gentlemen.  We danced all night—­an elegant room, the illuminating, fireworks, &c., were more than pretty.”  And at Newport, when Rochambeau gave a ball, by request it was opened by Washington.  The dance selected by his partner was “A Successful Campaign,” then in high favor, and the French officers took the instruments from the musicians and played while he danced the first figure.

[Illustration:  AGREEMENT FOR DANCING ASSEMBLY]

While in winter quarters he subscribed four hundred dollars (paper money, equal to eleven dollars in gold) to get up a series of balls, of which Greene wrote, “We have opened an assembly in Camp.  From this apparent ease, I suppose it is thought we must be in happy circumstances.  I wish it was so, but, alas, it is not.  Our provisions are in a manner, gone.  We have not a ton of hay at command, nor magazine to draw from.  Money is extremely scarce and worth little when we get it.  We have been so poor in camp for a fortnight, that we could not forward the public dispatches, for want of cash to support the expresses.”  At the farewell ball given at Annapolis, when the commander-in-chief resigned his command, Tilton relates that “the General danced in every set, that all the ladies might have the pleasure of dancing with him; or as it has since been handsomely expressed, ‘get a touch of him.’” He still danced in 1796, when sixty-four years of age, but when invited to the Alexandria Assembly in 1799, he wrote to the managers, “Mrs. Washington and myself have been honored with your polite invitation to the assemblies of Alexandria this winter, and thank you for this mark of your attention.  But, alas! our dancing days are no more.  We wish, however all those who have a relish for so agreeable and innocent an amusement all the pleasure the season will afford them; and I am, gentlemen,

“Your most obedient and obliged humble servant,

“GEO. WASHINGTON.”

VIII

TASTES AND AMUSEMENTS