After his inauguration he spoke his address to the Congress, and several days later members of the House and of the Senate called on him at his residence and made formal replies to his Inaugural Address.  After a few weeks, experience led him to modify somewhat his daily schedule.  He found that unless it was checked, the insatiate public would consume all his time.  Every Tuesday afternoon, between three and four o’clock, he had a public reception which any one might attend.  Likewise, on Friday afternoons, Mrs. Washington had receptions of her own.  The President accepted no invitations to dinner, but at his own table there was an unending succession of invited guests, except on Sunday, which he observed privately.  Interviews with the President could be had at any time that suited his convenience.  Thus did he arrange to transact his regular or his private business.

Inevitably, some of the public objected to his rules and pretended to see very strong monarchical leanings in them.  But the country took them as he intended, and there can be no doubt that it felt the benefit of his promoting the dignity of his office.  Equally beneficial was his rule of not appointing to any office any man merely because he was the President’s friend.  Washington knew that such a consideration would give the candidate an unfair advantage.  He knew further that office-holders who could screen themselves behind the plea that they were the President’s friends might be very embarrassing to him.  As office-seekers became, with the development of the Republic, among the most pernicious of its evils and of its infamies, we can but feel grateful that so far as in him lay Washington tried to keep them within bounds.

In all his official acts he took great pains not to force his personal wishes.  He knew that both in prestige and popularity he held a place apart among his countrymen, and for this reason he did not wish to have measures passed simply because they were his.  Accordingly, in the matter of receiving the public and in granting interviews and of ceremonials at the Presidential Residence, he asked the advice of John Adams, John Jay, Hamilton, and Jefferson, and he listened to many of their suggestions.  Colonel Humphreys, who had been one of his aides-de-camp and was staying in the Presidential Residence, acted as Chamberlain at the first reception.  Humphreys took an almost childish delight in gold braid and flummery.  At a given moment the door of the large hall in which the concourse of guests was assembled was opened and he, advancing, shouted, with a loud voice:  “The President of the United States!” Washington followed him and went through the paces prescribed by the Colonel with punctilious exactness, but with evident lack of relish.  When the levee broke up and the party had gone, Washington said to Colonel Humphreys:  “Well, you have taken me in once, but, by God, you shall never take me in a second time."[1] Irving, who borrows this story from Jefferson, warns us that perhaps Jefferson was not a credible witness.