would for some time be esteemed.  The stage he considered to be an indispensable resource for settled society, and a chief refiner; not merely interesting as a comment on the history of social happiness by its exhibition of manners, but an agent of good as a school for poetry, in holding up to honor the noblest principles.  ’I am too old and too far removed,’ he added, ’to seek for or require this pleasure myself, but the cause is not to droop on my account.  There’s my friend Mr. Jefferson has time and taste; he goes always to the play, and I’ll introduce you to him,’ a promise which he kept, and which proved to me the source of the greatest benefit and pleasure.”

This is by far the best account of Washington in the ordinary converse of daily life that has come down to us.  The narrator belonged to the race who live by amusing their fellow-beings, and are in consequence quick to notice peculiarities and highly susceptible to being bored.  Bernard, after the first interest of seeing a very eminent man had worn off, would never have lingered for an hour and a half of chat and then gone away reluctantly if his host had been either dull of speech or cold and forbidding of manner.  It is evident that Washington talked well, easily, and simply, ranging widely over varied topics with a sure touch, and that he drew from the ample resources of a well-stored and reflective mind.  The scraps of conversation which Bernard preserves are interesting and above the average of ordinary talk, without manifesting any attempt to be either brilliant or striking, and it is also apparent that Washington had the art of putting his guest entirely at his ease by his own pleasant and friendly manner.  He had picked up the English actor on the road, liked his readiness to be helpful (always an attraction to him in any one), found him well-mannered and intelligent, and brought him home to rest and chat in the pleasant summer afternoon.  To Bernard he was simply the plain Virginia gentleman, with a liberal and cultivated interest in men and things, and not a trace of oppressive and conscious greatness about him.  It is to be suspected that he was by no means equally genial to the herd of sight-seers who pursued him in his retirement, but in this meeting he appeared as he must always have appeared to his family and friends.

We get the same idea from the scattered allusions that we have to Washington in private life.  Although silent and reserved as to himself, he was by no means averse to society, and in his own house all his guests, both great and small, felt at their ease with him, although with no temptation to be familiar.  We know from more than one account that the dinners at the presidential house, as well as at Mount Vernon, were always agreeable.  It was his wont to sit at table after the cloth was removed sipping a glass of wine and eating nuts, of which he was very fond, while he listened to the conversation and caused it to flow easily, not so much by what he said as by the kindly smile and ready sympathy which made all feel at home.  We can gather an idea also of the charm which he had in the informal intercourse of daily life from some of his letters on trifling matters.  Here is a little note written to Mrs. Stockton in acknowledgment of a pastoral poem which she had sent him:—­