John Jay, now Chief Justice of the United States, was there, as ever the most simply attired personage in the Union.  His beautiful wife, however, beaming and gracious, but no less rigid than “Lady Washington,” in her social statutes, looked like a bird of paradise beside a graven image, so gorgeous was her raiment.  Baron Steuben was in the regalia of war and a breastplate of orders.  Kitty Livingston, now Mrs. Matthew Ridley, had also received a fine new gown of Mrs. Church’s selection, for the two women still were friends, despite the rupture of their families.  Lady Kitty Duer, so soon to know poverty and humiliation, was in a gown of celestial blue over a white satin petticoat, her lofty head surmounted by an immense gauze turban.  General and Mrs. Knox, fat, amiable, and always popular, although sadly inflated by their new social importance, were mountains of finery.  Mrs. Ralph Izard, Mrs. Jay’s rival in beauty, and Mrs. Adams’s in wit, painted by Gainsborough and Copley, wore a white gown of enviable simplicity, and a string of large pearls in her hair, another about her graceful throat.  Mrs. Schuyler, stout and careworn, from the trials of excitable and eloping daughters, clung to the kind arm of her austere and silent husband.  Fisher Ames, with his narrow consumptive figure and his flashing ardent eyes, his eloquent tongue chilled by this funereal assemblage, had retreated to an alcove with Rufus King, where they whispered politics.  Burr, the target of many fine eyes, was always loyal to his wife in public; she was a charming and highly respected woman, ten years his senior.  Burr fascinated women, and adorned his belt with their scalps; but had it not been for this vanity, which led him to scatter hints of infinite devilment and conquest, it is not likely that he would have been branded, in that era of gallantry, a devirginator and a rake.  All that history is concerned with is his utter lack of patriotism and honesty, and the unscrupulous selfishness, from which, after all, he suffered more than any man.  His dishonesties and his treasonable attempts were failures, but he left a bitter legacy in his mastery of the arts of political corruption, and in a glittering personality which, with his misfortunes, has begodded him with the shallow and ignorant, who know the traditions of history and none of its facts.  He was a poor creature, with all his gifts, for his life was a failure, his old age one of the loneliest and bitterest in history; and from no cause that facts or tradition give us but the blind selfishness which blunted a good understanding to stupidity.  Selfishness in public life is a crime against one’s highest ambitions.

Mrs. Hamilton kept a firm hold on her husband’s arm, and her glance shot apprehensively from Washington to the Vice-President.  The latter could not dance at present; the former looked as if petrified, rooted in the floor.  Betsey had a clever little head, and she devised a scheme at once.  She was the third lady in the land, and although many years younger than Mrs. Adams, had entertained from her cradle.  No one else immediately following the entrance of her husband and herself, she did not move on after her courtesy, but drew Mrs. Adams into conversation, and the good lady by this time was glad of a friendly word.