a word said until the cloth was taken away.  Then the President, filling a glass of wine, with great formality drank to the health of every individual by name around the table.  Everybody imitated him and changed glasses and such a buzz of ‘health, sir,’ and ‘health, madam,’ and ‘thank you, sir,’ and ‘thank you, madam’ never had I heard before....  The ladies sat a good while and the bottles passed about; but there was a dead silence almost.  Mrs. Washington at last withdrew with the ladies.

“I expected the men would now begin but the same stillness remained.  He (the President) now and then said a sentence or two on some common subject and what he said was not amiss.  Mr. Jay tried to make a laugh by mentioning the Duchess of Devonshire leaving no stone unturned to carry Fox’s election.  There was a Mr. Smith who mentioned how Homer described AEneas leaving his wife and carrying his father out of flaming Troy.  He had heard somebody (I suppose) witty on the occasion; but if he had ever read it he would have said Virgil.  The President kept a fork in his hand, when the cloth was taken away, I thought for the purpose of picking nuts.  He ate no nuts, however, but played with the fork, striking on the edge of the table with it.  We did not sit long after the ladies retired.  The President rose, went up-stairs to drink coffee; the company followed.  I took my hat and came home.”

After all, it was well that our first President and his lady were believers in a reasonable amount of formality and dignity.  They established a form of social etiquette and an insistence on certain principles of high-bred procedure genuinely needed in a country the tendency of which was toward a crude display of raw, hail-fellow-well-met democracy.  With an Andrew Jackson type of man as its first President, our country would soon have been the laughing stock of nations, and could never have gained that prestige which neither wealth nor power can bring, but which is obtained only through evidences of genuine civilization and culture.  As Wharton says in her Martha Washington:  “An executive mansion presided over by a man and woman who combined with the most ardent patriotism a dignity, elegance, and moderation that would have graced the court of any Old World sovereign, saved the social functions of the new nation from the crudeness and bald simplicity of extreme republicanism, as well as from the luxury and excess that often mark the sudden elevation to power and place of those who have spent their early years in obscurity."[223]

Even after the removal of the capital from New York the city was still the scene of unabated gaiety.  Elizabeth Southgate, who became the wife of Walter Bowne, mayor of the metropolis, left among her letters the following bits of helpful description of the city pastimes and fashionable life:  “Last night we were at the play—­’The Way to Get Married.’  Mr. Hodgkinson in Tangen