It was to be understood, too, that gentlemen should be dressed in bags.  Mrs. Knox contrived to come with the President, and to follow him and Mrs. Washington to their destination, and she had the design of forcing an invitation from the President to a seat on the sofa.  She mounted up the steps after them unbidden, but unfortunately the wicked sofa was so short, that when the President and Mrs. Washington were seated, there was not room for a third person; she was obliged therefore to descend in the face of the company, and to sit where she could.  In other respects the ceremony was conducted rigorously according to the arrangements, and the President made to pass an evening which his good sense rendered a very miserable one to him.

June the 12th.  Beckley tells me that Klingham has been with him to-day, and relates to him the following fact.  A certificate of the old Congress had been offered at the treasury and refused payment and so endorsed in red ink as usual.  This certificate came to the hands of Francis, (the quondam clerk of the treasury who, on account of his being dipped in the infamous case of the Baron Glaubec, Hamilton had been obliged to dismiss, to save appearances, but with an assurance of all future service, and he accordingly got him established in New York).  Francis wrote to Hamilton that such a ticket was offered him, but he could not buy it unless he would inform him and give him his certificate that it was good.  Hamilton wrote him a most friendly letter, and sent him the certificate.  He bought the paper, and came on here and got it recognised, whereby he made twenty-five hundred dollars Klingham saw both the letter and certificate.

Irving, a clerk in the treasury, an Irishman, is the author of the pieces now coming out under the signature of Verita’s and attacking the President.  I have long suspected this detestable game was playing by the fiscal party, to place the President on their side.

July the 18th, 1793.  Lear calls on me.  I told him that Irving, an Irishman, and a writer in the treasury, who, on a former occasion, had given the most decisive proofs of his devotion to his principal, was the author of the pieces signed Veritas:  and I wished he could get at some of Irving’s acquaintances and inform himself of the fact, as the person who told me of it would not permit the name of his informer to be mentioned. [Note.  Beckley told me of it, and he had it from Swaine, the printer to whom the pieces were delivered]; that I had long before suspected this excessive foul play in that party of writing themselves in the character of the most exaggerated democrats and incorporating with it a great deal of abuse on the President to make him believe it was that party who were his enemies, and so throw him entirely into the scale of the monocrats.  Lear said he no longer ago than yesterday expressed to the President his suspicions of the artifices of that party to work on him.  He mentioned the following