The Student's Life of Washington; Condensed from the Larger Work of Washington Irving For Young Persons and for the Use of Schools

should always be done without formality. His private life should be at his own discretion, as to giving or receiving informal visits among friends and acquaintances; but in his official character, he should have no intercourse with society but upon public business, or at his levees.
    Hamilton, in his reply, while he considered it a primary object for the public good that the dignity of the presidential office should be supported, advised that care should be taken to avoid so high a tone in the demeanor of the occupant, as to shock the prevalent notions of equality. The President, he thought, should hold a levee at a fixed time once a week, remain half an hour, converse cursorily on indifferent subjects with such persons as invited his attention, and then retire. He should accept no invitations, give formal entertainments twice, or at most, four times in the year; on levee days to give informal invitations to family dinners; not more than six or eight to be asked at a time, and the civility to be confined essentially to members of the legislature, and other official characters—the President never to remain long at table. The heads of departments should, of course, have access to the President on business. Foreign ministers of some descriptions should also be entitled to it. Members of the Senate should also have a right of individual access on matters relative to the public administration . The reason alleged by Hamilton for giving the Senate this privilege, and not the Representatives, was, that in the constitution “the Senate are coupled with the President in certain executive functions, treaties, and appointments. This makes them in a degree his constitutional counsellors, and give them a peculiar claim to the right of access.”
    These are the only written replies that we have before us of Washington’s advisers on this subject. Colonel Humphreys, formerly one of Washington’s aides-de-camp, and recently secretary of Jefferson’s legation at Paris, was at present an inmate in the presidential mansion. General Knox was frequently there; to these Jefferson assures us, on Washington’s authority, was assigned the task of considering and prescribing the minor forms and ceremonies, the etiquette, in fact, to be observed on public occasions. Some of the forms proposed by them, he adds, were adopted. Others were so highly strained that Washington absolutely rejected them.
    On the 17th of May, Mrs. Washington, accompanied by her grandchildren, Eleanor Custis and George Washington Parke Custis set out from Mount Vernon in her travelling carriage with a small escort of horse, to join her husband at the seat of government: as she had been accustomed to join him at head-quarters, in the intervals of his revolutionary campaigns. Throughout the journey she was greeted with public testimonials of respect and affection.
    On the following day [after her arrival in New York] Washington gave a demi-official dinner, of which Mr. Wingate, a senator from New Hampshire, who was present, writes as follows: “The guests consisted of the Vice-President, the foreign ministers, the heads of departments, the Speaker of the house of Representatives, and the Senators from New Hampshire and Georgia, the then most Northern and Southern States. It was the least showy dinner that I ever saw at the President’s table, and the company was not large.”
    On the evening of the following day, (Friday, May 29th,) Mrs. Washington had a general reception, which was attended by all that were distinguished in official and fashionable society. Henceforward there were similar receptions every Friday evening, from eight to ten o’clock, to which the families of all persons of respectability, native or foreign, had access, without special invitation; and at which the President was always present. These assemblages were as free from ostentation and restraint as the ordinary receptions of polite society; yet the reader will find they were soon subject to invidious misrepresentation; and cavilled at as “court-like levees” and “queenly drawing-rooms.”
    In regard to the deportment of Washington at this juncture, we have been informed by one who had opportunities of seeing him, that he still retained a military air of command which had become habitual to him. At levees and drawing-rooms he sometimes appeared cold and distant, but this was attributed by those who best knew him to the novelty of his position and his innate diffidence, which seemed to