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monial importance. The Democratic President further curtailed its splendors, and for some time kept official society in a flutter over details of his Republican reforms. From the distance of a century we are forced to admire the wit and skill with which Jefferson thus managed to divert attention from more serious issues until he could get his bearings and measure the forces for and against him. Some of his minor reforms, like his "Canons of Etiquette to be Observed by the Executive," 1 which promulgated the rules of "pele

1 Extract from "Canons of Etiquette to be Observed by the Executive":

4th. Among the members of the Diplomatic Corps, the Executive Government, in its own principles of personal and national equality, considers every Minister as the representative of his Nation, and equal to every other without distinction of grade.

5th. At dinners, in public or private, and on all other occasions of social intercourse, a perfect equality exists between the persons composing the company, whether foreign or domestic, titled or untitled, in or out of office. 9th. To give force to the principles of equality or pele mele, and prevent the growth of precedence out of courtesy, the members of the Executive, at their own houses, will adhere to the ancient usage of their ancestors-gentlemen en masse giving place to ladies en masse.

mele" and wiped the social slate free from title and precedence with one mighty Republican sweep, roused a buzzing like angry bees among diplomats, and even threatened international trouble. But, yielded at the opportune moment, they could be bartered for more important concessions.

In the early days of Washington's Presidency questions of social usage had required speedy settlement. Washington had appealed to a number of leaders, among them Adams and Hamilton, Jay and Madison, for help in making rules of official conduct, begging rather wistfully to be told whether one day in seven was not enough to set apart for visits of mere ceremony, and one hour of each dayeight o'clock A.M., which was a favorite time, apparently, with the Father of his Country-to receive visitors who came on business. Might he himself make visits not as President, but as a private citizen? What must he do about dinner-parties, etc.?

Little by little the code of manners had defined itself. Mrs. Washington held her

Friday evening levees; and at stated intervals the President gathered companies about his table for those oppressively silent dinners-"the most solemn I ever sat at," a participant feelingly confided to his diary.

Adams's reply to the President's inquiries had bristled with chamberlains and aides-de-camp. He had reminded his chief that the royal office in Poland was a "mere shadow" compared with the dignity of the American President; had mentioned the dogeship of Venice and the stadtholder of Holland slightingly in the same connection, and had warned Washington that "if the state and pomp essential to this great department are not in good degree preserved, it will be in vain for America to hope for consideration with foreign powers."

So when he came into the Presidency, the stately observances of Washington's day were not allowed to lapse. Even transplanting the seat of government from Philadelphia to the unfinished town on the Potomac had served only to jolt and rather humorously distort them. With the chill of new plaster pervading the executive residence, Mrs. Adams despaired of getting sufficient wood cut either for love. or money from the growing trees surrounding it to fill its yawning fireplaces and dispel the dampness. She put the great audience-room to the only use its unfinished condition permitted-drying the Presidential linen. Looking from its unglazed windows over the small and scattered groups of houses, all that had yet materialized of L'Enfant's imposing plan, she reflected that their inhabitants must subsist "like fishes, by eating each other." But she played her rôle of President's lady with spirit, maintained her hours for levees, and answered the "fishes," when they came to call, that she thought the new capital had "a beautiful situation."

It had indeed. Half-way between Maine and Georgia, at that time our northern and southern boundaries; inland, but at the head of tide-water on a noble stream; planned along generous lines to cover a succession of hills upon which

a city once built could not be hid, it was, and seemed likely to remain, fairly central. Even the most optimistic patriot could not foresee how far that mythical reality, the center of population, was to travel westward decade by decade during the next century, unimpeded by war or misfortune, until the city on the Potomac was left upon the edge of our great country.

Jefferson's imagination was vivid enough to see the city of the future, with its avenues and stately buildings, in Major L'Enfant's plan; but it is also quite possible that he saw the absurdity of trying to keep up the fiction of present ceremony in a capital whose houses were non-existent and whose thoroughfares were marvels of ruts and bad drainage. Personally of very simple habits, both inclination and conviction urged him to dispense as much as possible with the mummery of his office. The story that he rode to his inauguration, tied his horse to the picket-fence at the foot of the Capitol, and mounted the steps to take his oath of office has been relegated time and again to the limbo of lost, but cherished, fable. Even the knock-down objection that there was no fence fails to keep it there. The bit of truth at the bottom lies in the curtailed ceremonies of the day, and in the fact that soon after he became President he changed the custom of making a speech on the opening of Congress, prefaced by "a stately cavalcade attending the President to the Capitol," and followed by an equally stately procession of Congressmen and Senators in coaches back again to the President's house with answering addresses. Jefferson instituted the simpler method of sending Congress a written message, a custom that endured for over a century, until another Democrat chose to return to the more ancient usage of direct speech. The change, however, had neither political nor spiritual significance. It was purely physical. The taunt of Jefferson's critics that he never made a speech is almost literally true. An infirmity that caused his voice "to sink in his throat" when he attempted a public

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From the crayon portrait by St. Mémin. Engraved by J. H. E. Whitney. Copyrighted by Thomas Marshall Smith

Chief-Justice John Marshall

address at once explains it and absolves enough. Winfield Scott, who observed him from criticism.

In ordinary conversation he was ready

him with the critical attention of ambitious youth toward famous maturity,

thought him "an incessant talker." From others we learn that his conversation, while not brilliant, flowed on, thoughtful and agreeable, seasoned with old-fashioned compliment in the style of Virginia gentlemen of pre-Revolutionary days. He was not handsome, if we may trust Tucker's description of him as "tall, thin, and rawboned," with "red hair, a freckled face, and pointed features," but his height more than six feet two-and his rather loose-jointed carriage made him a marked. man in any assembly. In dress he was governed by comfort rather than by elegance. "Pride costs more than hunger, thirst, and cold," he used to say; and as he lived in an epoch that witnessed a mighty revolution in men's clothing as well as in men's government, monarchy's queues and velvets giving way to short hair and the useful, ungainly pantaloon, only the watchfulness of his body-servant saved him from unbelievable anachronisms of costume. Indeed, in later life, at Monticello, where this Democrat ruled absolute king, he often wore the garments of several different periods together, like superimposed geologic strata, or the historic. remains in the Roman Forum.

Left a widower many years before he became President, he lived in the White House in curtailed bachelor state, visited occasionally by his married daughters. His family affections were very strong, and frequent letters to them bore a recurring burden of questions about all things alive at Monticello, from his grandchildren to his cabbages, interspersed with good advice, reports on politics, or the wonders. of science, and gallantly attempted descriptions of the fashions, which he hoped were detailed and accurate enough to serve as working models. When the White House was in need of a hostess, warm-hearted Mrs. Madison, wife of his secretary of state, discharged that duty for him.

One of Jefferson's earliest reforms, in the interest of economy of time, was to do away with levees. He announced that he would receive publicly only twice a year, on January first and the Fourth of July.

The ladies of Washington, loath to give up what little courtly elegance Mrs. Adams's weekly drawing-rooms had lent to the embryo capital, tried to coerce him by appearing in force at the usual time. Told that he was not at home, they waited. He returned at last, and received them readily and courteously enough, but just as he was, dusty from his ride, without a word of apology for his appearance. His perfect unconcern gave them to understand unmistakably that he would not change his plan, no matter how often their petticoat invasion might be repeated, and they retired beaten, but laughing at his tact and their own discomfiture.

He refused to make journeys of ceremony, although both Washington and Adams had done so, pointing out that Washington's action was no precedent, since his place in the affections of his countrymen set him apart from all others, and indulging in a covert fling at Adams: "I confess that I am not reconciled to the idea of a Chief Magistrate parading himself through the several States as an object to the public eye, and in quest of an applause which to be valuable must be purely voluntary."

He strove to be a consistent Democrat; to keep the business approaches to the White House wide open, but to close those of merely social character, believing politics, not society, to be the duty for which he was elected. And politics was no child's play. Reversing positions in the game of out and in had not materially bettered affairs. Public irritation against England and France was still rife, though somewhat changed in character. Those two countries were now at war, and, striking at each other's trade, were dealing staggering blows upon our commerce.

The United States had built up a successful trade with the West Indies. England now decreed that neutral ships must not carry goods from the West Indies to France or to any European country that sided with France in the quarrel. France, on her part, forbade neutral vessels to enter British harbors. Both combatants

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