At the request of her husband she had laid aside her Quaker dress on her marriage. However, she clung to the Quaker ways, to its soft "thee" and "thou" that fell so pleasantly from her tongue, and even, in a measure, to its dress. During the eight years when, as wife of the Secretary of State, she and her sisters, Lucy and Anna, were often called on by Jefferson[57] to do the honors of the White House, she wore her "pretty Quaker cap." Indeed it was not until she came there as its mistress that she reluctantly laid it aside as "no longer suitable to her surroundings." She has sometimes been accused of adhering less strictly to some of the more essential beliefs of Quakerism, for which her father had suffered so much. Dolly was perhaps never a great woman, but she was infinitely better, a loving one. Her days were filled with "Little nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love." Her manner was irresistibly charming. Her memory of faces, her ready sympathy, delicate tact and Irish wit made her many admirers and friends, and her memory to-day is held in a loving remembrance such as is felt for no other one of the mistresses of the White House. One of the most characteristic stories told of her was that about the two old ladies from a western town, who, after seeing the Capital, had stopped on a corner near the White House, reluctant to leave without first seeing the President's wife, whose fame in some ways exceeded his own. They finally made known their wishes to a passer-by, who, being one who had access to the White House, ushered them in, and laughingly told their wish to Dolly. She arose from the breakfast table and went quickly to them, surprising them by the simplicity of her appearance, being dressed in a plain gray stuff dress and white apron, with a white linen kerchief crossed on her breast. Gaining courage from her warm reception, one of the old ladies murmured, "If I could but go home and tell my daughters I had kissed you!" And the wish was scarcely uttered until it was a reality for them both, and they departed with a story worth telling in their western home. She was a notable housekeeper, too, after the hospitable ways of old Virginia, and looked well to the ways of her household, usually ere her guests had left their beds. Any history of Dolly Madison seems incomplete without seeing her through Washington Irving's eyes. He attended a levee in 1811, then held from seven to ten o'clock, and writes: