He believed, however, that the President must guard his office from the free-and-easy want of decorum which some of his countrymen regarded as the stamp of democracy. At his receptions he wore a black velvet suit with gold buckles at the knee and on his shoes, and yellow gloves, and profusely powdered hair carried in a silk bag behind. In one hand he held a cocked hat with an ostrich plume; on his left thigh he wore a sword in a white scabbard of polished leather. He shook hands with no one; but acknowledged the courtesy of his visitors by a very formal bow. When he drove, it was in a coach with four or six handsome horses and outriders and lackeys dressed in resplendent livery. After his inauguration he spoke his address to the Congress, and several days later members of the House and of the Senate called on him at his residence and made formal replies to his Inaugural Address. After a few weeks, experience led him to modify somewhat his daily schedule. He found that unless it was checked, the insatiate public would consume all his time. Every Tuesday afternoon, between three and four o'clock, he had a public reception which any one might attend. Likewise, on Friday afternoons, Mrs. Washington had receptions of her own. The President accepted no invitations to dinner, but at his own table there was an unending succession of invited guests, except on Sunday, which he observed privately. Interviews with the President could be had at any time that suited his convenience. Thus did he arrange to transact his regular or his private business. Inevitably, some of the public objected to his rules and pretended to see very strong monarchical leanings in them. But the country took them as he intended, and there can be no doubt that it felt the benefit of his promoting the dignity of his office. Equally beneficial was his rule of not appointing to any office any man merely because he was the President's friend. Washington knew that such a consideration would give the candidate an unfair advantage. He knew further that office-holders who could screen themselves behind the plea that they were the President's friends might be very embarrassing to him. As office-seekers became, with the development of the Republic, among the most pernicious of its evils and of its infamies, we can but feel grateful that so far as in him lay Washington tried to keep them within bounds.