We have preserved to us an amusing anecdote of the effect of his abolishing levees. Many of the ladies at Washington, indignant at being cut off from the pleasure of attending them, and thinking that their discontinuance was an innovation on former customs, determined to force the President to hold them. Accordingly, on the usual levee-day they resorted in full force to the White House. The President was out taking his habitual ride on horseback. On his return, being told that the public rooms were filled with ladies, he at once divined their true motives for coming on that day. Without being at all disconcerted, all booted and spurred, and still covered with the dust of his ride, he went in to receive his fair guests. Never had his reception been more graceful or courteous. The ladies, charmed with the ease and grace of his manners and address, forgot their indignation with him, and went away feeling that, of the two parties, they had shown most impoliteness in visiting his house when not expected. The result of their plot was for a long time a subject of mirth among them, and they never again attempted to infringe upon the rules of his household. The Reverend Isaac Story having sent him some speculations on the subject of the transmigration of souls, he sent him, on the 5th of December, a reply, from which we take the following interesting extract: _To Rev. Isaac Story._ The laws of nature have withheld from us the meaning of physical knowledge of the country of spirits, and revelation has, for reasons unknown to us, chosen to leave us in darkness as we were. When I was young, I was fond of speculations which seemed to promise some insight into that hidden country; but observing at length that they left me in the same ignorance in which they had found me, I have for many years ceased to read or think concerning them, and have reposed my head on that pillow of ignorance which a benevolent Creator has made so soft for us, knowing how much we should be forced to use it. I have thought it better, by nourishing the good passions and controlling the bad, to merit an inheritance in a state of being of which I can know so little, and to trust for the future to Him who has been so good for the past. A week or two later he wrote to John Dickinson: "The approbation of my ancient friends is, above all things, the most grateful to my heart. They know for what objects we relinquished the delights of domestic society, tranquillity, and science, and committed ourselves to the ocean of revolution, to wear out the only life God has given us here in scenes the benefits of which will accrue only to those who follow us." Early in the ensuing year he received a letter from his old friend Mrs. Cosway, who writes: _From Mrs. Cosway._