An anecdote is related of Mrs. Madison, in connection with Mrs. Merry, wife of the British Minister, and Thomas Moore, the poet. Mr. and Mrs. Merry were invited to dine with President Jefferson; when dinner was announced, Mrs. Madison happened to be standing and talking to the President, at some distance from Mrs. Merry, and he offered his arm to her and conducted her to the table, where she always presided when no members of his family were present. This attention to the wife of the Secretary of State was considered by Mrs. Merry as an insult. “Such a stir was made by the angry ambassador, that Mr. Madison wrote to Mr. Monroe (who had succeeded Mr. King as our Minister to England), apprising him of the facts, to enable him to answer an expected call of the British Government for official explanations. Mr. Monroe, however, got his first information from a friendly British under-secretary, who intimated that he would soon probably hear of the matter through a different channel. The Minister was delighted. Within a very short period, the wife of an English under-secretary had been accorded precedence over his own, under analogous circumstances. He had no great fund of humor, but the absurdity of the whole affair, and the excellent materials in his possession for a reply to a call for explanations, struck him in a most amusing light. Shaking with merriment, he hinted to his informant the satisfaction the call would give him. He never afterward heard a lisp on the subject.” President Jefferson had abolished all etiquette in regard to official precedence when he went in office, and Mrs. Merry knew this, but she never forgave the occurrence, and never afterward went to the White House. Mrs. Madison regretted being the innocent cause of such a trouble, but she was spared further notoriety by the absence of the British Minister or his family ever afterward at the President’s reunions. The affair was not, however, destined to end here, for after the first clamor had subsided, the President, through another foreign Minister, inquired if Mr. and Mrs. Merry would accept an invitation to a family dinner. It was understood that they would accept, and Mr. Jefferson wrote the invitation himself. Mr. Merry addressed a note to the Secretary of State to know if he was invited in his private or official capacity; “if in the one, he must obtain the permission of his sovereign; if in the other, he must receive an assurance in advance that he would be treated as became his position.” Mr. Madison ended the correspondence with a very dry note. Thomas Moore, who was travelling in the United States at this time, and being a friend of Mrs. Merry’s, and disgusted with his reception, fell to lampooning the President and everything American, except a few attentive Federal gentlemen and ladies.