“Your very friendly letter of last month has afforded me much more satisfaction than all the formal compliments and empty ceremonies of mere etiquette could possibly have done. I am not apt to forget the feelings which have been inspired by my former society with good acquaintances, nor to be insensible to their expressions of gratitude to the President; for you know me well enough to do me the justice to believe that I am fond only of what comes from the heart. Under a conviction that the demonstrations of respect and affection to him originate in that source, I cannot deny that I have taken some interest and pleasure in them. The difficulties which presented themselves to view upon his first entering upon the Presidency, seem thus to be in some measure surmounted. It is owing to the kindness of our numerous friends in all quarters that my new and unwished-for situation is not a burden to me. When I was much younger, I should probably have enjoyed the innocent gayeties of life as much as most persons of my age; but I had long since placed all prospects of my future worldly happiness in the still enjoyment of the fireside at Mount Vernon. I little thought, when the war was finished, that any circumstances could possibly happen which would call the General into public life again. I had anticipated that from that moment we should be suffered to grow old together in solitude and tranquillity. That was the first and dearest wish of my heart. I will not, however, contemplate with too much regret, disappointments that were inevitable, though his feelings and my own were in perfect unison with respect to our predilection for private life; yet I cannot blame him for having acted according to his ideas of duty in obeying the voice of his country. The consciousness of having attempted to do all the good in his power, and the pleasure of finding his fellow-citizens so well satisfied with the disinterestedness of his conduct, will doubtless be some compensation for the great sacrifices which I know he has made. Indeed, on his journey from Mount Vernon to this place, in his late tour through the Eastern States, by every public and every private information which has come to him, I am persuaded he has experienced nothing to make him repent his having acted from what he conceives to be a sense of indispensable duty. On the contrary, all his sensibility has been awakened in receiving such repeated and unequivocal proofs of sincere regard from his countrymen. With respect to myself, I sometimes think the arrangement is not quite as it ought to have been; that I, who had much rather be at home, should occupy a place with which a great many younger and gayer women would be extremely pleased. As my grandchildren and domestic connections make up a great portion of the felicity which I looked for in this world, I shall hardly be able to find any substitute that will indemnify me for the loss of such endearing society.