The adjournment of Congress on May 3, 1802, left the Administration at leisure to carry on the business of government without interruption. Mr. Gallatin immediately afterwards took his wife and family to New York, where, as now became their custom, they passed the summer with Commodore Nicholson, and where Mr. Gallatin himself was in the habit of joining them during the unhealthy season of the Washington climate, when the Administration usually broke up. "Grumble who will," wrote Mr. Jefferson, "I will never pass those months on tidewater." Leaving his wife in New York, Mr. Gallatin returned to his work at Washington. On these journeys he usually stopped at Baltimore to visit the Nicholsons, and at Philadelphia to see Mr. and Mrs. Dallas. The society of Washington was small and intimate, but seems to have had no very strong hold over him. He was much in the habit, when left alone there, of dining informally with Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison. General Dearborn's family was in close relations with his, and the Laws, who were now at Mount Vernon, were leaders of fashionable society. But his residence at Washington was saddened in the month of April of this year, by the loss of an infant daughter, a misfortune followed in 1805 and 1808 by two others almost precisely similar, which tended to throw a dark shadow over the Washington life and to make society distasteful. His close attention to business seems at this time to have affected his health, and the absence of his family still more affected his spirits. He worked persistently to get the business of his office into a condition that would enable him to rejoin his wife for a time, and almost the only glimpse of society his letters furnish is contained in the following extract, which has a certain interest as characteristic of his political feelings: GALLATIN TO HIS WIFE. WASHINGTON, 7th July, 1802.