When in the winter of 1799 the directors of the Mutual or “Green Tree” Assurance Company were holding their annual dinner, word was brought them of Washington’s death. They charged their glasses, rose to their feet, and gravely drank to his memory. In the century and a quarter which have intervened since then, the rite has been yearly repeated. Even to-day, though the toast may no longer be drunk, the diners rise, the words are spoken, and the dead leader is honoured by the living. [Illustration: People eating at a table] How cordial, how dignified, how intelligent was this hospitality practised by men who were pursuing happiness along tranquil and rational lines! How immaculately free from the grossness of Georgian drunkenness, and from the grossness of Victorian gluttony! It is true that boned turkey and terrapin were making their way to tables where wild ducks and venison had always been plentiful, and where dairy products, made perfect by practice, were admittedly the finest in the land. But it was companionship and conversation, “the liberty to grow wise and live in friendship with one another,” which citizens prized, and which strangers recognized and remembered. Philadelphia, said the poet Moore, was the only American city in which he felt tempted to linger. It was the silver talk, alternating with golden silence, which made the nights speed by when friend met friend, and the wreckage of years was forgotten. “_And the men that were boys when I was a boy Shall sit and drink with me._” The Wistar parties were born naturally into a world where social intercourse was pleasant and esteemed. First a few friends dropped casually in upon Dr. Caspar Wistar, and sat by his fire on winter nights. Then he asked a few more. By 1811 the custom was an established one, and every Saturday night Dr. Wistar entertained his guests, among them any foreigners of distinction who chanced to be visiting Philadelphia. His house at Fourth and Prune Streets was spacious; the supper he provided was simple and sufficient. In 1818 he died, and his friends wisely resolved to perpetuate his name by perpetuating his hospitality. A hundred years is a respectable age for any social observance to reach in the United States; but Philadelphians reckon such things by centuries. Their tenacity in clinging to old customs, and maintaining them unchanged, is a valiant and poignant protest against the ills done to their town by modernity.