In days of retirement at Mount Vernon, when engaged in instructing her maidens, or in household pursuits, Mrs. Washington was always simply attired, and in cloth of home manufacture. She could, however, on occasions of state appear in rich costumes of satin, velvet, and lace, while the President, although appearing at the inaugural ceremonies in a suit of cloth of American manufacture, on festal occasions donned the velvet and satin that so well became him. With his republicanism in national affairs, it is evident that Washington inclined more to the state and ceremony of Old-World courts than to the extreme, almost bald, simplicity that came in with a later administration. The statement of that unknown “Virginia colonel” who said that General Washington’s “bows were more distant and stiff than anything he had seen at St. James’s” savors of probability, although disputed by some of his contemporaries, and Mr. Breck tells us that the President “had a stud of twelve or fourteen horses, and occasionally rode out to take the air with six horses to his coach, and always two footmen behind his carriage;” adding, “He knew how to maintain the dignity of his station. None of his successors, except the elder Adams, has placed a proper value on a certain degree of display that seems suitable for the chief magistrate of a great nation. I do not mean pageantry, but the decent exterior of a well-bred gentleman.” A President who thus realized all the dignity that his office implied naturally introduced a certain amount of form and ceremony into the social life of the capital, and when Mrs. Washington came from Mount Vernon, on the 27th of May, receptions were held at the old Franklin house on Cherry Street, whose like, for a certain state and fine aroma of old-time courtesy, we shall never see again. Those who, “with the earliest attention and respect, paid their devoirs to the amiable consort of our beloved President were,” says one of the newspapers of the time, “the Ladies of the Most Hon. Mr. Langdon [State Senator from New Hampshire] and the Most Hon. Mr. Dalton, the Mayoress [Mrs. James Duane], Mrs. Livingston of Clermont, Mrs. Chancellor Livingston, Mrs. Montgomery, Mrs. McComb, Mrs. Lynch, the Misses Bayard, and a great number of other respectable characters. Mrs. Washington from Philadelphia was accompanied by the Lady of Mr. Robert Morris.” We also learn that the President met his wife at Trenton, and that with a gayly-decorated and well-manned barge she made her journey to the seat of government.