What a gay pageant that old social life seems as it passes before us! We almost forget that the picture is limned against the stern background of war, for it is one in which the shadows have all faded out, leaving only the bright colors upon the canvas. Let it remain so. Why should we weep over sorrows so long past? The sting has all gone from them, and surely there can no harm come to this generation from dwelling upon the beauty and grace of those fair ladies, who ruled society in New York a hundred years ago, or upon the bravery and strength of the noble men who gathered around them. _Sic transit gloria mundi!_ cries the moralist; but the glory has not all passed away, as is proved by our lingering over it now, nor need it be quite effaced from the gay life of to-day, if hearts still beat as true under silk and broadcloth as did those of the fathers and mothers of the Republic beneath brocaded bodices and satin waistcoats. [Illustration] FOOTNOTES: [10] This house was the residence of Aaron Burr at the time of his duel with Alexander Hamilton. [11] Mrs. Robinson’s statement that a carpet was spread from the wharf for the President to walk upon was authenticated, more than sixty years later, by an eyewitness of the scene. Dr. Atlee, in 1850, while substitute-resident at the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, met a man of eighty-two who, when he learned that the young physician was named Walter Franklin Atlee, exclaimed at the coincidence, saying that he remembered having seen General Washington come up the river in a boat, and walk on a carpet to Walter Franklin’s house, where he and Mrs. Washington were to reside. [12] “Lady Cathcart was Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte. Peter Pindar celebrates her at Weymouth in connection with the king’s insensate manners: ‘Cæsar spies Lady Cathcart with a book; He flies to know what ’tis--he longs to look. “What’s in your hand, my lady? let me know?”-- “A book, an’t please your majesty?”--“Oho! Book’s a good thing--good thing,--I like a book. Very good thing, my lady,--let me look. War of America! my lady, hae? Bad thing, my lady! fling, fling _that_ away.”’” _Life of Major John André_, by Winthrop Sargent, p. 147. [13] See Army List, 1778. [14] This pleasantry on the part of the French minister seems to have been taken _au sérieux_ by certain writers as pointing to some obscurity of origin, while the fact is substantiated by various authorities that Eléonore-François-Elie, Comte de Moustier, entered the diplomatic service at eighteen, and after representing his country at several foreign courts was twice offered the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs by Louis XVI. [15] United States Gazette, May 9, 1789.