Quite as celebrated as the dinners of the society were Mr. John Vaughan’s breakfasts, which held the same prominence in the social life of the time as Dr. Wistar’s evening parties or as the Sunday afternoon vespers of Mr. Henry C. Carey, where, during the late war, and after its close, soldiers, politicians, statesmen, and civilians met together and discussed the great issues and events that shook the nation from 1860 to 1865. So at Mr. Vaughan’s breakfasts were discussed the agitating questions of the last decade of the century, Federalists and Democratic-Republicans, as they were beginning to be called, meeting together around his hospitable board. Mr. Vaughan himself was a Federalist, although not a violent partisan. Riding, one day, with Mr. Jefferson, his horse became unmanageable, disturbing somewhat Mr. Vaughan’s serenity, upon which the latter, gathering his reins firmly, muttered under his breath, “This horse--this horse is as bad as a Democrat!” “Oh, no,” replied the high-priest and leader of the party; “if he were a Democrat, he would have thrown _you_ long ago.” Mr. Vaughan, for many years librarian and treasurer of the society, had his rooms in the building on Fifth Street, in one of which, before its generous old-fashioned fireplace and high carved mantel, Washington sat for his well-known portrait by the elder Peale. The general, whom Mr. Vaughan numbered among his friends, had already been elected a member of the society; but we find few records of his presence at its meetings or at the famous breakfasts. One of these breakfasts, given in the latter years of Mr. Vaughan’s life, is still remembered by Dr. William H. Furness, then a young man, recently come from New England to take charge of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia. The breakfast lasted from nine until one. Whether the guests breakfasted upon roast peacocks and nightingales’ tongues, or upon plain beefsteak and chops, Dr. Furness does not remember; but he will never forget the circle gathered around that table. There were John Quincy Adams, Colonel Drayton of South Carolina, Mr. Du Ponceau, and Dr. Channing, who exercised such an influence on the religious thought of New England, and of whom the orthodox clergy were wont to say that his theology was “Calvinism with the bones taken out.” A goodly company of leading minds, “joined later,” says Dr. Furness, by Albert Gallatin and the Rev. William Ware, pastor of the First Unitarian Church in New York. Among other visitors of note entertained by Mr. Vaughan were Sir Charles Lyell, and George Robins Gliddon, the Egyptologist, who were both in this country about 1841.