“no dependence on these stage boats, pray be careful how you send your wedding Cloaths up when you come to Town for it must be horribly mortifying to lose them.” It is evident that the Assembly Balls were revived soon after peace was declared, and held occasionally, if not regularly, as Mrs. John Adams speaks of attending an Assembly while in Philadelphia during the administration of President Washington. The dancing she pronounces “very good and the company of the best kind,” adding that the ladies are more beautiful than those she has seen at foreign courts. Mrs. Adams must have been subject to variable moods at this time, as she writes to her daughter one week of the dazzling brilliancy of Mrs. Washington’s drawing-room, concluding that Mrs. Bingham had given laws to the Philadelphia women in fashion and elegance, while in another letter she says of an Assembly Ball, “the room despicable; the etiquette,--it was difficult to say where it was to be found. Indeed, it was not New York; but you must not report this from me.” This was probably written after one of their long drives to town over muddy roads, which made Bush Hill seem so undesirable a residence to the Vice-President and his wife. Mrs. Adams writes in more amiable mood upon another occasion, and is pleased to find “Mrs. Powell of all the ladies she has met the best informed, beside which she is friendly, affable, good, sprightly, and full of conversation.” This lady who combines so many charms is Mrs. Samuel Powel, born Elizabeth Willing, the aunt of Mrs. Bingham, who also came in for a large share of the New England lady’s admiration, being included in her “constellation of beauties,” with her sister Elizabeth, soon to become the wife of Major William Jackson, whose portrait represents one of the handsomest men of the time. The Chews of whom Mrs. Adams speaks are younger sisters of the Meschianza belles, little Sophia, Juliana, and Maria, grown up to take their sisters’ places. Old Chief Justice Benjamin Chew had a host of pretty daughters, and in the gay world of society, as in court circles, there is always a laudable disposition to hail the rising sun. Instead of Mrs. Benedict Arnold, her sisters, the Redmans, the Bonds, and Miss Wilhelmina Smith, who has gone off to Maryland with her husband Charles Goldsborough, we find a new bevy of beauties, Sally McKean, who afterwards married the Marquis de Yrujo, and whose languid beauty seemed made for a Southern court, Mrs. Walter Stewart, born Deborah McClenachan, Mrs. Henry Clymer, Mrs. Theodore Sedgwick, from Massachusetts, and Miss Wolcott, from Connecticut, whom New England gentlemen were wont to boast equal in beauty and grace to Mrs. Bingham. Mrs. Adams comments upon the gayety and prodigality of Philadelphia living at this period, as General Greene had done a little earlier, the latter having declared the luxury of Boston “an infant babe” to that of the Quaker City. Much of the extravagance which prevailed for some