When John and Abigail Adams moved in, the scantiness of fuel and lights, and the necessity for devoting the east room to the humblest of domestic uses and converting an upstairs chamber into a salon, were not the only shortcomings in their environment. Surface drainage water from a considerable bit of high ground to the eastward had formed a turbid little creek which almost surrounded the mansion. There was no water fit to drink and of sufficient quantity to meet the daily needs of the President’s family, short of a spring in an open tract which we now know as Franklin Square, about half a mile away, whence it was brought down in crude pipes. Beds of growing vegetables filled parts of the garden area where to-day we find well-kept lawns and ornamental shrubbery. The only way of reaching the south door from Pennsylvania Avenue was by a narrow footpath, on which the pedestrian took a variety of chances after dark. The streets surrounding the President’s grounds were so deep in slush or mud for a large part of the year that, in order to keep their clothing fairly presentable, visitors were obliged to come in closed coaches; and when the Adamses gave their first New Year’s reception, their guests, though so few that the oval room in the second story accommodated them, could not obtain in Washington enough suitable vehicles, and had to draw upon the livery stables in Baltimore. Adams was a well-bred and well-read man, reared in the best traditions of New England, including the sanctity of a pledge; and, having promised his friend and predecessor, Washington, to do what he could toward building up a capital in fact as well as in name, he pocketed his petty discomforts and made the best of things. Among his other efforts to promote the popularity of the new city must be counted several dinners of exceptional excellence, at which Mrs. Adams presided with distinguished graciousness in a costume that, though it would strike us now as rather prim, was in keeping with her age and antecedents. The President, who was a rotund, florid man of middle height, appeared at these entertainments in a richly embroidered coat, silk stockings, shoes with huge silver buckles, and a powdered wig. These were concessions to the general demand for elegance of attire on the part of the chief magistrate, following the precedent established by Washington. They did not at all reflect Mr. Adams’s preferences, for he was one of the plainest of men in his tastes, and his ordinary course of domestic life in the President’s House was to the last degree unpretentious; his luncheon, for example, [Illustration: _Old Carlyle Mansion, Alexandria_] consisted usually of oatcake and lemonade, and one of his amusements was to play horse with a little grandchild, who used to drive him up and down the somber corridors with a switch.