Page:Republican Court by Rufus Griswold.djvu/177

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NEW YORK METROPOLITAN.

I.

For several days after the inauguration Washington was occupied nearly every moment with public business, and the amount of official labor which he performed seems almost incredible. His first purpose was to acquaint himself intimately with the details of domestic and foreign affairs, and with this view he instructed Mr. Jay, General Knox, and the commissioners of the Treasury, (who continued to exercise their functions till Congress passed laws for the reorganization and support of their respective departments,) to present elaborate reports, which he read, and with his own hand reproduced, in abstracts, the better to impress their contents on his memory; and that he might more perfectly understand our relations with other governments he studied, from beginning to end, with pen in hand, all the correspondence which had accumulated in the foreign secretary's office since the treaty of peace and the termination of the war.

In the midst of these arduous avocations he found time, nevertheless, to arrange with Samuel Fraunces,[1] his steward, the details of his household economy, and to attend to the more important

  1. ↑ "Black Sam," as Fraunces was familiarly called, must have been at this time not far from sixty years of age. Washington had long been familiar with him as a popular host, and had employed his daughter as housekeeper, at Richmond Hill, while the head-quarters of the army were
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