Page:Republican Court by Rufus Griswold.djvu/317

any thing you can imagine; and though there was a great deal of extravagance, there was so much of Philadelphia taste in every thing that it must have been confessed the most delightful occasion of the kind ever known in this country."

VI.

The winter presented a continual succession of balls, dinner-parties, and other scenes of gayety and dissipation. The most sumptuous dinners were at Mr. Bingham's and Mr. Morris's. Mr. Morris lived at the corner of Sixth and Market streets, near the President, and his house was the abode of a noble hospitality. The great financier who had so admirably managed the pecuniary affairs of the nation, had not yet displayed that incapacity or thoughtlessness in the administration of his own, which was soon to render him a bankrupt and an exile from those scenes of luxurious enjoyment which were dignified by his simple and gracious manners, unfailing generosity, and large intelligence. "I should spend a very dissipated winter," writes Mrs. Adams, "if I were to accept one half the invitations I receive, particularly to the routs or tea-and-cards." Jeremiah Smith refers to the prevailing passion for gambling: he did not think it had any tendency to add to the property or to increase the happiness of its votaries, and therefore was of the comparatively small number who would not play; but he says it was no uncommon thing in this winter to hear that a man or a woman had lost three or four hundred dollars at a sitting. The dancing at the assemblies, Mrs. Adams informs us, was very good, and the company of the best kind; the room however was despicable, and the etiquette — "it was not to be found." She remembers that "it was not so in New York," but is consoled by the fact that Philadelphia society is generally agreeable; "friendliness," she says, "is kept up among the principal families, who appear to live in great