d between three and four hundred gentlemen. We danced all
night--an elegant room, the illuminating, fireworks, &c., were more
than pretty." And at Newport, when Rochambeau gave a ball, by request
it was opened by Washington. The dance selected by his partner was "A
Successful Campaign," then in high favor, and the French officers took
the instruments from the musicians and played while he danced the first
figure.

[Illustration: AGREEMENT FOR DANCING ASSEMBLY]

While in winter quarters he subscribed four hundred dollars (paper money,
equal to eleven dollars in gold) to get up a series of balls, of which
Greene wrote, "We have opened an assembly in Camp. From this apparent
ease, I suppose it is thought we must be in happy circumstances. I wish it
was so, but, alas, it is not. Our provisions are in a manner, gone. We
have not a ton of hay at command, nor magazine to draw from. Money is
extremely scarce and worth little when we get it. We have been so poor in
camp for a fortnight, that we could not forward the public dispatches, for
want of cash to support the expresses." At the farewell ball given at
Annapolis, when the commander-in-chief resigned his command, Tilton
relates that "the General danced in every set, that all the ladies might
have the pleasure of dancing with him; or as it has since been handsomely
expressed, 'get a touch of him.'" He still danced in 1796, when sixty-four
years of age, but when invited to the Alexandria Assembly in 1799, he
wrote to the managers, "Mrs. Washington and myself have been honored with
your polite invitation to the assemblies of Alexandria this winter, and
thank you for this mark of your attention. But, alas! our dancing days are
no more. We wish, however all those who have a relish for so agreeable and
innocent an amusement all the pleasure the season will afford them; and I
am, gentlemen,

"Your most obedient and obliged humble servant,

"GEO. WASHINGTON."

VIII

TASTES AND AMUSEMENTS

A market trait of Washington's character was his particularity about his
clothes; there can be little question that he was early in life a good
deal of a dandy, and that this liking for fine feathers never quite left
him. When he was about sixteen years old he wrote in his journal,
"Memorandum to have my Coat made by the following Directions to be made a
Frock with a Lapel Breast the Lapel to Contain on each side six Button
Holes and to be about 5 or 6 Inches wide all the way eq